A new curriculum for arts and sciences students in New Brunswick is in place following the approval September 27 of the faculty at the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS). Arts and sciences students represent about two-thirds of all undergraduates in New Brunswick/Piscataway.

The new curriculum and course list is effective between fall 2007 and fall 2009, when faculty expect to have a permanent curriculum in place that reflects and defines the meaning of undergraduate education at a public research university such as Rutgers.

Susan Lawrence, associate dean for undergraduate education at the School of Arts and Sciences and an associate professor of political science, said the interim curriculum and distribution requirements are a “reconciliation” of previous requirements at the liberal arts colleges – Douglass, Livingston, Rutgers, and University.

“Over the course of the next year and a half, the faculty is going to be engaged in an extensive discussion about what the curriculum at an AAU [Association of American Universities] public research university should look like,” Lawrence said.

The Task Force on Undergraduate Education concluded that the various core curricula at Rutgers’ liberal arts colleges too often emphasized “distribution for distribution’s sake” and did not articulate a distinctive vision of undergraduate education at Rutgers. The task force report encouraged more faculty engagement in the determination of the curriculum; Lawrence said that attendance at arts and sciences faculty meetings has increased since curriculum discussions commenced last spring, when the interim curriculum was first approved.

The interim curriculum requires:

• six credits of writing, including Expository Writing and another course chosen from a list of nearly 240 spanning most humanities and social science departments
  
• six credits in quantitative reasoning, either two mathematics courses or one math course and another analytical or research-based course from another discipline
  
• six credits in the natural sciences
• 12 credits in the social sciences, humanities, and interdisciplinary fields, with at least three credits coming from each
• three credits in diversity
  
• three credits in global awareness
  

Current students who have completed no more than 90 credits as of September 2007 – or roughly three-quarters of their graduation requirements – may choose to graduate under the new SAS distribution requirements or the requirements of the liberal arts college that admitted them.

Students who have completed more than 90 credits must finish the requirements of the liberal arts college in which they originally enrolled. All students entering the School of Arts and Sciences in fall 2007 through spring of 2009 will follow the interim curriculum.

 “We have students applying for September 2007 right now,” Lawrence said. “We need to be able tell them what is going to be required of them, but we also want the faculty to have the time to engage in thorough and thoughtful deliberations about a permanent core curriculum.”

At its September meeting, the arts and sciences faculty endorsed a proposal by Ziva Galili, acting executive dean of SAS, that would create a committee charged with developing a permanent SAS core curriculum governing students entering in fall 2009 and beyond. The committee will be made up of elected and appointed SAS faculty members, arts and sciences students, and representatives from professional schools that offer majors to arts and sciences students, such as the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies and the Mason Gross School of the Arts. Lawrence said the election will take place soon and the committee will begin its work by January 2007.