Big Departments Weigh College Seminars Plan

Representatives of the five largest fields--History, Government, Economics, English, and Social Relations--have met and formulated a new approach to the problem of tutorial, it was learned last nigh.

Basically, the plan is to set up undergraduate seminars in these five fields, rather than the expanded group tutorial which was envisioned in the Bender report on advising released last fall. The new plan will probably be presented to the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences soon after spring vacation.

Details of the seminar program are not yet completely determined and not all the men present at the meeting agreed on all points, but the general outline is supposedly as follows:

One Every Two Weeks

The seminars will meet once every two weeks, and will have approximately eight or ten members apiece. They will run through the school year, and will be worth half a course credit. Each concentrator in one of the big five fields will be permitted to take as few as one and as many as three of the seminars. Grades will be given, and written papers will be an important factor in determining those grades.

Arthur Smithies, chairman of the Economics Department and one of the men at the conference, said last night that the new plan would not be presented "on behalf of" the big five departments, and that he for one would like to hear further discussion on the subject before making up his mind.

The report on advising made by Dean Bender's committee in the fall was meant to provide some personal instruction for the non-honors men in the large fields who could not get individual tutorial. The report recommended that all concentrators be eligible for group tutorial, and that individual tutorial be limited to seniors at the very top of their class.

The rationale behind the new scheme, it is believed, is that seminars for credit will provide more incentive for participation than the non-credit group tutorial, and that they will, by their very nature, be better organized and hence more valuable. Permanent faculty members, as well as instructors and lecturers, would be included in the seminar program