Assembly LXI: The Undergraduate Curriculum at Yale
Thursday, October 24 - Saturday, October 26, 2002
Assembly Chair Marc B. Lockhart '84
Executive Summary

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Opening Plenary Session: The Yale College Curriculum Review

Assembly Chair Marc Lockhart '84 launched the Assembly by reflecting on the purpose and definition of education. He posed the question, "What will a Yale College graduate need to know upon graduation?" He also considered how Yale through the centuries has tried to impart the best of a liberal education, teaching its students to think critically and independently and to be able to express themselves with logic, clarity and grace.

Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead '68, '72 PhD, A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English, and chair of the coordinating committee of the review, introduced the four representative members from the Committee on Yale College, Peter Salovey '86 Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Psychology as well as Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health and Deputy Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS; Charles Bailyn '81, Professor of Astronomy and Physics; Rachel Alpert '03, a Yale College student majoring in International Studies and Political Science; and Christine Hayes, Professor of Religious Studies.

Dean Brodhead then reflected on the multiple purposes of a Yale education. Dean Brodhead began by asking delegates to bear in mind that the formal, academic aspects of Yale College form only a part of the education here. Yale students engage with great passion and commitment in a wide range of other activities, from athletics to performing arts to volunteer work in the community. All of these activities constitute significant learning endeavors outside the classroom.

That said, Yale students take great care in selecting specific courses and in constructing their four-year curricula. The faculty is also greatly invested in the College and work hard to engage and interest the undergraduates. If both these things about the students and faculty were not true, it would not be worthwhile mounting a review. It is the ethic of education that students and faculty bring with them to Yale which makes this endeavor worthwhile.
The review is being conducted by 42 committee members divided into four working groups that include faculty members, recent graduates, and current undergraduates. This past spring the committee members visited all schools and departments and held town meetings with undergraduates in their residential colleges. The Committee is currently assessing its members' views of both the principal opportunities and the principal challenges that Yale should address in the years ahead.

Dean Brodhead observed that Yale College today should be examined in the context of its location within University which has developed exceptionally rich resources in research, graduate and professional education. One focus of the committee has therefore been to reflect upon ways in which those wider university resources can be made more available to undergraduates. The Dean also presented additional questions that have provoked the most telling discussions within the committee:

• How can we better encourage closer contact between faculty members and undergraduates?
  
• How can we ensure that we have not only specialized classes, but classes with breadth and scope?
  
• Relying on the many recognized strengths of Yale College, where can we improve undergraduate education in strategic ways?

Dean Brodhead encouraged the delegates to bear in mind three challenges that any effort to review the notion of "curriculum requirements" must address:

1. There are too many interesting and important things that people need to know in today's world. These range from genetics and international politics to economics and computers. It is not possible to specify a four-year program of study that will accomplish every desirable objective or equip students with "all they need to know."
   
   
2. When one does establish a new requirement of any kind, one is trying to increase the value that faculty and students attach to the particular subject matter or skill to be acquired. However, making something a requirement can often have just the opposite effect. Courses that are "required" tend to be trivialized and conducted as pro forma exercises, since students and faculty come to see them as lying in the realm of "administrative regulation" rather than personal choice.
   
   
3. Exploring a wide variety of courses, discovering connections that no required program would make, and determining how to build a coherent plan of study from disparate courses are all critical aspects of a contemporary education as well as important lifelong learning skills. We should not underestimate the power of self-directed exploration.

The challenge of curriculum development lies in allowing for serendipity and self-discovery, while encouraging the kind of discipline and coherence in course selection that will provide students with a "real education." Yale also wants students to acquire a range of traits and capabilities: intellectual curiosity, the ability to find relevant information, the ability to analyze and interpret that information, the ability to make connections across disciplines, and the ability to communicate what they learn to others.

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