By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) voted overwhelmingly

Tuesday to reaffirm the Core Curriculum while making some adjustments to the program.

Faculty decided to add a quantitative reasoning requirement to the Core and to work toward increasing the number and range of Core courses available to students.

The changes, recommended by the Core Review Committee after an 18-month study, represent the most significant revisions to Harvard's general education program since its inception nearly 20 years ago.

The Core seeks to broaden student exposure to important subjects and approaches to knowledge. Core courses are designed and vetted especially for the program, and most are taught by senior faculty members.

"I'm extremely pleased with the final result," said University Professor Sidney Verba, who chaired the Core Review Committee. "We worked a long time with a lot of cooperation from the Faculty. I believe these changes will reinstitutionalize and strengthen the Core."

"The Core will be revivified and extended by the splendid mandate of Tuesday's vote," said FAS Dean Jeremy R. Knowles. "I have long believed that in a world of increasing technical complexity, all our students should have some exposure to quantitative reasoning. The other elements of the Faculty's decision will further enrich the Core in the future. What an excellent end to the academic year!"

During a lively two-and-a-half-hour discussion, faculty members considered a series of proposals about the Core and other aspects of the curriculum. This was the third consecutive Faculty meeting that focused on the Core.

In a unanimous vote, with one abstention, the Faculty approved the recommendations of the Review Committee, which would add a course requirement in quantitative reasoning when a sufficient number of offerings are available. Topics might include probability, risk analysis, or human demography. This requirement will raise the number of Core study areas from 10 to 11.

The legislation also aims to broaden student choice in the Core by:

* making the guidelines for reviewing Core courses more inclusive;

* allowing departmental courses that meet the Core aims and guidelines to count for Core credit;

* encouraging the development of incentives for faculty to teach in the Core.

A motion by Professor James Engell (English and Comparative Literature) expressed the view that departmental courses accepted for Core credit "need not necessarily be designed for the most general audience, provided such courses are within the aims and guidelines of a Core area."

Speaking in favor of the motion, Susan R. Suleiman (Romance and Comparative Literatures) said the Core "in many ways already does what Jim suggests." She said the proposal would expand student choice and noted that some students complain they have to take Core courses that satisfy a requirement but don't correspond to their deepest interests.

Although the Faculty Council had voted to table the measure to give the Core committees a chance to evaluate their guidelines, the full Faculty -- in an unusual move -- moved forward after considerable debate and passed Engell's amendment, 78 to 59.

A number of faculty spoke for and against English Professor Lawrence Buell's motion that "faculty-taught, small-enrollment courses using interactive pedagogy" be added to the Core. Some suggested that seminar-type classes could be phased into the Core over time, while others said the proposal was financially unrealistic and would require every senior faculty member to teach in the Core. Buell's prediction about the fate of his proposal came true when the motion failed, 86 to 45.

Faculty also agreed to solicit two preliminary reports from the Educational Policy Committee by December 1997.

One report, proposed by Professor Gregory Nagy (Classics and Comparative Literature), will review the current foreign language requirement for undergraduates.

The other, put forward by Associate Professor Michael Hasselmo (Psychology), will explore options for increasing the number of electives that students can take, by reducing the number of required Core courses from eight to seven or by capping the number of concentration requirements.

Dean Knowles and others thanked the faculty, administrators, and students who contributed to the review, and applauded the Core Review Committee's responsiveness to community feedback.

Over the course of the three-meeting debate, several professors praised the Core program, which began in the late 1970s and replaced a general education program that had become, in effect, a straightforward distribution requirement.

"The Core is a remarkable success," University Professor Stanley Hoffmann said Tuesday. "It has revitalized undergraduate education here."