ABOUT THE PROPOSED CURRICULUM CHANGES
September 9, 1998
Could we have a better name for the proposed oversight group than Committee on University-wide Requirements at Rice and thus a better acronym than CURR?
Yes, we can. The committee has given a modest amount of thought to
this matter and has come up with a number of highly creative names
and acronyms, several of which are suitable for family audiences.
Instead of using any of these, we have settled upon Committee for
General Education (CGE). Some have reservations about the term,
"General Education," but what we are recommending falls under that
rubric at most universities, so it seems to be a good choice.
How will the Committee for General Education (CGE) be constituted and chosen?
A major goal of the ad hoc Committee has been to facilitate closer
and active oversight of the general education component of the
curriculum by members of the faculty. To this end, the President has
accepted our recommendation that the Committee be constituted and
chosen as follows:
From a list submitted by Faculty Council, the faculty's elected representatives, the President will appoint a committee of nine members, four each from Divisions A and B and one at-large member. In addition, he will appoint a Director of General Education. To coordinate CGE's activities with those of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, at least one member of the UCC would serve as an ex officio member of CGE.
The nine members of the committee will ordinarily serve staggered terms of three years. (Normally, three members would rotate off each year. Leaves and other circumstances may, of course, require some adjustment.) To get this rolling, initial appointments would be for one, two, or three years.
To facilitate continuity with the ad hoc committee, members who have not become Deans have agreed, if Faculty Council and the President wish, to serve on the committee in the first two years, two or three members each year.
The Director would have a longer-term appointment.
Encourage and facilitate opportunities for improving undergraduate education-workshops, speakers, consultants, etc. As an example of the kinds of things that could be done, Professor Ira Gruber (History) is consulting with each of the seven academic deans to construct a list of information and experiences they regard as desirable for Rice graduates to know and have. Such a list, always subject to revision, could serve students and advisers as a useful guide as they think about what they want to derive from their undergraduate experience.
Oversee the Freshman Seminar program. (Note: The Hewlett Foundation has given Rice a grant to pilot a Freshman Seminar program in two residential colleges. Albert Van Helden will be in charge of this program. It is a separate project but will doubtless be coordinated with the General Education program. Indeed, it offers an opportunity to test models of Freshman Seminars.)
Make decisions as to which courses meet the requirements for satisfying the various categories of university-wide requirements: Freshman Seminars, intensive writing, oral presentation, quantitative reasoning, and, of course, the "Ways of Knowing" courses, and insure that a wide range of subjects, departments and faculty are represented in each "Ways of Knowing" category so that students have a lot of choice.
Encourage proposals for new courses to be included in the Freshman
Seminar and Ways of Knowing categories. (Note: the CGE will have a
substantial budget that can be used, along with other emoluments, to
facilitate new courses when such assistance is deemed necessary. The
university's budget for the current academic year includes generous
provision for precisely this purpose.) The committee will also work
with faculty, department chairs, and deans to devise ways of making
new courses feasible and successful.
If the CGE can decide that a given course does or does not count as a Ways of Knowing course, doesn't that violate a professor's academic freedom?
Not at all. The content of a course is the responsibility of the
professor and, perhaps, his or her department or division. CGE would
decide only whether the course meets the criteria for inclusion in
the General Education categories. In our current system, the deans
and the Provost have responsibility for deciding whether a course
meets the criteria for "restricted distribution." Under the proposed
system, this responsibility would be shifted to a larger group of
faculty.
Why use the term "ways of knowing" instead of more familiar Divisional (Engineering, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences) or Departmental terms?
We have used the term "ways of knowing" to point to the fact that
scholars-- biochemists, computational engineers, literary critics,
archeologists, and practitioners of all other disciplines represented
within the university-use a variety of approaches and techniques to
discover and create knowledge. These approaches do not necessarily
correspond to departmental, divisional, or even disciplinary
categories. Our proposal is designed to insure that students are
exposed to several of these approaches to knowledge as they master
different bodies of knowledge.
That is certainly not the committee's intention and it should not
be the result. The aim of the "ways of knowing" requirement is to
ensure that all students will gain some acquaintance with several
important and different ways of thinking. No department will be
excluded unless it chooses not to offer courses appropriate for
general education. It is true that some courses now taken for
distribution credit would not qualify as Ways of Knowing courses, but
any department should be able to offer courses (current and/or new)
that would meet the criteria. In fact, a department might well offer
classes that qualify in two categories. For example, Psychology might
offer courses in both "Interpreting Human Behavior" and "Engaging
Science and Technology." Religious Studies or Philosophy or a
language department might offer courses in "Approaches to the Past,"
"Encounters with Texts and the Arts," and "Interpreting Human
Behavior."
The categories ask Faculty to consider, in offering a course for
general education, both whether the material is suitable (as we do
now) and then to identify which category best describes the
approaches to the material that he or she will take. Some courses may
fit clearly into a particular category. For example, a
philosophy/cognitive science course on the philosophy of mind
probably fits best into "Interpreting Human Behavior." For other
courses the choice of category may not be obvious. A professor
teaching "Introduction to Hinduism and Buddhism" would need to
consider whether his/her course focused more a close reading of
sacred texts in an attempt to understand abiding fundamentals of each
religion (Texts and the Arts) or on the ways in which these two
religious traditions emerged and changed over time (Approaches to the
Past). A professor teaching a course on epistemology might ask
whether to focus more on evaluating a group of philosophical texts
that ask similar questions, or to look at how epistemological
theories shape broader cultural phenomena.
Won't these requirements add substantially to the number of courses students will be required to take?
There is no reason why they should. It is important to remember that 1) a number of the requirements can be met within the major, and 2) a given course can fulfill more than one requirement. As an example, science and engineering students, for whom the number of courses is always a concern, should easily meet the quantitative reasoning and the four "Engaging Science and Technology" Ways of Knowing courses in the normal course of their majors. Both the oral presentation requirement and one of the four "intensive writing" courses would ordinarily be satisfied by the Freshmen Seminar. Finally, numerous "Ways of Knowing" courses, as well as numerous elective and major courses, will doubtless also count as intensive writing courses. With the assistance of the Cain Center, it should be much easier for science and engineering professors to make sufficient writing assignments to have some their courses qualify as "intensive writing" courses. Thus, it is easily possible to imagine that S/E students could fulfill all General Education requirements by taking only seven courses outside their major. (A language requirement, if adopted, could also be met without additional courses.)
As is now the case, students at the Shepherd School, because of their closely programmed schedules, will have to choose carefully to meet the new requirements, but it should not be more difficult than is now the case.
The committee has prepared course plans for several disciplines,
confirming that the proposed program is indeed quite feasible.
Won't the addition of 45 Freshman Seminars inevitably divert resources from major courses?
The President has repeatedly and emphatically stated that
substantial new resources will be available to support the Freshman
Seminar program. The Board appears to be enthusiastic in its support
of these seminars. We take the President and the Board at their word.
One approach, used at Stanford, is for departments that agree to
provide a certain number of Freshman Seminars each year to be given
priority in obtaining new appointments.
How can we possibly have 45 Freshman Seminars up and running by the fall of 1999?
We probably can't. Our committee expects that it will be necessary
to phase in the Freshman Seminar program over several years, making
it optional for some students until a full complement of courses can
be mounted. Even then, some of the seminars might have to be offered
in the spring. That's not ideal, but we do not live in a perfect
world.
Yes and no. We hope to see the development of a number of new
courses that will be particularly well designed to meet the goals of
general education. We are confident, however, that numerous courses
already being offered meet these criteria quite well and that other
courses, with a modest amount of alteration, could be made to meet
them if the professor so desires. The aim is not to exclude any
professor or discipline, but to encourage a larger number of courses
suitable for the purposes of general education and to foster an
atmosphere on campus conducive to discussion about general education
and other curricular issues that transcend departments and
divisions.
How will students (and advisers) know which courses qualify for Ways of Knowing, intensive writing, quantitative reasoning, etc., and how will they keep track of where they stand?
Courses will be so designated in the General Announcements and
other publications. Readily available publications and websites will
contain lists of courses that meet the various requirements. In
addition, students will use a matrix check-list to help them see
where they stand at any moment. A proposed version of such a matrix
is available on the committee's website.