Word: curricular
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Senior Lecturer on Economics Jeffrey Wolcowitz—who served as the primary architects of last year’s curricular review report, which called for undergraduates to have a “significant international experience”—called Summers’ vision “right...
Another highly publicized and controversial component of the the curricular review has been the proposed addition of a January term. It is becoming increasingly likely that, in a move to align calendars with the other schools of the University, undergraduates will soon face the prospect of final exams before winter break for the fall term. Should exam period find a new home and the College begin opening its gates in late August, we maintain our skepticism of plans for a formalized academic January term. We are pleased that in its latest report the committee on a January term emphasized...
Among the other more notable proposals on the table for the curricular review, the committee on advising and counseling has prudently turned away from its earlier suggestion of switching to Yale-style housing in which students would be assigned to Houses at the beginning of their Harvard career. The committee rightly acknowledged the advantages of Harvard’s current housing scheme, which prizes class unity in addition to House pride, and has appropriately turned its attention towards finding ways to improve freshman and upperclass advising through establishing a centralized advising administration and bolstering peer-advising programs...
...curricular review has also put forth several proposals for remodeling the teaching of writing at Harvard. We are encouraged by the proposal to add public speaking or rhetoric courses to the curriculum or to add such components to the existing Expository Writing program. However, we continue to discourage against making freshman writing courses pass/fail. We believe Expos is a valuable struggle and students come out better writers for having gone through it. Moreover, we hope that the College can find a way to bolster the resources behind the Expos program to allow all interested freshman to take Expos...
Ultimately, a year that had the potential of being the curricular review’s annus mirabilis has amounted to little more than small tweaks of last spring’s hodge-podge. To be fair, this once-per-generation undertaking is only falling behind the schedule it ambitiously set out for itself. The much-heralded 1970s review took no less than 5 years to complete, and this review should have little trouble keeping up with that timetable. We have much to look forward to in the upcoming academic year, and it seems like the Harvard community is revving...