Stalled Review Inches Ahead

The Harvard College Curricular Review's Educational Policy Committee (EPC) will release a report of its work to the Faculty on Friday, and a second committee may follow with a report of its own in time for next Tuesday's full Faculty meeting.

The EPC submitted a preliminary report last May, but has since revised the report in response to faculty feedback.

And the General Education Committee is aiming to distribute its official report to the Faculty next week, Gen Ed Committee member and Professor of Philosophy Alison Simmons told the Faculty Council-the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' 18-member governing body-yesterday.

"Things are happening," said Harvard College Professor and Phillips Professor of Early American History Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who is a member of the Council. "It's going to be an interesting fall."

Ulrich said that the agenda for next Tuesday’s Faculty meeting will include discussion of the released committee reports.

The Gen Ed committee will be the last review committee to release a version of its report to the full Faculty. The forthcoming report was written over the summer by five members of the committee after the Council axed an earlier draft, saying that it lacked a guiding vision.

The Council offered feedback on the revised report earlier this month, but although the group was slated to see a final version yesterday, the report was not yet complete, Ulrich said.

According to a September version of the Gen Ed draft, obtained by The Crimson last month, the report recommends dropping the current Core Curriculum, with its 11 areas of study. The report proposes a general education system with three broad disciplinary areas—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology.

Students will be required to take three courses in each of the two areas not related to their concentration. Alternatively, students could fulfill an entire division’s requirements with a year-long “portal” course.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said yesterday that he plans to release a time-line for discussion of the final reports at Tuesday’s meeting.

“The Faculty Council’s really trying to help move this forward. I’m sure there are a lot of differences of opinion about particular details, but we don’t want things to drag on,” Ulrich said.

Secretary of the Faculty David Fithian said earlier this month that curricular review legislation will not come before the Faculty prior to January 2006.

Also at yesterday’s meeting, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Theda Skocpol announced the creation of a fund designed to encourage innovation and improvements in Harvard’s 55 PhD programs.

University President Lawrence H. Summers has pledged $100,000 for each of the first three years of the fund, part of which will be used to establish an annual prize recognizing departments or programs that have improved their PhD tracks.

“It’s a way to encourage and to honor efforts by groups of faculty to improve the quality of graduate education,” said Skocpol, who took the GSAS helm this summer.

Skocpol will administer the fund in consultation with the newly-formed Graduate Policy Committee (GPC). Skocpol said the committee will likely meet for the first time later this fall, and that regular meetings will begin in the spring. The GPC’s membership was finalized this week and will consist of 14 tenured faculty members, including Skocpol, Kirby, and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71.

Yesterday’s Council meeting also included a presentation by Director of Institutional Research Nancy Zipser on a report compiled from senior survey data.

Zipser declined to comment on the content of the Council’s discussion of the survey data.

“The idea is that some of the curricular review committees and all of the academic deans had seen it but it hadn’t been more fully distributed and discussed among the faculty,” she said. “This is just a starting point to make sure people see it.”

Kirby also announced yesterday that Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences Charles E. Rosenberg will replace Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn, who is on sick leave, on the Council this semester.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: The print and original online version of the Oct. 20, 2005 news article, "Stalled Review Inches Ahead," incorrectly stated that the Curricular Review's Educational Policy Committee (EPC) would release a new report that day, and that the Advising Committee would re-release a copy of the same report it originally released last May. In fact, the EPC released its report on Oct. 21 and the Advising Committee does not plan to re-release a copy of its May report.