The University Curriculum Committee suggested in a meeting last Thursday that the University Seminar program be made optional for the incoming Class of 2013 in order to accommodate budget constraints, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said. The idea to eliminate or alter the USEM program was originally suggested by the Special Faculty Advisory Committee, which was appointed by the provost to address the projected gap in the University's fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2010 operating budgets. Several modifications to the USEM program, such as making USEMs half-credit courses or increasing USEM class size, were also discussed at the first of two UCC meetings on this issue two weeks ago.

"The [UCC] voted to recommend to the faculty that the degree requirement for the [USEM] be eliminated and that it be converted to an optional first-year seminar. . Departments could allow the first-year seminars to count toward requirements for their major, but that would be up to the individual department to decide, either across the board or on a course-by-course basis," Jaffe said.

The faculty will vote about the USEM program in the Dec. 4 faculty meeting, said Jaffe, who is the chair of SFAC. If the faculty approves the UCC recommendation, it will take effect next fall.

Jaffe said that the UCC's recommendation to make the USEM optional was partially influenced by responses Jaffe received after he sent e-mails to the current USEM instructors about the possibility of making USEMs half-credit courses, which would mean that the classes would either have less work, meet less often during the week or both.

The responses were "overwhelmingly negative" because the faculty felt that "the diluted USEM experience wouldn't accomplish very much," Jaffe said. Faculty members were "skeptical of the notion that [the new USEMs] would be half as much work [for students and faculty] as the current USEM," he added.

"Rather than trying to reduce the USEM program to half-classes, it's better to keep the full program in effect but perhaps reduce the number of students who are engaged in it rather than reducing it across the board for everyone," Prof. Matthew Fraleigh (GRALL) said.

Prof. Sabine von Mering (GRALL), who has taught USEMs for the past 10 years, thinks that the USEM program "is a crucial part of being introduced to our University for first-year students. It's a very important experience for them to be in a small class with a professor, taking an interdisciplinary course that focuses on the basic introduction to humanistic inquiry."

It would be impossible to accomplish this if the USEMs were half-credit courses, von Mering said.

However, professors and administrators have mixed feelings about the consequences of making the program optional.

"I do think that some students for whom USEMs would be a good thing are going to not do it if it's optional, and that's too bad," Jaffe explained.

However, "A significant number of students have bad experiences in their USEM," Jaffe said. "Since we don't have to offer 53 of them, we can make sure that all the ones we offer are really good and that the students who are in them will be there because they want to be," he said.

Fraleigh explained that qualities of the USEM program, such as the opportunity to work closely with professors and to learn some of the basic skills that a University education seeks to address, "will remain attractive to students and will be forces that will keep the USEM program going."

"I would imagine that even if the USEM is made optional, there will be students who are interested in taking the classes and faculty who will be interested in offering them," Fraleigh said.

Jaffe said first-year advisers will be involved in ensuring that the benefits of taking a USEM are explained to incoming students.

"We are all hoping that this is a temporary measure that will eventually be turned back, and we do feel strongly that USEM is an important core part of what Brandeis does as a liberal arts school," von Mering said.