By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

Faculty and students favor a quantitative reasoning requirement in the Core Curriculum, but there is less agreement on how to make the Core program more flexible.

Over the past month, members of the Harvard community have discussed options for revising the Core, the almost 20-year-old general education program now under formal review.

"People at Harvard take the Core Curriculum very seriously," Professor Sidney Verba told members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on April 8. "The Core is a good program. It needs some changes, but the élan is still there."

Verba chairs the faculty-student Core Review Committee, which issued some preliminary proposals in March after more than 18 months of consultation and study. Both the FAS Faculty and the Committee on Undergraduate Education discussed the Review Committee's "working paper" last week; the Faculty plans a second discussion next month.

Faculty and students have voiced strong support for one of the committee's proposals: to add a course requirement in quantitative reasoning after an adequate number of courses are available. Topics might include probability, risk analysis, human demography, or methods of behavioral research.

Although many agree on the need to give undergraduates more flexibility in designing their academic programs, there is no consensus on the best approach -- at least not yet.

Verba's committee proposed reducing the number of required Core courses from eight to seven. It also recommended expanding the mechanisms for reviewing petitions from students who wish to meet Core requirements with work done outside the Core.

But some want to go further, by allowing more departmental offerings to count for Core credit.

Some students and faculty argue that Core courses, which are aimed at nonspecialists, discourage intellectual depth among students who already have knowledge in fields outside their concentrations.

"A biology concentrator with a strong history background, for example, should not be channeled into a course pitched at those without such background. This is simply not a good use of such a student's time," sophomores Sarah Hurwitz, James Grimmelmann, and Benjamin Rahn wrote recently in the Crimson. The three have coauthored a critique of the Core.

Said Gary Feldman, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, "We shouldn't allow the Core to be a hindrance to our students' education."

According to Verba, the Review Committee opposed a liberal "bypass" system because Core Courses are designed and vetted especially for the Core and focus on a particular aspect of a subject to illuminate large and important questions. Some worry that allowing departmental substitutions would deter faculty from developing Core courses, which are already in short supply.

The lengthy process for approving Core classes is a matter of concern for some faculty, including sociology professors Mary Waters and Theda Skocpol. They said it took two years to gain approval for their American public policy offering. "It's a very annoying process to go through," Waters told fellow members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education last week.

Lawrence Buell, John P. Marquand Professor of English, said he would like to see more emphasis on small-group instruction in the Core Curriculum.

Some faculty, among them scientists William Bossert and William Paul, said they would like to try a system of majors and minors. But Skocpol believes the Core should be adjusted, rather than scrapped.

If faculty and students agree on one thing, it is that the Core Review Committee has done an exceptional job in soliciting input from various parts of the community. The committee's efforts, said one faculty member, have been "truly Herculean."