Joseph B. Nadol '95 considered majoring in biology until he took Chemistry 10. Now, he's thinking about concentrating in government.

"The professors of intro science course [at Harvard] aren't satisfactory," Nadol says. "The University doesn't put enough effort into finding good teaching professors for introductory classes."

Nadol is not the only undergraduate who was turned off science at Harvard by early course-work. And though administrators and faculty members says they have stepped up efforts to retain prospective science concentrators, their efforts so far seem on the whole unsuccessful.

Last year, for the first time in Harvard's history, more than 50 percent of 1609 registered first years said they were interested in concentrating in the sciences.

This figure represents and 11 percent increase from 1988, when only 40 percent of admitted first-years indicated an interest in science concentrations on their Harvard applications.

But despite the increase in the number of prospective science concentrators admitted, the number of actual science concentrators has remained relatively constant over the past few years, and has even fallen several percentage points.

In 1986, 27 percent of upperclass students declared that they were concentrating in science or a related field. By 1989, this number had dropped to 23 percent. In 1990, there was a slight increase, to 25 percent.

Students and faculty members attribute Harvard's low retention rate of students in science concentrations to everything from normal attrition factors to problems in course structure.

Harvard is by no means alone in its difficulties. Colleges across the country have reported a decline in the number of science majors of their campuses.

But professors and students say that certain problems may be unique to the University.

Dean of the Division of Applied Sciences Paul C. Martin '52 acknowledges the difficulty of luring students as diverse as those at Harvard to introductory science courses.

"People want different things from each course," he says. "It's hard to make them attractive to people with a wide range of abilities, interests and career goals."

Other problems found in science classes include the high student-to-faculty ratio in some science departments as well as the limited variety of classes offered to students, says Martin.

"It is more difficult and it requires more resources to teach introductory science and math courses to variety of students," Martin says.

Students concur. Jack S. Levy '92 says he changed his major from biochemistry to government after finding introductory biology and chemistry classes "inadequate" and "boring."