Committee Urges Harvard to Expand the Reach of Its Undergraduate CurriculumBy SARA RIMER
 or the first time in 30 years, Harvard University has reviewed its undergraduate curriculum, concluding that students need more room for broad exploration, a greater familiarity with the world that can only be gained from study abroad, and a deeper, hands-on understanding of science.
After 15 months of study, a committee of administrators, professors and students has recommended that the university give students more time to choose their majors and limit the requirements for those majors, encourage students to spend time abroad and increase the number of required science courses.
The committee’s underlying conclusion, that students in a fast-changing world need a wider range of knowledge, is likely to have an impact on universities across the nation, many of which are also trying to modernize their curriculums. In making its recommendations, the committee was asked to address what it would “mean to be an educated man or woman in the first quarter of the 21st century.”
William C. Kirby, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said yesterday in a letter to the faculty, “As a leading American institution, Harvard College has a responsibility to educate its students — who will live and work in all corners of the globe — as citizens not only of their home country, but also of the world, with the capacity not only to understand others, but also to see themselves, and this country, as others see them.”
Among the findings in its report, which was released yesterday, the committee said it was no longer sufficient to satisfy the science requirement with broad-based survey courses. Instead, students should focus on scientific principles and methods, for example, spending time in the laboratory learning the chemical structure of the genome.
“Graduates of Harvard College should be able to understand the news and expository articles in journals such as Science and Nature,” the committee said.
And rather than studying, say, Chinese history without leaving Cambridge, students interested in the subject should be spending a semester at Qinghua University in Beijing.
“It is not enough to assume that in a world that appears to be increasingly Anglophone that all cultures are becoming alike,” said Dr. Kirby, who directed the review and is a scholar of modern Chinese history. “At this time of American influence and growing responsibilities in the world, institutions such as Harvard bear a responsibility to educate its students to be knowledgeable and responsible as they go out in the world — to know the languages, to know the culture, the economics and the policies of the countries they will visit, to interact in a knowledgeable way.”
Harvard’s most recent curricular reviews, in the 1940′s and 1970′s, were viewed as groundbreaking, and experts in higher education said they were eager to study the university’s newest recommendations.
“It’s always an important event when Harvard College undertakes a review of the curriculum because where Harvard leads others follow,” said James O. Freedman, president emeritus of Dartmouth College, and the author of “Liberal Education and the Public Interest” (University of Iowa Press, 2003), which the Harvard committee was required to read.
Officials at other colleges said they were encouraged by the recommendations, especially the emphasis on international study.
“I think it is an excellent idea to have every American student have some international experience,” said Nancy Dye, the president of Oberlin College. “I think Harvard is doing an excellent thing.”
The recommendations will be discussed by the faculty over the next year, with some changes requiring a formal vote. Dr. Kirby said he hoped any changes would be in place for students arriving in 2006.
One of the most striking recommendations is that every undergraduate at Harvard “be educated in the sciences in a manner that is as deep and broadly shared as has traditionally been the case in the humanities and the social sciences.”
Rethinking Harvard’s teaching
By William C. Kirby | April 30, 2004
UNIVERSITIES are, in some sense, always in a state of renewal. Seldom, however, do universities study themselves or attempt to rethink what and why they teach.
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This week, Harvard College issued a report on its first comprehensive review of undergraduate education in nearly 30 years. By most measures, the college is strong. Why, then, did we need a review?
No institution stays strong by standing still. Harvard’s curriculum was once entirely uniform and required, befitting a Puritan college founded for the training of a learned ministry. That has not been the case for a very long time.
In our review we tried to ask simple and hard questions. What does it mean to be an educated person in the first quarter of the 21st century? Can the goals of a college education be achieved in a modern research university? How can a research faculty recommit itself to educating undergraduates?
Review committees composed of faculty and students made many recommendations. The most important was that Harvard recommit itself to a liberal education in arts and sciences. Such an education bucks the trend of our time, for faculty and students alike, of ever greater (and ever earlier) specialization and professionalization. We believe that a liberal education can shape women and men to be reflective, curious, and skeptical individuals equipped with the knowledge and skills that will give them a foundation for their lives that will be increasingly long, to be sure, and lived in times that we cannot easily foresee.
Another recommendation is to focus less on concentrations (majors), to allow for an education that is broad as well as deep. At the same time, we must craft a curriculum to fit the world into which our students will graduate — a world that is ever more international and constantly redefined by changes in science and technology.
Globalization does not mean that people and their cultures are becoming alike, but it does mean that they are being brought more quickly into more direct contact (and conflict).
We live in a time of inescapable American influence around the world. With influence comes responsibility. As a leading American institution, Harvard has a responsibility to educate its students as citizens of the world. They will need the capacity to understand the languages, cultures, and contemporary lives of others and to see themselves, and this country, as others see them. We expect that all Harvard College students will pursue an international experience, undertaking study, research, or work abroad.
If we aim to lower cultural and national boundaries, we likewise wish to lower the divide between those conversant with science and technology and those who are not. Scientific and technological revolution are altering our means of communication, revising our understanding of the biological infrastructure of life, and challenging our conceptions of humanity. Our students need an education in, not just an introduction to, the physical, applied, and life sciences. Literacy in science should be as broadly shared among undergraduates as has been their education in the humanities and the social sciences.
No program of study in any college can succeed without a commitment to an intellectual community. John F. Kennedy, class of 1940, stated that “the real meaning of Harvard is not in the buildings or the library, however important their supporting functions may be; it is in the teachers and the students and the interrelationship between them.” This vision is at risk in the age of the specialized university. That is why the report emphasizes that students and faculty must engage, or reengage, one another in smaller rather than larger settings, from the first year to the last. We can still be a liberal arts college within a large research university. If our students will cross oceans and continents in pursuit of their education, they might also cross, on occasion, the frontiers of Harvard’s famously sovereign faculties and schools.
These are but some of the ideas that have emerged from our deliberations. As important as any of them is the sense of commitment to the common enterprise of teaching and learning, engendered by the review itself. Even, perhaps especially, an old place like Harvard needs to engage in self-reflection, self-criticism, and renewal.
William C. Kirby is the Geisinger Professor of History and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. 
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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oping to draw doctors, lawyers and businesspeople into public service, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner of U.S. News & World Report and The Daily News, said yesterday that he was giving Harvard $10 million to support professionals who pursue public health, education and government degrees.
