CLARIFICATION APPENDED

Both architects of the new General Education curriculum said that they would have preferred a program with fewer than eight categories to give students more leeway for electives.

English Professor Louis Menand and Philosophy Professor Alison Simmons—the two co-chairs of the Task Force on General Education, which wrote the legislation for the new curriculum to be launched this fall—said that they are concerned that the eight-category requirement may constrain students’ schedules, especially those who will also be pursuing secondary fields.

Simmons said that between concentration requirements, Expository Writing, foreign language citations, and newly created secondary fields, a six-category Gen Ed program would have been more manageable.

She added that the number of categories ended up reaching eight because the Faculty was trying to accommodate professors in all disciplines. During faculty discussions, eight was seen as the upper limit for the number of categories.

But Menand said he is hopeful that two Gen Ed classes will count double for students’ concentrations in most cases, a stipulation that would give students more leeway than the seven-requirement Core.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Stephanie H. Kenen said she was concerned that the number of categories will make students experience the program in “a very similar way” to the way they experienced the Core.

“I don’t think there are too many categories intellectually, but I do worry a little bit that the students will feel the eight requirements as a burden,” she said.

Kenen added that the curriculum will undergo a review in 2012, five years after the Gen Ed vote in May 2007—the committee that conducts the review may recommend to the Faculty that the number of categories be reduced, depending on the results in the next few years.

Although some Gen Ed courses may double as concentration requirements, students in some fields may enjoy having fewer requirements than concentrators in other areas.

Former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, who spoke to the Faculty before the final Gen Ed vote about his concern that students would not have enough room for electives, blamed the administrative upheaval during the curricular review for the number of categories, adding that there was a need for someone to “put limitations on the aggregate and shape it somehow.”

The original proposal that Menand and Simmons’ task force submitted to the Faculty in October had seven categories—the same number that the Core currently contains. By February, it had grown to eight.

After Menand and Simmons submitted their report to the Faculty for discussion in February, they and the rest of the task force decided not to speak at Faculty meetings until the final Gen Ed vote in May. They said wanted to let the Faculty finish shaping the curriculum and feel as though it was their own.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.

CLARIFICATION: The original version of the April 2 article "Gen Ed Creators Admit Doubts" bore the headline "Gen Ed Creators Raise Doubts."  In fact, because the Gen Ed planners quoted in the article stated their doubts in response to questions posed by The Crimson, "admit" is the more accurate reflection of the way in which the concerns were voiced.  "Raise" suggested a more active mode of communication, and has therefore been amended.