Faculty Plan For 'Major' Changes

With her plan of study due in less than three weeks, Elyse M. Schoenfeld ’09 is still juggling three potential concentrations.

“I definitely wish I had more time,” said Schoenfeld, who is trying choose between Economics, Government, and Psychology.

Thanks to a new policy adopted by the Faculty on Tuesday, Schoenfeld and her classmates will be the last students forced to commit to a concentration with only eight courses under their academic belts.

The legislation, which pushes the concentration choice deadline back to the middle of sophomore year, has two major implications for the structure of students’ education.

First, the move requires many departments to overhaul their year-long sophomore tutorials, forcing them to offer a fall tutorial open to all sophomores, squeeze the curriculum into one spring tutorial, or extend the tutorial program into the junior year.

Second, the later deadline will likely reduce concentration requirements in most disciplines because students will spend one less semester in the concentration.

The choice delay will go into effect for next year’s freshmen, giving departments a full year to restructure their tutorials before the Class of 2010 enters its sophomore year.

The new policy presents departments with the challenge of leaving tutorials open to undecided sophomores without having the size of the fall tutorial swell to an unmanageable size.

“We don’t want nobody to take [our fall tutorial], but we also don’t want anyone to take it,” Bryan M. Gaensler, head tutor for the Astronomy Department, said yesterday. His department, which currently offers a strongly-recommended year-long tutorial, is still considering how it may restructure its tutorial.

The Philosophy Department, meanwhile, has a year-long required sophomore tutorial that will likely be condensed into one spring-term course, according to Professor of Philosophy Warren Goldfarb ’69.

“This is a major change for us, even a disruption of a system that has worked exceedingly well,” Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Psychology Department’s director of undergraduate studies, wrote in an e-mail, “but we willingly undertake this discussion because of the larger benefit to students that the delay in concentration choice offers.”

The new legislation poses unique challenges for non-departmental, application-only concentrations like Social Studies and History and Literature.

History and Literature will substitute its required year-long tutorial with a mandatory spring tutorial and a group of strongly recommended fall semester seminars, according to Steven Biel, the department’s director of studies.

“These seminars will introduce students to interdisciplinary methods by focusing on a single rich text or event—and exploring a variety of contexts, questions, interpretations, and resonances,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The Social Studies concentration is considering opening its required yearlong Social Studies 10 course to any interested sophomore and then having students apply to the concentration in the fall of their sophomore year, Director of Undergraduate Studies Anya Bernstein said.

“The bureaucratic and logistical issues are daunting,” she said. “We haven’t fully explored what that would mean for us. It’s conceivable that the course would become very, very big.”

Bernstein said two other unlikely options include moving to a single-semester tutorial or staging the year-long program in the sophomore spring and junior fall semesters.

The legislation also requires freshmen to have a documented meeting with at least one departmental adviser in their second semester.

Professors voted down an amendment Tuesday that would have required students to fill out a plan of study as part of this meeting.

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Director of Undergraduate Studies Howard Georgi ’68, who sponsored the defeated amendment, wrote in an e-mail that the plan of study would ensure that students “look carefully at their schedules and avoid mistakes that will be costly to them later in their academic careers.”

Georgi wrote that the Physics Department would likely still require its students to fill out the plan of study.

Some concentrations, however, will be spared the administrative overhaul.

The Chemistry Department, for example, which only has an optional spring term tutorial, already satisfies the requirements of the new legislation.

“I do not anticipate that it will have a big effect on our concentration,” said Emery Professor of Chemistry Eric N. Jacobsen, the department’s director of undergraduate studies.

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