The Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (SUES) moves forward with its review of the University’s undergraduate curriculum this week as the study’s subcommittees assemble for the first time.

The subcommittees, which each draw approximately ten members from faculty, students and staff, are set to review broad topics including the freshman experience, residential education, co-curricular activities and academic breadth. Committees will define their individual focus areas in coming weeks.

At least initially, however, no subcommittees will be dedicated to studying specific programs such as Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) or the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR).

“We didn’t think that would be the most valuable way to start,” said biology professor and SUES co-chair Sue McConnell. McConnell replaced drama professor Harry Elam as co-chair in June after Elam was named vice provost for undergraduate education.

“We’re looking much more broadly at student life and student experience,” McConnell said. “How do residential and co-curricular experiences, overseas experiences play in to student life and learning? What’s the optimal way for students to get breadth in their education without compromising their majors?”

One of the most often vilified aspects of undergraduate experiences is IHUM, required of all freshmen who do not enroll in the smaller Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program.

“I think if people were genuinely interested in English they would seek it out on their own,” said Tuong Phan ’11. “They already have their humanities requirement, so why do they need IHUM?”

“It’s not news that a lot of students are dissatisfied with their freshman requirements,” history professor and SUES co-chair James Campbell Ph.D. ‘89 said. “It’s clear to us that a lot of existing requirements, both the breadth requirements and the education for citizenship requirements, are satisfied by students in the most cynical ways imaginable.”

“People try to cherry-pick courses that double count, or are easy As, or they choose based simply on the hour that it meets and so forth,” Campbell continued. “Some of this is inevitable. It happens at every university.”

Aside from reevaluating the existing graduation requirements, SUES is working to keep the Stanford curriculum relevant to an ever-evolving world.

“Part of what we’ve been trying to do is try to not get snared so much in evaluating existing programs but to try to think broadly and creatively about what about university education at an institution like Stanford is supposed to mean in the 21st century,” Campbell said.

Campbell cites a “perennial tradeoff” between giving students the freedom to choose their own paths and offering the “institution’s wisdom and perception.”

“I think it’s fair to say there’s a common view that the freshman year is extraordinarily densely packed,” McConnell said. “And it’s causing problems for freshmen in exploring possible majors. So the idea that there would be an increase in requirements for freshman year is incomprehensible.”

The traditional rule of thumb for the division of units was that “a third was your major, a third was general education, a third was elective,” McConnell said. These parameters, however, are not followed by all of the major programs offered at Stanford. Some majors, like history or math, require 55 to 65 units, while some engineering majors require more than 120.

A consequence of more units, Campbell believes, is limited time to take courses out of interest or curiosity.

“Students here have to be extremely instrumental and practical in how they think about their schooling,” Campbell said. “We don’t want to do anything that will compromise what is one of the premier engineering schools in the world. But we do want to see carve out space in time for students to reflect the totality of their experiences.”

SUES has been underway since Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82 and former Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman ‘79 M.S. ‘81 Ph.D. ‘85 commissioned it last winter quarter. It is the most recent in a series of studies on and revisions to Stanford’s undergraduate education that stretches back to the 1960s.

In 1994, the Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE) recommended University support for undergraduate research, which Campbell says “changed the face of this institution utterly.”

Of the students surveyed for this article, all unanimously lauded the University’s abundance of research opportunities for undergraduates.

“It’s cool how much research there is for everyone,” said Adam Jensen ’14. “I got into some psych research after my intro sem professor mentioned he needed a few research assistants.”

What changes SUES will recommend remain to be seen, but the ultimate goal of the committee and its co-chairs remains clear.

“I think it’s a great university, but there are just certain things that I think it can do better,” Campbell said. “And that’s really our challenge, is to come up with some fairly concrete suggestions about how to accomplish that.”
Ivy Nguyen contributed to this report.