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

Representatives from the Curriculum Review Committee

Peter Salovey '86 Ph.D., Chair of the biomedical education subcommittee, reported that his working group has organized its thinking into three principal areas.

• Directed research initiative: Many students report that their directed research work with faculty and graduate students was the highlight of their educations. To find ways to improve directed research opportunities, the committee wants to track these experiences and attempt to focus resources on the most effective kinds of research projects.
  
  
• Pre-medical initiative: The college curriculum for students interested in medical school tends to consist in a greater number of prescribed courses than the courses of study for other undergraduates. The Yale College experience for a premedical student should be just as exciting and rich as that for others.
  
  
• Health sciences in the college initiative: Could a new interdisciplinary program be created that integrates the health sciences? It might include work in the social sciences on health behaviors by cultures, individuals, and groups, and health policy and health economics.

Charles Bailyn '81 B.S., Chair of the physical sciences group, discussed the challenges facing Yale in the area of science education for nonscience majors. Many students with significant interest in science lose that interest after deciding to major in the humanities or social sciences. Yale needs to generate courses that will make those students want to take science courses because they are intellectually exciting, independently of whether or not they fulfill distributional requirements.

Rachel Alpert '03 from the social and international studies group reported that her committee has concentrated on study abroad, international studies, interdisciplinary courses, and language studies. The group wants to encourage more students to go abroad for at least a portion of their educational experience. They are looking at ways to increase opportunities for freshman and sophomores to travel abroad so that they will be able to incorporate this international experience into their later studies. This group is also looking at ways to bring together distinguished professors and practitioners in relevant fields to teach courses in a more interdisciplinary setting.

Christine Hayes, from the humanities and the arts group related that the group believes strongly in the element of discovery in the undergraduate curriculum. Yale College needs to keep the features that allow students to explore possibilities. The committee is searching for ways to foster creative interconnection between the disciplines, perhaps through specially designed courses. The hope is that students won't just sample regular classes in departments outside their major, resulting in unconnected islands of knowledge. The committee wants to find ways that would transcend traditional boundaries in the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences by creating more courses that are fully interdisciplinary.

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