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Credit: Roy Groething
Pat O’Connell, a Rutgers College senior,
addresses the audience at the Oct. 11
Busch Campus Center forum, where topics
ranged from honors programs and the
undergraduate application to campus
construction and the uniform assessment
of student fees.
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A semester of feedback is under way in response to a report from an undergraduate education task force that recommended sweeping changes to the curriculum and structure at Rutgers.
Major themes of the discussions have included widespread cultural change at the university’s New Brunswick/Piscataway campus, a revision of the way Rutgers presents itself to prospective students and the inclusion of ideas from several alternative proposals.
Two more forums are coming up: Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. at the Rutgers Student Center, and Nov. 15 at 8:30 p.m. at Lucy Stone Hall. In addition, numerous bodies – run by students, faculty and alumni – are holding forums and discussions throughout the semester. Open forums on Busch, Cook and Douglass campuses – each attended by about 200 people – have already taken place, as has a forum before the board of trustees Oct. 11.
College deans, alumni and students were invited to voice opinions on the task force report before the board of trustees.
Holly Smith, executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in New Brunswick, agreed with the task force that it is crucial to eliminate the “confusion, the frustrating disparities and the demoralizing hierarchy of prestige that debilitate our current system.” But she said that more work needed to be done to describe workable “campuses” that would provide stable, welcoming communities for first- and second-year students.
While she doesn’t support the notion of Douglass as a separate degree-granting college, Smith, herself a graduate of a women’s college, proposed the idea of an administrative entity – perhaps the “Douglass Center for Women” – overseeing and fostering special women’s educational opportunities across all campuses. Housed on Douglass, it could serve as a generative anchor for such activities as women’s leadership training programs; special residential, mentoring and tutoring opportunities for women in the sciences and engineering; learning communities focused on exploring women’s roles in the globalizing world; and other women-centered initiatives.
“Although the current Douglass College serves a few of these functions now, it cannot be fully effective because of its limited scope of responsibility for Douglass students only,” Smith said.
Emmet Dennis, dean of University College, wants to see the school maintained “as that unit for adult and non-traditional students, headed by a dean, as a part of the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.” Dennis said that calling the arts and sciences unit a “school” rather than a “college” would be consistent with the other degree-granting faculty units in New Brunswick.
Dennis supported many of the task force’s recommendations, including the proposed curriculum, which emphasizes a philosophical rather than a disciplinary basis for requirements. He is concerned, however, about the possible limited availability of courses and majors at night and on weekends. “Only 36 of the 80 majors available on the New Brunswick/ Piscataway campus are available at night,” Dennis said.
Rutgers College Dean Carl Kirschner said the current college structure leads to competition among colleges for students. “The competition for the best students must be exclusively external, between Rutgers and NYU, Maryland or Penn State. The new structure will accomplish that.
“The critical recommendation, the linchpin for all the report, the one that we must get right so that all others can be successful – is the structure committee recommendation for a single college of arts and sciences,” Kirschner said. “It
is the engine that drives the entire set of recommendations.”
The discussions surround a report, “Transforming Undergraduate Education,” released this summer by a task force appointed by President Richard L. McCormick and Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs. The report recommends fundamental changes to the curriculum and structure at Rutgers, as well as transformations in admissions, student services and facilities. After the fall semester, McCormick will consider all the discussions and make recommendations to the Rutgers Board of Governors.
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