Staff Editorial: Pilot needs guidance

When College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman departs for Oxford this fall, he will be leaving behind a host of confused students. It's year three of the pilot curriculum's trial run, and a handful of College juniors are now gearing up for the research segment of their endeavor. In choosing to enter the fledgling program before they came to Penn, these intrepid students traded half of their curriculum requirements for a mysterious research project somewhere down the line. On paper, the idea is a good one -- revamp the traditional College curriculum and encourage students to take advantage of the resources offered at one of the best research institutions in the country. The only problem is that in the two-plus years they've been here, no one has given these students any clue as to what this research project entails. Some students say that not enough funding has been budgeted for them to complete their projects, and others are holding out hope that a regular honors thesis will be enough to fulfill the ambiguous requirement. The current system is unfair to students in the traditional curriculum, who are being asked to fulfill twice as many requirements and -- for those who want to graduate with honors -- perform a similar if not identical research project. But the larger point is that when this program was developed, the intention was certainly not to allow students to cut their requirements in half and skirt their research responsibilities. The pilot students have been left to fend for themselves, receiving little help from program directors and virtually no guidelines for their projects of choice. If this program is to be successful for the freshmen and sophomores who have enlisted, the coordinators must develop a set of guidelines and clarify the research requirement. At the very least, they should be actively encouraging students to commit to a particular project by the end of this semester so that this confusion doesn't permeate their final two semesters at Penn. It's a good sign that College administrators recognize that students are confused about their research requirements. It's an equally bad sign that little has been done to alleviate this confusion. The pilot program has problems that must be addressed by the end of the semester -- before Dean Beeman leaves office and before these confused juniors enter their final year as undergraduates.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.