Going beyond this, the CYCE required a sea change in the kind of University Yale should be: global. It mandated not only better care and nurture of the increasing number of Yale students admitted from abroad, and a different pace for growing Yale’s international
curriculum, but a different attitude towards international experiences for Yale students and a strong mandate to provide resources for these experiences.
The CYCE also reaffirmed in the strongest terms the central place of teaching in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and urged that “Yale take as great pains to support the teaching aspirations of faculty as it does for their research activities.”
Finally, the CYCE recommended increases in small classes for freshmen and sophomores,
improvements in undergraduate advising, strengthening of arts education in Yale College, capitalizing on the neighboring professional schools, and a requirement that departments and programs undertake regular reviews of their undergraduate offerings in light of the larger aims of a Yale College education.
How we have done in implementing these recommendations is the subject of this progress report.
CHARGE TO THE STEERING COMMITTEE “Distance Traveled” since the Review The faculty approved the CYCE report in 2003 and the new curriculum launched in Fall
2005 with the Class of 2009. At the time of the vote, the faculty further mandated that the initiatives it had proposed should be reassessed and evaluated in a timely fashion. The
discussion about requirements had opened many difficult philosophical questions about
what the balance between requirements and electives should be in a liberal arts education
and whether we are educating our students as we aspire to do. The mandate was intended to require faculty and the Yale College Dean’s Office to continue assessing progress and keeping the knotty questions fresh in their minds.
On the strength of this, in 2010, Dean Mary Miller asked over a dozen committees of Yale College faculty, students, and administrators to take a careful look at the curricular
changes, and a CYCE Review Steering Committee (called “Steering” in this document) to CYCE Progress Report November 2011
3