Weinberg students may soon have more options for fulfilling distribution requirements.
At a meeting Wednesday, the Weinberg general studies committee will give faculty members a proposal to create an “interdisciplinary studies” section of classes that could fit into more than one category of distribution requirements.
The Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences divides its distribution requirements into six categories: natural sciences, formal studies, social sciences, history, values and literature. Every Weinberg student must take two 100- or 200-level classes in each area to graduate.
According to the proposal, an interdisciplinary course could fit into more than one category, but the same course couldn’t count for more than one credit. Students could choose the category for which the interdisciplinary course would count.
Teachers could vote on the proposal as early as April. If approved, the change would take effect in either Fall or Winter Quarter.
Weinberg currently has a Western civilization section that allows five classics and European thought and culture classes to count in more than one area. But the new interdisciplinary section would include classes that focus on non-European culture – or that don’t relate to culture at all.
“We worked on this proposal to change Western (civilization) to something not designating a particular geographic area, so that the concern of a privileging of Western culture would be taken care of,” said Mary Finn, Weinberg assistant dean and English lecturer. “In addition, we wanted to expand the options so there are interdisciplinary possibilities that have nothing to do with Western vs. non-Western but have to do with interdisciplinary work between all kinds of fields.”
Weinberg Assoc. Dean Robert Coen said the change would give professors more incentive to offer interdisciplinary courses.
“This is partly an invitation to the faculty to give more attention to proposing and creating such courses,” he said. “They’ve been discouraged from doing this in the past because a course that’s not on the distribution lists has a little more difficulty growing a good enrollment.”
Coen said department chairs would recommend which courses were interdisciplinary and which distribution areas they could fulfill.
The proposal also would change the way interdisciplinary courses are counted as distribution requirements. Students could count the course in a distribution area right away. In the current system, students must take two Western civilization courses before they can count either one.
Coen said such a change would remove the uncertainty of needing two Western civilization courses and give the students incentive to take interdisciplinary courses.
“Students can actually know that when they take a particular course they’ll know where they’re going to count it, rather than having this uncertainty about having to take yet a second course and not knowing whether they’ll be able to sign up for one,” he said.
Coen also said offering more choices for distribution requirements will entice students to take them earlier in their collegiate careers, which would open their schedules to more opportunities.
“This is a new opportunity for freshmen and sophomores to find appealing classes in their first years,” he said.
The largest problem with distribution requirements is that students wait too long to take the classes, he said, which defeats the purpose of students taking classes outside their major.
For example, if students wait until senior year to fulfill a poetry requirement and then find they enjoy poetry, they won’t have time to follow up on that interest, Coen said.
