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STANDARD 4: PROGRAMS AND INSTRUCTION
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| Introduction Majors Distribution Foreign Languages Writing Acceleration Advising
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IntroductionYale’s faculty and leaders have long been outspoken on the importance of a liberal education. In an influential report in 1828, the faculty of Yale College rebuffed calls for more practical training and asserted that college instruction should be principally aimed at providing “the discipline and furniture of the mind.” President A. Bartlett Giamatti expounded the same theme to incoming freshmen in 1985:
Yale’s liberal education is an education meant to increase in young people a sense of the joy that learning for the sake of learning brings, learning whose goal is not professional mastery or technical capacity or commercial advantage, but the commencement of a life-long pleasure in the human exercise of our minds, our most human part. Over the centuries, this consistent commitment to liberal education has been expressed in changing formulas of requirements and expanded opportunities. The nature of this education is continually affected by developments in the academy and society at large and daily refined through interactions between students and faculty. Chapter I of the Yale College Programs of Study outlines the organization and fundamental principles of a Yale College education, while Chapter III explains the academic regulations and Chapter IV presents the courses and programs currently offered to undergraduates. Additional information about courses and requirements is provided in the Freshman Handbook and various departmental publications. To qualify for a bachelor’s degree, a Yale student must complete thirty-six term course credits in eight terms of enrollment, a notably high number of courses. In selecting their courses, students must fulfill the distributional requirements, including the foreign language requirement, and complete the requirements of a major, including its senior requirement. Yale’s programs of study are overseen by a number of standing committees, each of which comprises tenured and untenured faculty, undergraduate students, and representatives of the Yale College Dean's Office. These committees, appointed by the dean of Yale College, report regularly to the faculty at its monthly meetings.
General academic advising is provided by the residential college deans and, in the freshman year, by the fellows of the college. Writing and math/science tutors are housed in the colleges, and the Yale College Dean’s Office organizes a general tutoring program. The Resource Office on Disabilities provides services to students with special needs. While it would be daunting to consider all issues concerning programs and instruction in Yale College, we identified six areas as being of special interest for self- study: the resources of programs in which students may major; the distributional requirements; the foreign language requirement and related issues in language instruction; writing; acceleration; and academic advising. A report on each of those areas follows. |
| Introduction Majors Distribution Foreign Languages Writing Acceleration Advising
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MajorsDescriptionYale College offers over seventy programs from which every student must choose a major. A list of the programs is given at the beginning of Chapter IV of the Yale College Programs of Study, and individual programs are described both in that catalogue and in the Freshman Handbook, as well as in various departmental web-sites and publications. For each program, on the basis of a nomination from its chair, the dean of Yale College appoints a director of undergraduate studies (DUS), who is a faculty member charged with primary responsibility for the undergraduate curriculum and the advising of students electing the major. The DUS works closely with the chair, the other faculty holding appointments or offering undergraduate courses in the program, and a student advisory committee. In about half of the programs that Yale offers, the major is lodged in a single academic department, such as Anthropology, Computer Science, or Music. A few majors are offered jointly by two departments, such as the major in Physics and Philosophy and the major in Economics and Mathematics. A small number of majors are arranged in cooperation with one of Yale’s professional schools, such as the majors in Art and in Architecture. The others--generally interdisciplinary programs--are overseen by an executive committee made up of faculty affiliated with the program, such as the major in Women’s and Gender Studies or the major in Film Studies. Some of these committees are appointed by the dean of Yale College, while others--those in area studies, such as East Asian Studies or Latin American Studies--are supervised by the relevant council in the Center for International and Area Studies. Most programs are open to any student, but because of special resource restrictions, a few are limited in enrollment, such as the Architecture major and the major in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. Such programs require application in the sophomore year. Some of these majors lead to the bachelor of arts degree only; a few to the bachelor of science degree only; some majors may lead to either degree. Many comprise specially designed tracks or concentrations for students with a particular interest or background, such as the urban studies concentration in the Architecture major; the atmospheres and oceans concentration in Geology and Geophysics; and the organizational behavior program in Sociology. Three--Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; International Studies; and Studies in the Environment--may be taken only as a second major, in conjunction with another full program in a related field. Students have, in addition, the option of designing their own major, with special permission from the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing. Yale College does not offer minors or certificates. Each major offers courses at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced level, although the articulation of levels is more evident in some majors, such as the sciences and the foreign languages, than in others. Every major also has a range of courses open to non-majors, and certain departments with a heavy commitment to introductory-level courses, such as Chemistry or French, teach more non-majors than majors overall. Conversely, many programs in effect restrict enrollment in certain upper-level or core seminars to majors. The normal structure of a major program includes prerequisite courses, a prescribed number of course credits within the major, and a senior requirement. The last may take the form--depending on the discipline--of a one- or two-term independent essay, an individual or group research project, participation in a senior colloquium or seminar, a comprehensive examination (rarely), or some combination of these. In addition, many programs require certain specific courses beyond the prerequisites, such as a course on Dante in the Italian major or the core courses in the Humanities major. Some have distributional requirements within the major, such as the requirement in the History major that students complete at least two courses in pre-industrial history and three in non-Western history. Many allow for, and some encourage, substitution of courses from related programs. The waiver of any requirement in the major is at the discretion of the DUS. The median of number of course credits that must be earned (including prerequisites) for completion of a major is around twelve or thirteen. It ranges upward to almost twice that number, with the highest totals found, for example, in the accredited BS degrees in engineering. In these and other BS science programs with apparently heavy requirements, however, that total includes several courses that many students pass out of on the basis of advanced work done in secondary school. AppraisalIn addition to examining every proposal for a new or revised undergraduate course, the Yale College Course of Study Committee is charged with reviewing the condition of current majors, approving changes to the requirements of any major, and considering proposals for the introduction of new majors. In almost every year since the time of the last NEASC report, the Course of Study Committee has dealt with all of these items of business. The committee is made up of tenured and non-tenured members of the faculty drawn from a representative range of disciplines (including some current or former DUSs), undergraduate students, and college administrators. A senior faculty member chairs it for a term of two to three years. The Course of Study Committee reports its recommendations to the Yale College faculty at every monthly meeting of that body. At the beginning of each academic year, the committee draws up a list of majors to review. Some programs are selected because the programs have been approved for only a limited duration, usually three or five years, and in fairness to students and faculty associated with the program, a decision to extend or discontinue the major needs to be made in the penultimate year of its mandate. Examples of majors reviewed for this reason in 1998-99 included the programs in Ethics, Politics, and Economics; German Studies; and Studies in the Environment. Other programs are selected for review, either because it has been a long time since they were last reviewed or because students, faculty, administrators, or visiting committees have suggested the timeliness of undertaking a review. History of Art underwent such a review in 1998-99. The process begins with a notice to the DUS and chair of the program, outlining certain topics about which the committee seeks information relevant to the review. Questions prompt the departmental officers to assess such matters as the current purpose and ongoing need for the major, the program’s responses to intellectual developments in its discipline or disciplines, and the adequacy of staffing and physical resources (classrooms, labs, offices) to its mission. Since the early 1990s, a similar questionnaire has been sent as well to a representative group of students majoring in the program, usually members of its student advisory committee. These students are asked to comment on such matters as how well they are being prepared for advanced study or careers, their evaluation of advising and other opportunities for student-faculty contact in the program, and their views on the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching and course offerings. Within the same time frame, the Registrar’s Office gathers data about enrollment patterns in the major and other information about its course offerings. The departmental officers and the students are invited separately to meetings of the Course of Study Committee for extended discussions. Often further questions arise that are handled by correspondence or by a second meeting with the DUS. The secretary of the committee reports back to the DUS of the program the findings and recommendations of the committee; in the case of majors that require renewal, the chair of the committee places the question before the faculty meeting, with the committee’s recommendation. This system of review has for the most part worked smoothly, with benefits both to the programs under review and to the faculty and students as a whole. The cycle of reviews invoked by the Course of Study Committee has given occasion for self-scrutiny to programs and validated, or suggested some adjustment to, the program’s internal findings. Faculty in most programs have little knowledge of the structure of programs outside of their field (indeed, less than that of students who distribute their enrollments across the curriculum), and therefore lack sufficient context in which to evaluate their own efforts at configuring and supervising a major. These internal reviews are helpfully supplemented from time to time with those by visiting committees from outside the university, which are conducted under the auspices of the Office of the Provost and the University Council. While it is difficult to summarize the findings of ten years of review of many different programs, the Course of Study Committee has generally found that most majors are setting and meeting appropriate academic goals. In most cases, both students and faculty strongly praise the teaching, advising, and curriculum offered. It is noticeable, however, that some--not all--interdisciplinary programs without power of appointment suffer from lack of faculty resources, with the result that course offerings may be inconsistent from year to year and sometimes even inadequate. At a low point one year, one interdisciplinary major that requires twelve courses listed only thirteen courses in total. Because the fields covered by such programs may be new or broadly defined, students in these majors may need extra support in choosing their courses. Yet some of these programs have difficulty recruiting a DUS when the usual one goes on leave. One interdisciplinary major had, under these circumstances, a visiting professor new to Yale as DUS, and one had a graduate student fill in for a term. Some junior faculty are reluctant to commit themselves deeply to interdisciplinary majors, because they sense that decisions on their promotion will rest largely with the faculty in the department in which they have their primary appointment. Senior colleagues in their department may not be well informed about, or supportive of, their choice to devote themselves to courses and administrative posts outside the department. Given these constraints, it has seemed to the Course of Study Committee that some interdisciplinary majors might make better use of the limited faculty resources by adopting measures that would take into account these constraints: for example, by refocusing their requirements without reducing their academic rigor, or by offering certain smaller courses every other year. Changes to the requirements of a major--including the creation of new tracks or concentrations--are regular business for the committee. In any given year, the committee might handle five to ten of these requests from DUSs. In 1998-99, examples included: an increase of from two to three in the number of courses in African, Asian, Latin American, or Middle Eastern history that will be required of all majors in History; the elimination of a formerly required introductory-level course in African American Studies because of its redundancy with the newly redesigned junior seminar; the creation of a creative writing concentration in the English major. Prior to coming before the committee, such proposals arise in discussions among the faculty in the program and extend to consultations with the local student advisory committee. The committee expects a full explanation of and justification for the proposed changes. No change in the requirements of a program can go into effect without the committee’s approval. The committee is watchful of the effect of such changes both on students within the major--generally insisting on a phasing in of the change so as not to affect students in progress adversely--and on non-majors as well, who, even though not directly affected, might as a result have diminished access to courses offered in that program. When, in the opinion of the chair, these changes are substantive, the chair will also report them to the faculty for a vote at the monthly meeting of that body. All changes in major requirements require the approval of the Yale College faculty. Since the time of the last NEASC report, the total number of major programs in Yale College has increased by nine: ten new programs have been initiated and one was discontinued. Some of this increase has come about by the reorganization of departments, notably the meiosis of the Biology department into two distinct departments (and therefore majors): Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Other majors arose by the demarcation of separate majors in African Studies and African American Studies out of the formerly combined African and African American Studies major, and in Portuguese out of the Spanish and Portuguese department. A few are additions, in recognition of the rise of disciplines that have attracted faculty and student interest, including Biomedical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, International Studies, and Cognitive Science. New majors in German Studies and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration--arising from tracks in German Languages and Literatures and in American Studies, respectively-- were developed to accommodate faculty and student interest from outside their original departments. Two other majors were reorganized and renamed, owing to contemporary intellectual and political changes: Soviet and East European Studies reverted to its former name as Russian and East European Studies, with slight modification of requirements; and Women’s Studies developed into Women’s and Gender Studies, with the addition of tracks in gender studies and in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies to the existing track in women’s studies. The new major in Ethics, Politics, and Economics replaced the major in Economics and Political Science, which its faculty had deemed no longer to have coherence or appropriate definition. Proposals for new majors arise from a group of interested faculty who are expected to develop a rationale and design for the major, demonstrate sufficient undergraduate interest, and make a case that there is an adequate resource base for staffing courses and advising. The proposal must explain the need for such a program and compare the proposed program to the ways in which its study is organized at peer institutions. The committee is provided with a draft of the copy that would appear in the course catalogue, showing requirements, the titles and descriptions of courses (both new and existing) to be offered in the major, and the names of faculty offering to teach in the program (including a commitment from one faculty member to be the first DUS). Given that the addition of a new major is not tied to any increase in the size of either the Yale College faculty or the student body, the committee also seeks to learn what other programs might benefit or lose courses or enrollments. With the inauguration of a new major in Cognitive Science, for example, the committee was especially concerned about the consequences to the cognitive science track in Psychology (to be dropped) and the joint major in Computer Science and Psychology (probably to be discontinued). The committee also asks for a forecast of how the new major expects to develop. Often this process requires multiple visits from the proposers, in addition to the written materials, and issues in suggestions for revision and expanded negotiation with other departments. The experience of the Course of Study Committee itself and of administrators is that this process works well at helping to shape the proposed new major, but has no hold on questions of resources or priorities. The addition in 1998-99 of an associate dean for academic resources to the Yale College Dean’s Office, who also reports to the dean of the Graduate School as director of the Teaching Fellows Program, should be of assistance in this connection in the future. This and other ties to the Office of the Provost should enable the Course of Study Committee to do more than simply accept, reject, or modify proposals that come before it. ProjectionThe programs and instruction committee, which included several members of the 1998- 99 Course of Study Committee, feels that almost all current major programs, taken one by one, are academically solid and appropriate as a component of a liberal arts education. The range and variety of choices express and enhance the intellectual growth of students and faculty. But there are some general questions about how majors play a role in a Yale education that need to be answered and cannot be addressed by existing procedures of the Course of Study Committee. There is some sense among faculty and administrators that there might be too many variants, given the resources on this campus, on what constitutes a major and insufficient coordination among those that are competing for priorities: there are some departmentally-based majors that seem understaffed even though they have first draw on their own faculty’s time; some interdisciplinary programs without any primary faculty appointments that must negotiate annually for staff with little to bargain with in return; a few joint majors between departments that really offer few courses of their own; a few programs offered only as second majors; majors that restrict admission by application in order to conserve resources but by so doing frustrate student demand; and a lack of definition of what constitutes a track or a concentration. At the same time there are appeals from students, alumni, and faculty for even more programs, such as a major in South Asian Studies, a Korean track in East Asian Studies to supplement the China and Japan tracks, and the revival of a major in Urban Studies. In 1909, in a speech in Hartford, CT to Yale alumni, President Arthur Twining Hadley reflected:
If the greatest university were that one that was in the position to teach the greatest number of things, Yale's future would be discouraging indeed ….It is in the nature of things impossible that we should do as many kinds of work as other universities do. It is not in the nature of things impossible that we should do the work which is before us as well or better than they. The programs and instruction committee feels that these observations are still valid, and calls for early and extensive discussion, of the nature, number and structure of Yale’s majors. The dean of the College has appointed an ad hoc committee with this charge, to begin meeting in September, 1999, and report to the faculty by the end of the current academic year. |
| Introduction Majors Distribution Foreign Languages Writing Acceleration Advising
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Distributional RequirementsDescriptionThe Yale College distributional requirements were developed in response to the faculty’s decision in the 1960s to reform the general education program for the freshman and sophomore years. This pedigree is manifest in the history of changes in the requirements, which have evolved from a listing of seven specific subject areas thirty years ago, to the current system of categorizing all 1450 courses offered in Yale College into four distributional groups from which each student must select twelve courses outside the group of his or her major (see the Yale College Programs of Study, Chapter I). Still in keeping with the original purpose of promoting exposure to a variety of subjects early in college, the distributional requirements are progressive in structure: a certain degree of distribution in course work must be accomplished by the end of the freshman year and a higher degree by the end of the sophomore year, as stages on the way to completion of the requirements by the end of four years of enrollment. The distributional requirements for the bachelor’s degree are never waived. Four important changes in the distributional requirements have been made since the time of the last NEASC report:
Cumulatively, these changes are designed to emphasize the importance of studying a range of subjects in the immediate context of a college education, not just as preparation at the secondary-school level; to oblige students to distribute their programs somewhat more widely than before; and to indicate that students should undertake these courses with the same degree of diligence they devote to courses in their major. AppraisalThe philosophy and practice of distributional requirements have been most recently been studied by the Course of Study Committee in 1997-98. The committee gathered information about distributional, core, proficiency, and other forms of general education requirements from a sample of peer universities and liberal arts colleges and discussed the various models for general education being used elsewhere. It reviewed reports showing the courses at Yale most frequently elected for the purpose of satisfying the distributional requirements by students enrolled in the largest majors, and also examined a random sampling of individual transcripts of recently graduated students to observe in what ways and at what stages of their education students fulfilled these requirements. It also polled all the directors of undergraduate studies and the residential college deans for their views on both the rationale for the requirements and the actual practice of students whom they advise and whose schedules they sign. DUSs were asked to describe not only how students in their majors satisfied the distributional requirements but also how their department accommodates students from other departments seeking courses through which to satisfy the distributional requirements. While it is too soon to assess the effect on students’ programs of reducing the number of courses taken under the Credit/D/F option that may be applied to satisfying the distributional requirements (the first class affected by this policy has not yet been graduated), there is ample evidence of some of the expected effects of the other three changes. Previously, a certain proportion of students satisfied the distributional requirements by taking only two courses in at least one of the three groups outside the major and some were satisfying at least a part of the distributional requirements through acceleration credits. All students now do all their distributional course work in college. In Groups I (languages and literatures), II (other humanities), or III (social sciences), this increase in enrollment is not especially concentrated in a few courses. Students tend to elect some of the same courses for fulfilling the distributional requirement that are also taken by students majoring in those fields. In Group IV (natural sciences and mathematics), in contrast to the pattern in the other distributional groups, distributional enrollments--insofar as they may be identified-- may mass in any given year in a small number of courses, many of which are specifically designed to introduce non-science majors to methods and problems in the natural sciences. Examples of such large-enrollment courses from the past decade include Biological Roots of Human Nature, The Digital Age, Global Change, and Perspectives on Technology. At first glance, these courses, along with a few others, seemed to constitute a de facto set of core courses in the sciences. The Course of Study Committee’s review of randomly selected transcripts revealed, however, a greater variety in individual students’ course selections for the purpose of fulfilling the distributional requirements than the aggregate data suggested. While some students elect only these specially-designed courses for fulfilling their distributional requirement in Group IV, others fulfill the requirement by enrolling in at least some courses also selected by students doing intensive work in the sciences. And those who complete a course or two in general chemistry or in molecular biology as freshmen or sophomores but later went on to major in non-scientific fields satisfy their distributional requirement in the natural sciences through enrollment in the some of the same courses that science majors take. When polled by the Course of Study Committee, the deans and DUSs expressed a strong general philosophical agreement with the distributional policy. There was consensus that the current system of requirements expresses and supports a commitment to the principle of distribution in studies and that, taking into account the number of courses in a major that students must take, the number of courses for the distribution requirements is just about right. There was no enthusiasm for radical change or for altering the basic model to one prescribing a set of core courses. The same feelings were expressed in focus groups of students in the same year. A few DUSs in the sciences, however, indicated a dissatisfaction arising from the fact that, unlike a proficiency requirement, the distributional requirements do not compel a student to attempt anything other than introductory courses. As a result, instructors teaching courses that specially designed for non-science majors cannot assume any background on the part of students in the course--even though some of the students have already completed one or two of these courses. Students may become bored with too many courses at the same level, even while they seem reluctant to elect more advanced courses. One strong sign of continued faculty support for these introductory- level courses is that DUSs reported no special difficulties in finding instructors to staff them. One of the most important questions facing the DUSs and the Course of Study Committee was whether contemporary scholarship has become so interdisciplinary that the current groupings no longer make sense. Asked whether Yale has devised the right groupings of courses and the appropriate number of groupings, most DUSs felt that the current scheme worked about as well as any that could be designed. There is some support, though, for devising a distinct category for courses in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. Even while they support the basic model, there is some feeling among students and instructors that certain courses that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries--as when a literature teacher makes use of methods and materials drawn from anthropology or an historian assigns literary works--had been too narrowly categorized. Others, in contrast, propose that no interdisciplinary courses should count towards the distributional requirements. The DUSs from interdisciplinary programs felt strongly, however, that their courses should count, since they promote acquaintance with a variety of intellectual methods and materials and would, if disallowed for credit towards the distributional requirements, be less attractive. While these debates show that the expansion of the range of scholarly inquiry puts some strain on the categories, a consensus nonetheless remains that there should be distribution of studies and that some form of categorization is required. ProjectionGiven that there is a strong and broad commitment to a distributional requirement among the DUSs and the Course of Study Committee, and given that the most recent modification to the distributional regulations was voted by the faculty only in 1997, we felt that no overall review of the requirements is called for at this time. We recommend that in the coming years the Course of Study Committee monitor some of the following issues with special attention:
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| Introduction Majors Distribution Foreign Languages Writing Acceleration Advising
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The Foreign Language Requirement |
| Introduction Majors Distribution Foreign Languages Writing Acceleration Advising
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Writing ProgramsDescriptionAlthough there is no formal writing requirement, Yale offers instruction in writing at several different stages of a student’s education, provides extensive co-curricular support services in writing, and encourages an extensive array of extracurricular journals in which students publish their writing. Many of these efforts to nurture student writing are administered through the Bass Writing Program, which is overseen by the interdepartmental Yale College Committee on Expository Writing. The Bass Writing Program sponsors the training and provides, to varying degrees, the funding for freshman writing courses in the English department; the upper-level Daily Themes course in that department; the Writing Intensive courses across the curriculum; and the writing tutors in the residential colleges. The Department of English offers freshmen (and upperclassmen who wish to enroll in them) a choice of six types of seminar-style courses designed to enhance the student’s competence and confidence as writers. These courses are directed at students with different levels of skill in writing and range from a focus on instruction in writing about literature to an emphasis on essay topics in environmental studies, cultural studies, or ethical issues. In addition, approximately 10 percent of the freshman class enroll in the Directed Studies program, which consists of three coordinated seminar courses on Western traditions in literature, philosophy, and history, and requires students to compose one essay each week. Beyond the freshman year, several upper-level courses in the English department promote further practice in writing and sharpen student skills. Notably, the popular course Daily Themes (English 450b)--a redesigned course first taught in 1907 as a required sophomore course and by mid-century offered as an elective for those aspiring to become novelists, journalists, or advertisers--requires five related short essays a week, exploring a range of genres and techniques. Each student enrolled in the course has a weekly meeting with a tutor to discuss his or her essays. The English department also offers a number of workshop courses in creative writing, including non-fiction writing, and in 1999-2000 begins to offer a writing concentration for those English majors with deep interest and demonstrated skills in creative writing. Further course offerings for both beginning and advanced creative writers are available through the Residential College Seminar Program, Film Studies, and Theater Studies. Writing Intensive sections (WI) are offered each year in a number of intermediate and advanced courses drawn from other areas of the curriculum. These courses are designed to provide practice and guidance in the writing process in the context of a specific academic field. WI courses commonly require frequent short papers or the submission at intervals throughout the term of multiple drafts of a substantial research paper. In either model, individual students are expected to have regular conferences about revision of their work. Another goal in WI sections is to examine the conventions of academic and professional writing in the discipline by discussing the texts assigned in the course as examples of good (or bad) writing, not just as source material. The size of the sections in WI courses is strictly limited so as to facilitate these goals. WI teaching fellows are specially trained in a series of pre-service and in-service workshops organized by one of the faculty directors of the Bass Writing Program. Workshops focus on such topics as designing assignments, commenting on drafts, and conferring with students about their papers. Since the time of the last NEASC report, such departments as Chemistry, Mathematics, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, History of Art, History, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Religious Studies, Political Science, and Sociology have offered one or more WI courses. The number of WI courses, however, has declined since the last NEASC report. The Bass Writing Program was able to sponsor thirty-two WI courses in fourteen departments in 1989-90, but only nineteen courses in eight departments in 1998-99. The Bass Writing Program also coordinates the work of the twelve residential college writing tutors. Many tutors have careers as professional writers or editors, and several continue to be classroom instructors in expository writing at the university. Some also have experience as teachers of English as a second language. Each is available for at least ten hours per week by appointment or in specified office hours--generally at nights or on weekends--to discuss writing assignments at any stage in the process of composition from first notes to final version. Students may be referred to the writing tutor by their residential college dean or instructors, but may--and generally do--come in on their own. One of the writing tutors holds additional office hours specially designated for freshmen in the Directed Studies program. Writing tutors provide extensive support for students working on senior essays and attend some sessions of the Mellon Senior Forums in the residential colleges, in which students from different disciplines present their senior projects as works-in-progress to faculty fellows and other seniors. In addition to course assignments, students may bring to the tutor pieces of personal writing or applications for fellowships, internships, and jobs. Further advice about practical writing is available in workshops at University Career Services. Even beyond the special offerings and services coordinated through the Bass Writing Program, most of the departments and programs in which a student can major have seminar and senior project requirements that emphasize the production of written work. The overall median class size in Yale College is small (fourteen), providing most instructors the opportunity to attend closely to their students’ progress in writing. Even in many larger courses, once-weekly discussion sections and office hours make consultations about writing assignments feasible. Of the many undergraduates engaged in research projects or in tutorial courses with professors and post-doctoral fellows, some will aid in the preparation of articles published in professional academic journals. Outside of class, although sometimes arising from interests developed in a course, hundreds of Yale students contribute each year to dozens of different campus peer- reviewed publications. These journals cover such topics as current events, science, the arts, international studies, ethnic affairs, and humor. Some of these publications have advisory boards that include faculty and distinguished alumni, who are called upon to critique pieces proposed for publication. AppraisalThe Committee on Expository Writing undertook several studies through the Office of Institutional Research in 1997-98 to assess the extent and success of various initiatives it sponsors and also reviewed data gathered in COFHE reports about the experience of recent students with writing in all their courses. The first of these studies was designed to track the percentage of students in the Classes of 1989, 1990, 1996, and 1997 who, even in the absence of a requirement to do so, completed at least one of the introductory English courses. The study also sought to ascertain some of the characteristics of those students who did not do so. Among the findings of this study are the following:
The Committee on Expository Writing inferred that the lack of an English requirement has had little significant effect on the course selections of Yale students, who choose these English courses on the basis of their excellent reputation among other students, the recommendation of their faculty advisers, and the attractive variety of different interests and needs the courses accommodate. We concurred with this finding and felt that there would be little or no positive effect of requiring a freshman course in writing. Beyond the introductory level and beyond the English department, the Committee on Expository Writing was eager to know how much writing students did for their classes and how valuable they found the instruction in writing that they were receiving. A COFHE Cycles survey of the Class of 1997, conducted when the members of that class were in their junior year, found that students were writing, on the average (mean), almost seven papers each term, for an average (mean) total of forty-eight pages a term. There is little difference between the written output of men and of women (with women writing a somewhat greater number of papers and slightly more pages each term. However, students majoring in the sciences reported that they write significantly fewer-- and briefer--papers than students in the humanities or social sciences: thirty-five pages a term instead of the overall average of forty-eight. This last result was not unexpected, given the types of assignments customarily set in these different disciplines. The Committee on Expository Writing decided to explore these questions further by asking the Office of Institutional Research to set up a protocol for interviewing separate focus groups for students majoring in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences about their experience as student writers. Students in the focus groups were asked, among other questions, what uses they made of the various curricular opportunities and support services for improving their writing; how their conception of themselves as writers had changed in college; and what changes to writing instruction at Yale they would propose. Students in all groups reported intensive use of writing tutors, and several said that they regularly asked friends to review drafts. There was praise for anyone--friends, writing tutors, or instructors--who “tore apart” (a frequently repeated metaphor) their papers. As it happened, few of the students in any of the focus groups had ever taken a writing intensive course, but among those who had done so themselves or with friends who had done so, the reputation of WI courses was good. Only a few believed that they would themselves benefit from Yale’s instituting a writing requirement, although several opined that other students might. Science majors held a somewhat lower opinion of the helpfulness of introductory English courses to improving their writing. Some science students also expressed a desire that more lower- and intermediate-level courses in science departments assign essays rather than give only tests. They felt that such a change would provide opportunities for science majors to improve their writing and attract non-science majors, who might be more likely to enroll in these courses if offered the option of writing papers. The Office of Institutional Research also conducted telephone interviews with Directors of Undergraduate Studies from across the curriculum, asking them about the place of instruction in writing to the major they oversaw; assessing the connections students and faculty in the major made to programs and services offered through the Bass Writing Program in support of writing instruction; and seeking proposals for change in instruction in writing at Yale. Several of long-term DUSs regretted of the decline in the availability for funding of Writing Intensive sections. There are great differences in the frequency with which they themselves or, to the best of their knowledge, their departmental colleagues referred students to the residential college writing tutors, but almost all believed that many of their students consulted the tutors in connection with the senior essay. Most felt that the program of study they directed placed an appropriate emphasis on writing in the senior year in its capstone requirement, but several felt that there should be a greater emphasis on writing in lower-division courses as well. Some called for increasing the number of lower-division workshop courses that would emphasize collaborative learning and peer review of writing as one way to accomplish this goal without demanding additional resources. Almost all--even though the question was not raised with them--emphasized that the most serious problems with writing in their department were at graduate rather than the undergraduate level, usually because of the larger number of students in graduate programs for whom English is a second language. ProjectionAfter reviewing the data and survey information gathered by the Committee on Expository Writing, we concurred with the suggestion that the number of Writing Intensive courses needs to be increased. We were especially supportive of this program, because it is seen as bringing important benefits both to mid-level undergraduates in a variety of majors and to the graduate students assisting in those courses through the pedagogical training that is given them. Other suggestions that came up in the focus groups of students and in the interviews with DUSs also seem worth pursuing by the Committee on Expository Writing. One of the most intriguing suggestions growing out of that research was that more introductory English sections focus on topics and genres of interest to science majors and, conversely, that some intermediate science courses require essays rather than exams, both to help develop the writing skills of science majors and potentially to attract more non-science majors to these courses. Beyond first-year courses in expository writing, most students have significant writing assignments in the junior research seminars or senior projects that their disciplines require. In many departments, senior essays are reviewed not only by the student’s adviser, but also by another member of the department or by an instructor in a related program. We noted, however, that it has been many years since Yale College undertook a large-scale study to compare students’ writing skills at different stages in their careers here. Individual instructors who teach both upper- and lower-level courses report that they are generally aware of improvements, but, while well-informed, such judgments are impressionistic. It is not clear that there are solid research approaches to these questions. Members of the Committee on Expository Writing feel that no available methodology satisfactorily resolves problems of reliability and validity in such interval sampling. We nonetheless believe that these questions should be looked at afresh. We propose that the Committee on Expository Writing—perhaps in conjunction with the 1999-2000 ad hoc committee on majors—should examine the value and practicality of asking each department to describe goals for students writing within their own disciplines and to suggest procedures by which students’ progress towards those goals might be assessed. The Committee believes that there should be more opportunities for the improvement of oral communication skills as well as of writing. Even though many students are enrolled in small seminars, which should afford some occasions for public speaking, the tenor of most of these courses is towards informal conversation than towards formal presentations. Some practice interviewing currently takes place at Undergraduate Career Services, and guided practice is given in Mellon Senior Forum and such colloquia as the Mellon/Bouchet Fellowships and the STARS program for scientists, but overall these efforts reach only a small percentage of Yale students. And although the College boasts a successful intercollegiate debate team and a well-funded annual public speaking competition, those activities tend to attract students already highly adept. We urge the Course of Study Committee to take up this issue and consider how to integrate oral communication into the curriculum. |
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Acceleration Policies and ProceduresDescriptionYale offers students two ways to accelerate their progress towards the bachelor’s degree and fulfill all requirements in fewer than eight terms. Acceleration policies and procedures are fully described in the Freshman Handbook and in the Yale College Programs of Study, Chapter II and Chapter III, section O. The first way is by early accumulation of course credits, all of which must be earned at Yale. By slightly exceeding the usual schedule of four to five course credits a term (for example, by taking five course credits in each of six terms and six credits in the seventh term), a student may finish one term early. Such students are permitted to earn an unlimited number of course credits in Yale Summer Programs or at Yale-in-London, but can bring in no outside credits. The early accumulation option brings students and their families clear financial benefits, since Yale tuition is assessed per term rather than per course and there is no surcharge for overloads. Even though in fact many students do enroll for more than five courses in a term, few take advantage of these accumulations in order to graduate early. A more common route to an accelerated degree is by activation of acceleration credits, which are awarded on the basis of high scores on examinations taken before matriculation in college, such as those set by the Advanced Placement Program of the College Board, the International Baccalaureate, and such national tests as the British A- levels and the German Abitur. Students whose secondary schools had limited or no access to such testing programs may earn acceleration credits at Yale by completing certain advanced courses with a grade of B- or better in the freshman year, thereby demonstrating that their preparation in these subjects was equivalent to that of students who received high scores on AP tests. Certain rules govern the application of acceleration credits towards degree requirements, such as a required pattern of attendance and a special limitation on the number of outside credits that can be transferred in. Students using acceleration credits to satisfy some of their degree requirements generally do not graduate early, but take a term (in some cases, two) off and yet finish at the same time as their classmates. In addition to the financial savings acceleration brings them, there are significant education and personal benefits to the time off as well. Residential college deans report that a good number of these students make use of the term off to travel or to study elsewhere; some engage in non-credit-bearing internships or low-paying community service jobs; some earn money for college or graduate school expenses; some assist their families such as by caring for an ailing relative. Out of the 14,708 students graduated in the eleven classes from 1988 to 1998, 235 (1.6 percent of the total number of students) were two-term accelerants, graduating in six terms of enrollment, and 743 were one-term accelerants (5 percent of the total), graduating in seven terms of enrollment. While probably 70 percent of a class has a sufficient number of acceleration credits to complete degree requirements in seven terms, only a small fraction of those eligible wind up taking advantage of this option. AppraisalAlthough directors of undergraduate studies and faculty in general support the principle that highly qualified students should be able to accelerate their progress to the degree, they have expressed in recent years increasing frustration with certain features of the system by which students earn and make use of acceleration credits. One important question concerns whether the basis for the award of these credits (a score of 4 or 5 on AP tests, or comparable scores on the IB and other tests) is accurately calibrated to the level of work assigned in the Yale courses for which these credits substitute. A few departments assert that these scores no longer correspond to the proficiency levels expected, but these claims are based on data developed in very small samples of students who have both taken the tests and also enrolled in comparable courses at Yale. Some faculty feel that AP scores should be used only for purposes of placement and not in substitution of degree requirements. In the belief that no matter what a student’s level of preparation, certain features of a college education should not be omitted, the faculty voted that, beginning with the Class of 1993, students may no longer apply acceleration credits towards distributional requirements. Some faculty members have since proposed that acceleration credits should not be accepted in fulfillment of the foreign language requirement or of requirements in the student’s major. Other concerns have more to do with unintended effects of Yale’s own system for acceleration. Students face an absolute deadline of declaring an intention to accelerate on the last day of classes in their third term of enrollment. Most Yale students who have sufficient credits to do so therefore accelerate in their sophomore year. Some of these accelerants then take advantage of their status to demand early admission to junior and senior seminars. Later the great majority of these students decelerate and then again claim places in these seminars. Since the size of such courses is limited, departments are compelled to staff more seminars than they might otherwise need to offer, drawing faculty resources away from other important curricular offerings. In response, a few departments find themselves permitting accelerated students to fulfill their senior requirement, which is supposed to be a capstone requirement, in what turns out to be the penultimate year. A similar structural problem arises in the residential college room draws, but is dealt with in that context by allowing students to draw only once as a senior. If an accelerated student chooses to claim senior status after four terms of enrollment and then later decelerates and seeks to draw again the next year after six terms of enrollment, that student is considered a junior in the subsequent draw. We felt that some of the negative side-effects accelerated students impose on departmental staffing and curricula might well be addressed by analogous changes in the registration processes for departmental seminars. We had only a limited set of data with which to study the demographic characteristics of accelerated students. On the basis of figures supplied from the registrar’s office, the group found that there were no significant differences on the basis of sex, race, nationality, or type of high school attended in the patterns of students graduating as accelerants in the Classes of 1988-1998. It had incomplete data about the majors of these accelerants and no data about their financial aid status, both of which factors might prove to be of concern. We also had no substantive information about the validity of AP test scores as indicators of success in comparable college courses. The group concluded that a more comprehensive study was needed. ProjectionThe Advanced Placement Program of the College Board is undergoing its first thorough review in several decades, and the national commission charged with that undertaking will be making a comprehensive report in spring, 2001. The results of that report, particularly with regard to cross-validation of test scores and grades in comparable college courses, are expected to affect future decisions about how acceleration credit is awarded. In addition, the Ivy League Deans have scheduled a discussion of this topic at their annual meeting in April 2000. Locally, while there have been several adjustments to standards and policies, no fundamental review of the acceleration system has been conducted since 1973. At the April 1999, Yale College Faculty meeting, Dean Brodhead charged the Teaching and Learning Committee with responsibility for such a review in the 1999-2000 academic year. |
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Academic AdvisingDescriptionStudents at Yale have many networks for obtaining advice about their academic programs. Each residential college dean is the primary academic adviser for approximately 430 students from all four classes. Residential college deans hold non- ladder appointments in a department or program and teach one course a year. They are responsible for supervising the student’s academic progress towards general degree requirements, such as the distributional requirements and course-credit requirements for promotion and graduation. They hold daily office hours in the college and are regularly available in the evenings and on weekends for informal advising. At fireside chats held in small groups in October and at various other forums throughout the year, deans have the opportunity to discuss the goals of a liberal education, and not just enforce academic rules and regulations. For detailed information about the requirements of a major or questions about particular courses, deans will refer students to other faculty members. In the summer before the freshman year, the dean assigns each incoming student a freshman faculty adviser, who is a fellow in the residential college with which the student is affiliated, and a freshman counselor, who is almost always a senior in the same college residing with the freshmen. Typically, an adviser has three to five advisees, and a counselor has twenty counselees. Also living in the freshman dormitories are an additional twelve counselors who serve as special liaisons to the residential college deans and to the directors of the African American, Asian American, Mexican American, Native American, and Puerto Rican cultural centers. During Freshman Orientation, freshmen are invited to special meetings set up by individual departments to discuss any issue relating to the department’s offerings, including placement. They are also invited to attend an Academic Fair, at which dozens of directors of undergraduate studies and other faculty are assigned by department to different classrooms in the same building to give freshman easy access to advice. The night before classes begin for the fall term, each residential college holds an Advising Fair, at which attendance is required. In one phase of the Advising Fair, the freshmen meet with their assigned faculty advisers for the first time. In the other phase, students move about freely to consult with any other fellow of the college about courses or programs with which the faculty member is affiliated. Before submitting the course schedule at the end of the ten-day course selection period, each freshman must obtain the signature of the freshman counselor, the freshman faculty adviser, and the residential college dean. The student is expected not simply to obtain a signature, but to explain and discuss their proposed program with the adviser and with the counselor. This same sequence of meetings must be repeated at the beginning of the spring term. All freshman advisers are allotted a certain number of free meals in their residential colleges, to facilitate individual or small group consultations in the course of the term. At the end of the freshman year, students are required to select an adviser for the sophomore year. Students expecting to major in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics must have their sophomore schedules signed by the appropriate director of undergraduate studies, or his or her designee. Most other students are not required to declare a major until the end of sophomore year and may choose any faculty member as the sophomore adviser. Students typically either continue with their freshman faculty adviser or select the instructor of one of their classes. The sophomore adviser signs the schedule for each term and, in the spring, is expected to have a special consultation about long-range academic plans. This consultation is guided by a form sent out to each sophomore after spring recess that must be submitted to the residential college dean before the end of term. Advising in the major is overseen by the director of undergraduate studies, who must sign the student’s schedule each term after the student has declared a major. In some majors, there is also an assistant director of undergraduate studies, and in the larger majors, such as History and English, faculty representatives--often those with offices in the residential colleges–assist the DUS by advising students and monitoring routine questions about the schedules of majors. In a few majors, such as Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, the advising is organized by graduating class rather than college affiliation, and a specific group of faculty follow members of the class from the time they declare the major until they complete their degree. Some departments also have peer advisers–-advanced undergraduates who offer practical information under the supervision of the DUS. Especially in those departments in which students take on individual research projects or write senior essays, seniors will get a certain amount of general academic advice as well from the director of their senior project. Pre-medical and most other pre-professional advising, including advice about course selection, is administered through Undergraduate Career Services; similarly, advising for careers in elementary and secondary school education is overseen by the director of the Teacher Preparation Program. Information and guidance about study abroad is coordinated by the new Office of International Education and Fellowship Programs, which until 1999 was a division of Career Services but has been newly organized and expanded. In addition, extensive information to guide academic choices is made available to students in print media and on Web sites, including handbooks from the Yale College Dean’s Office, departmental offices, and Career Services. Other publications are designed to support the work of directors of undergraduate studies, sophomore advisers, and freshman advisers. AppraisalIn 1997-98 and in 1998-99, the Teaching and Learning Committee examined at length the strengths and weaknesses of academic advising in Yale College. Nationwide studies show that students at most universities are not satisfied with the academic advising they receive. This state of affairs may have been true since Kenyon College was the first to assign advisers to students in 1828. Yale’s Office of Institutional Research surveyed students from the Classes of 1994 and 1996 and concluded that, while not highly satisfied with academic advising here, Yale students are relatively more satisfied than their counterparts elsewhere. Two findings seemed especially striking:
The Teaching and Learning Committee decided to focus its discussions on the advising of freshmen and sophomores who have not yet chosen a major, among whom satisfaction is lower. Having access to these surveys of undergraduate opinion, Teaching and Learning solicited additional information from approximately half of the freshman faculty advisers, all the residential college deans, all the directors of undergraduate studies, and half of the head freshman counselors. The Teaching and Learning Committee found that opinion among faculty is divided and even inconsistent, and while feeling unhappy with aspects of the current system, most look askance at proposed alternatives that would require either more or less commitment from them than they currently give to freshman advising. There was no support for instituting a system of professional non-faculty advisers, like those at some other colleges and universities, and little expectation that there would be the resources to support such a system, even if there were any inclination to have it. Several freshman counselors and directors of undergraduate studies, and even some residential college deans, questioned whether freshmen are best served by a system built upon the residential college fellowships. While the residential colleges are generally one of the great resources for Yale College students--and the academic advising about general requirements and the broad goals of a college education that is given by the residential college deans themselves is seen as quite good--it is not clear that linking the freshman advising system to the college fellowships always works to the advantage of the freshman. The membership of the residential college fellowships rarely matches up with the restricted range of academic interests that freshman present upon arrival at college: in most colleges, there are too many faculty from departments in which very few undergraduates major, and not enough from others that freshman profess an interest in. Furthermore, some of the most active members of a fellowship are not FAS faculty, or perhaps not faculty at all, who may not be able to give the students informed advice about undergraduate programs. While most of those generously volunteering to serve as advisers may be well known to the master and the dean of the college, they do not necessarily spend much time in the college except at bimonthly fellows’ dinners, which are closed to students. Freshmen report that they feel shy about approaching their advisers except at the designated times, and they turn instead to the master, dean, some resident fellows, and (above all) freshmen counselors, whose offices or residences are at hand and whose presence is familiar. Electronic mail has proved to help bridge this problem of access in some cases, but not in all. Some freshmen report that their relations with their advisers amount to little more than procuring a signature on the schedule twice a year--a state of affairs that the advisers themselves corroborate, but attribute to students’ procrastination in seeking them out until late in the afternoon before the deadline. One alternative considered by the Teaching and Learning Committee might be that departments take over the responsibility for assigning individual advisers to freshman on the basis of the students’ declared preferences. After discussion with several DUSs, we concluded that such a system would be neither practicable nor even desirable, because the identification of advisers with particular disciplines might seem to encourage early specialization. It is also the case that approximately half the students in each graduating class change their mind about their major between the time they matriculate and the time they graduate. Furthermore, disassociating the freshman advising system from the colleges might undermine the residential college fellowships by removing one of their raisons d’être. Another model discussed, and in use elsewhere, involves assigning a student an adviser who is also one of the student’s first-term instructors, perhaps even the instructor of a specially-designed freshman seminar. This system has obvious advantages in that the student and adviser have regular opportunities to meet and to know each other in some depth. Potential difficulties are equally obvious: the freshman may be dissatisfied with the very course that the adviser is teaching and cannot discuss such a problem as freely as with a different faculty adviser; the advising duties constitute an additional burden on those faculty who have already taken on the intensive work of teaching introductory level courses; each adviser would have many more than the three to five freshmen that Yale’s advisers currently have; the system puts the burden of advising disproportionately on those departments offering courses that tend to be elected by freshmen. Colleagues at other institutions also report that such systems prove difficult to staff year after year and serve to drain resources from upper- level offerings in the curriculum. After extended discussion over two years, there was little consensus even within the Teaching and Learning Committee for proposing major changes to Yale’s current system, even though its members--who are in equal numbers faculty and students-- recognized real shortcomings in the operation of the current system. At the end of the 1997-1998 academic year, the committee proposed one modest change, to require students to choose their sophomore advisers in the last weeks of the freshman year rather than in the opening days of the sophomore year. This slight advance in the transition between two advisers is expected to make it possible for students to be able to start their second year already in consultation with their adviser and potentially, through electronic mail, even to confer over the summer. At the end of the 1998-99 year, the committee announced to the faculty that it planned to conduct an experiment with freshman advising to run for two years in two residential colleges. The experiment would lower the number of freshman faculty advisers per college to only six, approximately the same number as the number of freshman counselors per college. The expectation is that all six would be FAS faculty members--perhaps those with offices in the college, but certainly persons with a commitment to spending time in both formal and informal contacts with students. The reduction in number is hoped also to make possible better training and supervision of the advisers. In return for taking on these increased responsibilities, the cadre of advising fellows would be exempted from committee service by the dean of Yale College and provided with a small financial incentive in the form of a research account. While decreasing the number of advisers would inevitably have the undesirable effect of constricting the range of disciplines represented, the deans would make every effort to make sure that there were at least some faculty drawn from each of the different divisions. Other fellows in the college, it is hoped, will remain available for consultation on issues specific to their fields. Berkeley and Trumbull Colleges have volunteered to undertake this experiment for two years, beginning with the Class of 2003, and will deliver an interim report to the Teaching and Learning Committee at the end of the 1999-2000 academic year. ProjectionThose involved in the Reaccreditation Committee on Programs and Instruction heard summaries of the discussions of the Teaching and Learning Committee and speculated on possible changes to the advising system. Members noted that there are few material or honorific incentives to faculty at Yale or elsewhere to spend time in advising, rather than in research, in teaching, or in other professional work. The number of Yale faculty who are dedicated advisers do so out of a sense of commitment to students, loyalty to the institution, and belief in its philosophy and ideals. For this reason, committee members noted that the loyalty and obligation a number of faculty feel towards their residential college fellowships may induce them to respond to the call of the residential college master and dean for service as advisers more readily than they would to a summons from their department chairs.
As a research university with a strong commitment to teaching and
nurturing undergraduates, Yale believes it should have no less than the
very best advising system. While Yale students are relatively satisfied
with the advising they receive and many individual students report
excellent experiences, there are still a significant number who expected
much more guidance or even just more contact with an adviser. It remains a
challenge at Yale, as at other universities, to be able to build a
reliably first-rate advising system from the best practices of certain
advisers. Perhaps the whole paradigm must change, in response to the
changing shape of professional academic careers and in relation to the
expansion of information and communication media in use on campuses. The
Teaching and Learning Committee will monitor the experimental systems put
into place in two of the residential colleges, while it continues its
general discussion on advising in the coming year.
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