Pitt Profiles: Deans & Schools Series

FCAS to Introduce New Curriculum Requirements in 2003

By Evan Pattak

Barbara Mellix, assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of its advising center, counsels Pitt student Kassandra Sapienza, a junior majoring in history.

In Fall 2003, the Faculty and College of Arts and Sciences will introduce new curriculum requirements that have been several years in the making and include significant innovations.

According to Provost James V. Maher, the new requirements reflect the University’s emphasis on superb undergraduate experiences, with appropriate influence from concerns expressed by employers and the community.

“We must get students engaged in their own education,” Maher said. “Most students believe that the only really important thing during their undergraduate years is their choice of majors. But if you consider what graduate schools, professional schools, or employers are looking for, the lists are remarkably similar.

“They want people who can think clearly and critically, who can communicate well in writing, who can stand up and speak clearly and succinctly, who aren’t afraid of mathematics, who know how to sit down at a computer and use it, who understand that the viewpoints of people in other cultures may be different from our own,” Maher continued. “The new curriculum requirements are aimed at addressing these issues.”

When incoming freshmen in September 2003 sign up for courses, they will need to satisfy the following requirements outside their major areas of study. (Current undergraduates will be grandfathered under existing requirements.)

• Fundamental Skills, 16 credits

Required will be a composition course, two terms of foreign language study, and one course in quantitative reasoning or formal reasoning.

• Disciplinary Approaches, 27 credits

Requirements will include nine credits in natural sciences (from at least two departments); six credits in social sciences, at least one of them in historical analysis; and 12 credits in the humanities, including at least one course in philosophy, one in literature, and one in the arts.

• Global Citizenship, 9 credits

Required will be one course each in regional, comparative, and global study. At least one of those courses will focus on a non-Western culture.

• Integrating and Applying, no additional credits

Students must take two “writing-intensive” courses, including at least one in their major departments, and courses within their majors that promote the development of foundation skills in communication, information technology, and quantitative reasoning. Departments also are called upon to develop capstone experiences that help students integrate their academic work. These requirements do not involve any additional credits, since courses taken here may overlap general education or major requirements.

The new requirements represent a shift in thinking regarding such fundamental skills as writing, oral communication, and information technology. Rather than mandating discrete instruction in these subjects, the new requirements will favor courses with learning in fundamental skills threaded through them.

“We’re encouraging departments to incorporate oral skills, writing skills, and information technology skills across the curriculum,” stated FCAS Dean N. John Cooper. “We think that learning these skills is critical. But we don’t think the right way to do that is with courses solely devoted to a particular skill. It makes quite a bit of sense when these skills are taught within the subject matter that’s under study.”

The capstone experience is the second major innovation. It’s roughly analogous to a graduate thesis, but it can include more than research and writing. A capstone experience could be a paper that synthesizes learning in a variety of disciplines. The design and execution of a research experiment, or a portfolio of published work.

“It will be something that helps students bring together everything that they’ve learned throughout their major curriculum,” said Patricia Beeson, FCAS associate dean for undergraduate studies. “It won’t be ‘one size fits all.’ Each discipline has a different approach to knowledge and issues. It’s best, I think, to leave it to those departments.”

To assure that its departments are on track, FCAS will review capstone experiences—and all other aspects of the new requirements—every five years.

—Evan Pattak