Gen Ed Courses To Find New Life

Faculty members yesterday put the final touches on a plan to include in next year's course catalogue at least a dozen courses in a new category for offerings that fit in neither a department or an area of the Core Curriculum.

Nearly all the courses, which will appear under the heading "General Education," now belong to the General Education program, which will dissolve in the fall when the Core is fully implemented.

A Faculty standing committee on non-departmental instruction yesterday approved eight courses into the new General Education category, all of them current or recent offerings of the departing Gen Ed program Before yesterday's meeting the committee had approved four other courses into the new category, including one that was offered this General Education 100. "Introduction to Women's Studies."

Since the new category has no strict guidelines on content, as departments--and areas of the Core do, it will consist of courses with syllabuses too broad for a department or the Core.

The new General Education courses will resemble House and freshman seminars in that they will normally not fulfill distribution or concentration requirements But departments may choose to let its concentrators apply individual offerings in the new category towards concentration requirements

The 31 courses in the current Gen I d program may be offered next year in one of three ways in a department in the Core or in the new General Education category Some professors are expected to stop offering their Gen Ed courses entirely.

Several past Gen Ed courses have already moved into the Core over the past three years, but no more than one or two professors of current Gen Ed offerings will seek Core status this year. Edward T. Wilcox, director of General Education, predicted yesterday.

The standing committee has not yet rejected any courses for the new category. Susan W. Lewis, associate dean of freshman and the committee's chief administrator, said yesterday Only two of the courses it has approved are not current or former Gen Ed offerings: the women's studies course and a course on the influences of "The Odessey," taught by Peter A. Bren, a Dartmouth professor who will visit the Classics Department next spring.

Yesterday marked the formal deadline for considering courses for the new category, although the committee may still take up as many as six or seven late applications before the 1982-83 course catalogue's March 23 deadline, Lewis said.

New 'General Education' Courses

Hum 108

Nat Sci 120*

Nat Sci 135

Soc Sci 33*

Soc Sci 106

Soc Sci 123

Soc Sci 152

Soc Sci 169

Soc Sci 174

Soc Sci 176

Gen Ed 100

["The Odyssey's" Influences: not currently offered]

'to be offered in modified form