Concentration Proposals Start In Council

All the professors and instructors in each academic department will have to meet together at least once annually to discuss their undergraduate curriculum--marking perhaps the first time in years that some departments have met as a group to discuss its undergraduates--if the Faculty passes one of the motions the Faculty Council approved in its meeting yesterday.

Taking up the first half of the report of the Task Force on Concentrations, the Council endorsed or approved for Faculty discussion all of the task force's first five recommendations.

The Council did not have time to discuss the most controversial proposal in that section of the report: the proposal that the Faculty rescind existing quotas for senior faculty participation in undergraduate tutorials.

The Council will send two of the recommendations directly to Dean Rosovsky and the three others will go to a full Faculty meeting for a vote.

The first proposals would prevent the number of concentrations from growing and the second would make visiting committee reviews more thorough but less frequent. Visiting committees now often stay on campus for only one or two days yearly.

The first motion the Faculty will vote on proposes each department set up mechanisms both for advising all concentrators on their individual course plans and for reviewing the academic progress of all students in the major.

Start Simple

The last two proposals would require each concentration program to establish some type of required progression from basic to more specialized courses and that each department hold an annual meeting to review the undergraduate program.

Paul C. Martin '51, professor of physics and the chairman of the Task Force on Concentrations, who attended the Council meeting, said yesterday that based on his research in compiling the report, "to the best of my knowledge a number of departments do not now meet as a whole to discuss the undergraduate program."

Martin said that a fairly long discussion preceded the approval of the five motions but that clarification, not controversy, took up most of the time.

He said he expects a more lively debate on the tutorial recommendations.