Foundation requirements modified

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by Peggy Lai

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Faculty members decided in a meeting on Monday that NSCI 101, NSCI 102 and SOSC 102 will not be offered next year.

"NSCI and SOSC were a valiant effort, but they didn't work ... there is a lot of student resentment about them," said Bill Wilson, Committee on the Undergraduate Curriculum chair.

However, the foundation requirements themselves will remain the same for at least two more years. Instead of taking the currently designated courses, students may substitute classes from a list of social science, science or engineering courses.

According to Wilson, replacement courses for NSCI 101 and 102 will include, among others, ELEC 201, GEOL 201, SPAC 201 and BIOS 201. ECON 211, POLI 209, POLI 210 and a few history classes may be substituted for SOSC.

The list of classes is still being finalized and will be published in next year's course announcements.

HUMA classes will still be offered next year but only for Group III students.

According to Wilson, when the foundation courses were first established in 1987, they were implemented on the condition that the courses be reviewed after five years.

In 1992, the Committee on the Undergraduate Curriculum instigated a two-year study of the foundation courses and requirements. Students and faculty were surveyed and the instructors of the foundation courses were interviewed.

The conclusion was that the humanities program was on the whole successful but NSCI 101, NSCI 102 and SOSC 102 were not effective as introductory level classes in science and engineering and the social sciences.

A new proposal was made which suggested that instead of foundation courses, all students would be required to take two out of four designated courses in each of the groups.

The list of required classes will be denoted as "Restricted Distribution Courses," being of a broad-based, introductory-level nature and considered representative of that particular discipline -- humanities, social sciences or science and engineering.

Distribution requirements will remain the same. Last November, this plan was adopted "in principle" by the faculty, and the deans of each division were asked to make the necessary preparations, such as designing new courses.

The "Restricted Distribution" plan was to be instilled this year, but a changeover in the deans of the Humanities and Social Sciences departments caused a delay in the implementation of this strategy.

Thus, the next two years will be a proposed "Holding Pattern," in which as few changes as possible will be made in order to minimize confusion and disruption for students.

"This is really a change for the better because I think the [new] courses will be more enjoyable to the students," Wilson said.

This item appeared in the News section of the February 16, 1996 issue.

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