***CORRECTION: In this article, The Daily inaccurately stated that the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education is Greg Boardman instead of John Bravman.***

Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) will remain a core element of the freshman academic experience for the foreseeable future, according to a committee report delivered to the Faculty Senate yesterday afternoon.

The report, the result of a ten-year review by the Senate’s Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policy, recommended no immediate change to the status of the Area One requirement for undergraduate education, which is currently fulfilled by IHUM or, for a few freshmen, Structured Liberal Education.

Speaking on behalf of the committee, Electrical Engineering Prof. Brad Osgood told the Senate that the IHUM program was “doing very well,” and that the Committee “does not believe that there should be a revamp at this time.”

“We have a program that’s working well,” agreed IHUM Director Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature and German studies.

Both Berman and Osgood noted that although they were not recommending IHUM’s overhaul, they were optimistic about the prospect of experimentation in some IHUM courses, a decision which was approved by the Senate earlier this year.

“It remains a work in progress,” Berman said.

He cited smaller lecture sizes, greater involvement with the arts and “soft” three quarter sequences as proposals for some new IHUM courses. Unlike the current model, which offers one interdisciplinary quarter of IHUM in the fall and a two-quarter, department-specific sequence in the winter and spring, the three quarter sequence would link one discipline across the entire freshman year. Students would be able to opt in and out freely after fall quarter of the course.

While several Senators complimented IHUM on its longevity and success, a few expressed dismay at what they saw as the review’s lack of scrutiny of the program.

“I’m sorry to say that I’m disappointed the report was so thin,” said History Prof. Philippe Buc. “We have to know what we’re doing, if we’re asking kids to spend one third to one fourth of their time in this program. In terms of monitoring, this is not the document I wanted to see.”

“I do want to urge us to have a discussion of the intellectual rationale for the area one requirement and whether we think the current way we have of satisfying it is the right way,” added Philosophy Prof. Debra Satz. “I took it that the ten year review was partly to force us to ask those questions.”

The report did acknowledge that a review of the area one requirement may need to take place in the future.

“Conditions that would mandate significant changes in our undergraduate requirements of the sort that have brought such changes in the past have not yet risen to the point where a major overhaul of the curriculum is required, but the outline of such conditions are discernible,” the report read.

Such a review remains at least two years in the future. Provost John Etchemendy and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Greg Boardman proposed convening a task force on undergraduate curriculum in fall 2010.

The recommendations of that task force would not be implemented until the following year at the very earliest, so IHUM is set to stay for the foreseeable future.

“I’d like to congratulate the IHUM program,” said Law Prof. Hank Greely. “Of the three predecessor programs, not one of them lasted more than 12 years, and it looks like IHUM is going to beat that.”