DEAS Profs Slam Review

Science and engineering professors could stand in the way of Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby’s plan to win approval for major curricular reforms this spring.

Faculty members in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS) voted to back a pair of statements Tuesday that criticize key aspects of the ongoing curricular review.

The DEAS statements were not released publicly, but were e-mailed to all professors in the division and obtained by The Crimson from one of them.

The DEAS statements represent the second significant setback to the stalled review in less than a week. Last Friday, Kirby, the leader of the review, announced that he will resign from his administrative post at the end of the spring semester.

Harvard College Professor Harry R. Lewis ’68, a DEAS member, said the science and engineering professors produced the statements in hopes of working with the curricular review committees to revise the proposals—not to defeat the curricular review in a final Faculty vote.

“We thought it better to speak now rather than waiting for legislation,” Lewis said.

One arm of the review, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC), has recommended that the College delay concentration choice by one semester, to the middle of sophomore year.

Kirby had said in a Jan. 20 letter that he aims to bring the EPC proposals to a full Faculty vote this spring.

But according to a statement approved unanimously by DEAS members at Tuesday’s meeting, the EPC proposal fails to give students adequate incentives to do advanced work in their fields.

McKay Professor of Mechanical Engineering Frederick H. Abernathy said that science and engineering concentrators must acquire skills cumulatively from a progression of courses. Students in these fields who fail to take key prerequisite classes during their freshman year may face limitations in their choice of concentration.

“We’re just pointing out that...by making one mistake in your freshman year, you could have less freedom with what you can do in your next three years,” Abernathy said.

While the current system is not ideal, Abernathy said, forcing students to declare a concentration at the end of their freshman year ensures that they have some contact with a concentration adviser earlier in their Harvard careers.

The EPC has also recommended that departments cut back on the number of courses that concentrators must take, and allow non-honors-track students to graduate with cum laude degrees.

But the DEAS faculty said that recommendation “provides too little incentive and structure for undergraduates to do advanced work and to develop the kind of superior scientific knowledge on which the advancements of science, engineering, and technology depend.”

Lewis said these proposals are problematic because they signal to students that they have little to gain from advancing further in their primary field of study.

“I find it curious that at a moment when much of the national conversation about American competitiveness and America’s place in the world is based on the notion that we are no longer producing enough well-trained scientists and engineers,” Lewis said.

“[Harvard] would take a stance against advanced work and for more spread-out work,” he added.


ROTTEN TO THE CORE?

Nearly all of the DEAS faculty members at Tuesday’s meeting also voted to approve a second statement expressing concerns about the proposal to replace the Core curriculum with a set of distribution requirements.

The DEAS statement said the Committee on General Education’s proposal does not provide professors with adequate inducements to teach courses geared toward non-concentrators.

Kirby said in his Jan. 20 letter that the full Faculty would vote on the general education proposals later this semester.

Abernathy said the second statement emerged from concerns that the reform proposal does not provide concrete incentives—in the form of funding, teaching fellows and other support—that the Core Office currently gives faculty who develop Core courses.

Abernathy and his colleague Steven C. Wofsy, an associate dean of the Faculty and a DEAS member, both said humanities concentrators stand to suffer the most if faculty are not motivated to create these broad courses, since most departmental science courses require mathematical and scientific know-how that many humanities concentrators may not possess.

“Non-science concentrators can take a history course­—it’s written in English,” Abernathy said.

“Going into a physics course if you haven’t had physics is very tough,” he added.

Lewis, Abernathy, and Wofsy all said that concerns about Harvard’s advising program underlie many of the problems that the curricular review is trying to address.

They suggested that the curricular review should lay the foundations for a comprehensive and effective new advising program before trying to tackle other recommendations.

—Staff writer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.