PAC System Up For Evaluation

By Jay Antenen
Staff Writer

The Pomona College Curriculum Committee, consisting of students, faculty, and administrators, is gearing up for a yearlong review of the college’s Perception, Analysis, and Communication (PAC) requirements. Its recommendations will influence next year’s faculty decisions on whether the PACs should be kept, modified or dropped.

The review, mandated when the PAC requirements were implemented in 1994, will focus on how effective the requirements have been in meeting their original description and goals.

PAC requirements stipulate that all Pomona students must take one course in ten different distribution areas in order to graduate. Each course in the PAC focuses on a specific skill the College expects students to learn. Skills include reading literature critically, understanding the scientific method, analyzing data and thinking critically about values and rationality. In addition to the PACs, students must demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language and take two writing intensive classes.

In1994, the Curriculum Committee proposed the PAC system in response to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ (WASC) criticism of Pomona’s general education requirements. The system was also overhauled due to internal concerns raised by faculty members that little importance was placed on general education courses.

The WASC wrote in its 1992 report of Pomona that it, “needs to move towards more systematic and organized attention to its curriculum. The issues of particular concern [include] lack of organized communication about the curriculum at the most fundamental level.”

Associate Professor of Romance Languages and chair of the Curriculum Committee, Mary Coffey, said in an interview that the committee faces several challenges in conducting the review.

For the past ten years, no system has been in place to monitor and record data about the PAC system. Before reviewing the requirements, the Curriculum Committee established a formal assessment structure last spring based on data gleaned from the registrar, students’ transcripts from the past ten years, and subjective surveys with faculty and students. Coffey said the goal is to spot trends in the data to get an objective picture of how the PAC system has affected the college.

“This will not be an easy task,” Coffey said. “But it is an opportunity to be very conscious about what we do with general education. Regardless of the outcome of the [PAC] review, if we do it in a conscious manner it can’t be a bad thing.”

Coffey said the Curriculum Committee is still trying to put the original intent of the PAC system in simple terms. Most professors and Dean Kates were unable to describe the original goals of the PAC system, referring back to the six-page formal description of the requirements.

A memorandum sent by Coffey to Curriculum Committee members last fall stated that she understood the goals for the future of the PAC system. They were to ensure students develop the intellectual skills defined in each category, nurture intellectual skills in the PAC categories, and also to focus on a genuinely interdisciplinary general education. Furthermore, the system should develop a general education program administered by the Curriculum Committee as opposed to departments/divisions, and create courses that were specifically geared towards general education.

Dean of the College and Curriculum Committee member Gary Kates said that the committee will look at questions ranging from whether the requirements would allow for students to graduate in four years, to whether the PAC system reflects the academic values of Pomona.

Kates expressed skepticism with the PAC system’s skills-based approach to general education.

“It’s not completely clear to me why if the goal [of PAC] is that students should come out of Pomona with certain skills why it is necessary to take classes when other methods exist to test skills competence,” said Kates.

Starting in late October, the Curriculum Committee will hold three weeks of faculty focus groups to get a better understanding of the faculty’s views on the PAC. Kates said he believes a majority of the faculty feels “pretty good about PAC but a minority never believed the PAC to be useful.”

Currently, it is hard to predict what the faculty will do with the PAC system. Coffey said the faculty rather than the Curriculum Committee, has to be the prime movers in deciding what should be done. “There has to be sufficient will to make change,” she explained. Kates declined to speculate on the faculty’s decision.

Since its inception in 1994, the PAC requirements have drawn criticism from some faculty members. Coffey said it is hard to find clear support for the requirements, but some are deeply opposed.

Curriculum Committee student member Natalie Klein ’04 said she thinks that the skill descriptions should be more carefully worded so there is consistency across all ten PACs. Klein said that there have been disagreements as to whether Introductory Psychology courses should count towards the PAC Two skill (use and understand the scientific method). Currently, only natural science courses count towards fulfilling the PAC Two requirements. PAC Seven (explore and understand human behavior), is viewed by some as too narrowly worded.

“If there is consistency in the wording of the PACs,” Klein said, “the Curriculum Committee will be able to spend less time debating whether individual courses should count towards the PAC.”

A survey conducted by Pomona’s institutional researchers showed that most students are satisfied with the education they are receiving through the PAC. Seventy-four percent of respondents to the 2003 Pomona Enrolled Student Survey agreed that the PAC system should be continued at Pomona, and a majority said their skills in the area the PAC stressed have improved.

A break down of the data by individual skills shows that only in foreign language did a majority of students feel that general education requirements did not improve their abilities.

The PAC system appears to have exposed students to more disciplines than they would have tried without the requirements. Data from the last class that did not have to fulfill the PAC requirements, the class of 1997, shows that out of fifty-nine available “fields” a majority of students only sampled between ten and twelve fields with only two percent taking classes in seventeen or more fields. The 2003 survey shows that the PAC pushed eighty-four percent of students to take courses in fields they otherwise wouldn’t have taken.

Students appear to only take the minimum number of required PAC courses. Data from the classes of 2000, 2001 and 2002 shows that in every PAC besides two, a majority of students only took one class that taught the skill. Over seventy percent of students only took one course teaching the analyzing of art, the bare minimum.

The PAC system also does not push students to consider a different major. Seventy-nine percent of respondents to the 2003 survey disagreed with the statement that courses taken for PAC credit helped them determine their major.

Klein said she was not surprised by the survey data. “When ever I get feedback [about the PAC system] it is negative,” Klein said.

Academic Affairs Commissioner and Curriculum Committee member Kyle Warneck ‘05 said that many students aren’t focused on getting a broad education.

Warneck said he has swung around in his view of the PAC but remains “cynical of a skill-based system.”

Klein concurs. “I think the PAC is hugely problematic,” Klein said. “I don’t agree with a skill based education, but it isn’t clear that there is a better alternative.”

Leigh Featherstone ’05 said the PAC system is better than other college’s more rigorous general education requirements, but said she feels like some of the PAC courses she took overlapped.

A review of the PAC system might not be the end of the Curriculum Committee’s work. Some professors are pushing for a complete review of the curriculum over a three-year period.

“This is the opportune time to do this,” Professor of Art History George Gorse wrote in a memo to the Curriculum Committee. “The stars are aligned. Let’s do it. Ok, it’s a lot of work. But it’s our work. Who else do we expect to do it?”