Rice University Reviews Core Model

A group of faculty at Rice University in Houston are reviewing Harvard's Core Curriculum as a possible model for a major curriculum reform at Rice.

Fifty-seven faculty members petitioned the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee to give "serious and speedy consideration" to the introduction of a core curriculum at Rice, The Rice Thresher, the student newspaper, reported last Thursday. The Committee has asked the faculty group to present a specific plan for reform.

Harvard's set-up provides "a good middle ground between a rigid system of courses and anarchy," Martin Wiener, professor of history and last year's chairman of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, said Monday.

The faculty will probably reach no consensus for at least a year, Wiener said, adding that faculty members range from "fundamentalist"--who support returning to the highly structured system Rice had until 1969-to those who favor keeping the present distributional system.

Harvard's system has been "quite influential in raising the question of reforms, because the Harvard example received so much publicity," Gale Stokes, professor of history, said Monday, adding that Rice will probably need something "adapted to our needs and past experience."

Cutting Back

Under the present system, almost all Rice courses fall into six distributional categories, with a minimum number of course-hours required in each.

Many faculty feel students can too easily manipulate the system to take trivial or easy courses--"jelly rolls," in Rice jargon--in areas outside their major, Wiener said.

The group is also looking at the curriculum at Brandeis University and at any adaptation of the system followed by Rice until 1969, Ewa Thompson, a professor of Russian who organized the petition, said Monday.

Scrambled Eggs

Thompson said she would favor modifying the old Rice curriculum. "I wouldn't go as far as Harvard did in developing only new courses, but I would broaden the choice," she said.

An editorial in The Rice Thresher last Thursday opposed overhauling the present system, arguing that "jelly rolls" are not inherently bad, since they give students "a working knowledge of a particular field. If we can assume Rice students are intelligent, we should also be able to assume they are capable of determining what courses are best for their education [and]...see the importance of a broad education," the editorial states.