As students scrambled to pre-register for courses this week, certain people were looking outside Brown's course catalog to pick their classes for next semester. By 3 p.m. Thursday, those students had to submit their proposals for group independent study projects and independent study projects — curricular options created in 1969 as part of the New Curriculum.
"One of the classic Brown experiences is to do a GISP," said Alison Cohen '09, who took multiple independent studies during her time at Brown and is studying environmental policy on a Fulbright Scholarship in Belgium. Students who have participated are so enthusiastic they "spread the gospel" to other students, Cohen said.
GISPs allow faculty to experiment with new courses and give groups of students a way to pursue what really interests them, said Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine. Hazeltine, who teaches ENGN0090: "Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations," said the course — one of Brown's most popular classes — originated as a GISP.
In the inaugural year of the New Curriculum, more than 500 students participated in GISPs. But after flourishing for the first few years after their creation — reaching a high of 50 projects in the 1974-75 academic year — GISPs have faded from view.
"For more than 20 years, the number of GISPs has hovered in the mid-20s," wrote Associate Dean of the College for Curriculum James Valles in an e-mail to the Herald. This semester, 84 students are enrolled in 16 GISPs.
Shifting perceptions
Today, fewer students and faculty members know about GISPs or consider them to be serious course options than during the New Curriculum's early years.
Faculty turnover may have contributed to the decline in awareness about GISPs among professors. Seventy percent of professors who were at Brown 40 years ago when the New Curriculum first began are no longer teaching, said Arthur Matuszewski '10, GISP/ISP co-coordinator at the Curricular Resource Center and editor-in-chief of post- magazine.
GISPs are also not as well-known among students as they once were. Nick Donias '12, who is developing a proposal for a spring GISP on multiculturalism and identity, said he did not know the program existed until Associate Dean of Student Life Kisa Takesue '88 suggested one as a way for Donias to pursue his interest in cross-cultural issues.
After he sent out e-mails and Morning Mail notices advertising his GISP, Donias received 20 responses — a level of interest that surprised him, he said. A lot of the students who responded to Donias' announcements had been unaware of the option to create a course before, he said.
Hazeltine, who has been teaching at Brown since 1959, said, "The '70s had a lot more acceptance of academic experimentation." But in recent years, "there's been pressure on making GISPs more like regular courses because people are worried about academic credibility," he said.
Professor of English William Keach, who started teaching here in 1986, agreed. "The culture at Brown over the past six or eight years has become somewhat more cautious, somewhat more risk-averse," he said. Keach, who also has sponsored several GISPs, said many students may see GISPs as "not being courses."
As Brown's student culture has shifted, the increasing opportunities for extracurricular involvement have pushed students to look beyond the classroom, possibly lesseningstudent interest in pursuing all possible curricular avenues.
"Meaning and purpose used to really be part of the college curriculum. Now they've been pushed to the extracurricular," said Clinical Professor of Engineering Josef Mittlemann '72 P'00 P'04.
In the last 40 years, Brown also has bolstered his course offerings. There are more options than ever, reducing students' need to look beyond the course catalog to pursue their academic interests.
"This fall we are offering more than 900 regular courses ... the highest in Brown's history," wrote Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron in an e-mail to the Herald.
Too much work...
When compared to the time- and energy-intensive process of creating a GISP, the ease of enrolling in a normal course — which only requires entering a CRN number on Banner — may also dissuade many students from designing their own course.
"I think the GISP process overall can look daunting, but it is actually a really great process to go through," Cohen said.
Cohen went through the application process for her first and only official GISP, but she chose to do her next two collaborative study projects on an unofficial basis because the GISP application process was so cumbersome, she said. Cohen and the other group members "signed up for a departmental independent study under the same professor under the expectation that we would work collectively, just as in a GISP, but with less paperwork," she said.
To propose a GISP, students must find a faculty sponsor and submit an application that includes a syllabus, bibliography and evaluation plan months before the semester starts. The College Curriculum Council evaluates the proposal and either accepts or returns it with suggested revisions. The early deadline is to allow time for revisions and mirrors the application process for a normal course, Matuszewski said.
The process also requires students to clearly express the course's goals and their reasons for creating a GISP, which may deter some students from proposing one.
While normal classes are "more focused on the product, independent study focuses a lot more on the process of learning," Matuszewski said. "Really investing yourself in independent study requires you to articulate why what you're doing matters."
...too little time
When faculty members have other responsibilities including research and teaching regular courses, having the time to sponsor a GISP can be difficult.
"I think faculty are busier than ever, so it is perhaps harder for faculty to be involved," said Mittlemann, who has declined sponsoring some GISPs because of time constraints.
Keach said, "I'm glad to be doing it, it's a lot of fun to be doing it, but it's an additional time and energy commitment."
There should be more incentives for faculty to sponsor GISPs, Matuszewski said, suggesting that Brown should work on "appropriately recognizing faculty for their support of independent studies."
But to properly address the recent decline in students participating in GISPs, "the first thing is for the administration and the faculty to find out what's going on," Keach said.
While some people believe that group independent studies deserve more support, others think the decreasing number of GISPs is a natural consequence of the increasing diversity of other opportunities on campus.
"I think over 200 students per year is still a very healthy level, given this increase in regular courses," Bergeron wrote.
Still, others are concerned about the decline in GISPs. The trend "generally reflects a lack of investment of what it means to really stick to Brown's ideals and values," Matuszewski said. "The GISP option used to be seen as a lot more central to what Brown was," he said. "And now it's become an afterthought."
