Four Courses Adapted from Core for Gen Ed

The approval of four more classes for General Education credit brings the total number of approved courses to 70 across the new curriculum’s eight categories.

All four courses have been adapted from the current Core Curriculum and each will satisfy a different Gen Ed category.

Until this point, most approved classes were in humanities-based fields. Three of the courses approved by the Gen Ed committee last Thursday, however, will fulfill math or science requirements.

“Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning,” the “Science of Living Systems,” and “Science of the Physical Universe” will see increased course variety. All three categories had previously comprised fewer than seven course selections each.

Two courses offered this past fall term, Quantitative Reasoning 50: “Medical Detectives” and Science B-60: “Origins of Knowledge,” will fulfill the “Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning” and “Science of Living Systems” requirements, respectively.

Science A-45: “Reality Physics,” last offered four years ago, will be offered in Spring 2010 and will meet the Gen Ed requirement for “Science of the Physical Universe.”

According to Physics Professor Gerald Gabrielse, who will teach the course, the class was deemed a model Gen Ed course during the course of the curricular review.

History of Art and Architecture Professor Thomas B. F. Cummins’ course Foreign Cultures 93: “Pathways through the Andes—History, Culture, and Politics in Andean South America,” offered this term, can be taken to meet the requirement for either “Culture and Belief” or “Societies of the World.”

At present, “United States in the World” and “Ethical Reasoning” boast the fewest offerings, with five and four classes approved, respectively.

—Staff writer Wendy H. Chang can be reached at whchang@fas.harvard.edu.