A recommendation for recommendation #37

Author: The Campus Editorial Board

A progress report released last week confirmed the steady implementation of the College's strategic plan, "Knowledge Without Boundaries." Paul Rusesabagina's speech and increased financial aid grants for the class of 2011 are just some of the positive examples of the plan's implementation. At Monday's faculty meeting the Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) presented their pitch to fulfill recommendation #37 of the strategic plan - "Eliminate triple majors and reduce the number of double majors."

Recommendation #37 argues that triple and double majors place undue pressure on both the faculty and curriculum. With each student signing on to a major, a department needs to provide an advisor, sufficient senior seminars and enough faculty to offer one-on-one academic guidance. These demands spread the faculty thin and lead to overcrowded introductory level classes.

To control the consequences of multiple majors, the EAC suggests a far-reaching policy that outright eliminates the triple major option, while subtly reigning in the options for students considering a double major. But the potential complications of dictating a set number of majors and minors students can declare were revealed as faculty began to question how joint majors and interdisciplinary programs would fit in. As Cut C. and Else Silberman Professor of Jewish Studies Robert Schine observed, the proposal seems to be a big flyswatter for a small fly.

But the EAC's measure goes even further than the immediate aims of recommendation #37, and states that students may only declare a major up through their fourth semester of school. While this does not prohibit double majors, it means that those who wish to double major will have to know so by sophomore spring, at the very latest. The requirement would mean that students returning from overseas would no longer be able to pursue a new academic focus upon their return to Middlebury. No new Russian majors after a semester in the shadow of the Winter Palace and no new activist political science majors after a semester learning about social mobility in South Africa. Students who are simply inspired by a discipline they discovered late in their college career would be discouraged from exploring the topic in major depth.

We understand the great pressure placed on the faculty and agree with the goals of the strategic plan's recommendations but in dealing with recommendation #37, the administration should look to an even more prescient proposal in the strategic plan.

The plan to hire twenty more faculty members over the next five years should be the central element to relieving a stressed faculty. Triple majors should be banned but double majors should not be discouraged. Students should have at least until their return to campus as seniors to finalize their major and minor declarations. All four years at Middlebury should be a period of far-reaching academic exploration, not just the first two.