“By the end of sophomore year, every Vassar student must take at least one course that demands a significant amount of quantitative analysis,” asserts the Admissions Web site.
In theory, the quantitative analysis (QA) requirement exists to ensure that all Vassar students are exposed to “significant” mathematical and statistical literacy. In practice, however, many students and faculty members have raised serious questions about the efficacy of the requirement.
This year, the Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP) has begun a comprehensive—and unprecedented—review of the courses that currently meet the requirement.
“There are some very serious academic freedom issues here,” admitted Associate Professor of Mathematics Natalie Frank, who chairs the QA Sub-Committee of CCP.
“Some faculty members raised concerns about this committee stepping in and telling them how to teach.”
Although no faculty members interviewed by The Miscellany News would speak about these objections on the record, several did express their concerns on the condition of anonymity.
“I was very uncomfortable with this policy change, and really in mission, for CCP,” said one male associate professor in a natural science department. “How will this group know my subject better than I do? They won’t, frankly. I worry that they will try to enforce some sort of totally inappropriate quantitative standard across disciplines.”
Frank insists that the QA Sub-Committee has no such intention. “All we hope to do is even out some of the unevenness,” she said.
The Sub-Committee, established by a vote of the faculty in May 2008, began meeting this past fall. After a semester establishing its guiding principles and devising ways of evaluating courses without “stepping on professors’ toes,” Frank and the other members are spending this semester evaluating the QA courses in two academic departments.
The group will continue to evaluate two departments per semester, with the goal of evaluating each course at least once every five years. For the evaluation, the Sub-Committee will examine syllabi, sample examinations and curricula to ensure that the class devotes a significant portion of its time to quantitative reasoning.
“Vassar is unusual among colleges that no one is really monitoring what [professors] teach,” said Frank. “We don’t have a system of peer review here where professors critique the methods and ways that other professors teach. The faculty really prize academic freedom.”
Though controversial, many faculty members do agree with the need to strengthen the QA requirement on campus. “The definition of ‘quantitative’ seems to be very broad, as Vassar is defining it,” said Professor Gwen Broude, who teaches quantitative courses in the Cognitive Science and Psychology Departments. “It may refer to numerical calculations or to the reading of table, charts, figures and so on or to statistical techniques or to logical reasoning. And this does not seem to exhaust the list. I think that we need to clarify what we mean by quantitative requirement before we can establish whether students are solid in what it reflects.”
Even College President Catharine Bond Hill agreed on the need to critically examine the courses that currently meet the QA requirement needs. “One issue we need to examine is whether the courses that meet the quantitative requirement are appropriate,” said Hill. “I’ve heard from some students that they have taken courses to meet the requirement that didn’t involve much quantitative analysis. They didn’t think the courses should have met the requirement.”
These sorts of anecdotal complaints about quantitative courses seem to be fairly common. Introduction to Psychology, which fulfills the requirements of nearly 300 students each year, is often the target of criticism for not being strict enough in focusing on quantitative skills. “We’re holding off on evaluating [psychology] until we’re sure we’ve got the process for looking at QA courses down,” said Frank. “I doubt we would ever ‘de-certify’ Intro Psychology or take away their QA status. [Registrar] Dan Giannini would march over here and chop off my head. He would have no other place to put those hundreds of kids to fulfill their requirement. More likely, we might make suggestions about ways that the introductory course could emphasize quantitative reasoning.”
Other schools take different approaches to ensuring that their graduates are equipped with quantitative skills. Most common is to require that students take a certain number of courses within the Natural Sciences division, which houses departments like Biology, Computer Science and Mathematics. At Vassar, students must take at least one-quarter of their coursework outside of their major’s division, but there is no mandate that they must take courses in the natural sciences. Indeed, an English major could satisfy their quantitative requirement with a social science course like Introduction to Macroeconomics, avoiding the natural sciences altogether.
But an approach like those of Williams College or Harvard University that requires students to take courses within each curricular division does not seem likely for Vassar. “I’m not wild about divisional requirements,” said Hill. “Many—most—of our students are [already] taking a set of courses that exposes them to the kinds of things the faculty consider important. I don’t think divisional requirements would add much value.”
Rather, Hill prefers the “tagging” work that the faculty has been doing, essentially marking each Vassar course with the words that identify the primary skills that it emphasizes.
To reinforce the quantitative courses and to bolster the presence of numerical skills on campus, the College is considering the creation of a new academic facility. Tentatively entitled the Quantitative Reasoning Center, this facility would be housed at the Learning and Teaching Center (LTC) in the Library.
“Everything about this new center is very much tentative,” explained Molly Shanley, Director of LTC. Shanley is leading an ad hoc working group comprised of faculty members from each department offering a quantitative course. The group expects to draft its mission statement during its April 3 meeting.
“This idea for this new center really excites me,” said Shanley. “It would be analogous to the Writing Center—a place that offers a very broad program in writing to enhance the entire curriculum. This Quantitative Reasoning Center would also work across curricular boundaries to enhance scholarship of students and faculty.” The exact charge of this new center is not yet clear.
Part of its goals might involve hosting lectures and symposia, allowing members of the community to share ways in which they use quantitative analysis in their social science or humanities work.
Another important part of the center, though, might involve peer consultation on quantitative work. “We really do want to move beyond ‘homework help’ and such, but we do want to establish a place where students can go to get help on the skills that they’re learning in their quantitative courses, particularly during their freshman year,” said Shanley.
The working group is trying to sort out exactly how peer consultation in quantitative work could occur. “With writing, those skills are sort of generalizable,” noted Shanley. “If the student working at the Writing Center is a history major, they would not have a problem helping someone structure a sociology paper. The same sorts of factors make for strong writing across disciplines. But could a biologist really help an economist calculate something? Could a physicist help a psychologist? It’s a much harder problem for staffing.”
Specifics aside, Shanley and the working group hope that the Quantitative Reasoning Center would bolster numeracy on campus.
Similarly, administrators hope that the new center and the strengthened QA coursework will combine to bring quantitative analysis to the forefront of academic life. “All of this will really put quantities analysis at the front and center of campus culture,” said Shanley. “Just as Vassar prides itself on saying that each student will graduate with strong writing abilities, it would be great to make the same claim about numeracy.”
—This is the first in The Miscellany News' series of articles examining the ongoing development of the academic requirements at Vassar.
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