Both of these meetings were collegian and informed. Almost all the topics have been covered at other meetings, so I will simply provide some scattered notes on the discussions.

One initial question was: What's lacking in what we're doing? That led to a discussion of COFFEY reports and some of the needs perceived by graduates. One person suggested we may take reviews from former students too seriously.

It was also suggested that many of our problems and problems perceived by students stem from poor high school preparation. Perhaps we should change the admission process. This was disputed by others.

Students would be happier with a distribution system of some sort, not being forced to take single required courses without any possibility of choice. Perhaps what we need are guidelines, not requirements.

There was substantial discussion of language requirements in the first meeting, with the language departments supporting some kind of requirement and chemists questioning the need. The language professors replied that a monolingual, monocultural education was too narrow, too limiting in the contemporary world. It was suggested that there be a foreign language competency exam during freshman week for all students in order to judge the effectiveness of our foreign language entrance requirements. A recommendation to this effect was made a couple of years ago.

The usual somewhat favorable discussion of freshman seminars was a part of both meetings. One of the chemists had been an undergraduate at Stanford and spoke favorably of the system of small classes there.

It was suggested that Huma 101 was a failure; the faculty was burned out. Change is needed. Pass/fail encourages mediocrity.

The need for writing instruction was a part of both discussions, at the freshman level, across the curriculum, with emphasis carried across the four undergraduate years so that students would build on freshman writing.

There was a suggestion that training was also needed in reading and thinking.

After one faculty member suggested that an ideal size for a freshman seminar be 10, there was some discussion of how to staff 60 seminars. One suggestion was to involve upper division students in seminars as aides to faculty.

We didn't get to this in the meeting, but further consideration of the content of general education was suggested, that is whether or not a background in western culture should be required of all students.