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Faculty Will Consider Freshman Experiment

Dean Bundy to Propose One-Year Project; Participants Would Receive Course Credit

By Alan H. Grossman

When the Faculty of Arts and Sciences meets this afternoon, Dean Bundy will move to permit "experiments designed to intensify the intellectual experience of the freshman year." If the motion is carried without amendment, freshmen recommended next year by the Committee on Advanced Standing will receive course credit for supervised study in connection with the one-year experiment.

The motion was approved by the Committee on Educational Policy, with one member voting in opposition, and enthusiasm of key Faculty members for the project has been reported.

Despite some reticence--which was explained by the early yet crucial stage of thinking on the experiment--members of the CEP and Administration sources alluded last night to certain aspects of the proposed project.

Some Students Not Challenged

Most of those questioned agreed that "some, though certainly not all" students in their first year are not being sufficiently challenged by the formal curriculum, and it was added that the present freshman advising system is "no help" in this respect.

Much of the discussion about experimenting with a more stimulating freshman curriculum has centered on two approaches. One has emphasized a greater amount of course work, and has been criticized as "proto-graduate school thinking."

The other, and it would seem more indefinite approach, is widely talked of in terms of "a more directed course than is taken under the present system" and "regularly scheduled, close work with a faculty member."

After Faculty action today, it will remain to be determined whether the experiment will be aimed toward a program for the entire freshman class, or for only what one member of the CEP called "the pilots" in it.

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