University May Set Up Committee To Apply Technology to Teaching

The University may establish a new Faculty committee as part of an effort to "catch up with the technological revolution in instruction," Dean Monro said yesterday.

Besides dealing with the use of teaching machines, television, recorded tapes, and motion pictures, the new committee would advise on the teaching fellows, according to Monro.

If approved, it would be the first new standing committee of the Faculty to be established since the Committee on the Practice of the Visual Arts was set up in 1962.

Monro said that he was "enthusiastic" about having such a group, and predicted that neither the Committee on Educational Policy nor the Faculty as a whole would offer any resistance to it.

Only President Pusey's approval is necessary for establishing the committee. Plans, however, are still indefinite, and no proposal has yet been submitted.

The idea for the committee originated with Dean Ford, who was "struck" by how many different standing and special Faculty committees currently handle question relating to instruction. The use of audio-visual aids, the value of language laboratories, and the role of tutorial are all undergoing separate study, he said.

Ford said he thought the University was "getting close to the point" at which these scattered investigations could "coalesce into one committee." He pointed out that the Committee on Educational Policy, of which he is chairman, was originally supposed to have jurisdiction over instruction, but that questions of curriculum had come to demand all of its attention.

"I think we are approaching the time," he said, "when we will have to get out into the open some questions about instruction."

The standing committees, which number nearly 40 are the working arms of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The more important, like the CEP, meet at weekly intervals.

The idea of a committee on instruction represents a continuation of Ford's concern with the quality of teaching in the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

In a major program that he announced in October, 1963, the University began offering five-year fellowships to incoming graduate students.