THE BASIC TASKS

A Rice University education should help students

• acquire substantial specialized knowledge in one or more fields,
• experience broad intellectual growth, and
• develop proficiency in a range of skills that will facilitate the accomplishment of these tasks while at the university and prepare them for effective lifelong learning.
  

The acquisition of in-depth specialized knowledge will ordinarily be accomplished in the major. Intellectual breadth can be fostered by a distribution system or a system of free electives, but, unless well conceived, such systems can leave students with a shallow education outside their major fields. The skills that are the hallmark of well-educated persons can be acquired and nurtured in various ways and settings, but they can easily be ignored or neglected if they not systematically incorporated into the curriculum.

Our committee believes the Rice faculty can effect notable improvement of the undergraduate curriculum by implementing a flexible set of university-wide requirements, at least some of which can be met within the structure of most majors.

We offer the following not as a final proposal, but as an outline of the recommendations we want to discuss with you over the next two months. After a series of meetings in which all interested parties will be able to raise questions, ask for clarification, offer objection, and suggest improvements, we plan to come back to you in April with a refined proposal, discuss it in one or more open meetings, and submit it to you for a final decision by written ballot.

We do not expect that our recommendations, even if fully and enthusiastically endorsed, could be implemented before the 1999/2000-academic year and think it likely that certain portions would have to be phased in gradually. Please check the Curriculum Review homepage at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~currrev/ for references to our past and evolving reports.

PART I: UNIVERSITY-WIDE REQUIREMENTS

(Requirements all students must fulfill.)

During their first year at Rice, all students would enroll in a freshman seminar with no more than fifteen members. In addition to serious consideration of substantive material, all seminars would emphasize a common set of skills, such as writing, speaking, library research, and effective use of the Internet and other information technologies. They would equip students to get information and experience that allows informed, thoughtful, critical analysis and discussion and would introduce students to a wide range of human and other resources within and beyond the university. We regard such seminars as having the potential to provide an ideal introduction to the intellectual processes that should be characteristic of a university education and life-long learning.

Though some faculty may wish to handle these tasks themselves, we expect that most of the "skills" components of the seminars would be handled by graduate students, post-docs, and professional staff.

We are aware, of course, of the difficulties involved in providing forty or fifty such seminars every year. We believe these can be overcome and note that President Gillis has indicated that substantial resources for such seminars will be included in the recently announced enhancement plans.

The following basic skills and capacities were widely (in some cases, almost unanimously) regarded as essential or highly desirable aspects of a first-rate university education. We think it possible that most of them can be acquired in a variety of ways. Some of them will be met automatically in the course of fulfilling the requirements for most majors.

Writing

All students would be required to take at least one course designated as an "intensive writing" course each year. The freshman seminar would count as one such course. All departments would be encouraged to offer some intensive writing courses, with writing assignments appropriate to their individual disciplines. We think it likely that professors in science and engineering would be able to obtain the assistance of specially trained writing instructors who could conduct "trailer" writing sections to accompany existing courses.

Oral Discussion and Presentation

All students would be required to take at least one course that involved substantial emphasis on group discussion and oral presentation. Taking one of the few available speech classes or participating in the forensics competition would obviously satisfy this requirement. Ideally, it might be preferable to omit a specific requirement in return for a commitment from all departments to foster greater oral participation in classes.

Quantitative Reasoning

We have set forth a justification for a quantitative reasoning requirement in our previous reports to the faculty. We suggest that the requirement be met in one of the following ways:

Passing a quantitative reasoning test, or

Successful completion of at least one course, within or outside the major, which would be designated as meeting the quantitative reasoning requirement (just as certain courses will be designated as intensive writing courses). Examples would include statistics courses taught routinely in several departments, econometrics, and perhaps new courses developed particularly to satisfy this requirement.

We also recommend wider application of quantitative reasoning in many Rice courses, across numerous departments.

Languages

Virtually all faculty acknowledge the advantages of knowing more than one language in an increasingly transcultural world, though they vary in the importance they place on languages, particularly when compared to other learning opportunities. The recent creation of a new Center for the Study of Languages should significantly enhance foreign language instruction at Rice and contribute to a greater student awareness of the diversity, richness, and relevance of other cultures. Our committee's preliminary report, presented to the faculty in December 1997, offered considerable information about new developments in language instruction at Rice. Given the present possibilities, we propose that all undergraduates demonstrate competence in a foreign language in one of two ways:

Obtaining an acceptable score on a recognized language competence test, or

A grade of C or above in the second-year level of any foreign language taught at Rice.

Other means of meeting this requirement, such as studying abroad for a specified period, might satisfy this requirement, although a student who had studied abroad should be able to pass a language competence test.

Ethics and Moral Reasoning

All students would be required to take at least one course exposing them to the processes involved in making value judgments, in taking ethical considerations into account in the making of decisions, in resolving ethical dilemmas, and in the construction of and adherence to professional ethics. This requirement might be met by taking a conventional ethics course in the philosophy department or a course that focuses specifically on ethical issues in a given field-for example, environmental ethics. We would encourage individual departments to help students satisfy this requirement by consciously incorporating a substantial ethical dimension into all majors.

Note: It may be that be that, because of insufficient existing courses, such a requirement would have to be phased in at a later point.

The Arts

Most faculty members appear to believe that the inclusion of formal consideration of and exposure to the fine arts is a desirable component of a well-rounded education. We agree, but suspect that any general requirement would be difficult to implement without significant increases in teaching personnel. Still, we think it important that faculty and students alike consider this matter seriously while contemplating revisions of the curriculum and would hope that some kind of requirement-perhaps the successful completion of a course or participation in one or more of the arts-might eventually become a university-wide requirement. We invite discussion of this matter and recommend that you check our committee's website for examples of such requirements at other universities.

Teamwork and Collaboration

We believe it is important to foster the ability of students to work in teams and to learn collaborative skills, since these skills will prove extremely valuable in most careers, as alumni surveys repeatedly note. It seems pointless at this juncture, however, to call for a formal requirement involving collaborative work, since so few examples of such courses now exist. We choose instead to place it on the agenda for future consideration and to encourage further attention to the methods and resources necessary to help students develop these skills.

Health and Physical Education

While not truly part of our charge, the physical education requirement has long been a university-wide requirement and may properly be considered in this context. We have found considerable support for continuation of the two-course, non-credit requirement, with some sentiment in favor of permitting participants in varsity and clubs sports to waive one of the two courses.

A SUMMARY OBSERVATION:

While it is theoretically possible that a student might have to take eleven courses (including a freshman seminar) outside his or her major to fulfill these suggested requirements, that would almost never actually be the case. On the contrary, a number of these requirements could be met within the structure of most majors, particularly if those majors were changed in ways that seem desirable, possible, reasonable, and not particularly onerous.

A third set of requirements would replace the current distribution system. At present, we ask students to take a specified number of courses outside their home disciplines and hope this will have positive benefits. We feel this too often results in a haphazard selection of courses and a woefully inadequate appreciation for both the methods and content of fields outside their major(s).

In place of this arrangement, we propose that students take a specified number of courses that will introduce them to the leading intellectual approaches they will encounter in the university. Our hope is that these courses, either newly developed or chosen from existing courses for their ability to meet specific criteria, can provide them with the tools and a context for intellectual growth across multiple disciplines during their years at Rice and throughout their lives.

The Criteria. While dealing extensively with specific subject matter, the kinds of courses we have in mind would:

• Be explicitly self-reflexive, giving attention to the processes and, if appropriate, multiple theoretical perspectives within the discipline(s).
• Give attention to the creation, development, and modification of models, perspectives, and interpretations within the disciplines, currently and over time.
• Explicitly introduce students to problems within the discipline and to various approaches and pathways to understanding these problems.
• Be appropriate for both majors and non-majors. (We expect most such courses to be accessible without prerequisites, but can easily conceive of exceptions.)
  

The Categories

Historical Thinking (2 courses)

Courses in this category would give explicit attention to the processes of historical thinking-studying, interpreting, analyzing, and reconstructing the past-as well as concentrate on information about specific historical eras. Ideally, they would introduce students to multiple historical perspectives, demonstrating how to approach and assess a variety of source materials in the process of understanding our relationship to the past. Such courses would be offered by a range of departments, including Art History, English, other Language/Literature departments, Philosophy, and others, as well as by the History department.

Textual Analysis (2 courses)

Courses in this category would focus on analysis of various kinds of "texts," including literature, film, art, and music. Again, we expect that such courses would be offered in several departments, some of which may be outside the humanities division.

Social and Cultural Interpretation (2 courses)

Courses in this category should provide students with ways of analyzing and interpreting our own and other societies and cultures. They should give a sense of the range and diversity of human behavior by explicitly comparing institutions and practices across several social and cultural settings, or by examining another culture or society in depth. A variety of courses in the social sciences and humanities could satisfy this requirement.

Scientific and Technological Reasoning (2 courses)

Courses in this category would focus on the processes of scientific and technological reasoning that are essential to the development of our current understanding of scientific principles. Courses would be designed to enhance insight into how hypotheses and theories are developed, how they are tested, and how the observations and experimental results become established as scientific facts and form our shared understanding about underlying principles. The recursive nature of this process would be emphasized, in that insights from experiments not only may confirm the original ideas but also generate new and unexpected hypotheses.

Scientific Knowledge (2 courses)

This category is designed to provide information about the body of knowledge that has been accumulated and would include a number of courses now commonly taken to meet Division III distribution requirements.

New and Existing Courses

In our meetings and on our website, we will be presenting examples of syllabi of courses currently being taught at Rice that appear to satisfy the criteria we have listed above. It is difficult to identify an appropriate set of courses that would satisfy the criteria for the Scientific and Technological Reasoning category and that would be accessible to all students. This is perhaps the most formidable challenge involved in revising the undergraduate curriculum. We believe, however, that providing all Rice students with substantial understanding of the intellectual underpinnings of science and technology is a challenge that simply cannot be finessed. Other universities appear to have met this challenge more successfully than we have. Good models exist. Surely we can learn from others and use our abilities to surmount this obstacle.

Multidisciplinary Courses

We believe that multidisciplinary courses, taught by instructors from different departments and divisions, can be an especially effective way to foster intellectual breadth and to make students aware of the approaches taken in various disciplines. Not many such courses currently exist, and we do not wish to demand that they be created as a condition of revising the curriculum. Instead, we expect that the new structure we are recommending to implement, oversee, and improve this part of the program will use its resources to encourage the development of such courses.

Avoiding Balkanization

Students have frequently complained that they have limited shared classroom experience with students from divisions other than their own. Ironically, the Foundation Courses exacerbated this situation by limiting these courses to students who were not majoring in the divisions offering the respective courses. Note that the present proposal, if adopted, could be expected to reduce intellectual balkanization by holding all students responsible for the same set of requirements, even though some of those would be met in the normal course of fulfilling individual majors.

No Necessary Increase in Required Courses

Note again that, as in the case of the "Skills and Capacities" requirements, substantial segments of these requirements would likely be met by most students in the normal course of meeting requirements for their majors, particularly with the creation of new courses and the adaptation of existing courses.

Classification of Courses

A given course might qualify for inclusion in more than one category, but could be counted only once in the "ways of knowing" categories. However, courses in these categories could satisfy a "skills" requirement as well as a "ways of knowing" requirement. For example, a course featuring historical thinking or textual analysis might easily be an intensive writing course as well.

Pass/Fail

We have found little enthusiasm among our colleagues for the Pass/Fail system. This is particularly true for professors who have had substantial experience with students taking their courses on a Pass/Fail basis. Some have even charged the Pass/Fail system with playing a major role in the difficulties associated with the various foundation courses.

It is currently the case that students are not permitted to take courses within their majors on a Pass/Fail basis. We strongly believe that policy should be extended to the program of university-wide requirements. Indeed, if Pass/Fail is to be retained in any fashion, we recommend that it be limited to free electives and that a grade of "C" be regarded as the minimum for a grade of "Pass."

Advanced Placement

None of these requirements could be satisfied by AP credit. Indeed, we prefer, but do not insist, that all students satisfy these requirements at.

PART II: THE SUSTAINING STRUCTURE

Few aspects of our research have impressed us more than the overwhelming consensus on the part of those familiar with curricular revision that even the most thoughtful and successful curricular changes can quickly be lost without appropriate administrative structures to maintain them. Despite the customary resistance to additional administration, we are absolutely convinced that provision of such structures is essential and that, unless we are willing as a faculty to establish and maintain them, that there is little point in undertaking the kinds of changes we have proposed above.

President Gillis has given his assurance that substantial resources will be devoted to supporting a first-rate program of university-wide requirements. Obviously, managing these funds responsibly will require competent and dedicated leadership. We believe this leadership should come from primarily from the faculty. Though our views are far from set in stone, we propose the following structure as roughly appropriate.

A Director

To provide direct oversight of the program, we believe a new position should be created, to be identified perhaps as University Professor or Director of Undergraduate Curriculum or some other appropriate designation. The occupant of the position would devote all or a quite significant portion of his or her time to the task, though this might well include some teaching. We expect that this would be a well-paid position and might well involve a new hire.

A New Standing Committee

The Director would work closely with a new standing committee of perhaps eight to twelve members who would serve three-year terms, staggered at the outset to provide for continuity. The director and the committee would set and maintain appropriate guidelines for courses and requirements, respond to problems, adapt to new challenges and opportunities, provide incentives and assistance to persons involved in the program, and, most importantly, stimulate continuing conversation regarding the curriculum.

Another Plausible Committee Structure

As we have pondered the responsibilities such a committee might have, we note areas of potential overlap with the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. A structure that would incorporate a smaller, more focused group responsible for the duties outlined in the previous section as a subcommittee or partner committee with the current Undergraduate Curriculum Committee may have advantages. This structure might have the Director as chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, which would maintain its current oversight of the curriculum, including majors, but would take on the crucial and important task of facilitating on-going, regular dialogue among the faculty on curricular issues and creating an environment in which curricular development becomes an integral and less disruptive process.