Fulfilling General Education Requirements could become easier for Emory students. The College Governance Committee has formed a task force to review the GERs with an eye on allowing students more freedom in choosing classes.

The goal of the task force, which consists of one representative from each academic department, is to “radically simplify requirements and reduce them in number,” said English Professor John Bugge, who heads the task force.

“Over the past few years, attempts to tinker with the GERs have not been very successful. However, determination on part of the Governance Committee and of Dean [of Emory College] Robert Paul will make this task force a success,” Bugge said.

Complaints about the GERs have come from busy science and double majors, as well as freshmen who are confused by the list of classes needed for graduation and the difficulties they sometimes pose.

The task force will also address the issues outlined in a 2005 College Council’s proposal, including allowing post-freshman writing requirements to be taken anytime, fulfilling requirements with any course from a department rather than with specific classes and allowing more classes to be taken on a satisfactory or unsatisfactory basis.

“We may be moving to the previous model, toward the distribution requirements where students do not take individual courses but a certain number of classes labeled in the department,” said Bugge.

While the task force is in charge of coming up with amendments to the current GERs, they will have to be approved by the Governance Committee and then the full faculty. Paul wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel that he would like a revision of the GERs to come up for a faculty vote next semester.

This approach is different from previous ones that were geared toward GER evaluation, but Paul is pushing for changes, said Eric Weeks, associate professor of physics and the physics delegate to the task force.

“GERs restrict science majors from studying abroad. They don’t have wiggle room,” Bugge said. “Another problem is seniors who come back to take intro-level courses, ruining the dynamics of the course. And they’re bored. They’re taking these classes to fulfill the GERs, not because they want to.”

The task force has looked at models at Brown, Harvard, Princeton and Duke universities. Bugge said the task force is trying to figure out what is the best approach for Emory that will satisfy both students and the faculty.

Harvard, Princeton and Duke all have loose distribution requirements. Brown is one of the few liberal arts universities with no distribution requirements, a path Emory has said it will not take.

“The GERs are essential to ensuring that the goals of a liberal arts education are realized, in that students are exposed to a wide range of ways of knowing about the world and are encouraged to explore areas of study they might never have encountered otherwise,” Paul wrote.

Dissatisfaction with the GERs is common among students. College sophomore Jessica Compton said she likes distribution requirements in principle but not the way the GERs are organized in practice.

“It is good that they make you take classes outside your major, but the categories don’t allow you to choose the best classes,” she said.

— Contact Esther Yang at esyang@emory.edu