While administrators once hoped to begin voting on how to revamp Harvard College’s curriculum by this spring, a variety of setbacks—including the controversy surrounding embattled University President Lawrence H. Summers—has resulted in a year of only gradual progress, leading to dozens of revised recommendations, but no votes and little time for Faculty discussion.

More than half a dozen committees met throughout the year to examine the recommendations of last April’s Report on the Harvard College Curricular Review and to produce suggestions of their own.

While development of the centerpiece of last year’s report—the replacement of the Core Curriculum with a set of knowledge-based general education requirements—is still caught at the committee level, other committees have submitted ideas to the full faculty for review.

This piecemeal quality of the review has raised concerns about coherence and the potential for progress from this point forward.

“It’s hard to see how any sort of part of the curricular review could go through while the central parts have some large question marks attached to them,” said Chair of the Classics Department Richard F. Thomas.

Some of the suggestions that have been advanced include the creation of new introductory science courses stressing the connections between disciplines and of a Freshmen Writing Tutorial that would be graded satisfactory/unsatisfactory and would replace the Expository Writing requirement.

The committees also affirmed recommendations from the 2004 report such as a cap of 12 courses on concentration requirements, a later deadline for declaring concentrations, and a more supportive advising system.

In addition to these and other academic changes, the committees rejected last April’s recommendation to move to a Yale-style housing system and put forth a number of suggestions for how to structure a possible January term.

AN UNSURE FOUNDATION

As the 2004-2005 academic year opened, the ongoing Harvard College Curricular Review was faced with the challenge of addressing an acknowledged lack of “guiding vision” that had aroused criticism from the Faculty last year.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby—one of the leaders of the curricular review—appeared unfazed in the face of faculty concern and said the review would build upon last year’s progress.

“I do not wish to lose this momentum,” Kirby wrote in a Sept. 20, 2004 letter to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). “My goal is to have a set of formal proposals that can be presented to the Faculty by the end of the academic year.”

Within a week, the curricular review was dealt another blow when Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz abruptly left his post as one of three leaders of the review.

Days after Wolcowitz’s departure, a second round of committees was created to address specific areas of the undergraduate experience, including general education, writing instruction, and the advising system.

WINTER OF DISCUSSION