THROUGHOUT HIS TENURE President Wessell was not only sympathetic to educational experimentation but was anxious to encourage it whenever the opportunity arose. Out of this interest came one of the boldest and most successful programs ever introduced at Tufts - the Experimental College. It was both an exciting innovation in undergraduate education and a signal personal triumph for the president who was convinced that incoming students were much better prepared and more intellectually sophisticated than earlier generations and that some needed the challenge of more than the conventional curriculum had to offer.

It all began with Wessell's appointment in the fall of 1962 of an eight-person ad hoc Committee on Innovation and Experiment of which he was chairman. The committee consisted of Seymour O. Simches (Romance Languages), Franklin K. Patterson (Lincoln Filene Center), Daniel W. Marshall (Education), Percy H. Hill (College of Engineering), Newman P. Birk (English), Frank A. Tredinnick (Office of Development), and Leonard C. Mead (Provost). The purpose of the committee was to generate and collect new educational ideas and approaches to teaching and learning which could be considered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Obviously related to this was the establishment of machinery for testing innovations. In this way work of an experimental nature could be tried and evaluated. If considered worthy, such work could be eventually incorporated into the regular structure of the university and would both diversify and enrich the curriculum.

Wessell's idea of an experimental program met with the enthusiastic approval of the student body, and in response the Tufts Student Council voted almost unanimously (28-0-1) to endorse the concept. But the faculty at first greeted the proposal with many reservations and some were noticeably skeptical about the whole idea. The ad hoc committee, which met biweekly throughout much of the academic year 1963-64, had prepared in December of the

Faculty were kept abreast of the committee's deliberations by means of frequent newsletters from the president which were intended to "go a long way in convincing the faculty of the feasibility of a new plan." The Educational Policy Committee reported the proposal to the faculty, which was caught by surprise, having had no opportunity to study it beforehand. The faculty then voted that a second ad hoc committee be created to study the proposal and recommend, this time with at least two weeks notice, ways in which it could be implemented. The seven-person committee, with Hill as chairman, consisted of Robert D. Eddy (Chemistry), Michael Fixler (English), George J. Marcopoulos (History), John C. Palmer (Office of Admissions), Alice L. Palubinskas (Psychology), and Jack Tessman (Physics).

After several months of deliberation the committee presented a report which emphasized both continued commitment to undergraduate education and the changing faculty and student body. As the committee developed and matured its ideas in the course of many meetings, the administration was gratified to note that it had become more and more determined to win over a doubting faculty to a new project. The climax came at a faculty meeting in March 1964. As a measure of student approval, a flyer prepared by the Student Council under the leadership of Arthur House and strongly urging approval was circulated at the meeting. After minor amendments had been made from the floor, the motion to create the Experimental College carried "overwhelmingly," followed by a round of spontaneous applause. The president was jubilant. One of the most important of his cherished dreams had finally come to pass in spite of a hesitant faculty. (One administrator went so far as to describe the successful piloting of the proposal through the faculty as "a great coup.") It was

Because the Experimental College was basically educational in nature, the consensus was that it be controlled by faculty rather than administration, and a five-person faculty board was to be selected, representing the four divisions of engineering, humanities, sciences, and social studies, with the fifth member to serve "at large." Those appointed to the first board by the president were Hill, Palubinskas, Simches, M. Kent Wilson (Chemistry), and Russell E. Miller (History, member-at-large). Except for the initial board they were to be elected by those faculty who had taught in the Experimental College the previous year, and were to serve for three years. The program was given a five-year lease on life and was to be evaluated at the end of that time. (In the original version in 1963 the experiment was to have been limited to only one year.) Its continued existence was contingent on a vote of confidence by both the faculty and the trustees. Annual reports to the faculty were required.

No faculty who taught in the program or served on the board were to receive additional remuneration but, according to the original plan, were to receive, if possible, adjustment of regular academic load. In actual practice the faculty involved in teaching Experimental College courses offered their services on a volunteer basis and carried them as an additional load. Members of the board likewise conducted their time-consuming work with no reduction in their other academic responsibilities.

The board of the Experimental College began their work with great vigor and enthusiasm, encouraged by President Wessell who attended whenever his schedule permitted. He also provided a small budget. At its first meeting the board agreed to add three undergraduates, each representing an undergraduate college and chosen by the Student Council to serve in an advisory capacity. A precedent was set in 1966 when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted by a margin of 2 to 1 to give the student representatives on the board full voting rights - a practice not extended to students on certain other

By the time the board made its first report to the faculty in the spring of 1965 it had already launched or planned thirteen programs, seven of which were already being offered by members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and three of which were awaiting funding. Those already in operation were an undergraduate major program in applied physics; a one-semester course in the contemporary European novel; a free elective program; comprehensive examinations in foundation, distribution, and major requirements; a system of independent study; a seminar on information, communications, and knowledge; and topics in the education of disadvantaged youth. Those approved but not yet in operation were a four-year combined bachelor's-master's degree program; and an introductory interdisciplinary science course. The combined bachelor's-master's program was approved by the faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1965. A freshman seminar program to be conducted by faculty which had been worked out in the summer of 1964 was almost ready to begin. A course in tropical biology, a seminar on Humanism and Science, and a course on "Great Moments in Natural Science" awaited funding. A high proportion of the courses and seminars used an interdepartmental or interdisciplinary approach and encouraged independent study. It was an exciting and exhilarating beginning.

By the end of the second year of the program several sets of problems had arisen. One was financial, another academic, and still another professional. Even though applications were made to both public and private agencies, the extramural funding that was sought failed to appear at first, and several of the programs dependent on such funding did not come into being or were delayed. Such was the program in tropical biology which required considerable travel in order to do the necessary field work. It was not until 1968 that Experimental College costs were budgeted like other departments.

The Experimental College did not offer any academic concentration of its own, and the major part of a student's course work leading to a degree still had to be taken through the existing departmental structure. It was intended as a means of curricular enrichment rather than as a substitute for the regular program, although some students wished it to be so. At first, only one course in the Experimental College could be taken in any one semester although with the introduction of freshman seminars in 1967 the limit

There was always the danger that courses proposed in the Experimental College might overlap or even duplicate those in the regular curriculum or otherwise tread on departmental toes. In order to minimize that possibility and to provide at the same time a measure of "quality control" for proposed courses, the prior approval of departments with offerings most closely related to the subjects proposed was required, as was sponsorship by one or more faculty members. The problem of how much credit to assign was yet another matter which required careful decision and with which the board had to wrestle. Decisions also had to be made as to whether to open to the entire Tufts community some courses such as those involving film showings.

Another problem was the continued skepticism of many of the more conservative faculty about the academic legitimacy and respectability of Experimental College courses, especially those taught by "amateurs." There was also a growing feeling among participating faculty that their extra efforts were not sufficiently taken into account when the time came for assessment of their professional and scholarly activity relating to salary increments, promotion, or the award of tenure.

On the positive side, the various experimental programs were eagerly received by the student body and some, like the two-year integrated science sequence (biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics), first offered in the fall of 1965, represented unprecedented interdepartmental cooperation. More and more of the courses were taught by students, both graduate and undergraduate. Of all the programs offered, freshmen seminars taught by fellow students became the most popular of all. It was the student members of the board who had suggested the idea in 1966, and five such seminars were offered in the spring term of 1967, with 124 enrolled. A course (for double credit) in the teaching of freshman seminars was offered for those upperclassmen conducting them. As the freshman seminars continued each year, many students who had enrolled in them in their first year of college returned to teach in the program as upperclassmen. The increase in enrollment over the years was nothing short of spectacular. During the fall of 1964, when the program began, a total

Some of the freshman seminars had become so popular by 1968 that upperclassmen began to enroll surreptitiously in them without the knowledge or consent of the board. Many of the subjects reflected such social and intellectual problems of topical interest as those of the inner city, dangers to the environment, and race relations. The grand scope of some of the seminars was rather breathtaking, but the board was usually willing to allow the students a wide degree of freedom to try their hand at tackling such broad topics as "Higher Education" and "The Future of Western Civilization." Throughout its history the board of the Experimental College not only reviewed innovative subjects not offered in the regular curriculum but proposed or actually approved courses and topics of a sensitive and even highly controversial nature, trusting to the intellectual maturity of the students and the discretion of the teachers to make them acceptable. One such was an "advocacy" course on Zionism offered in 1973 which upset some of the trustees but was staunchly defended by the faculty chairman of the Experimental College board. Another proposal (by a student) which would have had to be treated with the utmost circumspection and careful control, and would have had significant legal implications, was a course in "mind-expanding" drugs which would have involved observation of the physical and psychological effects of actual drug use. In the meantime, the board of the Experimental College had not lost sight of one of the original purposes of the experiment — to grant student sabbaticals for up to one year to allow for independent study. It was during 1966-67 that the first such sabbatical was arranged for a student who travelled to Spain. Unlike the Junior Year Abroad and the various Tufts-sponsored overseas programs, students under the auspices of the Experimental College enrolled in no formal university work while on sabbatical but were very much "on their own."

During the early years of the Experimental College the total amount budgeted for it was a modest $5,000, but was increased substantially in 1968 by a grant from the Braitmayer Foundation made as a result of the efforts of President Hallowell, a strong supporter of the program. The Experimental College was being operated in 1971 with annual expenses of less than $27,000. By using outside lecturers and graduate students it was the least expensive program per student in any division of the university. The willingness of some graduate students to teach without any monetary reward in order to gain teaching experience was an important factor in holding down instructional costs.

Even before the program was five years old the Experimental College had achieved many of its original purposes. Among the courses that started out in that program and were later incorporated into the regular curriculum were the one in applied physics - the first one to have been approved by the original board - and courses in dance and in the Chinese language. It was from a faculty member of the board that in 1967 the idea originated of allowing students to design their own majors. This resulted in the adoption of the Plans of Study program the following year as a part of the regular curriculum. The Experimental College also provided the administrative vehicle by which academic assistance on a one-to-one basis could be offered to entering freshmen who needed and desired remedial work in English. The program was later incorporated into the offerings of the English Department. Area programs in such multidisciplinary fields as Environmental Studies and Urban Studies had their inception in the Experimental College. New approaches to learning were tried constantly. Such was the "Participant in Discovery" program introduced in 1969. Academic credit was arranged for freshmen and

Probably the most exciting innovation was the introduction of "Freshman Explorations" in the fall of 1972. Nine sections were teamtaught that semester by one faculty member and from one to four upperclassmen and/or graduate students. It was an interesting attempt to combine instruction with academic and personal advising. Student response was overwhelmingly positive and went far to solve the long-standing problem of how to provide both intellectual stimulation and an individualized introduction to the college experience. Evaluation of the various programs in the Experimental College was a most necessary part of its operation and was first conducted internally in 1967 by a four-person faculty team. One of the problems revealed by the review was the recruiting of adequately qualified instructors to offer some of the courses or supervise some of the projects. Another problem was its precarious financial position and the continued doubt in the minds of many faculty that its rather unconventional offerings even belonged in an academic institution. All of this meant an aura of uncertainty about whether the charter of the Experimental College would be renewed after its first five years.

The first thorough and elaborate investigation of the Experimental College was made in 1968 by a nine-person ad hoc faculty committee headed by Robert Stange of the English Department. The result of the review was a vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to recommend to the trustees that the Experimental College be continued for another five years. A similar review took place in 1973, with similarly favorable results. Only minor changes had been made in the administrative structure by the time that a revised charter was adopted that year. The board had been enlarged to thirteen, two of whom were salaried coordinators and one of whom was a secretary. A single director (Robyn Gittleman) was appointed in 1973 and went far to provide continuity and efficient administration. An Experimental College Council elected future board members, both faculty and students, and standing committees were established to equalize the greatly increased work load which had evolved over the years, and to provide continued oversight over the constant flow of suggestions made for new courses. A three-person outside evaluation team reported enthusiastically on the program in 1979, citing the lack of widespread faculty participation as the principal deficiency. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in reporting to the trustee Educational Policy