Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe has begun plans to reform the USEM and experiential learning programs, signaling that his plans for broad changes to the curriculum will continue despite controversy generated by his integrated planning proposals last school year. To improve the USEM program, Jaffe proposes to separate the writing and seminar components and to reduce the interdisciplinary aspect of the courses, allowing future majors to use their USEM as an elective credit in their field.

To integrate experiential, or hands-on, learning into the curriculum, Jaffe believes it is important to both assess whether or not the students are benefiting from an experience such as an internship, play or lab, as well as to give faculty more credit and aid for making experiential programs part of their courses.

While most of these changes are still in the planning stage, Jaffe is hopeful that some could be enacted as early as the next school year.

The writing component of the USEM program is largely ineffective, according to Jaffe.

"In the current structure we've attached the teaching of writing to seminars that are designed for other purposes," he said. "This is not conducive to teaching writing."

Adding to the problem, the faculty is generally reluctant to teach USEM courses because they feel the classes detract from the rest of the department.

"It's a struggle to get the faculty we need," Jaffe said. "Not all faculty are interested in the interdisciplinary component. Some feel it provides for less electives in their field because there are too few faculty members available to teach."

To remedy this, Jaffe has proposed that USEM courses count toward credit in a student's major.

"A number of faculty have been talking about teaching ... discipline-based courses to allow the USEM to count as an elective if you major in that field," he said.

Jaffe feels that increasing experiential learning is as important as reforming the USEM program. But the problem in integrating experiential learning into the liberal arts curriculum, according to Jaffe, is twofold. It is difficult to tell if students, rather than companies, are benefiting from an internship. In addition, a survey conducted last spring revealed that faculty are sometimes hesitant to facilitate such programs, he said.

"In general, faculty find it's time-consuming, and in some cases they don't get credit for it," he said. "If they work outside of a course they don't get credit for those kinds of activities in terms of their teaching load."

Jaffe hopes this knowledge will lead to a solution.

"We're also working on barriers, be they bureaucratic or financial, to help faculty offer courses that contain an experiential learning component," Jaffe said.

Jaffe cautions that his proposals do not indicate an arts and sciences curriculum in trouble.

"I think that we have a tremendously exciting curriculum and overall are offering our students a fabulous liberal arts education," he said.

But he continues to echo many of the sentiments from his original integrated curriculum plan. Last school year, Jaffe stated that because Brandeis is a relatively small school with limited resources, the number of programs the school can effectively offer is thus limited. As a result, it is necessary to cut back some programs in order to strengthen those that remain. Those proposed cuts were the source of controversy last semester.

"To some extent we can increase the [size of] departments with additional resources, but to some extent we'll have to reform and reduce the overall extent of our commitments," he said.