College Senate
Minutes of the Meeting of March 13th 2000
Chair Gee called the meeting to order at 4:03 PM.
1. A quorum was present and the Agenda was approved unanimously.
2. The minutes of the February 14th 1999 meeting were approved unanimously.
3. President Denis Hefner (President's report):
I just have a few very quick items to go through today.
I thought I might first give you a quick update on what seems to be happening in Albany, or, maybe better yet, what's not happening yet. There does actually seem to be a little bit of movement towards the budget. They are not going to make the April 1st deadline, everyone has said that emphatically. It will be sometime later in April or in May. But it does look like it should be wrapped up maybe even before commencement.
The best news that I heard when I was in Albany at SUNY Day, and we had some students there that were wonderful in representing the campus, was that there is actually is starting to be some work on the university hospital issue. As you know, university hospitals had a shortfall of $77 million dollars last year. For this year, the projected shortfall in about $116 million, and that is projected to be repeated again in next year's budget. Because funding of Medicare and Medicaid have dipped so much, it has created fiscal difficulties in the hospitals, and the way that the budget is currently constructed, technically, our campuses are responsible for covering the shortfall. And that is an issue, obviously, that we would like to see addressed at a statewide level. Build a firewall between the campuses and the university hospitals and also provide the university hospitals with sufficient funds to have them be in a break-even position. But there is movement going on there and actually discussions going forward and hopefully that is going to be handled.
You may have seen the newspaper on Saturday. UUP had invited the local legislators to come for a session here on campus. And, once again, we were talking to the legislators that it's good news that the state has a surplus, and the surplus looks very large at this time, but, before they start adding new programs or new initiatives, look at existing programs that exist or existing units such as SUNY and at least get us to a break-even position. The headline was a little sensational. I would rather not have had that headline, but anyway, the headline did point out the fact that in the current budget that the governor has proposed, if it went through as it is, we would be $260 thousand dollars short for this year. We need some additional assistance from the legislature to get us back to a break-even. The legislature has lots of new initiatives they're talking about. They're really excited. They're going to spend a lot of money this year. But at least the plea that I'm giving them, and I think others are giving them, is let's at least get SUNY back to a break-even before you go running off on new initiatives. So that's what that headline was about.
There have been some changes at the System in terms of leadership. The most noticeable is that Executive Vice-Chancellor Don Dunn, who's been there for about three years, has taken a different position. He will be the president of the Construction Fund. He'll be working over on the Construction Fund side and the position that he was holding they have renamed. Instead of Executive Vice Chancellor, we now have a Chief Operating Officer and they have just finished naming their new Chief Operating Officer. That will be Richard Miller. He has been the Vice President for Administration and Finance at the University of Rochester. That was just announced recently. So that's a major change. I have had a chance to meet Richard Miller just briefly during SUNY Day. He seemed level-headed, anxious to get to work, so I'm pleased. I think he will be a good person to work with. I should point out too that SUNY Day was much better organized this year than any other year that I've been in SUNY. We do have a new Vice Chancellor over the lobbying effort. E.J., and I can't remember his last name. But any way, his first name, his initials are E. J. And I think they did a good job this time. So maybe the message will get through.
I see that Tracy Bennett just walked in. And he was going to bring. Did you bring?
Tracy Bennett: I did.
Hefner: He's passing materially around. Good. That's the next item on my agenda. And it's to let you know, here a map of the campus showing some of the construction that will be going on this summer. Between now and August we will be breaking ground on projects that total $17.8 million dollars. That does include the Natatorium, which will have the ground breaking on Friday, April 7th at 2:00. So if you've got some time at 2:00 on Friday, 7th, come on out in front of Steele Hall and there will be a mound of dirt there and some shovels. So that should be a fun event.
The applications are continuing to be ahead of last year and that's the good news. The difficult news is that we're having a tremendous surge in applications throughout all of the arts programs, which is good, and we have outstanding arts programs and a tremendous surge in the education programs, especially elementary education. The difficulty is we just don't have enough space for all of the students that are truly qualified. And so we're probably going to have a little increase in enrollment next year, but we're not going to have a big bump in enrollment next year. We just don't have the resources and that's going to be an issue at the next Long-Range Planning and Budget Committee meeting. I want to sit down and talk about that one a bit. It is staggering the way the applications are coming in in those two areas right now.
Prepare yourselves. In two weeks, a Middle States visiting team will be here and two and a half weeks from now, the Middle States process will finally have concluded. They will be here the very first week in April, and they will be here Monday through Wednesday. In addition to having meetings with a large number of groups that are set up, there will be one or two open campus-wide meetings. I know that Jack Croxton and Judy Elwinger will have those memos out. They're going to make sure they're in your box right as you come back from the break so that everyone has them fresh on their mind after the break. I would encourage each and every one of you, if you don't have an individual session, to be sure and go to open session and talk to the Middle States visitors.
I was just on a team, the first time I've ever been on a Middle States team. I've been on them on West Coast. This is the first one in this area. I chaired the team that went to Ramapo College in New Jersey last week. And I'll tell you, it truly is a lot of fun to go onto a campus. First of all, they're very nice to you. That's wonderful, I like that a lot. And secondly, it's just kind of interesting to talk to people, find out what they're doing on their campus, really exciting things they're doing, some other things you kind of think, well why are they doing it that way. But it's great to go on another campus and just take a look at it and see what's going on. I know we're going to have some team members who are just going to be pleased to be here and find out all the wonderful things that are happening here at Fredonia.
And the last thing that I had on my list was just to let everyone know, I just asked a few minutes ago how we did we at Super Dance on the final amount. I was at Opera Scenes, which was absolutely wonderful. I hope everybody saw it this year; I think it was the best opera scenes we've had yet. It was terrific. But the total came in at over $10,000 dollars. So they surpassed their goal and we have two dancers who were involved in Super Dance here sitting with us who are members of the College Senate, so I think they deserve a hand. (applause)
Given that, I'll take any questions that anyone might have... Seeing no questions, have a great break.
4. Dr. Una Mae Reck (Report of the Vice President for Academic Affairs):
The first item on the agenda is the request for the name change of the "Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures" to the name of "Department of Modern Languages and Literatures." Maybe Ruth Antosh would like to say a few words about the request.
Ruth Antosh: Our department has decided to make this name change partly because we just feel that the term foreign, unfortunately, may bother some students and it's been sort of a trend in the United States for foreign language departments to change their name to modern languages. Another reason being that, unless the department teaches classical languages, which perhaps we might someday, but we don't currently, we teach modern languages. We feel this title would be more appropriate. So we are all in favor of this in our department.
The report on the name change was informational, and did not need to be voted on.
Reck: A second item, which is not on your agenda, I hope everyone picked up a handout here of the proposed move of the Learning Center to the library here. And this is the proposal that has been taken to the president. I'm going to ask Mike Conley to explain the diagram to you.
Mike Conley: Briefly, we're talking about the diagram of the fourth floor of Reed Library. It is fairly self-explanatory. This proposal of space distribution would account for office space, Disabled Student Service testing requirements, a tutoring area (which we've increased our tutoring space by approximately sixty-percent), a modicum of computer area here accommodating six to eight computers and a small area marked tutor lounge which provide tutors a place to when they need a place to go. Other than that, the things that affect the Learning Center are pretty much, as I said, self-explanatory. If you have questions for me, I can entertain now or after this meeting certainly individually. If not, we'll defer to Randy Gadikian, the librarian.
Randy Gadikian: As you can see from the diagram, we've retained a considerable amount of book stacks on the fourth floor. The Learning Center space will displace approximately one-third of the materials on the fourth floor of the library. As far as impact on growth is concerned, at a rather vigorous rate of growth, 4,000 volumes per year, we would be able to accommodate twenty-two years of growth.
Michelle Carpenter, senior, Music Composition major: There was talk of expanding the graduate programs. How will the campus draw students by doing such an extensive weeding process?
Nancy Gee: Weeding will come later on the agenda. This is just on the Learning Center.
Michael Grady: The twenty years of growth, is that within the annex itself?
Gadkin: That is throughout the whole library. We have enough shelf capacity to accommodate twenty-two years of growth.
Ted Steinberg: Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought that at the last meeting we were told that by ALA standards the library was full. How can we have room for twenty-two years of growth?
Gadikian: Let me explain that. When ALA sizes the building we use guidelines and the guidelines state that your top and bottom shelves are empty and your shelves are three-quarters full on each shelf. SUNY is not built to ALA standards. SUNY builds to full capacity and that is every shelf filled to one hundred percent capacity top and bottom shelves used. What I've done is strike a balance between the two. My balance that I used in the twenty-two years is every shelf full to three-quarters of capacity. So we have growth room.
Steinberg: Thank you.
5. Nancy Gee (Chairperson's Report):
I just have two announcements in my report. The SUNY Faculty Senate is calling for nominations for committees. And I have forms that you can nominate yourself or a friend for an SUNY-level committee and on the back of the form there are descriptions of each of the committees. So, if you are interested, please see me and I'll give you a copy of the form. Or spread the news, and we'll get some people at the SUNY-level.
The second announcement is the SUNY Senate Undergraduate Committee is undertaking a revision of their Guide for the Evaluation of Undergraduate Academic Programs. It's this little booklet. And they want some feedback. So if anybody is interested in reviewing this for them and sending them some feedback, please let me know. Unfortunately I only have one copy, so we'll have to share.
But that's it. Any questions?
Ok, that's the end of my report. Moj, do you have a report?
Moj Seyedian, Faculty Senator: No.
Gee: Ok, so we're on to standing committees. The report of Academic Affairs Committee... David Ludlam is unable to attend and has included a written report. So, if you have any questions, send him an e-mail. And now we're down to Governance.
7b. Charlie Davis (Governance Committee):
Just very briefly, we're looking at the Planning and Budget Committee. With resignations and such we're looking at extending the membership now so it can function, but at the same time a call for nominations is out. As a reminder, that's due March 17th.
And the next will be that we're doing committee reviews in terms of viability of all committees. We're right about in the middle of that. Hopefully at the next meeting, we'll have a report on that.
We'll be electing a new Senator. That is out. The call for nominations is out, and that is also due on the 17th of March.
And, then, lastly, not because we don't have enough to do, we're looking at a bylaw change, in terms of changing the terms of the College Senate and of the Budget and Planning Committee. They are now not based on the academic year; all others are based on the academic year. It's causing some problems, in the sense that either people resign or we need nominations it's done in the middle of the year. We're trying to get people in the middle of the year. At the same time, committees are trying to function. With the College Senate and the Budget and Planning Committee, a move to an academic year would alleviate some of those problems of people resigning and/or of membership on committees. One of the reasons why Planning and Budget was done was that the fiscal year used to be April 1st to March 31st so membership on the committee was based on that. These recommendations would come to this body.
So please look at the dates for nominations of March 17th.
Gee: Ok, This brings us to the GCP.
So, I'd like to invite Cheryl and her entire committee to come up here so we can field questions.
7c. Cheryl Drout (GCP Committee):
Actually, we would like to begin with our interim program. That is the program that will be in place between fall of 2000 and fall of 2001. What this involves is a motion to make some minor adjustments in the current GCP. And that motion was presented at the last session of College Senate, but I would like to point out just a couple items of new information. You have copies of the motion in front of you. We have added the word "freshman" to the motion to clarify that the changes in the GCP requirements will be effective for freshman students entering Fredonia in Fall 2000.
I also want to add, a question came up in our last session about advising information. So if you would turn the page of your packet of handouts, you'll see advising at the top and General College Program Fall 2001 for Freshmen Students. We've taken our GCP outline from the college catalog and added the adjustments in bold to bring these changes into play and to make it clear to students in this overview. So, this would apply just to the freshman students. On the reverse side, you'll see our regular GCP that would apply to transfers. You'll see also with that new advising sheet we have identified SUNY learning outcomes because students who are interested are able to see where changes are being made to address the SUNY-wide learning outcomes. You'll see those are listed on the side. And, at the bottom, you'll also note that several learning outcomes are still not satisfied with these changes. We are not covering foreign language, American History and western civ for all students at this point.
Are there questions about the motion?
There is also a change that will be made in the course offerings bulletin. I spoke with the registrar and Nan Bowser communicated that we would be able to use an A under the notes section of courses to indicate which courses would satisfy the Fall 2000 freshman arts requirement, so that would be under the notes section of part I.D.c. Also under part II.B under the courses that specifically satisfy the arts requirement, we'll have that note next to it, so there will be an indication in the course offerings bulletin that will be helpful to students as well.
The motion to revise the General College Program for entering freshmen for the year 2000 passed unanimously.
Drout: We'd like to move on then to discussing our preliminary proposal for revising our general education requirements. And I would like to begin with a brief overview of our preliminary proposal for the committee and then the committee and I would like to take questions and open this up to discussion. I would like to point out that this preliminary proposal is not a motion on the floor at this time. We are just introducing it for information. We would like discussion, input, and feedback. We expect discussion to continue on this, review, and consultation over the next two months. We are not proposing it as a motion.
I just want to provide a little bit of background in terms of our work and some of the premises behind the proposal. Then we'll spend some time taking a look at a flow-chart that overviews the core program.
First of all, the charge to the GCP Committee was to consult with the campus about the dissatisfaction with the current GCP and to determine whether faculty want improved general education. This charge has been in place now for a couple of years. The committee's self determined charge added some additional ideas here. We observed that the existing GCP is respected both locally and throughout SUNY and that the campus tradition is one of taking general education very seriously. So we also set out to preserve that heritage on a solid academic integrity and a sense of pedagogy for our program, while addressing the need for change stemming from erosion of the current GCP over a period of about fifteen years or so.
I wanted to point out some of the areas in which it is felt there has been erosion of the program over time. The sense of the general education mission, the commitment to the courses - it is felt that over time, there has been some lessening of that commitment that we saw at the very beginning of the program. The integrity of the program due to the unmanageable size - the fact that we have something like 350 courses in the program makes it difficult to maintain a common experience for students. The coherence of the program and the ability of the program to adapt contemporary trends in general education have also been concerns that have been raised in our discussion.
We then had an additional charge that came into play just this year. That was in fall '99, we became aware that the University Faculty Senate had endorsed the Provost's SUNY-wide learning outcomes for general education. And so in the fall the committee accepted as part of its charge to incorporate the coverage of the learning outcomes into our proposed revisions for general education. That became very much a part of our recent discussions of general education. I'd like to now focus on some of the premises behind the proposal that we developed. Fredonia's general education program, we felt, would be built upon the minimal guideline provided by the general education program of the Provost and it would be built up from there. That the program really could not be mandated and that it must be developed by the faculty who would then take ownership of the program and would have revitalized commitment to the program. The structure of the program, we felt, should reflect an evolution of intellectual development, and a student should go from less sophisticated ideas to more complex. That general education knowledge and competencies should complement the major, and not really compete with the major and may be fulfilled in part by the experiences in the major. Other premises behind the program proposal - the program is essentially outcomes based. We are interested in the holistic development of our students and are very much concerned about their development longitudinally over time.
The aims enumerated as part of the SUNY learning outcomes and also stemming from Fredonia's campus-wide consultations may be met we felt in the variety of types of experiences: the experiences in the core, in the major, as well as prerequisite experiences and transfer credit.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills before students enter the courses in an area, we felt should be clarified along with the identification of the goals and outcomes. The prerequisite knowledge and skills should be built upon the courses in each area.
So we did develop three proposed prerequisites, which we see as the beginning point of our program - looking at our students' entry-level capabilities. I'll just briefly review those three prerequisites and then I would like to spend some time looking at the core of the program we've proposed.
American History is one of those prerequisites. What we have identified as B-level performance or higher on Regents American History exam or the equivalent and we've estimated that about sixty-percent of our students would enter the program with that prerequisite satisfied. In foreign language, we identified successful completion of the equivalent of foreign language at the 115 level as a prerequisite level. We estimated that about ninety-percent of our students would enter Fredonia with that prerequisite satisfied. And, in the area of quantitative skills, successful completion of Regents level-three math exam or the equivalent of that, and again we've estimated that about ninety percent of our students would enter with that prerequisite background already in place.
We'd like to spend some time looking at the proposed core. I have a chart here for you. As we take a look at the core, you'll see that we've been concerned about students' intellectual development throughout the full four years of the experience here at Fredonia. I'd like to identify the two different types of categories of courses. You'll notice that there are five areas that are in italics and underlined. The categories of courses there compose what we've referred to as the spine. These are courses that we expect to be relatively unique to Fredonia, and courses that we're utilizing to provide a sort of coherence to the program.
You'll notice that other courses are in bold. Those courses we're referring to as foundation courses. We see those as providing background for students - providing the building blocks to later learning experiences. And those courses also serve the role of the distribution requirement. So you'll see that they ensure that students are exposed to course work in a range of different disciplines.
So, if we begin at the 100-level, Artistic Inquiry and Humanistic Inquiry, those are introductory courses in the arts and humanities and will provide the background introductory experience that contributes to the later 200-level course in creativity and knowing. Communication literacy - English will provide our students with their first writing experience in the program. Knowledge, Society and Self is a course for which we have a number of aims. We see this as a course that will introduce students to the study of culture, that will introduce students to Fredonia, and introduce students to general education. So, under discussion is the idea of utilizing such a course for a freshman experience for our students. Also at the 100-level you'll see Scientific Inquiry--social science and Scientific Inquiry in the natural science area. Both of these provide introductory survey experiences in the Natural and Social Sciences for our students and give them introductory level experience in scientific reasoning. A quantitative reasoning course you'll see at the 100-level is likely to include some courses offered by the math department as well as courses in areas like statistics offered by other disciplines. And this provides students with an introductory quantitative reasoning experience.
We see the social and natural science courses and the quantitative reasoning course all as contributing to the 200-level experience that students will later have in the area of scientific knowledge. So that at the 200-level we have two courses that are part of the spine: Creativity and Knowing and Scientific Knowing. Each of these we see as then somewhat more advanced and building upon the earlier introductory experiences. The Creativity and Knowing provides students with additional experience drawing upon the arts and humanities. There will be potentially a wide range of different types of courses that would be offered. And in Scientific Knowing, the courses there will be again drawing on the introductory experiences in the sciences and further developing the student's understanding of the scientific method and utilization of scientific reasoning. At the 200-level there are also two foundation courses. Historical Knowledge is a course that will satisfy some of the Trustees' learning outcomes that are related to history, in particular western civilization.
And the foreign language requirement, I should take a couple of minutes to clarify here. We're proposing that in fall 2001 the foreign language requirement will be the completion of Foreign Language 116. This would be the completion of a year of study of Foreign Language (this would be the completion of 115 & 116 of that sequence or what would be one year of Foreign Language). We are expecting that most of our students will come in with that level of foreign language satisfied, that eighty-five to ninety-percent of our students have had three years of foreign language in high school. Some have had four years. And there are proposals to increase the coverage of foreign language in high school so that eventually most students coming to us will have taken four year of foreign language in high school. At least that's our expectation. So we propose that over the course of 2001 to 2004, during that time period, there will be further discussion of the foreign language requirement and further examination of resources. So that it is our suggestion that we would like to move in the direction of a Foreign Language requirement of 216. That would be the completion of the intermediate sequence, 215-216.
But we are not proposing exactly when that would occur. We are proposing the examination and consideration of that over time along with the examination of resources and the possibility of supporting some an extensive requirement, it would certainly demand significantly more coursework on the part of our students than the requirement of the 116 level.
Moving to the 300-level, Globalism, Autonomy and Responsibility. This is a category of courses that bears some similarity to our current Part III.B GCP. We see these courses as involving global studies, as cross cultural, as addressing issues such as values, cultural differences and values and ethical issues. And this course at the 300-level would build upon previous background in Knowledge, Society and Self, Historical Knowledge, Foreign Language - all of those experiences would be contributing to this 300-level experience.
Finally at the 400-level, we are proposing a capstone Integrations course. And this we view as an opportunity to draw together the experiences in the major and in general education so that the majors would identify a variety of types of experiences that they might use for this capstone experience. Possibly this would involve internship experiences, research experiences, study abroad is a possible option here. What we see is the need for students to see the connections between their major and general education and that there are some important activities that occur in the major, that are also aimed at developing some of the general education competencies that we've identified. So we imagine a variety of types of possibilities under the 400-level capstone Integrations and naturally working with the majors to determine what the best options there would be.
I would like to refer to one final chart in your packet of handouts. On this chart, if you look down the list of courses on the left that are part of our program, you see we have now identified the SUNY learning outcomes, showing how we would met the SUNY outcomes with the program we propose. Finally, at the bottom of that chart, there are a number of general education competencies that we view as integrating both throughout the core of the program and in the majors as well. So you'll note, writing across the curriculum, oral communication across the curriculum, technology and information management across the curriculum, and critical thinking are all areas where we feel that there should be coverage both in the core and in the majors. In the core, we would be looking for courses that are part of the core to develop some of those competencies. In the majors, we would be asking each major to identify either a course, a set of courses, or a set of experiences in the major that would ensure that their students would be developing those competencies. So those are additional ways, apart from the core program itself, that we aim to address those competencies.
We'll take questions.
Roger Byrne: I'd like to read out a resolution that the Biology Department came up with at the end of last week. This is simply for information purposes; I'm not proposing this resolution to this body.
"Whereas the National Academy of Sciences in recognizing the importance of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology in our society has recommended that 'All undergraduates should achieve high levels of literacy in science, mathematics, and technology by having access to excellent programs that provide direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry,' and
"Whereas the SUNY Fredonia Institutional Assessment and Student Outcomes (1998-1999) self study has noted that our students score lower that students at all other types of colleges or universities in their understanding of science, and
"Whereas the same Self Study recommends that 'We should take steps to strengthen our General College Program curriculum to address the relative weakness (compared to national norms) in our students' perceived knowledge of science...' and
"Whereas both breadth and depth of knowledge within the natural sciences in a necessary component of a liberal arts education thereby preparing our graduates to be informed citizens in an era of increasing scientific and technological advancements, and
"Whereas the Preliminary General Education Revision Proposal ('new GCP') reduces the minimum number of credit hours in the Natural Sciences to one course, be it
"Resolved, that the Biology Department Faculty unanimously recommend that the Preliminary General Education Revision Proposal ('new GCP') incorporate at least six hours of Natural Science Courses to be taught be the Departments within the Natural Sciences."
Ziya Arnavut: As far as I've noticed there is no indication that technology has been addressed by this program. Under quantitative skills I don't see any programming skills or any other item related to computers and computer literacy. I feel that this is a big deficiency for the students, because they need to survive by knowing and improving their knowledge and in improving their skills in computers. At least word typing and so on, which is a requirement of all colleges these days.
Bob Rogers: Actually we have addressed it. What we decided in committee, instead of having one catch-all course that's going to satisfy everybody (you know, CS whatever it will be), we decided that the use of technology would be best left from major to major, and let each major decide how technology should be used inside that major. It's not that we're ignoring it totally. It's just we also figured that what should we teach them? Twenty-five years ago we should have taught key-punching.
Arnavut: Yes, but what you're learning by key-punching is still the same idea. Problem solving skills are attached to...
Rogers: And it's not that we're ignoring it. In fact, one of the premises behind this was that this general education program also works with the major. We just deemed that it would be better that each major should determine what kind of technology level is appropriate for that major.
Arnavut: I don't see that. While some other premises are addresses specifically...
Rogers: It is there. On this page it is at the bottom.
Cheryl Drout: We will be asking every major to identify how the major is assuring that the students within that major have some technology. If the body were to adopt this proposal the departments would be agreeing to identify a course or offer a course or identify an experience that's included within the major that would demonstrate that the students have technology skills. So, we're not just saying that it'd be nice for majors to do this, we are proposing that it be a specific part of the program.
Arnavut: It's not very clear to me...
George Browder: Frankly, we agree with your complaint. We met with your department and we talked about a prerequisite. But we've also been beaten around quite a bit about having too many hours and too many prerequisites and scaring students away from Fredonia and things like that. So what you have is an unfortunate compromise based on these kinds of problems. If you want to vote to include such a thing in the program that is the prerogative of the faculty.
Drout: We have also included on our general education worksheet a recommendation of CS 104 for students who aren't bringing some background in technology from high schools here. For those who are lacking that background we'd recommend CS 104. We didn't feel we had the resources to require that of every single student, and we felt that the students' level of need varies quite a bit.
Amin Sarkar: The Dean and the chairs of the Social and Natural Sciences had a meeting and the chairs at that meeting adopted an amendment for consideration of the committee. I can read the chairs recommendations, the amendment:
(1) six hours of introduction to the disciplines in social science will be required;
(2) six hours of introduction to the disciplines in natural science will be required;
(3) the scientific knowing course will be taught be faculty of the natural or social sciences and the courses will have as a prerequisite a course taken to fulfill either (1) or (2) above;
(4) the foreign language and culture requirement will be limited to one one-semester course taken at Fredonia; and
(5) all GCP courses can double count against a major.
And by adopting this amendment, the following problems perceived by the faculty of the Natural and Social Sciences will be mitigated:
(1) the current plan is heavily skewed toward Arts & Humanities, and in this plan the hours will come close to balancing out;
(2) the amendment maintains the conceptual framework of the proposal (core and spine) while rectifying the devaluation of natural and social science; and
(3) by allowing double counting GCP courses with the major, the amendment will not add real hours to the requirement.
Chair Gee: Just to clarify, it isn't technically an amendment because there isn't technically a motion. So it's a suggestion to the committee.
Sarkar: We just wanted to express the chairs' feelings.
Cheryl Drout: The proposal does then involve increasing the requirement to forty-five hours.
Sarkar: If you look at our amendment, we can discuss it at a later time, but it would not change the number of hours.
George Browder: Our proposal already called for as much duplication/overlap between the major and GCP as possible. That's not a new idea. I don't know why you didn't see it in the proposal. We're already calling for it.
Bob Rogers: In point of fact, and also to address a question for Roger, in our current GCP programs theoretically a student can get out of Fredonia without taking any science course if you don't consider mathematics and computer science a science, because they could fulfill part II.A with a mathematics course and a computer science course and never take a "natural science" course. In fact what we have proposed here is a strengthening of what our current program is.
Amin Sarkar: Yeah, I understand this is definitely an improvement over the current one, but our amendment probably it would still an improvement to your proposal.
Rogers: By one course.
Sarkar: By one course in social science, by one course in natural science.
Rogers: No. Total. One. We're proposing three courses, you propose four.
Sarkar: I would like to speak with you later on. I do not want to discuss this now. You will get a copy of our amendment and look at it, and then if you have any questions we will go over that. Without seeing our entire program and the amendment it is not worth it.
Cheryl Drout: Just to clarify, I think they are proposing to retain the Scientific Knowing course. So it is an addition of three credits of natural science and three credits of social science, if it is a six-credit addition.
Michael Grady: If you look at the current courses that are in, say, part II.B or part II.C, there are more courses above the 100-level than there are 100-level courses. There are a lot of 200 and 300-level courses in those areas (also in part I.C has a number of 200s), whereas the new categories that are supposed to cover the introductions to the disciplines are listed as 100-level. Isn't this going to be a sort of a dumbing-down compared to what we have now, if we don't allow 200 and 300-level courses to these for the introductions?
George Browder: You can number courses any way you want, but, if you're going to introduce them to students, they have to be introductory. What we're doing here is meeting the Provost's mandate for introducing these subjects to students. Now, if you want to number them 200, who cares? As far as what's actually offered each semester as opposed to what's on the approved list, you'll find a vast majority of the courses are 100-level and some of those that are not 100-level have prerequisites.
Grady: There are very few English courses in the 100-level.
Browder: That's true.
Ted Schwalbe: I'd like to build a little bit on Mike's was saying because it parallels some of our concerns. For example, in the part II area, the restrictions by the three categories aren't by department but are sort of by knowledge. Now, you didn't go over it today, but in the larger description of the new proposed general college program four courses at the 100-level seem to be pretty much by department. It said in the proposal what departments would be expected to be offering courses in that area, whereas it didn't in the spine or the 200 and 300-levels.
Browder: We're just guessing what would be most...
Schwalbe: But you made it very clear in the part II and III that other departments would be welcome to offer courses. Yet you didn't include that in the description of the 100-level core.
Browder: Well no; that's because of the Provost's mandate.
Schwalbe: The Provost is mandating by department?
Browder: Almost. They are mandating it to be arts courses and they think of that term very traditionally. They mandate that there will be humanities courses in each of these mandates. They say courses not met in subjects met elsewhere in the program.
Schwalbe: Are we certain that departments, by that, may be pigeoned out?
Browder: We're afraid of that. We're very much afraid of that. We are going to encourage departments to propose courses, but we are afraid they are going to run into a wall.
Schwalbe: My second question has to do with the SUNY learning outcome in communication. Why has that been translated into basic written communication under the part I core, as opposed to a broader concept of communication?
Cheryl Drout: For a variety of reasons, I think. One of the reasons is that in the consultations campus-wide there seems to be a strong emphasis across the campus on the thought of all students taking a writing course from the English department, something like our English Composition course. In addition, in the discussion that has come out of the Provost's Advisory Council it seems that we are likely to be able to integrate oral communication across the curriculum, whereas the written communication seems to be very specific course requirements, so that's another influence. We also have strong administrative support for maintaining a basic writing course in addition to writing across the curriculum. So we had looked at the notion of some students taking a writing-oriented course under their first experience and some taking a more oral-oriented course. But taking into account all of the input, it seemed to work better to integrate the oral communication skills and to maintain writing as an experience for all students at the beginning of the program.
Schwalbe: Except, again, if you look at the bottom half of writing across the curriculum, it says "writing across the curriculum - oral communications across the curriculum." I guess I would disagree with some of those assumptions, and also remind you that I think there were proposals several years ago to increase competencies in oral communication. This certainly doesn't meet that.
Drout: Well, I think if we have a single course in every major that's identified as an oral communication course, or an oral intensive experience, I would argue that's certainly an improvement from where we are right now. It's not every student taking public speaking certainly, but we are intending to have workshops to help faculty skills in teaching oral communication in their majors. I see that as an advancement, but certainly a compromise.
Chair Gee: I notice that we just hit the 5:00 hour, and we do have a time certain discussion of weeding on the agenda at 5:00. So, if we can shift to weeding, we could come back to a discussion of the GCP after we're done with weeding.
8. Joan Burke (Taskforce on Weeding):
I start with a quote on my sheet that reminds me that this word has such a negative connotation that one even hesitates to mention it, but it's a necessity. You should know, and probably all of you do, because you've seen a list. There were ten people on this committee. Three people from each division, one dean (Steve Stahl) and three librarians. We represent these departments: History, Communication, English, Social Work/Sociology, Math, and Physics. We were charged with reviewing the proposal that was presented last month at this meeting and asked to make and I quote "a reasonable weeding plan for our campus". I think we have done that, but before we did that, before we made any changes, you all might be interested to know that we all had to change our attitudes toward this process. There were many of us of the ten who were resistant to weeding and we did this by becoming informed, which because we hadn't ever experienced weeding on this campus, we didn't know very much about it. We visited Reed Library and we saw the work that had been in progress. We considered the guidelines from the ALA which is the American Library Association and the guidelines from ADA which is the Americans with Disabilities Act from 1990. We consulted books including Stanley Sloats' "Weeding Library Collections." We read articles - a very important one, we thought, was entitled 'Weeding the Collection, Painful But Necessary'. We also obtained information from our sister or brother schools: Oneonta, Geneseo, Potsdam, Buf State, and Plattsburgh among them. But ultimately it was what we conceived to be the small quality undergraduate institution that we used as our model or models, especially places like Williams, Oberlin, Vasser, and Earlham.
For those of you who have seen this proposal, we have devised a two cycle (which means once in the fall, once in the spring) process that involves six stages. Two of those stages are specifically organized for faculty review. One of them, the first one, I think it's stage four (I'll try not to say numbers, in case I'm giving you the wrong numbers), but the first faculty stage is a little bit more focused for departments and then the next one is opening this up so that everybody has another chance to look at the collection. The first faculty stage, the texts, the books, the materials, are as they appear in the stacks.
The second stage they've been removed (not from the library, but taken to a different location) so that they can be looked at there out of their context, but they will be organized. We have tried, and I think we've been informed by this statement, which is from that article, and I quote Evan Farber who is Emeritus College Librarian at Earlham College, "No matter how seldom a particular title has been used, or how outdated it may be, or how flawed it may seem, there may be a reason an individual faculty member will want to retain it." I think it has been our unanimous intention to honor that statement, and to give everyone, every one, a chance to veto a potential weeding decision.
And, our work is in front of you. I think most of you have gotten copies. I also think that perhaps all of the committee is here, so there are nine others who can join in. And if you have questions or comments, I would certainly like to hear them.
Elizabeth Nelson: On page three of the weeding document itself at the top under criteria for identifying those items that may be removed. The second one, "the item number and line is not taught on campus and not likely to be taught on campus." Faculty and students speak different languages than we teach here. There is also a question of increase in distance learning over the next few years. What if a course in fill-in-the-blank language is taught eventually and we weed those books now because we don't think it'll be taught...
Burke: Remember with this, that this is the earlier stage before the faculty review. So that is stage three even if a librarian would identify a particular, let's target a language, would target that. Any of you who had concerns about this could come through and mark those and then they would be kept.
Marcus Vink: I think the principle is keeping it in there and giving us a chance to recover whatever is going to be weeded. I think it should be left out as principle.
Ruth Antosh: Well I have to agree that I don't think this criterion is worded the way I think it should be. That could include Latin. It would include Latin. It would include some probably very useful works that many faculty could use and probably a certain number of students. The other thing I might worry about is would this include languages in which we don't have a major? I'm not sure what the status of German is, but we still teach German. But I'm a bit concerned, we have a rather good German collection and I don't know how we'd get it back.
Mac Nelson: I am so appalled by that particular stipulation, that I really think it should just simply be removed. Would we have to weed the Stephan Zweig collection, for example? Old English, we don't teach here, but certainly it would be useful for us to be able to refer to that. We're talking historical languages. I think that is just very, very bad.
Bill Graebner: It doesn't say that every item in that category will be removed.
M. Nelson: It's a bad assumption to begin with. I understand that we can pull back from these things if we think it's important. That's just much too broad and sweeping.
Graebner: It doesn't even say that every item in that category will be marked for removal. It doesn't even say that. It is not as precise as it seems. The first category says that any of the conditions on the previous page, any of these conditions, items that meet any of these conditions will be kept. The second one is stated a bit differently: that they may be removed. The committee actually looked at trying to make the bulk of these kind of correspond. They don't correspond. There is the assumption when you read it that this is just like the previous page that these are removal items, and it's not really true. It doesn't work quite that way.
Joan Burke: I see some of you are still shaking your heads no. Maybe we could have a proposal to accept this but strike that sentence?
Patrick Jones: I move we strike that sentence.
Nelson: Second.
The motion to strike the sentence was approved unanimously.
Michelle Carpenter: Under that third criteria, "very little or no apparent relevance to current or anticipated programs". That doesn't really take into account independent studies. So how will you be going about that? It doesn't take into account independent studies and graduate research.
Burke: Maybe we should just leave it. Maybe it would be simpler, wouldn't it be, to just say the item has not circulated within the previous twenty years and cut it right there.
Kraus: To be honest that didn't bother me like number two did, because I can't see that there is almost any work in there that doesn't have something relevant to some field we are teaching. With regard to substantive areas I can't see how that would be very pertinent, since most books do fall into some area or discipline. That would include things that are involved in independent study.
Ellen Litwicki: I just have a problem with what's implied and I know it is not explicit. In the "items that meet any of these be kept," it says that the item was published within the previous twenty years, which suggests that, if an item was published earlier than the previous years twenty years, it is a possible candidate even though it is not followed up in the next criteria. While the past twenty years, recent publication, is important in terms of monographs and texts. There are a lot of books that were published more than twenty years ago that are quite important to our study and to our students' study. Novels, classic works of history and philosophy, you name it. I know it's not explicit, but it seems to be implied by that statement that we're valuing new books and not older books.
Vince Courtney: In the committee we were discussing the circulation and some of us pointed out that there are some things that have circulated minimally from 1982, 1981 that we felt could be marked. And this language would make it explicit that nothing could be marked that had circulated from 1980 onward (twenty years on).
Litwicki: This wasn't about the circulation. This was about being published in the past twenty years.
Courtney: That's because things that have been published within the past twenty years have been marked at this go around. People arguing against that on the committee felt that, if it had circulated within the past twenty years, it should immediately become apparent that it had been published within the past twenty years.
Michael Grady: May I address that? These aren't "ands" here, they are "ors." The point is that we wanted to keep it even if it hadn't been used, if it was published in the last twenty years, to be sure people get a chance to use it. It's a relatively new book. Previously things had been marked as late as 1998 or something.
Litwicki: I realize that, I guess I just disagree with the subtext of that.
Jon Kraus: I raised a question previously on Proftalk. This idea of circulation, would that include books that are put on reserve?
Courtney: Yes.
Mills-Courts: I do have one concern. Faculty are under a lot of pressure all the time, but I think particularly during the next two months or so. I'm not sure that one month is enough time to review items that have been marked. Not everyone can go over an dedicate day after day to doing this. It will have to be done sporadically over a longer period of time. Would it be possible to have more time?
Burke: I think someone else should probably address the answer to this question, just out of fairness. I was one of the people who asked for more time, and obviously didn't persuade too many people. I did talk to Jo Ann and Vince about this. Let's say this first go-around is the time for English to really put in its time. If we ran out of time, I said to Jo Ann the other morning, what happens if we don't get it done? She seemed to think that that was not a terrible problem, that we'd just ask for an extension.
Jo Ann Kaufman: This time around it going to be strange. We're thinking about the month of April. What we want to do in the fall is limit the areas to begin with. English wouldn't get hit. Languages might, but we might have to break it down to a part of a Library of Congress section too so that we share the wealth more each cycle so that it isn't as bad. What we're trying to do though is finish a whole process each semester. If we do it only once a year, then we have a problem that takes twenty years to get through the collection and we're right back where we are now. It hasn't been done.
Ruth Antosh: I just had one concern, which is that in the fifteen years that I've been here as a member of foreign languages, we haven't been able to buy many books because the budget has been so terrible. For small departments, the allotment is very slim. So we made a decision, not more recently than ten years ago. We decided to put what little money we had into video purchases. And so I'm just wondering if the committee and the library has thought about the fact that we haven't been acquiring at the speed that say Earlham or Oberlin collections have been increasing. And so I'm just afraid we're going to loose things that any library collection ought to have. I'm not sure whether they'll be in this guide or not. Anyway, I'm concerned about those budget cuts.
Burke: The accommodation to that concern is in the first page, the second paragraph. It is in our introductory material and it may not be enough to satisfy you, but at the very end of the second paragraph, "that a portion of the library budget will be allocated to those areas where weeding has taken place previously," the previous cycle. I don't think we're at liberty to say you get seventy-five percent or whatever it is. Some effort will be to do that.
Nancy Boynton: I just want to point out also that if those items have circulated, and it's pretty modest, you know, that they've been out within the last twenty years, then they don't get marked. And, of course, the other thing is too, if there are things that should be retained, that have been marked, you always have the option to say that they need to be retained.
Dan Jelski: What fraction of the books does the library plan or intend to mark? I know they said they'd go through five percent of the collection every year, but what fraction of that do they intend to mark?
Randy Gadikian: There is intentional marking, no goal.
Jo Ann Kaufman: We honestly feel that there are books that were purchased in the mid-sixties when Rockefeller was running the college that have never been used and never will be used and just getting those out of there will make a world of difference in our shelving condition. The bottom line.
Joan Burke: We do have information for you that the library provided us with some statistics. Especially, I was very concerned after our last meeting that the figure of 40,000 books was mentioned. I think it was Randy, perhaps, who misspoke and said that that number would be withdrawn. We did put together, or they did put together, some of that information and what was the total percentage?
Randy Gadikian: 10.7 percent have been marked out of 40,680 books that have been reviewed.
Burke: But that's the first stage. That's not the final stage. That's 10.7 percent that are potentially going to be weeded. After two sessions of faculty review obviously that number is going to come down.
Bob Rogers: I just feel like I've got conflicting stories here. Because before when there was talk about the proposed Learning Center move that the library is not even near capacity, and now it sounds like your saying that it's stuffed to the gills and we've got to get out some of this old stuff. That's what I've gathered from this. Was I listening wrong?
Vince Courtney: Certain areas are very difficult to shelve things in and find things in.
Rogers: I don't understand.
Courtney: It's just the way the collection has developed.
Rogers: That just means it should be rearranged.
Courtney: That's part of the process. We'd like to rearrange things. We'd like to move less things and we're trying to review things.
Randy Gadikian: Also we have to put this the perspective of the comment that Jo Ann made about the sixties. We're in the Rockefeller Era and the campuses are having money poured on them. At the end of the academic year, libraries were traditionally given large sums of money and told to spend it in very short periods of time. Consequently, we ended up buying everything, and a lot of it simply doesn't make sense. What was it, subscriptions to I don't know how many academic presses and if it cost less than fifty dollars, we bought them? Everything, automatically. And we're not unique in that. You ended up buying things that simply did not fit your profile, the programs that were offered at your school. We were simply spending money.
Bob Rogers: I guess it seems to me, that if it's not over crowded, which I got here before, and I don't see the sense in throwing something out if you've got the space to keep it. Call me a pack rat if you want. But it seems to me that if you have the space to put it, you don't get rid of it until you need that space for something else.
Cynthia. Smith: Is there a possibility of an electronic listing of this being considered that we could all maybe gain access to through the library's web site?
Joan Burke: We talked at great length about that as a possibility. And all of us pretty unanimously decided in terms of the time it would take to produce that it would be more efficient to see the items in a collection, to see the context, to see the whole collection that's there. And to have this process be divided so you'd see it once in the collection, once removed and you would have an opportunity to do that twice.
C. Smith: How would I know if I should go?
Burke: You would know. You would know. You will be notified. The deans will be notified, the chairs will be notified, and the faculty will be notified.
From what I understand from this document, everybody would be contacted for both stages. If you are interested in what English was doing with Old English you could go to visit at that time and see it in its entire collection in the stacks. And if you wanted to you could go back and see what was taken apart and make a decision at that point, too.
Ted Steinberg: I have to say, I was very skeptical at the last meeting. Having looked at this document, I think it's a good document. No book will be removed that any faculty member wants to keep, so there is really no danger that we'll lose anything that anybody would want.
Amin Sarkar: I'm just wondering, if we had the space to keep these books, and the ones that are not frequently used we can set aside them and they can be separate from the books that are in use. So why shall we just try to remove them from the library? When we have the problem of space, and we do not have any place to keep these books, then we can think about that. But since we have now the space, we can put all these old books on one side, and the ones that are in use we can keep them on the other side.
Joan Burke: I don't know if I can answer that question because I'm not familiar as much with the library space.
Steve Stahl: We actually did talk about this in committee and we didn't want to have parallel cataloging. That would be very difficult to maintain.
Michelle Carpenter: Is this weeding plan specifically for P-Z, or is this for the entire library in the future?
Vince Courtney: Every time we do weeding it will follow this plan.
Carpenter: Does that go for all the music library too then?
Burke: Right.
Carpenter: So records that students don't take home are going to get thrown away because they haven't been checked out?
Burke: I think the language is important. They will be marked for potential withdrawal from the collection.
Carpenter: Will you include other faculty members when you do this on your committee? Like a music faculty member when you decide to review that portion of the library?
Burke: All of the faculty members will have an opportunity to look at them, not just the committee.
Carpenter: Would there be any student input at all on this process?
Burke: I think that would probably depend on your department.
Kevin Michki: I'm actually the music librarian so I can probably answer this better. We haven't really talked about the nature of scores and recordings and how they differ from monographic materials.
I would like to answer your question about recordings. Most of these have been checked out numerous times. I doubt that many of them would fall under that category necessarily. I think that at some point we may want to revisit that specifically for music, because I think there are some music specific concerns in the proposal: the format types. We may want to at some point, we haven't really talked about audio/visual materials in general but I felt that with this particular document that would kind of muddy the waters even further. This is concentrating on the book collection.
Burke: Even so, you'll notice in this document that often we've identified them as items and materials and not books. It may have some specific problems, but otherwise it's pretty generic.
Adam Brown: Has any headway been made as far as those books that are going to be removed? We decided that they're going to be weeded. Where do those books go? I heard at one point that they were being destroyed. I don't really see any real reason for that. I was wondering if there had been any headway into somehow studying that, somehow the college making some money on this, anyway so that those books won't have to be destroyed?
Amin Sarkar: I think the real question is, the problem is once the book is destroyed, it is gone. We can not recover it once it is gone. Maybe somebody after fifty years wants to look at it. It should be available.
Chair Gee: I need to jump in here. We are at 5:30. So we need a motion to extend the meeting for a half-hour if you'd like to extend the meeting. Would anybody like to do that?
A motion was made seconded and passed by a unanimous vote to extend the meeting.
Roger Byrne: Call question.
Gee: OK, we're calling the question. What is the question that we're calling? Is this going to become a formalized college policy that we going to put to a vote?
Roger Byrne: There is a proposal on the floor. The proposal from the task force on weeding. Isn't that what we're discussing. I'm calling a question on that proposal.
Gee: Before you can call that question, I think we did have a specific question here and it wasn't answered about where these books were going to go. Let's get the answer to Adam's question and then we'll call a question.
Randy Gadikian: And your question is what will happen to books that are removed from the library. Let's go over some of the options. It's been suggested that they be sold. They are SUNY property and there are concerns about the book publishing/vending community that somehow we would be in competition with them should we be allowed to sell these things. Faculty would be allowed to take them to their departmental reading rooms. That is an option. Destruction of the books is an option. Shopping around to other SUNY libraries to see if they are interested in these books is also an option.
Amin Sarkar: Departmental reading rooms, particularly in Thompson Hall, they are already crowded with books. We don't have continual space in our reading rooms for books from the library.
Gee: OK; now we have Roger who has called a question.
The motion to close debate passed.
Chair Gee: Now we have to vote on the actual proposal itself.
Mac Nelson: As amended.
Gee: Yes; as amended. Since it's not coming from a standing committee, we do need a motion for the proposal.
The proposal was moved, seconded and approved by a unanimous vote.
Gee: We have two other motions still pending. We have Bill Graebners' motion.
Graebner: I withdrawal that.
Gee: So that one's technically on the table. We're just deciding not to take it off the table.
Graebner: I guess, we'll just leave it on the table.
Gee: Indefinitely... ok.
Then we have resolutions from Mike Grady.
Grady: There are four resolutions here, and quite a lot has happened since I made these resolutions. I personally believe only resolution three is needed at this point. But if others want to go ahead with discussing the other resolutions, I'm willing to do that, since I'm not the only one who put these forward. I feel obligated to move all of the resolutions and, if they don't get a second, then we can move on. If they do, then we can discuss.
Gee: OK, why don't we start by calling for a second to resolution one? Does anybody want to discuss that?
OK, that one did not receive a second. Resolution two. Sorry, I'm going too fast. Let's go back to resolution one.
Grady: Let me just say a little about that. Last time we were talking about removing all the books from the fourth floor. Now were talking about removing only a third of the books, which is 18,500 books. I'm basically convinced that there is enough room on the first three floors to easily fit that many books. So, personally, I think this issue has been resolved. That's why I don't really think we need the resolution.
Gee: So, does anybody want to second that one?
Jon Kraus: So that you are saying this resolution is mute?
Grady: I am going to move resolution three.
No second was given.
Chair Gee: Let's go to resolution two. So nobody's willing to second resolution two?
No second was given.
Gee: OK, now let's go to resolution three.
The motion was seconded.
Gee: Any discussion?
Mae Reck: On resolution three?
Gee: Yes.
Reck: Partly, the library does have an Advisory Committee and that was appointed by some Vice President for Academic Affairs, not me, just so you know, OK? And I believe this is an extremely important committee. It's supposed to, in my mind, represent the library and have definite input from the constituencies that need to be having input on a regular basis on the library. And I know the resolution calls for a standing committee of the College Senate. What I would like to propose, I guess I would say, is a compromise. I know the College Senate is trying to sort of look at standing committees, and maybe it doesn't really want another standing committee, but I think the process can be improved in another way. It is that it would stay an appointed committee, that it would be jointly appointed by the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the College Senate. I would like to come at the next meeting with a slate that has been worked with between Nancy, and myself and also presented at Executive Committee of the College Senate. And I would like to make sure that there are representatives from both academic divisions, that there would be librarians on the committee, and that there would be students on the committee. So that is my proposal for the College Senate.
Mac Nelson: Move to table resolution three until the next meeting.
The motion to table was seconded and passed by a majority vote.
Jon Kraus: Point of information. Would the Vice President of Academic Affairs tell us how often that committee has been meeting? My understanding is that it didn't.
Mae Reck: I think it met like two to three times. I don't think it met with the previous director. I don't think it's met on a regular basis. I think it would be up to that committee, once we get the appropriate membership, that they would meet on a regular basis, because I think it would be important for them to keep the College Senate involved and informed about their progress. I think it is a library committee and I think it should, I guess, be reporting to the Director of the Library and it should be meeting on a regular basis.
Gee: OK, the motion has been tabled, so we do need to move on.
So, what about resolution four? Would anybody care to second that resolution or should we move on? Nobody wants to second it?
No second was given.
Chair Gee: So this brings us back to GCP. So we can spend the remainder of the meeting on GCP issues. So I would like to ask Cheryl and the committee to come back down, and let's talk about the GCP. We have twenty minutes left in this room. Are there any questions of Cheryl and her committee?
Elizabeth Nelson: On the chart that's on the wall where it says "maximum of thirty-nine hours, as many as twenty-one could be in the major or co-lateral requirements". That is, a little over half of the courses can be in the major? What does that do to the sense of general education?
Bob Rogers: The idea is that right now with the current GCP, when you talk to students, they talk my major courses, my GCP courses, and whatever else. I think when you look at the motion, that this is based on outcomes. It shouldn't matter where the students get this, get whatever skills, whatever objectives we want them to meet in each section. So should it really matter if they get it in their major or they get it outside the major? That's why we made up categories, to decide what kind of objectives we felt were reasonable objectives for all the students on the campus. Where they get it shouldn't matter.
E. Nelson: The learning outcomes come from the Board of Trustees?
Rogers: No. No, this is something that the faculty are going to make up, these categories...
E. Nelson: The SUNY learning outcomes?
Rogers: No. No, I'm looking at each category is going to have certain objectives...
E. Nelson: The phrase "SUNY learning outcomes." Those are mandates?
Rogers: Yes, those are mandates.
Drout: Those were adopted by the Board of Trustees. The Task Force looked at them, and now there is a Provost Advisory Council looking at them. They are the SUNY, they originated with the Board of Trustees.
M. Nelson: A related question. Is it envisioned that we would continue to have some such requirement as a minimum of seventy-five hours outside the major, because ...
Rogers: That's not ours.
M. Nelson: Right, but it does fit into this. Because in answer to Bob's rhetorical question, "what difference does it make where they encounter these things?," it does make a difference that they do have encounters of some sort outside the major.
Rogers: Well there's nothing to say they can't take free electives.
M. Nelson: That's not the point.
Jon Kraus: To support Mac notion, reducing the number of hours and putting them back in the major does undermine the notion of liberal education. I don't see how you could get away with that. The minimum was required; the ideal was liberal education. Distribution of requirements are long existing in many colleges throughout the country. Those distribution requirements create the idea of a liberal education where students get introduced to various fields of knowledge.
That apart, I'd like to address a couple of things. The Department of Political Science has met about this question. And, number one, they did support the resolution of the chairs of Natural and Social Sciences with regard to the additions of some courses with the qualifying thought that that might make too many courses for a GCP. That, if possible, some spine courses should be folded into some of those requirements. Number two, a slight protest to the contrary when we raised the question in the past with the GCP Committee and here the effect of the proposal as it now stands is to eliminate one of the key things that was introduced, I think with George on the committee many years ago, when GCP was introduced was that students had to take at least one course during all their stay at Fredonia in the study of some foreign area, some foreign culture, something. At the moment, some of these may, that's the operative work, may be fitted into the wilderness of Autonomy and Responsibility, but not necessarily. So, this is a movement backwards.
George Browder: It will be a Historical Knowledge. Very specifically that's the mandate that they cover either world studies with an emphasis on Western Civilizations.
Kraus: So all of the introductions to foreign areas will be in the History Department? Is that what you're suggesting?
Browder: No. They don't have to be in the History Department. The proposal says they can be offered by any department. They do not have to be conventional historical narrative courses.
Bob Rogers: Also, if I can clarify something that was brought up about a notion that it seems we are allowing a lot of things to happen inside the major. The idea is that it's not necessarily specific courses inside the major. In fact, each one of these categories will have specific outcomes. It was determined that if you look, say, at quantitative reasoning, OK, MA110. Would you require math majors take MA110 or would you figure that somewhere along the line in their major they would develop quantitative reasoning? Or, say, history majors. Would a history major be required to take a specific history course or would it be understood that somewhere in their major they would develop certain objectives? In fact, I would say that it is up to the departments to determine that their majors are fulfilling these certain categories. They have to document that, yes; our majors in the end will have this overall understanding through their course requirements in their major. It may not be just one course that does it, but they will get to a certain level. They will have attained certain objectives. The students will be like this. That's why we decided that it was reasonable to put a number of these things inside the major because the onus will be on the departments to determine that, yes, the students once they have gotten to this point have attained this.
George Browder: There is a distribution requirement still built into the 100-level block mandated and 200-level block mandated courses. The seventy-five hour requirement also guarantees ample breadth. I don't think that breadth has to occur only in the general education program in order to have a liberal education.
Jon Kraus: I just want to respond to that last comment. George, we have been sitting whether it be called Faculty Council or College Senate for the last three or four years passing one professional program after another which mandates fifty, sixty, seventy hours in the major and that included interdisciplinary majors. We have conventional majors recently asking, last year if I'm not mistaken, to commit an additional fifteen hours in an education-related major field which would, when I added up after the meeting, in fact left those students four courses (12 hours) that they would take outside the major, GCP, and work in the school system. So the fact of that is that there are a large number of students, including most of our professional programs, where that seventy-five hours is not.
Browder: That seventy-five hours out of a multi-disciplinary program is by definition excluded from that requirement and there is not much you can do about it when you've got these kinds of programs on this campus. We certainly can't solve that problem here, Jon, and you know that. And may of us agree with your concern, but there is nothing that we can do about that.
Ellen Litwicki: I have a question about the impact on transfer students. I know now that the most recent change has been that when transfer students come in with an Associate's Degree we given them, you know we assume that they've fulfilled parts I and II. Obviously I think this isn't going to be the case with this new GCP, especially I think we have these courses that you state are supposed to be taught, taken, in the first semester of Freshman year, such as Knowledge, Society and Self and several 200-level courses that I don't think would be easily transferable from a community college since these are more hours than the Trustees. So, what are we going to do with people who come in as Juniors? They're not going to be able to graduate in anywhere near two years.
Bob Rogers: What do you do whenever people come into your major and their not prepared to take the Junior level courses in that are in your major? And we have them, there is no doubt about that.
Litwicki: That's not my question here.
Rogers: How is it different?
Litwicki: These are specific kinds of classes that they are not going to have coming in that they can't possibly have.
Rogers: How is that different from the question that I just asked?
Mills-Courts: It's very different Bob. You have a program laid out here in which all of the courses are related one to the other developmentally in terms of the student's personal growth. It's not a matter of content. So, if you are going to have a developmental model you simply cannot ignore those problems.
Rogers: I'm not. I'm not. But I'm not saying, ignore the problems. Number one, any proposed program is going to have difficulties with transfer students, that's just a given. What actually I look at in terms of this program, since it is objective, each one of these categories will have its objectives. In the end students will be at this level. They will have this; and I think it has to be spelled out specifically. If the students come in with whatever level, whatever categories they fit in, they fit in. If they're ready to move on to the next course based on this, then they move on.
Mills-Courts: You're going to test to see?
Rogers: No. No. Actually this is only my personal opinion, this is not the committee. My personal opinion is that every student comes in, you give them a booklet that spells out the levels that you assume that everybody has when they come into a certain category. I mean, spelled out to them: this is what we are assuming that you can do. Not content, but just level-wise. And, if it were left up to me, which it is not, I would say the onus is upon the students to figure out where they belong in. And if they get into something that's too high a level for them and they don't know any better, then that's their problem.
Ellen Litwicki: But I thought that these certain courses had to be taken here. Knowledge, Society and Self and stuff like that.
Rogers: I think...
George Browder: We're shooting at a moving target here. It looks like already that the Provost's Committee is going to require that even if we waive American History narrative that the students are still going to have to take another course in America of some sort. And so now it looks like Knowledge, Society and Self is going to have to be one of these approved courses that we will have to accept in on transfers since that is the only way we are going to be able to meet that requirement. As for having three courses and a capstone in our program that we insist should reflect some kind of continuity, growth, and development, I just don't think that's absolutely unreasonable as an educational goal. Yes, we have impacted programs and they are problems and we will have to adjust the program to deal with them. And that is a mandate also included in the Provost's Guidelines, that we adjust these programs to impacted programs, which we weren't allowed to do under the current GCP.
Ted Steinberg: George, I'm really concerned about these spine courses as a developmental idea. I don't know if we can make a developmental idea work for a whole lot of students and I'd like to know, first of all, if the committee has done any research to find out if certain things really work in the first place. I know that we tried it with GLEP. I know that it would take extraordinary workshoping, extraordinary dedication by the faculty--and we have a dedicated faculty. But this is going to be extra time and extra initiative. I'm not even asking if the administration is willing to support it. I don't know if we can support it. These kinds of workshops have only had a very fitful success in the past. And without incredible support, they won't work. I'm sympathetic to what the committee's done, but I have real reservations about this.
Browder: Is there something that will work? Something? We do it in our majors, don't we? Isn't there a development in our majors? Don't we presume that when students take courses for which there are prerequisites that some kind of development has occurred? It seems to me that although you're right in the kind of ideal that we're proposing here may be beyond our reach, I think collectively we can do something to approach this if we're of a mind to do so. Or we can just simply accept the blind mandates.
Rogers: In fact, I was going to ask, what is the alternative?.
Steinberg: The alternative for me would be to just leave out the spine.
Rogers: And replace it with?
Steinberg: And replace it with content courses for students preferably outside their major.
Rogers: As we have now?
Steinberg: Yes.
Arlene Hibschweiler: I was just curious if the issue of resources has been addressed. Specifically, are we anticipating additional resources when we need to implement this? And, if so, are we expecting that that's coming from SUNY Central or is it understood that this is going to involve a reallocation of resources that are on our campus. And, if that's the case, could we have any of that information in advance of making decisions?
Cheryl Drout: As I understand the resources proposed from SUNY Central were then dropped from the budget from the governor, so as far as I understand there aren't resources from SUNY Central. I would like the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Mae Reck, to respond to the local question.
Reck: I think you're all asking excellent questions that I have asked myself many times. In terms of resources, no, there are none from SUNY Central at this time. I served on the Provost's Advisory Council, and there has never been any indication that they are forthcoming either, so I don't feel that they are.
In terms of the proposed GCP or whatever program that we come up with, that we decide on, first of all, I am looking for a campus commitment from all of you. This is the program that we want, whatever it is and we go for it and I'll be right behind you. You have understand also the resource question and you'll be making a decision on that, too. If this is an important program, then we have to use the resources we have to. So that would mean probably in some cases, and we've done this already since I've been here, reallocation of resources from departments that were needed to support the program, the GCP program. It also might mean that we have to revise our Academic Master Plan or we can not go forward with some of these programs because we've made commitment to the General College Program.
We have to keep in mind the resources we have. There are no extra resources that we have in terms that I know of to support the General College Program except what we have already going into our current one. So reallocation would be a part of this, and that's why we need to be looking at it.
I think the question about transferring is a very good question. We want a program, in my opinion, that has a reasonable number of hours and is fair to both our native students and our transfer students. We need a program that does not disrupt our majors in a drastic way.
Chair Gee: Can I jump in here. We unfortunately loose this room at 6:00, so we do have to end the meeting, but I just wanted to let you guys know that we will probably have an additional meeting to discuss the GCP perhaps during the month of April.
10. The meeting was adjourned at 5:58PM
Attendance:
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Ruth Antosh
[x] Joan Burke
[ ] Joseph Chilberg
[x] Scott Johnson
[x] Patrick Jones
[ ] Jeanette McVicker
[x] Karen Mills-Courts
[x] Elizabeth Nelson
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Ted Schwalbe
[x] Theodore Steinberg
[x] Jackie Swansinger
[x] Markus Vink
Ex. Officio:
[x] Tracy Bennett
[x] Charles Davis
[ ] Michael Dmitri
[ ] Len Faulk
[x] Nancy Gee
[x] Dennis Hefner
[x] Arlene Hibschweiler
[x] Jean Malinoski
[x] Mae Reck
[x] Dick Reddy
[ ] Paul Schwartz
[x] Mojtaba Seyedian
[x] Stephen Stahl
Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies:
[x] Ziya Arnavut
[x] Nancy Boynton
[x] Adam Brown
[x] Roger Byrne
[x] Penny Chiappe
[x] Mara Goodman
[x] Michael Grady
[x] Jon Kraus
[ ] David Ludlam
[ ] Lawrence Maheady
[ ] Jane Romal
[x] Amin Sarkar
[x] Cynthia Smith
[x] Charles Telly
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[ ] Jean Branicky
[x] Carolyn Briggs
[x] Mike Conley
[x] Vince Courtney
[ ] Marianne Eimer
[ ] William Jardin
[x] Karen Klose
[x] Patrick Mandia
[x] Kevin Michki
[x] Charlotte Morse
[x] Carol Schwerk
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Soteris Tzitzis
[x] Anna Zarczynski
Student Association:
[x] Andrew Fidurko
[ ] Shamus Hayes
[ ] Heather Koski
[x] Emily Palumbos
[ ] Diana Ruiz
[ ] Pam Wright
Guests:
Randy Gadikian
Dan Jelski
Peter Schoenbach
George Browder
Mark Leonard
Michelle Carpenter
Jennifer Monthie
Allen Lumis
William Graebner
Jo Ann Kaufman
Mary Carney
Liza Smith
Minutes prepared by College Senate Secretary, Dick Reddy, with the assistance of Michael Anton Sciortino