All incoming UW-Madison College of Letters and Science students must fulfill new requirements for a Bachelor of Arts or Science degree, according to a new curriculum in effect May 21.
""The new liberal arts curriculum builds on our traditional strengths in broad academic fields that are at the heart of a great University of Wisconsin education,"" Letters and Science Dean Gary Sandefur said on the 2007 Bachelor of Arts and Science Degree website.
The new 2007 curriculum—BABS07—is being implemented by Sandefur as a revision, not a radical change, of the current student curriculum that had not been modified since 1971.
""It's a means of just simplifying the [degree] process for students to make it much clearer,"" said Tori Richardson, assistant dean in Letters and Science Student Academic Affairs.
The 2007 degree eliminates some of the confusing ""credit rules"" that face current students in an effort to make requirements more comprehensive for incoming UW-Madison students and parents, as well as student advisers and faculty members.
""It basically makes the degree more user-friendly and transparent so that everyone will understand it—parents will be able to understand it,"" Richardson said. ""It won't seem as complicated and daunting as for students who are currently here.""
Under BABS07, students will still require a minimum of 120 credits to graduate, a study load within a range of 12 to 18 credits per semester and completion of University General Education Requirements.
Current UGER include the fulfillment of communications courses aimed at literacy proficiency, quantitative reasoning courses aimed at mathematics, statistics or formal logic and three credits of ethnic studies.
Modifications to the curriculum allow for more courses to count toward degree credit as electives that did not qualify before BABS07.
""The students will have the opportunity now to have up to 12 credits of what we call ‘free electives in the degree,'"" Richardson said. ""For the students under the new degree, they'll be actually able to count P.E. courses toward their degree, which has not been true for the current students.""
All courses counting in Letters and Sciences will be called ""Liberal Arts and Science Credits"" and students will need 108 of those credits to graduate—eight more than current students.
Additionally, under the new curriculum, undergraduates who receive passing grades in graduate courses could be awarded undergraduate degree credit, which was not available in the 1971 curriculum.
Current and transfer students will have the ability to opt in to the new program if they want to.
According to the BABS07 website, Letters and Science administrators have been working on changes to the liberal arts curriculum since 2000. The revisions were approved by the Letters and Science Faculty Senate in 2005.
For more information, go to http://www.lssaa.wisc.edu/babs07.
