Protecting Science

After wrestling for nearly a year with requirements and exemptions, the Standing Committee on the Core Curriculum this week approved a plan ensuring that all students take both physical and biological science as part of their undergraduate education.

"We decided long ago that science would be protected," Edward T. Wilcox, spokesman for the committee and director of General Education, said this week.

The committee also decided, long ago, that no student had to take more than eight Core half-courses to fulfill his requirements. But because there are ten Core sub-areas, the committee had to find a way of exempting students from taking courses in two of them.

"The most flexible Core committee would say, 'take any eight out of ten," Wilcox says. He adds, however, that most non-science undergraduates would be happy to take those eight in non-science areas. "The whole history of Gen Ed was how to get out of Nat Sci," he says.

Therefore, the committee decided to exempt students from taking Core courses in the sub-areas that corresponded to their concentrations, while at the same time "protecting the science areas," Wilcox says.

The committee had trouble, however, finding two exemptions for some concentrations. It remedied the situation by deciding this week to allow students in such concentrations to take their extra exemption in one area of their choice, excluding Sciences A and B.

The committee also decided that students in physical science concentrations must take one half-course in the Sciences B sub-area, which covers life sciences. Concentrators in biology-related sciences, however, are not required to take courses in the Sciences A sub-area, covering physical sciences.

The committee adopted the exemption policy because physical science concentration requirements do not stipulate that majors take life-science courses. Biology-related concentration requirements, on the other hand, specify that majors take classes in physical sciences.

"Sciences now have protected status for everyone in the college," Wilcox says.