With 68 concentrations left to consider, the College Curriculum Council is far behind the Task Force on Undergraduate Education's 2008 goal of reviewing the standards and usefulness of all academic concentrations by 2011. But slow and steady wins the race, according to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.
"It has been very valuable to do this in this slow manner one-on-one because you really have meaningful conversations as opposed to putting out a broad assignment," she said.
"It's going to be a while," she added, but the review's slow pace does not put it outside the norm for academia. "In university time, that's not that bad," she said.
The purpose of the review is to "ensure integrity and consistency across the curriculum," according to the task force's report.
The College Curriculum Council is reviewing eight concentrations this academic year, Bergeron said.
Neuroscience, marine biology, human biology, computer science, anthropology, economics, political science and sociology are the concentrations under review this year, according to Barbara Sardy, special assistant to the dean of the College and secretary of the CCC.
Each concentration under review will send representatives to meet with the CCC subcommittee and discuss the various components of their program, Bergeron said. According to the CCC's guidelines for chairs and program directors, the discussions will involve questions regarding student expectations, the concentration's connections to Brown's larger liberal learning goals, the strengths and weakness of the department's advising system and how the program measures concentrators' successes after graduation.
The committee hopes to use the reviews to highlight the differing features of each concentration, Bergeron said. "We've been trying to get departments to try and articulate not just the description of the concentration and not just the requirements, but what are the goals? What are you going to get out of it?" she said.
The CCC has scheduled its reviews to come after the departments' external reviews, which are run by the provost's office and conducted by academics from other institutions, Bergeron said.
"We're trying to do a coordinated review cycle so you're getting departments to focus on those areas in a timely way, and you're not administratively working at cross purposes," she said.
The Department of Neuroscience was the first to go under review this year. It had its first meeting with the CCC's subcommittee in mid-October, according to Barry Connors, professor of neuroscience and chair of the department.
The two groups have not met since their October meeting, but Connors said the "free-wheeling discussion" brought up a variety of points, including questions about concentrators' writing experience and requirements as well as potential changes to the website.
"They wanted to know why our undergraduate website was not as spiffy as our graduate program website, even though they more or less have the same information," he said.
Connors said he expects the review to be finished by the end of the semester and is not expecting any major recommendations. "We're pretty comfortable with our concentration," he said.
Tom Doeppner, vice chair of the Department of Computer Science, director of undergraduate studies for the department and member of the CCC, said the subcommittee is not scheduled to meet with the CS department until January 2012. When the date gets closer, he and Roberto Tamassia, chair of the department, will get together and select the faculty and students who will participate in the reviews, Doeppner said.
Though the department also does not expect to receive any recommendations, Doeppner said they are always looking to make the concentration better.
"Certainly, we always have continuous, on-going changes to the concentration in terms of the courses, modifying concentration requirements and so forth," he said. "In that sense, it's nice to have a deadline."
David Lindstrom, chair of the Department of Sociology, said he does not expect the concentration to be reviewed until next semester but is looking forward to the review and the opportunities it brings to better the department.
"We want to avoid being static," Lindstrom said. "The review process is really helpful for us in terms of forcing us to conduct these kinds of self-evaluations and assessments."
Lindstrom also said the timing of the concentration reviews fits well with discussions the departments have been having about themselves, both internally and externally.
"It makes a lot of sense for this to occur in the years subsequent to the external review," he said. "It's a nice follow-up. We want to be responsive and changing, because everything else is changing."
