Active group projects in the creative arts, under the direction of qualified instructors from inside and outside the University, should also be based in the Houses and should receive Gen. Ed. funds and degree credit. Diversity and experimentation should characterize the form, as well as the content, of these House courses. Team teaching should be encouraged, especially in interdisciplinary courses. Instructors could teach jointly throughout the term or successively for several weeks each. Group research projects and workshops could also be started, along the lines of some of the Freshman Seminars and Applied Physics 14.
Primary responsibility for creating experimental House seminars and projects would rest in each House with a House Committee on Educational Policy (HCEP) consisting of nine official members: two Faculty Associates, two resident tutors, three undergraduates, the House Master, and one Senior Tutor as Chairman. The student representative from the House to the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life should be a de facto tenth member. The HCEP would be sensitive to the educational needs and preferences of the students it serves and would solicit individual and group suggestions for House Gen. Ed. courses. Ultimate authority for approving and funding House courses would rest with the Committee on General Education and the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Gen. Ed. Committee should establish a standard stipend of approximately $1500 to compensate a department or a professional school for the services of a Faculty member enlisted for a one-term House course.
Each HCEP would also have authority to screen proposals for January Intensive Studies that are based in its House and to approve Independent Study and cross-registration petitions submitted by House members and freshmen affiliated with the House (We recommend below that each freshman be affiliated with a House).
INDEPENDENT STUDY: All undergraduates, including freshmen, should be eligible to entroll in an Independent Study. An Independent Study petition should be signed by the Corporation appointee supervising the work and submitted to the student's HCEP for approval. If the student wanted to receive credit toward his concentration program for his Independent Study, his petition would also have to be signed by the appropriate representative of his department or the Committee on Special Studies.
Evaluation for Independent Studies should be on a pass/fail basis rather than for ungraded credit as now. Each supervisor should submit to the Registrar a report acknowledging the competition of (or failure to complete) work meriting a pass.
We propose that the total sum (at least $100,000) allotted each term to subsidize Independent Studies be evenly divided by the number of Independent Studies pursued during that term, with each supervisor receiving a portion proportional to the number of students he is supervising. A fixed limit of about three or four Independent Studies should be imposed on any one supervisor during a term.
Group Independent Studies should be encouraged. To that end, students should publicize their interests in House bulletins; and these bulletins should be distributed among the Houses so students can find others with similar interests. The January Intensive Studies would also benefit from this public advertisement of personal objectives.
A list of potential Independent Study supervisors should be made available through computerized compilation methods.
Limits on Independent Study: There should be no limit set on the number taken in any term, but no undergraduate should be able to include in his 27 term courses presented for credit toward the A. B. degree more than SIX Independent Studies of one-term duration.
EXPOSITORY WRITING: We propose that a program be designed to make effective assistance in expository writing available to all students at any time during their undergraduate careers. Courses and Independent Studies in English composition would count as Humanities courses for distribution purposes.
Entering freshmen and transfer students should be given a test prior to their selection of courses for their first term. This test would be designed to help each student evaluate his writing ability in light of the criticism received from the English teaching fellow who reads his essays. Students deciding that they would benefit from instruction and counseling in writing would be able to enroll in a basic expository writing course that teaches general techniques of exposition, or in a specialized writing course that teaches style and techniques peculiar to essays in specific fields (courses similar to the middle group expository writing offerings). In all cases, students should be able to choose the topics for composition.
A resident English tutor in each House should be compensated to serve as writing counselor to the students in his House and the freshmen affiliated with it. He should be available to advise students who seek his assistance in improving their writing. Graders of undergraduate course papers should be encouraged to recommend to a student that he consult with his writing counselor when his expository style or organizational technique could stand improvement.
Students should also be encouraged to take an Independent Study in writing if they feel one would be helpful. Such an Independent Study would normally be supervised by a House writing counselor and would be conducted in a group whenever possible to conserve tutorial resources and to encourage students to criticize each other's work.
( The conclusion will appear in tomorrow's CRIMSON.)