Monday, July 28, 1997Administrators propose new general course
requirements
CURRICULUM:
Faculty aim for teaching across department boundaries
By George Sweeney
Daily Bruin Contributor
Today’s UCLA students face a massive and disjointed pool of
general education requirements.
With a new proposal, UCLA is looking to cluster general
education, offering a better teaching environment and more research
opportunities.
In early July, faculty, students, and administrators completed a
proposal for a new set of general education (GE) guidelines for the
1999 incoming freshmen.
The current requirements need to be altered, the proposal
states, because they do not guarantee a strong and relevant general
education.
"There should be an attempt for the GEs to integrate areas that
are really relevant to life situations," said Judith L Smith, Vice
Provost for undergraduate education.
These are the most initial stages of planning, and
implementation is not guaranteed.
"Before the proposal goes on to the Academic Senate, we will
have extensive discussions with the faculty in each department,"
said Edward Berenson, chair of general education and professor of
history.
Current GE requirements require students to take a wide variety
of courses, each a separate entity.
However, the proposal lays the framework for connections between
departments.
The new GE proposal seeks to build an interdisciplinary field of
courses for students to take on a year-long basis. These groupings
are being referred to as first-year clusters.
Cluster courses would integrate two or more academic departments
into a grouped curriculum. Each cluster would consist of two
quarters of lecture, with weekly discussion sections, and then
would culminate in a quarter-long seminar.
The new GE will no longer consist of the current four divisions
 social sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and
humanities  but instead have three broader areas.
The new divisions would be: North, the social sciences and
humanities; South, the life sciences and physical sciences, and
Bridge, combining both North and South disciplines.
For example, a North cluster on the democratic process could
collect together the classics, political science and sociology
departments.
Because the new curriculum is interdisciplinary, no one
department can regulate the effectiveness of the courses.
A newly-formed General Education Advisory Committee, made up of
faculty, will evaluate courses for the new GEs and determine the
adequacy of the already existing curriculum.
This committee is still in the proposal state, and has not set
the basis of the new curriculum.
"If the proposal is accepted then we will issue a set of
guidelines that will govern the general education curricula,"
Berenson said.
Teaching responsibilities will also be restructured. Each
cluster will be directed by a cluster coordinator, chosen from the
top professors at UCLA.
These professors will forego upper division teaching to
concentrate on administering and teaching their clusters. They will
be aided by three professors per cluster, 10 teaching assistants,
and 10 to 12 professors in emeriti.
One hope of the new curriculum is to push professors to become
better teachers.
"The new general education asks the teachers to do a better
job," said Mark Morris, chair of the general education workgroup.
"This will make teaching ultimately more interesting, making it
easier to teach."
And while the teaching opportunities are exciting in themselves,
Morris sees an even greater opportunity for research through
interdisciplinary teamwork.
"A lot of the research frontiers are on the borders" of
individual departments, Morris said.
"If we practice communication with each other on the borders,
even on the undergraduate level," Morris said, "then communication
can be facilitated on the research level."
Hopes are high that the faculty will see the opportunities as
committee members perceive them.
"There have been several drafts of the proposal based on input
from deans, department chairs and isolated faculty," said Lucy
Blackmar, coordinator of undergraduate education.
"I am hopeful the faculty will find it a very exciting direction
to move towards in improving undergraduate education," she
said.
However, only one third of the general education requirements
will be clustered. The remaining GEs will be chosen from already
existing curricula and from new courses, proposed by faculty from
each department.
The new opportunities for teaching are the most exciting thing,
for those making the plans.
"The clusters will be a learning experience for the faculty,"
Berenson said, "a really exciting one."