Word: seminar
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...Five Year Plan ended one year ago and the Capital Campaign is almost yesterday's news. According to Harvard, the future is here; you are only reading this for idle amusement before putting down the paper to go to your small, well-taught Core section or interdisciplinary seminar. Of course, we all know the reality behind the rhetoric. Consider Harvard's latest opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to undergraduate education: the "review" of the Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) concentration and the almost unnoticed demise of its most lauded tutorial, Conservation Biology and Biodiversity...
Conservation Biology and Biodiversity is a small interdisciplinary seminar focusing on field biology and the social aspects of conservation. It is the only course at Harvard taught by two recipients of the Phi Beta Kappa award for teaching, Glenn Adelson and Dan Perlman; Adelson is the only current teacher at Harvard to have won both the Phi Beta Kappa award and the Levenson award for excellence in undergraduate education...
...Knowles wrote only a perfunctory reply), but no student input at all was allowed in the "review" process--an astonishing display of administrative arrogance in a concentration that desperately needs restructuring. The concentration chairs refused to request money for the course: Conservation Biology and Biodiversity, the quintessential "small interdisciplinary seminar," will not be returning next fall; nor will two of Harvard's best teachers...
...thing I felt was discouraging was that the ESPP concentration didn't help enough with thesis preparation," Kanter said. "There's nothing unified for the department in terms of advising, particularly for the thesis. They could learn from the Social Studies Department who puts together a seminar on how to prepare for a thesis. I don't entirely blame the ESPP committee though because they are borrowing faculty from other departments...
Although the debate over the biodiversity seminar remains to be resolved, McCarthy said the ESPP concentration as a whole has been a success...