Committee to Examine Undergraduate Academics

Top administrators and professors will spend a year evaluating undergraduate life at Columbia, officials announced Wednesday.

The new Task Force on Undergraduate Education will meet bi-weekly to develop a set of recommendations on how to improve academic life and the infrastructure of undergraduate education, officials said.

Though the committee has not yet selected exactly what it hopes to study, officials said a review of the Core and other requirements and an examination of how the college is preparing students for life after graduation are among its top priorities.

"Given that we are moving towards a capital campaign and a new campus, we felt this would be a good time to think about how we want the College and SEAS and so forth to look five to ten years from now," Provost Alan Brinkley said.

The recommendations will not be binding and will need to be reviewed by relevant parties before they take effect.

The committee is made up of 30 faculty members and deans from Columbia College, SEAS, and General Studies. Barnard Provost and Dean of Faculty Elizabeth Boylan will also sit on the committee, but the findings will not apply to Barnard.

Undergraduates were not invited to serve on the task force, though officials said they will involve students and alumni in every part of the process.

"We do believe students need to be represented," Brinkley said. He said the committee had considered inviting one or two students to sit on the committee, but decided not to because they were concerned those students would not "have an adequate voice." He added that the committee had not determined at this point how they would involve undergraduates.

Task force members said they hoped to address a variety of issues.

"The world is more complicated, borders are becoming more porous," said Martha Howell, the Miriam Champion Professor of History. "Skills are changing, and we want to provide undergraduates with access."

Other issues she hoped to address are international education and the place of international students at Columbia, the composition of the undergraduate student body, and the role of New York City in an undergraduate's education.

Task force member Robert D. Friedman, a professor of mathematics, said it was too early to speculate on what the task force might conclude.

"Right now, we're struggling to figure out what should we be doing," he said. "We're still trying to figure out what the issues are."