By Matt Dodds, Staff Writer
The Haverford College Education Policy Committee (EPC) recently unveiled a new set of general education requirements that shift the borders of traditional course categories and require fewer classes per curriculum division. The EPC revised and updated the former policy in an effort to better reflect Haverford’s goals as an institution.
The new requirements replace the course divisions formerly referred to as Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences with three “Domains of Knowledge.” The first domain is “Meaning, Interpretation, and Creative Expression”, the second is “Analysis of the Social World, Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures,” and the third is “Physical and Natural Processes, Mathematical and Computational Constructs.” These domains, while loose interpretations of the previous divisions, are not mutually exclusive, meaning that a course can qualify for any number of domains. For example, the course “Case Studies in Environmental Issues: Concepts, Contexts, & Conundrums” is included in all three domains, though it cannot count towards more than one of them simultaneously.
Haverford students beginning with the Class of 2022 must take two courses within each of the three domains, and four departments must be represented among them. The former policy required students to take three classes across at least two departments per division. Additionally, the Quantitative Analysis requirement no longer exists within the general education requirements. Instead, it is an additional necessary course that cannot count towards any domain of knowledge, similar to the unaltered language and first-year writing requirements.
These revised general education requirements were gradually developed by the EPC during a lengthy process over the past several years. Formal dialogue regarding the possibility of revision to the requirements began in April 2013, when a memo from Professor Anne McGuire, then head of the EPC, called for the initiation of “thoughtful discussion of our educational goals and the ways in which our General Education requirements help us to achieve those goals.”
In February 2014, the EPC reviewed a number of student comments regarding the shortcomings of the legacy requirements, before deliberating over several different proposed reforms. This process culminated in a final revision proposal circulated in April 2016, and finalized in December. A memo from the EPC published in April 2016 stated, “the primary reason [behind the revision] is that the Academy as a whole has evolved in directions that make divisional boundaries increasingly arbitrary, even as new disciplinary possibilities evolve.”
The success of the new requirements is yet to be determined, as the policy is still in its infancy, currently only impacting Haverford first-years. Despite their novelty, opinions and debate are already taking shape regarding the new requirements. When asked about her thoughts on the changes, Anna Fiscarelli-Mintz, a first-year at Haverford, indicated support, saying that “it’s another step by the administration of trusting the students to know their own good.”
Julia Colletti, ‘21 “curious to see if it will be an actual change or if it’s just going to be a fewer number of requirements,” she explains that “I’m kind of confused about the cross-listing aspect, and I wonder whether it will deter people from branching out of their course of study or if it will function the same way as our course requirements but with a different name.”
