House Biology Tutorial Planned for Next Year

Dean Ford has approved a plan to establish a non-credit tutorial in Biology run through the Houses next year. The Committee on Educational Policy will have to take final action on the program this Spring.

Dr. John W. Hopkins, chairman of the Undergraduate Committee of the Biology Department, which drafted the proposal, calls the new program "unconventional" because it is entirely non-credit and is not required either for the major or for honors. He said that the program, if successful, may be the first step to a required biology tutorial for credit.

The immediate purpose of the tutorial, Hopkins explained, is "to give a student stronger training in biology and make science more respectable in the Houses." Students in Geology and in History and Science are presently the only science majors offered House-run tutorials.

All biology concentrators will be eligible to take the tutorial, he said. However, because seniors are usually involved in a Bio 40 (to be renamed Bio 99 next year) research project, the new program will serve mainly sophomores and juniors.

Tutors will be free to conduct either individual or group tutorials. The subject of a tutorial will be chosen by the tutor and his tutees in consultation with the Biology Department's tutorial supervisor.

Students who have taken Bio 2 or Nat Sci 5 should be able to understand the material in the tutorial. These courses are not now considered definite prerequisites, but the Undergraduate Committee may vote to make them so later this spring.

12 Will Tutor

The tutorial staff will consist of twelve tutors next year, one for each Harvard House and three for Radcliffe. The tutors will be selected by the House Masters this spring from a list of candidates submitted by the Biology Department.

Tutors will be drawn from graduate students with two semesters of teaching experience with the Department and more than two years of residence and from post-doctoral fellows.

The new tutorial program will replace the present informal departmental tutorial, which has about 30 students, and informal seminars which have been held from time to time in some Houses.

The tutorial is just one aspect of a major overhaul in Biology planned for next year. The Department announced last Fall that it was expanding its concentration requirements and expanding its curriculum at an estimated cost of $150,000. Hopkins said there was no connection between these changes and the tutorial except perhaps a common origin in the "general atmosphere of change and improvement" which seems to be pervading the department.