Thursday, September 9, 1971. THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Three Thursday, September 9, 1971 THE MICHIGAN DAiLY Page Three I Personalizing 'U' education 0 . . THE FOUR YEARS that separate an entering freshman from his undergraduate degree generally loom ahead with a seemingly never-ending stream of requirements which must be fulfilled. In recent years, however, the literary college has made some movement toward providing alternatives for the student who feels alienated by traditional programs. PRESSURED by students seeking to end the language and distri- bution requirements for the B.A. degree, the LSA faculty created a separate degree, the Bachelor in General Studies, in 1969. The degree allows students to chart their own academic course of study, free from the restraints of distribution requirements and a particular field of concentration. In August, 1967; the University converted East Quadrangle into the Residential College (RC). There, for the past four years, students have lived in some of the old dorm rooms and learned in others, while working with a liberal faculty in easing degree re- quirements, introducing new courses and programs, and virtually eliminating the letter-grading system in favor of the pass-fail system. OTHER PROGRAMS at the University have mirrored the innova- tive manner of RC. The Pilot Program, for instance, has combined dorm life and learning for underclassmen in a comparable though less intense fashion for more than ten years. For the student who may want an occasional taste of the un- usual, the course mart program offers student-designed courses on a wide variety of current-interest topics. Like RC and the Pilot Program, course mart's classes will also be graded under a pass/fail system as of this fall. BGS degree: A program to your tastes By ROBERT SCHREINER "The BGS can be either the salvation of geniuses or the refuge of scoundrels," commented romance languages depart- ment chairman James O"Neill a year and a half ago, when the Bachelor in General Studies degree program was just beginning its second full term of operation. O'Neill, along with many other mem- bers of the University community, had expressed concern that BGS students would have more of the "scoundrel" in them as they found themselves freed of language, distribution, and concentra- tion requirements. However, it is becoming apparent that O'Neill's "scoundrels" to a large extent are completing language requirements anyway, and formulating th e ir own 'concentration' programs. Moreover, the BGS degree program is not only gaining stature here at the University, but is also enjoying wide acceptance by graduate schools through- out the country. The controversial BGS program was created two years ago by the literary college faculty in the aftermath of a long drawn-out dispute with students seeking the abolition of the college's language and distribution requirements. Refusing to remove the requirements from the BA degree, the faculty in- stead established the BGS, a new, sep- arate degree program without language, distribution and concentration require- ments. The program's creation marked one of the first major examples of academic reform in the literary college brought about by pressure from the students themselves. The only requirement for the BGS is that students elect at least 60 hours of advanced-level courses (300 level and above), with no more than 20 of these advanced hours in any one department. In addition, there is a 40 hour limit on courses taken within any one depart- ment. Currently, over 1,000 students are en- rolled as candidates for the BGS, an in- crease of over 700 within the last year. And while m a n y faculty members have continually expressed concern that BGS students would be viewed by grad- uate school admissions offices as being less qualified than other applicants, a nation-wide telephone survey made ear- lier this year by The Daily revealed that most graduate and professional schools hold the BGS in as high a regard as any other University degree. Although only about 20 students had graduated with the BGS degree before April, 1971, an additional 55 were awarded the degree last April - mark- ing the first sizable graduating class of BGS students. As the program continues to grow and gain respectability, the number of BGS students is expected to increase even more, until the program eventually involves as much as 15 per cent of the LSA student population. The growth of the BGS program would in itself indicate that a signifi- cant portion of LSA students are find- ing the broader and more unrestrictive nature of the program more to their lik- ing than the traditional BA concentra- tion. Although critics have taken the view that the lack of requirements in the program makes the BGS an "easy way out," the BGS candidates themselves seem to have different ideas. Although they are not forced to take language courses or elect a concentra- tion program, a large portion of the BGS students have fulfilled the lang- uage requirement and an even larger number are "concentrating" their pro- grams in a selected discipline. While the programs such students formulate may thus be somewhat tra- See CREATING, Page 7 .. _-- . ......... ..... .. . . . . . . . The U's newest degree Residential College: Working an experimental idea by living it By HESTER PULLING and CARLA RAPOPORT You're walking down the hall innocently enough when you--see the gang approaching. You recog- nize them by their baggy pants, wide-label s u i t s and broad- brimmed hats. As they approach, you notice machine guns casual- ly slung over their shoulders. But others pay no attention to the sinister groups. Cats walk by with ardent indifference and the 24-hour bridge game con- tinues with hardly a glance. On- ly a visitor to East Quad would be startled by the cast of another student-run movie. Four years ago, however, there were neither cats nor movie cameras at the quad. In the fall of 1967, engineering students were bumped out of the dorm to make room for the University's most ambitious experiment in undergraduate education - The Residential College. A division of the literary col- lege, the RC was conceived in the mid-1960's by a group of Univer- sity faculty members who envi- sioned the new college as an ans- wer to the growing size and im- personality of the University-a place where liberal students could live and study along with faculty members and staff in an atmos- phere of mutual respect. In the summer of 1967, parts of East Quad: RC's corner of the campus the dormitory were swiftly con- verted to a college as trunk rooms changed to classrooms and lounges to offices, providing the University with its first self- contained, living-learning experi- ence. Subsequently, the freshmen who entered the quad that fall became guinea pigs for a barrage of programs as yet untried on such a scale at the University. Living and learning in the Pilot Program By CARLA RAPOPORT Supplement Co-Editor "Too often, a first year student taking introductory courses is unchallenged. His classes are too large, the teachers boring or un- available and the subjects stilted and irrelevant," says Tom Lobe, coordinator of Pilot Program, a division of the Literary College. For a freshman anxious to avoid this route but somewhat hesi- tant to immerse himself into the Residential College's (RC) total living-learning experience, Pilot Program at Alice Lloyd Hall offers underclassmen an equally intriguing, though not "total," alternative to the traditional freshman year. Selected on a first-come, first-serve basis, the some 450 freshmen who enter Alice Lloyd each fall find themselves in an RC-like atmos- phere where nothing is unusual-from the painted bust of Alice Crocker Lloyd in the lobby to the coed bathrooms on the sixth floor. Unlike the RC however, Pilot participants are not obligated to participate in any Pilot course or activity and are free to take advan- tage of as much or as little of its academic program as they choose. Throughout its ten year his- tory, the most prominent aspect of Pilot Program, has been its cluster of unconventional course offerings taught by resident graduate students and conducted in the dorm. These seminars, limited to en- ff N irollments of 15, are usually inter- '''.$ ' {."°;r .;:rdisciplinary approaches to a spe- r%.;"F f ;cified problem such as Aliena- tion and Meaning, Imperialism, Anarchism, or Death. Pilot classes are taken as elec- tives by Pilot students and start- {.ing this fall, all classes will be graded on a pass-fail basis. In addition, these classes are open to non-pilot students where Tom Lobe room allows. Pilot also promotes various non-credit classes and lecture series on topics of current concern. Recently Pilot instituted a program of one- and two-credit directed reading seminars where a student may research a subject on his own, with the approval of a resident fellow. The brashest of these programs included: -The RC's blanket use of the pass-fail grading system; -The small, rather unstruc- tured seminar where student voices are heard equally or more than the professor's; -The "core" curriculum which all students were required to take during the college's )--ginning years but which was later re- duced considerably. Last May, some 100 m-iembers of the RC's first class graduated from the College, thus presenting the University with the first real "results" of the experiment. In tapping these results. most RC students and those involved in the college speak with pride about the program's first four years citing its faults along with its achievements as examples of its rapid growth and change. Yet critics of the college point to the RC's informal, unstruc- tured attitudes towards lfarning as an "easy way out" for stu- dents who are unwilling to un- dertake a disciplined course of study and instead pursue their own whims without real direc- tion. In order to more thoroughly understand the experimental col- lege, one may look at the RC students' reactions to the major aspects of the program as fol- lows: 1 THE RC CLASSROOM. While ranging in topics from Comparative Revolutions to Silk- Screening, the RC courses most all have one characteristic in common-lack of structure. 'I'll never forget the cay I walked into my first RC class and the teacher said, 'Well. 0hat do you want to do this semes- ter?' " remembers one senior. "I was floored." As RC students explain, scmi- nars and classes in the college are of an informal nature, al- lowing the student to more eas- ily take an active part in the class. As a result, students say they feel less pressured to "per- form" than they might have to in "highly competitive" literary college classes. 0 PASS - FAIL. Perhaps the boldest program to be -instituted in the RC is its pass-fail evalua- tion grading system. Under this system, a student receives eii-her a pass or a fail and, in addition, a written evaluation of his pro- gress and involvement in the class. "The removal of grades, I think, kept most competition from the school. You can't com- pare grade averages here and a pass doesn't mean anything to anyone but yourself, says a senior majoring in urban affairs. The RC's pass-fail grading sys- tem is vulnerable to outside crit- icism because RC teachers tend to fail only two or three per cent of their students. While RC students recognize this opportunity to shirk their work, faculty members say that very few of them abuse the sys- tem. * CURRICULUM. With the hope of enhancing the iitellectual community of the college by ex- posing students to a common aca- demic program, the Residential College at its inception, required all of its students to take a basic "core" curriculum. The core program consisted of a sequence of specially-designed liberal arts courses which would fulfill all of the college's distri- bution requirements - including English composition, a foreign language, social sciences and hu- manities. However, the Residential Col- lege disbanded the program last winter term following complaints from students and teachers that the required nature of the pro- gram did not take into account the needs of individual students. At present, only the freshman seminar and language require- ments remain, but efforrs to do away with these are currently underway. -Daily-Tom Gottneo Learning the traditional way . . After registration move to frustration While the University has introduced a number of innovative programs, there is one aspect of academic life that has seen little reform-the registration process. From counseling appointments through exams, you will discover that getting in and out of classes involves coping with an endless bureaucratic maze. However, there are ways of making the process less painful. Following are some ways to cut through the red tape. THE PRELIMINARIES Registering for courses is easiest when you are a freshman and have gone through an orientation session. You find yourself shunted in and out of offices and through lines and in the end somehow, you have a small piece of green flimsy paper with a Schedule. The next semester is not so easy. The most essential point is to get up early (and 5:30 a.m. is none too early) on the first day you are allowed to make an appointment with a counselor for your next term's schedule. If you sleep too long, you are liable to get a late appointment and spend the next term studying Chaucer to Milton when you wanted Vonnegut. When you first make the appointment (through the freshman/ sophomore counseling office, 1213 Angell Hall) they will give you a booklet which lists courses along with their places and times. Check this schedule and construct a program for yourself that in- cludes relevant courses, at the times that you can live with. THE COUNSELOR'S APPOINTMENT Explain politely but firmly to your counselor exactly what you want to take. Chances are he will nod and sign your slip and you can leave. However, if he raises an objection like "but that course is only for secon semester senxors with seven credits in Advanced Sanskrit", be ready with a pre-arranged clever answer like "but the professor said I could take it." Usually this will suffice. You have now preclassified. REGISTRATION Once you have properly preclassified, registration is just a boring hour or so of long lines to walk through while you pick up some papers, hand in some papers and show your I. D. card at the proper places. If you haven't preclassified, add several hours to registration time, and prepare to spend one day at the beginning of the term at little desks labeled "Sociology 100-350". You will be kept busy filling out little cards for courses you really didn't want but have to take because all the good courses are full already. DROP AND ADD or "I've got to get out of this place" The first day of classes you are bound to find one you don't like-the professor expects five papers, two projects, is giving three hourlies and isn't covering what you want to learn anyway. Don't panic. You can legally drop courses anytime within the first four weeks but the later you try to drop, the greater the chance a Good Excuse will be required by someone along the line. Adding courses is done the same way in reverse, but is a little harder. First you must convince the professor that you are dying to take his already overcrowded course and will prove a great asset to the class. Then fill out the drop/add card and you're in. Adding classes can only be done legally within the first two weeks of school-the earlier the better as it's sometimes hard to catch up if you've missed the first few weeks. CUTTING After the first week, you will probably be able to tell which courses are skippable and which are not. Lectures usually are, especially if you have a friend who takes good notes. Seminars and recitations are different, and should probably be fairly regu- larly attended, as the teaching fellow may recognize the absence of your smiling face and take it personally. PAPERS Find someone who has taken the same course from the same professor and ask how many footnotes per page the prof likes, and whether "about five pages" means he wants four and a half pages or eight pages and a bibliography. It's almost always pos- sible to turn in a late paper. But, It is good form to ask the pro- fessor first-a minor excuse will do for most professors. EMERGENCY MEASURES If you absolutely cannot finish a course on time, there is a marvelous opportunity to put all your powers of creativity to a test and try for that lifesaver known as The Incomplete. Find a Very, Very Good Excuse, or maybe even two, -and go see your professor. If he agrees to give you an incomplete, celebrate, but remember that all good things must end, and incompletes are due within the first four weeks of the next term. If you can't manage that, there are always Extensions. Write a note to the Administrative Board, including the course title, the professor's name and your Never-Fail Good Excuse and turn it in to the counselor's office with your professor's signature, FLUNKING OUT Yes, it happens, but not very often, so don't worry. The -Daily-Tom Gottlieb . . or striking out on your own LSA COURSE MART Creating a class of your own By TAMMY JACOBS supplement Co-Editor Ever want to take a course in non- violence and pacifism? Or one entitled "Comics in American Society"? Or did you ever want to form your own course? All are possible - that's what course mart, the literary college's program for "miscellaneous" courses, is for. Course mart was formed almost three years ago to provide interdepartmental or unclassifiable courses that did not fit ,,ndp, .nv nth , r a,. ~+orv graded on a pass-fail basis only, unless the sponsor has received special permis- sion for a graded course. In the last few years, several c o u r s e mart courses have been taught by under- graduate students under the sponsor- ship of a professor or a teaching fellow under professorial supervision. However, in January, six sections of a course mart course being offered for the first time, Independent Political Action (College Course 327) were denied credit by the onurse mart committee a student- ing political action and 15 seminar ses- sions on such diversified topics as radical journalism, sexism and ecology. The ensuing upheaval became a battle between traditionalists who said the sec- tions in question were not deserving of University credit, and advocates of the sections who argued that the sections and instructors were legitimate and that the committee had no right to delete sec- tions of an approved course for which students had registered and were cur- rently taking.