LibArts vs. Ivy League

interesteddad
Sat, 08 Jul 2006 03:47:23 +0000

Depends on the science department. The intro Bio and Chem and Physics courses for non-majors are going to be large, but with lab sections led by professors.

The Physics department has a department wide cap on class sizes. I don’t remember the exact number – something like 25 to 30 students, except for the general intro course which has 60. The first semester course for potential Physics majors is a seminar on the Theory of Special Relativity and Quantuum Mechanics. They have been teaching three sections of it, capped at 15 students per section. It meets for three hours, one night a week and is centered around students presenting problem sets to the class. I think that’s pretty much what physics majors can expect for most of their courses.

They taught two sections of the basic intro Chem class last fall – one with 50 and the other with 28 students. The lab sections were capped at 20 students. They also taught two sections of the honors intro course in seminar format, capped at 12. I’m guessing this is like the physics department – mostly potential chem majors in these intro seminars, as opposed to the premeds, bio, and engineering majors.

The intro bio course was the one course at Swat last year reported with 100 or more students. Looks like the lab sections are officially capped at 10, although that number looks small to me…there are only five sections listed, so it may be 20 in reality.

The other largish lecture courses are Intro Psych and the basic survey of Western Art course – looking at slides lends itself to a lecture format.