Word: blackmer
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...financial possibility of installing the Blackmer Plan--providing individual tutorial for honors seniors and five-man groups for the others--is surprisingly good. If every professor in each of the five main departments were willing to undertake a full tutorial load, only the Social Relations department would still need more money for a tutoring staff. Social Relations is a special case for two reasons. The number of concentrators in this department has grown rapidly during the last few years, and money allotments from the University have not kept pace. Also Social Relations always employs a large group of guest lecturers...
There are now two possible sources for more tutorial funds. The Provost receives over $100,000 each year unrestricted from the Harvard Fund. Further, the Blackmer Report declares, "this Committee feels the need of a good tutorial system so acutely that it as ready, with University backing, to organize a student fund-raising group." While this shows well-placed, sincere enthusiasm, Harvard undergraduates should not be forced to beg in order to receive a good education. Although the University always has more worthwhile projects than money, large scale tutorial expansion nonetheless deserves top priority...
...Blackmer Report's priority for allocating available funds differs from the two previous faculty proposals. The Bender Report last fall suggested that the five-man limit on groups was important enough so that most individual thesis tutorial should be sacrificed to the general good. The Brinton proposals of this spring, made by an unofficial committee of representatives from the five largest departments, held that senior individual honors tutorial deserved top consideration, and if anything had to go it should be the five-man limitation of the groups. The Blackmer Report takes the middle, and expensive, view. Seniors should get individual...
...final controversial features of the Council proposals deserve consideration: tutorial content and grading. As the Blackmer Report points out, the present content of tutorial in several departments is either overspecialized or aimless. Any new program should allow tutors freedom to assign work fitting the individual interests of each group. But it should also receive broad departmental direction to insure that the work cuts across course lines...
...work in tutorial, many feel that this is necessary to insure that assignments are not neglected in the face of other academic pressures. While some written comment at the end of the year is undoubtedly desirable as a check on both student and tutor, we agree with the Blackmer Report that the application of letter grades to tutorial would be more harm than good...