The University is contemplating eliminating the University Seminar requirement from the undergraduate curriculum because of budget constraints, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said. The idea was originally suggested by the Special Faculty Advisory Committee, which was appointed by the provost to address the projected gap in the University's fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2010 operating budgets. The University Curriculum Committee met last Thursday to discuss this matter but was forced to schedule another meeting for this Thursday to make a decision.

"The University, like everybody else in society, is in bad financial shape," Prof. Malcolm Watson (PSYC), chair of the USEM Committee, said. "The University is forced to make some cuts because [it has] to balance the budget."

"Nobody would have come up with the idea that we should eliminate the USEM program if it weren't for the financial pressure," he said.

Jaffe said, "One of the more general strategies for closing the budget gap for next year is to try to cut back on the hiring of adjunct faculty. The hope would be that if departments don't have to provide USEMs, they would be better able to staff the courses that they need to staff for their own curricula with the faculty that they have and wouldn't have to come to me for adjunct faculty."

Jaffe said that the goal is to "try to figure out whether there might be some other version of [the USEM program] that might not accomplish everything that the USEM now tries to accomplish but would still achieve the goal of having every first-year student have a small course with a faculty member and other first-year students. But maybe we could do that in some way that wouldn't require quite the same level of faculty resources."

University Studies Program Administrator Lisa Mills said that "the potential is there for [USEMs] to have a really positive impact on first-years. I know each USEM is different, and each instructor is different. But the program as a whole is a really positive first-year experience."

"I think modifications will still allow the uniqueness of USEM to exist. . My concern is either having [USEMs] or not having [USEM]s at all," Mills said.

One idea for modification suggested at the UCC meeting was to count USEMs as half-courses. Jaffe explained that the class would have to meet less often or have fewer papers "to make it less burdensome to the faculty."

The second suggestion was to make USEMs voluntary.

"This way, all first-years would have a USEM course available to them," Watson said. "The problem we see with this idea is that the students who could really benefit from it wouldn't take it."

"A lot of students majoring in science or economics have to take a lot of large intro courses to get them started on their academic path," Watson continued. "Besides that, when they do take small courses, often they're labs or language courses, not courses like the USEM. They may feel like they just can't afford to take a USEM. But then the [students] that would actually take a USEM would be the ones who would otherwise take a similar type of course anyway, he said.

Jaffe said that a lot of faculty members speculate that students would opt out of taking a USEM if it were optional but that many students appreciate the experience in retrospect.

The third suggestion was to increase the size of each USEM class to decrease the number of total courses offered. "But that would defeat the purpose of having a small seminar," Mills said. This semester, there are 17 students in each USEM.

"We teach a little over 50 sections of USEM every year," Jaffe explained. "So that's the equivalent of about 12 to 15 full-time faculty who teach nothing but USEM, so that's a pretty big chunk of faculty resources. There was some interest in trying to figure out if there was a way to reduce that resource commitment to them USEM."

The administration cannot change the academic requirements without the faculty's vote, according to Watson.

"Ideally we'd like to bring it to the faculty meeting in December if we're going to change it because if we decide much later than that, it would be very difficult to plan for next year,"?Jaffe said. "The departments are already very much in the midst of trying to put together their schedules for next year and it makes a big difference to them whether they have to teach USEMs or not, so if we don't change it in the next few weeks, we're probably not going to change it for next year, because it would be too difficult to do it."

Jaffe explained, "We have not discussed replacing it with some other requirement. The discussion has been to either eliminate the requirement or modify it in some way, but we haven't contemplated so far that it would be replaced with something else."

In an e-mail to the Justice, Prof. Alice Kelikian (HIST) wrote, "I am of two minds on this. I have taught a USEM (with the writing component) for just about every year during the last decade and a half. Most [first-years] welcome the opportunity of working in a small setting on an interdisciplinary topic about which the instructor has special interest."

"But some departments, many of which also have graduate programs to service, have disproportionately high USEM obligations," Kelikian wrote, referring to History, her own department. "[The History department's] USEM commitments limit the number of upper-division undergraduate courses we can offer in our own disciplines," she wrote.

"There are varied views on the committee about what should be done," Watson said. "People are taking this very seriously. Everyone really hates the idea that they'd ever have to cut something that would be of real value to undergraduates here at Brandeis."

Watson said, "The thing we have to ask ourselves is what is the worst of all [the programs and expenditures being considered] to cut? What is the thing that's going to hurt the most? If we kept the USEM program, what would go in its place? At this point, I can't say," he said.