University Times

Arts and sciences faculty will consider modified College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) general education requirements at a meeting tomorrow, 1:30-4 p.m., in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room.

If faculty approve the modifications and related administrative changes, the revised curriculum would apply to students entering CAS next fall. The current CAS curriculum was adopted in 1981, and last modified seven years ago.

Faculty shot down the most controversial change that had been proposed by CAS's curriculum review committee — reducing from three to two the required number of natural sciences courses — but the surviving changes number in the dozens.

Among other things, the proposed changes call on faculty and departments to:

* Integrate oral, written, information technology and quantitative skills across CAS courses.

The associate dean for Undergraduate Studies would get $100,000, taken from FAS's savings from the faculty retirement program, to support these efforts.

* Develop courses that address issues of diversity such as race, gender, sexual orientation and religious differences.

* Implement discipline-appropriate capstone experiences for all majors. These experiences might include senior seminars requiring major papers, internships or laboratory research experiences with written or oral reports, or portfolios of artistic work.

* Drop courses periodically from the CAS general education catalog if they have not been taught at least once during the previous five years.

The curriculum review committee did not reach consensus on whether to affirm, abolish or strengthen CAS's foreign language requirement. So, faculty will be asked to approve creation of a committee to examine the requirement. This group would report to CAS Council on or before the council's April 2003 meeting.

The new CAS general education requirements would include: an introductory composition course; two writing-intensive courses; a quantitative and formal reasoning requirement; one course each in literature, music or art, and philosophy; a second course in literature, music or art, or creative expression; a sequence of two foreign language courses; three foreign culture/international courses; a non-Western culture requirement; one course each in historical change and social science, and three natural sciences courses.

— Bruce Steele