APPENDIX III. REPORT OF THE DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES To the President of the University: SIR: I have the honor to submit herewith my fourth report as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences covering the academic year 1905-1906. The annals of this college are found mainly in many series of annual reports prepared independently by the constituent departments, the Dean and the Registrar, and brought into correlation and perspective only in your report. Down to 1888-1889 it was common for the President's Annual Report to include the reports of many departments now incorporated in this college. Since that practice was discontinued there has been no printed record of the General Courses, the Academic Department, or the College of Arts and Sciences as an educational agency, differentiated from the other branches of the University. This method is an inheritance from a time when the organization of the University was less complex, the individuality of the College of Arts and Sciences less evident and recognized, the duties of the President less multifarious and exacting. From the standpoint of the Dean's office a better organization and a more effective grappling with the educational and administrative problems of the college would probably result from widening the scope of this report and making it an annual résumé of the history of the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole and in all its branches. I suggest, therefore, that you authorize or instruct me in the future to widen the scope of this report and make it cover, so far as practicable, all aspects of the work of the College of Arts and Sciences. To this suggestion an objection might be raised because it implies an increase in the present duties of the Dean and might be animated by a desire to magnify the office. Should this objection be made, it might be pointed out that the College of Arts and Sciences and with it the functions of the Dean are in a process of rapid modification, that the opening of Goldwin Smith Hall in which the majority of the departments in the college are to be housed marks a most important stage in that process, that it necessarily increases the duties of the Dean, and that this particular suggestion has arisen directly and naturally out of the action of the Executive Committee June 7, 1906, placing the Dean in charge of Goldwin Smith Hall, from the beginning of the next academic year. For the proper performance of this duty he needs to be in touch with the educational work of the nineteen departments to be housed therein, and with the educational work of the whole college as related to these departments. I believe it necessary for the increased efficiency of the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole that the Dean should be made more clearly than heretofore the educational leader of the College under the President and to this end that his duties and responsibilities towards the President on the one hand and towards the departments constituting the College on the other should be materially increased. The change I have suggested would constitute an important step in that direction. The history of the College for the past year, so far as it has been customary to record that history in the Dean's Report, has been closely intertwined with the work of the Committee on Educational Policy. That committee has been in existence now for a little more than two years. During the academic year 1905-1906 it held twenty evening meetings lasting on the average about two hours each and attended on the average by rather more than eight of the nine memhers. The time spent during the year by the members of this hardworking committee in attending its meetings, without considering the time spent on sub-committees or in preparing reports for the committee, was equivalent to five eight-hour days per member. In no one of the four years since I was made Dean and, I believe, in no one of the ten years since the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was organized have the educational problems of this College received such patient and thorough examination and in no one of these years has such radical and important legislation been enacted. This result is due mainly to the work and the influence of the committee and the College is deeply indebted to their self-sacrificing labors. Most of the time of the Committee was spent in discussion of the elective system which had been referred to it by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, June 12, 1905, when the following resolutions were adopted: "I. Resolved that in the interest of the students some regulation of the present elective system is desirable. II. Resolved that the question of the form and method of such regulation be referred to the Committee on Educational Policy." The committee began work on the subject before the summer vacation. Fortunately several members were intimately acquainted with the regulation of the elective system at one or another of the leading universities and others were in a position facilitating the acquisition of such information. At a meeting held June 17 the committee selected fourteen institutions and asked some one member to be ready in the fall to report regarding the regulation of the elective system at each institution. The institutions selected as typical of American practice were Amherst College, Columbia University, Hamilton College, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Chicago, University of Indiana, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, University of Wisconsin, and Yale University. Early in November the Committee presented a report of progress to the Faculty embodying and amplifying upon the following points: I. Each of the institutions named and, so far as the committee is informed, every important American college or university has the elective system in some form or to some degree in its A. B. course. II. With reference to the regulations of the elective system the institutions examined may be arranged in a series with Johns Hopkins University at one extreme giving its students least freedom of election and Cornell University at the other giving its students most freedom of election. III. Up to about 1895 nearly all the changes of the elective system in these institutions were in the direction of greater freedom. IV. Since that time there are indications at several of these institutions of a movement towards greater regulation of the elective system and very little evidence of an opposite tendency. V. The regulations of the elective system in force at these institutions were grouped under four heads. 1. Regulations designed to secure, generally in the earlier common content of education in certain fundamental years, a subjects. 2. Regulations designed to secure a certain degree of continuity and concentration in work. 3. Regulations designed to aid the student in his selection with advice. 4. Regulations designed to encourage a high quality of work. The report, which the foregoing statement summarizes, was discussed in two full meetings of the Faculty. The consideration of the elective system at length and in all its bearings was continued by the committee until April 6 when a report was presented to the Faculty recommending that the elective system be regulated as follows: "I. Before a student may be registered as a junior he must have completed 60 hours of work which shall include in one or more languages other than English 6 hours, in English and History 6 hours, in Philosophy and Mathematics 6 hours, and in Physics and Chemistry 6 hours. Each 6 hours may be entirely in one division (for example, Philosophy 6 hours) or partly in one and partly in another (for example, Philosophy 3 hours and Mathematics 3 hours). II. Each student shall choose at the beginning of his junior year one of the following groups. In the group thus chosen he must complete during his junior and senior years at least twenty hours of work. In selecting these twenty hours the student must obtain the advice and approval of some one professor or assistant professor within the group, who shall be chosen by the student himself. (For the present, however, a student specializing in chemistry and taking the four years' course outlined by the Department of Chemistry may be exempted from paragraph I of the above requirements.)" This report was considered at length by the Faculty in three meetings, two of which were long evening meetings, the debate filling in all about eight hours, and finally was adopted in the following form: "I. Before a student may be registered as a junior he must have completed sixty hours of work which shall include in English and History six hours, in one or more languages other than English six hours, in Philosophy and Mathematics six hours, and in Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Physical Geography and the biological sciences six hours, of which hours the student is required to take at least twelve, and advised to take more in his freshman year. Each six hours may be entirely in one division (for example, Philosophy six hours) or partly in one and partly in another (for example, Philosophy three hours and Mathematics three hours). II. Each student shall choose at the beginning of his junior year one of the following groups: II. 12. Physiology, Histology and Embryology In the group thus chosen he must complete during his junior and senior years at least twenty hours of work. In selecting these twenty hours the student must obtain the advice and approval of some one professor or assistant professor within the group, who shall be chosen by the student himself. But a senior in this college who is registered also in some other college of Cornell University is excused from ten of these twenty hours. (For the present, however, a student specializing in chemistry and taking the four years' course outlined by the Department of Chemistry may be exempted from paragraph I of the above requirements. )" It will be noticed that these regulations of the elective system taken in connection with the legislation of February 3, 1905, em |