The Curricular Review Review

What's Happening With The Review?

Just curious - anyone know?

Where next with the Curricular Review?

Today's meeting was important. It was encouraging to see a good turnout, although I think it's important to reach out to students who don't normally attend these sort of events.

The Committee on General Education has already made its recommendations, which I largely agree with. While I think it's worthwhile to be encouraging students to continue to think about the questions raised, my interest is in figuring out what we can do as a student body to get the Faculty to vote on the recommendations.

There is uncertainty in University Hall about what happens next. There is concern that the faculty who oppose the reforms will use the resignation of Dean Kirby and President Summers to stall the process. From one perspective, the biggest threat to the process is a filibuster - talking and talking and talking until the Curricular Review drops off the radar.

John Haddock is right: there is no consensus among the student body about each of the specific reforms, but taken colletively I think it's fair to say that we want the faculty to review the recommendations and vote as soon as possible (ie, before Kirby leaves).

What can we do to speed the process up? Start by signing the petition: http://hcs.harvard.edu/proreview/petition.html.

When should we choose our concentration?

There was some discussion today near the end of the meeting about when students should be forced to choose a concentration. I wish we had had more time on the topic, but maybe we can address it in greater detail here.

The first step is better advising, which I discussed earlier.

Choosing concentrations later is impossible in the current system. You just can't let people choose concentrations after freshman spring if you have 4 classes a semester, expect to graduate on time, and have to fulfill your concentration reqs. It's impossible. One student made the point that it's hard even now to fit all the classes you want to take into just 4 slots when you have to consider the core and concentration.

So what if we increased the typical number of classes each term. Make work/class load a little smaller to compensate. 5 classes means that in the 3 years after freshman year, you'd have 6 more slots to work with. That's a semester and a half by the current system.

Allow students to choose at the end of their sophomore fall, increase the typical class load, and reduce load per class.

What do you think?

This afternoon's meeting

I think by all accounts this afternoon's meaning was succesful. Congratulations to its organizers and those who attended.

That said, we're a far-cry from getting this review sufficiently discussed by the student body. So let's see if we can't generate some good, constructive dialogue on this blog. My first concern has to do with faculty leadership.

Its nice to see the faculty paying at the very minimum lip service to getting back on top of the Curricular Review. Dean Gross, Dean Kirby, and the other faculty members at the meeting were quick to assure all of us that it's the next big thing they're talking and not something that will dissapear off the radar screen just because Summers is gone.

But I', still concerned about faculty continuity. Dean Kirby is still on his way out of the top Dean spot, Summers is heading out, and that leaves only Dean Gross (it seems) as the public figure pushing this review forward who is going to have the same office come next fall.

With all these changes, who are the public figures in the faculty who are going to provide some sense of stability and vision moving forward?

Emergency student convention Tuesday!

SAVE OUR REVIEW!
Emergency student convention on the revival of the Curricular Review:

Tuesday, February 28

4:30PM

Kirkland JCR

(Free Food)

This is our chance to get our voices heard and reclaim our review. Why hesitate to abolish the Core, expand financial aid options for summer travel, implement secondary fields (minors), and improve advising? What are we waiting for?

In recent weeks and months, events at Harvard have begun to distract much of our university community from its central goal: the improvement of the undergraduate experience. Political tensions have caused some to lose focus; on Tuesday, February 28, the undergraduates of Harvard College are going to show that we have not lost our focus.

The Curricular Review still matters to us because undergraduate education is still important to our community. Some students feel like we're the only ones left who care - on Tuesday we will show that whether we are the only ones left or whether we are joined by faculty and administration, we will not wait idly any longer.

At 4:30PM on Tuesday, at the Kirkland House JCR, we will reclaim our Curricular Review. Free food will be in ample supply, lively discussion will abound, and the will for progress will triumph. Will you be there?

Advising

The Curricular Review recommendations begin with a section on advising, so let's start there. The jist of the proposal is that advising needs some serious work particularly among freshmen. Some propose moving to a Yale-style housing system, but the idea was shot down by the students who prefer leeway in selecting blockmates. And I happen to agree-I would only be with one of my blockmates had our upperclass houses been determined by freshman dorm.

While the Review's focus on advising is laudable I fear that some of the changes may be slightly misguided. While a Dean of Advising may be necesary to coordinate planning and execution, more advising staff are almost entirely useless and potentially counter-productive. The single most effective change the administration could make is to get upperclassmen involved with advising. As a freshman, upperclassmen know their departments best. They have the experiences they accumulated choosing classes and concentrations, and they are also easy to talk to.

Not only are upperclassmen best equipped to advise freshmen, but this system would also improve campus cohesion. Right now there is a very real boundary encircling the Yard - an adivising system that stressed upperclassmen participation would not only improve advising, but help freshmen access the rest of the campus.

Agree?

Will the faculty now finally focus on the Curricular Review?

The faculty, so caught up in a frenzy over President Summers, was expected to once again push aside voting on the Curricular Review at the Faculty meeting on February 28. Now with the Summers issue off the table, what can we expect in the way of progress on Curricular Reform?

Dean Gross Breakfast

So I wrote about my breakfast with Dean Gross in my blog, and I want to throw out some more specifics about what I heard. The biggest problem right now is the Summers controversy, which is dominating the headlines and sidelining the review. Faculty are tabling debate on key issues like changing when students choose their concentration or what do with the core curriculum because everyone is getting themselves in a frenzy over President Summers.

This review has been handled poorly from the start, but now that some real (and decent) ideas are emerging, the faculty should at the very least give them their due and be timely about it.

The point of this blog...

Every few decades Harvard decides to relook at how things are taught at Harvard. And at a place so usually unwilling to change, this moments of self-investigation are absolutely critical. The administration has created focus groups and sent out polls to gauge our ideas and responses to ideas they have created, but these venues for discussion have their limitations. This site was developed to give the Harvard community a place to discuss issues like the Curricular Review in a more nuanced and inclusive way than ever before...So let's see if it work.