Should science be a part of every Stanford undergraduate education? And if so, how much is enough?

These are two major questions that administrators will be asking throughout the next two years as the University re-evaluates the General Education Requirements, or GERs.

A subdivision of the Committee on Undergraduate Education has initiated a broad curricular review to examine the purpose and effectiveness of its requirements. The findings and recommendations resulting from the review are slated to be released in 2007.

This review stands apart from the GER changes that were passed by the Faculty Senate last month, which included a provision to combine the Area 2 and Area 3 requirements under the title “Disciplinary Breadth.”

Many non-science majors will continue to seek the path of least resistance to meet their natural and applied science GERs; a large number of students pass through college without ever setting foot inside a lab or finishing a problem set.

This falls in line with one of the administration’s goals to make GERs more flexible.

Nonetheless, administrators are well aware of some “fuzzy” students’ distaste for the study of the sciences and are trying to find innovative new ways to give all students a background in science without forcing them into classes that don’t pique their interest.

For example, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman said that the current science core requirement is “the weakest link” in the GER system.

He estimated that there are about 200 students in each new Stanford class who truly dislike science and math and said that the University needs to “overcome [students’] phobias and fears and perhaps the real limitations of their high school training.”

It is well known that certain science GER classes are more popular than others among fuzzies. These courses have a reputation for being easier than, say, a chemistry or physics class.

Among the top picks: “Human Origins” in the Anthropological Sciences Department, “Oceans” offered by the Geological and Environmental Sciences Department and “Fundamentals of Geology,” otherwise known as “Rocks for Jocks” in the same department.

The ASSU Course Guide shows that of the students who took “Oceans” in the 2002-2003 academic year, 66 percent were humanities or social science majors and 61 percent took the course only because it fulfilled a GER.

Bravman acknowledged the scope of the problem.

“I’m certain many science and engineering faculty would say, ‘Hey, you’re dumbing down the curriculum,’” he said.

Bravman asked Computer Science Prof. Eric Roberts, who Bravman said “could have also been a professor in the humanities,” to look into better ways to interest fuzzies in more technical classes.

Roberts said he has “lots of ideas” about how to bring science to non-science majors.

“My big idea is that what you want to do is teach courses that people have a genuine interest in but that legitimately cover areas of science and quantities reasoning,” he said.

Roberts said he envisioned these courses as small seminars and suggested several ways to approach the subject matter.

One is to offer courses that combine science with other subjects of interest, creating courses in the future such as “Mathematics and Music” or “The Science of Art.” He also defined what he called the “Great Books” approach to science, which would assign students readings by famous figures like the Greek geometrician Euclid.

“Let’s try 10 of these courses,” he said. “If five work and five fail, you’ve still got something.”

Sophomore Helena Lamb, a prospective history or classics major, took a small seminar called “Science and Technology in World War II” with Engineering Prof. Brad Osgood, that fulfilled her applied sciences GER.

The course examined the advent of war technologies like radar and the Enigma code-breaking machine. The course required no problem sets or lab work and, according to Lamb, there was “minimal math and science.”

She said that Osgood’s course was “probably one of the two best classes that I’ve taken here.”

Roberts ruled out the reinstatement of another multiple-quarter sequence like the Science, Math and Engineering Core, one of the more ambitious ways of providing science classes that catered to fuzzy students, which the University has tried in the last 10 years.

The Science, Math and Engineering Core, or SME Core, was a three-quarter sequence for students who wanted a more structured background in science and lab work. It grew out of the recommendations contained in the 1994 Report of the Commission on Undergraduate Education.

Nevertheless, the program did not attract enough student interest to justify the University’s expenditure of resources and Bravman had to pull the plug a few years back.

One of the most innovative aspects of the SME Core was its laboratory component, which would be difficult to repeat in a smaller setting.

The critical review of the GERs will likely question whether or not laboratory experience is valuable to scientific education.

For a student who takes only one science course at Stanford, a lab might not be possible at all because they commonly do not occur until the second or third quarter in department sequences.

Unlike many of his faculty peers, Roberts said he does not think that there are any particular subjects that students must know before graduating.

“I don’t like required courses in general,” he said.

Geophysics Prof. Rosemary Knight, chair of the Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policies, said that GERs “are meant to provide what we feel are the essentials of education.”

The current process for choosing courses that satisfy GERs may not be as stringent as some faculty would like.

Knight suggested the possibility of forming an oversight committee for GER courses similar to the I-hum Governance Board, a panel of students and instructors who accept or reject proposals for new courses.

Both Bravman and Knight agreed that science GERs would be a major focus of the curricular review.

“If Stanford University, with its breadth of excellence, can’t solve this problem for all our students, then no one can,” Bravman said.