It is alternatively referred to as the Brown Curriculum, the New Curriculum and the Open Curriculum. The admission Web site says it has three principles, but Dean of the College Paul Armstrong says it has five. Nuance aside, many agree the New Curriculum is a vibrant philosophy that transcends these details.
"The New Curriculum is a set of beliefs about education and the goals of liberal learning that are widely shared among faculty, students and alumni, and have evolved over the 36 years since its inception," Armstrong said. "There is no document. It's a tradition. It's kind of like British common law."
Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Sheila Blumstein, who has been at Brown since 1970 and oversaw a major review of the curriculum as dean of the college in 1990 before serving as interim provost and president, emphasized that despite its intangible nature, the curriculum's philosophy is clear.
"It may sound nebulous, but it's not minor," Blumstein said. "If we succeeded, you come out not only knowing something really well, but knowing about how to approach different content areas."
Fundamentally, the curriculum provides students with "a template for a rich education in liberal arts and sciences," Blumstein said. She refers to the system as the Brown Curriculum - an official change that was made nearly a decade ago.
Despite the official renaming, many still call it the New Curriculum, including Dean of the College Paul Armstrong. "(The name) will continue to be used for as long as people find it useful," he said.
While it still is referred to as "new," there have been four major reviews of the New Curriculum since its inception, the most recent led by Blumstein in 1990. Despite these reviews, the increase in the required minimum number of courses (from 28 to 30) and elimination of AP credits and Modes of Thought courses are the only major alterations that have been made since 1969.
But according to members of the College Curriculum Council - which is responsible for continued assessment of the academic program - the importance of the curriculum to Brown's identity does not impede discussion of future changes.
"It's not a sacred cow," said Armstrong, who chairs the CCC. "It's a tradition that is strong because it's open to change and scrutiny."
"The ideas of the New Curriculum haven't changed, but there are so many new curricular initiatives," said CCC member Freya Zaheer '06, citing new concentrations and course offerings.
Debate within the CCC and faculty over the past few years has included the possible use of pluses and minuses in grading, but the issue was resolved in favor of keeping the current system. Although individual professors may disagree with aspects of the grading system, the fundamental principles are not seriously questioned.
" 'Requirements' is almost a four-letter word around here," said Executive Associate Dean Robert Shaw P'03. Shaw, a professor in the Department of Education, said he personally favors including failing grades in transcripts.
"It's never going to be like we're going to disband the New Curriculum," Zaheer said. "It creates a strong brand for Brown."
Director of Admission Michael Goldberger agrees the New Curriculum is a powerful part of the Brown "brand."
"There is absolutely nothing that compares with the impact the New Curriculum has on applications," Goldberger wrote in an e-mail. Goldberger estimates that over half of Brown's applicants each year mention the curriculum as one of their most significant reasons for applying.
But without a required core, Brown students face a multitude of academic choices that can be daunting and difficult to navigate. "We all realize it's not for every student, and that's the challenge for admissions," Shaw said.
Goldberger emphasized the importance of selecting students who will be able to handle the responsibilities of the curriculum and consequently succeed at Brown. "This sense of match probably falls second in our selection protocol with academic excellence being the most important criterion," Goldberger said.
To support students as they navigate the curriculum and make a multitude of decisions, the original New Curriculum emphasized close advising relationships - an area that the CCC and administration continue to address.
"I think we can always do better with advising," Armstrong said. He said he believes the first-year advising system is strong but wants to improve sophomore advising in the future.
"In our curriculum, if advising is poor, then students will not be able to make good, informed decisions," Blumstein said.
"Encouraging students to make course decisions earlier is one of the big thrusts (of the CCC's current agenda)," said Associate Professor of Computer Science Tom Doeppner, a member of the CCC for the past three years.
Although members of the CCC foresee no drastic changes to the curriculum, there are minor challenges.
Registrar Michael Pesta worries that the New Curriculum mantra of freedom might have led to some "bad habits," such as delayed decisions during shopping period.
His office processes 12,000 adds and 11,000 drops in the first four weeks of classes - a sign that students are crafting their academic programs carefully - but students continue to add and drop courses in significant numbers past the four-week deadline.
The curriculum's philosophy of trusting students with the design of their own education does allow room for exploitation. "It is a danger," said CCC member Christopher Elias '05.5. "But you can't mandate liberal learning."
Elias' personal opinion that most students study broadly and use the S/NC option with good reason is well supported. Armstrong cited a recent University study that found the overwhelming majority of students take classes outside their area of study - for example, 87 percent of science concentrators took three or more humanities courses, and 90 percent of humanities concentrators took at least one science course.
The curriculum's flexibility allowed 23 percent of the class of 2004 to complete multiple concentrations. But Pesta said students often use the flexibility to "credentialize" by adding a second concentration in their eighth semester, often after realizing they have unwittingly fulfilled all the requirements in another concentration. "But you can't legislate against abuse," Pesta said. "You can waste your education anywhere. It doesn't matter where you go." The faculty voted last month to require undergraduates to declare second concentrations by the end of preregistration period during their seventh semesters in response to this concern.
Last semester, Benjamin Bright-Fishbein '07 wrote a column in The Herald arguing that without a core, the Brown education was too easy to squander. "People think that a core deprives you of your individualism," Bright-Fishbein said. "But there is some sort of commonality that we should have to our education. There is something to be said for a universal standard of pedagogy, and I just don't think Brown offers that."
Judging from the response to his column, Bright-Fishbein suspects most students disagree with him. "People reacted to it very violently," he said. "One person even wrote me an ad hominem attack on Thefacebook.com."
But Bright-Fishbein's belief in the necessity of a specific body of knowledge directly contradicts the New Curriculum philosophy.
"Our curriculum is about encouraging students to think creatively, to learn to think, and not about assembling a great tradition or core set of texts," Armstrong said.
Despite general satisfaction with the New Curriculum - even after 36 years - Armstrong said he hopes to continue to expand the Brown undergraduate academic program in new ways. "The role for faculty and students now is to try to keep pushing, to explore the potential of the New Curriculum, and to try to keep discovering things that (its) framers wouldn't have thought imaginable," Armstrong said.
Ira Magaziner '69 P'06 P'07, a creator of the New Curriculum, said there is one thing he might not have imagined.
"We would have been shocked to have the New Curriculum survive as long as it did," Magaziner said. "We would have expected a new group would have come together and looked to sort of question everything and so on. We certainly would have been shocked to hear it still called the New Curriculum after all these years."
Perhaps Magaziner simply did not anticipate how much the New Curriculum would become a part of the University's identity.
"It has defined Brown," Blumstein said. "It will continue to."
