The Economics Department announced yesterday that four seminar-groups of approximately 20 students each will replace the once weekly lectures in Ec. 93, or tutorial for credit, and that an associate professor at the University of California has been appointed to head the new junior tutorial program.

John T. Dunlop; chairman of the Department, said that increased enrollment in 1998 had made lecture presentation of the subject matter--the central core of economic concepts--ineffective. Since Gill Plan opened tutorial for credit all concentrators, the number of students in the course has jumped from to 80.

Dunlop declared that the use of two-hour, smaller seminar discussion groups meeting once a week is "more properly the spirit of tutorial, will improve a level of instruction, and will allow the students and professors to develop their own interests more thoroughly and participate in good give-and-take discussions."

The seminars will split into smaller groups of four of five students, meeting once a week for 90 minutes to present and discuss papers. These groups will focus on the major aspect of economic thought considered in the larger seminars.

Caves to Head Program

Heading the program will be Robert Caves, who will become professor of economics on July 1. An expert on industrial organization, Caves worked on a new foreign trade program as deputy special assistant to the President in 1961. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard before joining the faculty at California.