Fifty Years! That's how old the Civilization Sequence program is. Half a century ago, according to Mr. Peter Shebaya, Director of the CS department, AUB was inspired by Columbia University's "Great Books Program" and developed its own general education program. This program initially called General Education and later Cultural Studies, went through numerous phases and ended up as the Civilization Sequence Program. "They used to give us masses of material, not just primary texts, the way we have it now. We also studied secondary texts," recalls Mr. Shebaya from his days as a student at AUB. As of 1968, the CS Program had become more focused by reducing the amount of material and concentrating on primary rather than secondary texts. 
     All FAS students are currently required to take twelve credits of CS courses, starting with CS 201 and ending with CS 204, over a period of four semesters. According to Shebaya, these courses give students a general background about the focal points of a general education. Students "coming out of university, with a university degree, shouldn't just have [their] specialization. They should also be generally and broadly educated and exposed to important ideas in all kinds of fields and areas and not just their own area." CS seeks to keep the balance between both a general education and the tendency towards specialization.
      The CS Program also serves as a link or common ground which allows students from practically all faculties to come together and take these core courses. This unity within the student body exposes students to different ideas and provides a forum for thought, discussion and debate among students. The program also develops areas of critical, analytical, and personal thinking. "The stress in CS courses is not on the information that is developed, although one gets a lot of information; that is part of the exposure. The concentration in these courses is to pick out different ideas that have influenced us and continue to influence us. Living ideas that come to us from different cultures."
      As ideal, complete, and perfect as this program may seem, there is no such thing as a perfect system, which explains why there has been a change in the CS requirements. CS will be joining with other departments to increase student choices in selecting courses. FAS students will still have to take 12 credits in the humanities; that hasn't changed, but only six of these credits have to be CS courses. The other six may be taken from any other humanities department such as English, Arabic, or archaeology. Engineering and agriculture students will be required to take six credits in CS.
      The new CS system will include three different tracks, or options. The classic CS 201-204 will be kept for those students who are looking for a much more solid exposure to the whole wide range from Gilgamesh to figures of today such as Edward Said. People who take the classic CS 201-204 will, according to Shebaya, "get a more systematic coverage of some of the main ideas that influence us today."
 The second track involves two new courses, CS 205 and CS 206, which can be taken over the course of a year and will add up to six credits. CS 205 will be equivalent to a compressed form of CS 201 and 202, while CS 206 will correspond to CS 203 and 204. Students will still be learning some of the main ideas of the subject, but with much less depth and in much less time.
     The third track, called the thematic track will still allow the students to be exposed chronologically to the ideas of different time periods. The new course, CS 207, will include Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Islamic culture, and CS 208 will be taken the following semester, also incorporating different time periods. The difference between these two new courses and the present course offerings is that these courses will be individually developed courses on individual themes by individual professors. Themes such as Utopia, Love, Science and nature will be discussed by drawing from the people of different time periods. "The students will still be exposed to the period, but through themes," stated Shebaya.
 Shebaya reassuringly stated, "This change shouldn't be looked at negatively. It is more like a question of developing to meet new needs. Nothing is happening in terms of CS, it's still there." These new needs, however, are a result of the administration's concern with the current weak situation of the humanities departments. The other administration concern involves giving the students more choice. Rather than having all four requirements from CS, they will only have to take two from CS and another two from a "basket of courses" which the departments are working on. The logic is, that when students are forced to take courses against their will they won't do well and won't be interested. Once students have more flexibility in choosing their courses, the administration is hoping student interest will increase.
 Other reasons are also responsible for this change in requirements. AUB is expecting about 1000 new students coming in every year to take these courses, and the CS Program cannot take on this heavy load because not enough faculty members are available. "It is not easy to find faculty to teach CS, because not everybody is ready to teach CS; it takes time to get used to it." At this point in time, the CS faculty members are better off handling  smaller classes, and can deliver a better quality of education to those smaller groups than the larger ones.
  When asked whether this change was a result of a budget cut, or a financial setback, Shebya responded by saying it was "budget redeployment" and not a budget cut. "Instead of having 20 lines in CS, now we have 10 lines in CS and the other 10 would be distributed among other departments to strengthen their departments. The common CS lecture for example, is regarded as extremely beneficial and important. Yet students are not gaining the maximum benefit. Nor are they attending as often because of the poor atmosphere. The poor lighting and the great number of students who have to sit in the back of the Assembly Hall stand in the way of students benefiting from the atmosphere of debate, discussion, and freethinking of the various lecturers. With the new AUB plans, the CS lectures will move to the renovated West Hall, where the lecture rooms will be smaller, brighter, and provide audiovisuals for the students.
 There may be disadvantages to the current CS program, but there are advantages as well. From Shebaya's viewpoint, balance between one's field of specialization and general education will, in turn, create a better-rounded and educated human being. Bilal ElChaarani, a freshman science major, stated, "CS is not important for science majors. That's why they should be required to take two courses only; the others can become electives." Shebaya argues that somebody who is just doing science all the time needs to be taking these courses more than anybody else. "If you look at the job market nowadays," commented Shebaya, "people who are hiring engineers or anybody in the science fields, among the things they always check first is not just their competence in their field, but also how much of a background they have. They'll be much happier to hire someone who shows they have a very general cultural background." 
Shebya questions the quality of human beings that we are producing if they were to study science only. Ola Al-Ahmad, a senior business student, agrees that "it's good to know all the material in CS, but they're putting a lot of pressure on us seeing that business students only have room for two or three electives."
 The main concern among students is that this change doesn't degrade the quality of education at AUB. "University was never meant to become a job market machine producing experts," states Shebaya, "but rather presenting well and broadly educated citizens who can do their jobs out of the basis that they are well educated human beings before they are engineers or doctors!"