FREQUENTLY (and occasionally) ASKED QUESTIONS

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.

What will the CGE do?

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.

Do the proposed Ways of Knowing categories exclude some disciplines?

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.

What about Ways of Knowing courses? Will those be phased in as well?

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.

What happens if the faculty does not approve of the proposal?

In accord with directions given by the faculty in February 1996, we would be left with no curricular requirements pertaining to general education. We could either drop all such requirements (a la Brown University) or we could reaffirm, perhaps with some changes, the current curriculum, which the faculty has repeatedly judged to be inappropriate for this university. In either case, such a decision would require two votes of the faculty.

What happens if the faculty approves of the proposal but decides, after a few years, that it does not work well?

It can vote to appoint another committee to come up with another plan. Our aim has been to devise a structure that will allow for continual evolution and improvement. That is a major reason we have not tried to specify every detail of the program in great detail. If the plan works as we hope it will, a major standing committee (CGE) will devote substantial effort and energy to continuing oversight and development of this portion of the curriculum. We hope it will never be necessary to start all over again.