Faculty Group Suggests Retention of Seminars

The Freshman Seminar Committee will recommend to the Faculty that the freshman seminar program be retained as a permanent part of the College curriculum, usually reliable sources have revealed.

When the Committee makes its report at the Faculty meeting Tuesday, it will also make specific recommendations concerning the nature and organization of the program. Unless the Faculty takes positive action this spring, the program will automatically be discontinued.

The Seminar Committee, a subdivision of the Committee on Educational Policy was set up last October to evaluate the program and to recommend a course of action to the Faculty. In late October, the Committee distributed questionnaires to 1485 undergraduates to determine the effects of the seminars, particularly on the later academic experience of the students. Reportedly, Committee members were quite impressed by the apparent accomplishments of the seminars.

Original Report Favorable

At the mid-December meeting of the CEP, the seminar Committee submitted a highly favorable preliminary report and recommended that the seminars be continued. It will now submit a revised report elaborating its recommendations to the full Faculty on Tuesday.

The seminars were established as an experiment in 1959 with an anonymous donation of $2 million. However, the Faculty stipulated at that time that the entire program was to be reviewed and evaluated in three years. Under the direction of Byron R. Stookey, Jr. '54, the program has expanded from an original 17 seminars involving 175 students to this year's total of 41 seminars with an enrollment of more than 300.

When the Seminar Committee was created, John J. Conway, Committee chairman, said that the recommendations would have a "great effect" on the future of the seminars.