College Senate
Minutes of the meeting of April 17th 2000
Chair Gee called the meeting to order at 4:05 PM.
1. The proposed agenda was approved unanimously.
Jon Kraus: Is there a quorum?
Nancy Gee: I don't see the need to have a quorum. We're not voting today.
Kraus: I see.
Gee: It's just a discussion.
Kraus: Is it an official Faculty Council meeting?
Gee: It's a special session of the College Senate for the purpose of discussing the GCP.
Browder: It would be nice to know whether we have a quorum, though, in case somebody decides....
Gee: Did everyone sign in? OK, we need to have everyone to sign in before we can determine whether we have a quorum. But we can go ahead and begin discussing in any case and then we'll have that question answered along the way.
2. Pre-Discussion of General College Program Issues:
Cheryl Drout: There are two things we'd like to do today. One of those things, I think, is very obvious and that is to discuss the models that have been presented by the GCP Committee at the previous College Senate meeting. To engage in question and answer, and to hear about the ideas that others are proposing. But the other thing we'd also like to do is have some discussion of the process that is underway in attempting to come to consensus on the GCP revision.
So I wanted to remind you that the sense of the GCP Committee has been that we're attempting to try to achieve closure on this by the May College Senate session. We realize that that may not be possible, but it is still the aim that we are trying to achieve. We foresee the need for potentially additional special Senate sessions to engage in further discussion and that's something we may propose at the end of the session today. So that process is something that we'd like discussed as well to hear how the campus is going about that process, whether another special session is desirable and how the campus is feeling about moving toward closure on actually voting on a model at the College Senate meeting in May. So each of those areas are being discussed today.
Let's open the floor to discussion first to the models that have been presented and any ideas that you've brought with you today. I would like to identify just one new handout. Most of the materials that you saw as you came in are not new. There is one handout however that is new today. And I would like to review a little bit of information on that handout. It's the General Education Decision Process Worksheet. Does everyone have that?
What we are attempting to do here is to identify where we feel there is already some campus consensus that has emerged. So I'd like to point out the lower division introductory 100- 200-level system transferable requirements. If you look under what we're calling simple mandates, these are a set of 18 to 21 hours that we feel the campus has already moved toward a consensus on, in that in the arts we expect that there will be at least one course that would be required. At least three credits in the arts. In the humanities, at least one course (or three credits) in humanities and the same for the natural sciences and social sciences. This is not saying any of these areas are necessarily limited to three credits, but that we feel that the entire campus agrees that there would be a minimum of three credits in each of these areas. Basic communication, the EN100 course, and in Mathematics we have been talking about in several different models a college level requirement of three credits with a prerequisite of passing Regents Level Three math or taking MA104.
So our sense is, from the discussions that have taken place and from counter-proposals that we've seen, ideas that have come from all of you, that there seems to be some consensus that has emerged in that set of 18 to 21 hours. The remaining areas that involve more complex mandates from the Board of Trustees, that involve developing capstone courses and such, we feel are much more widely under discussion and debate. So this is an attempt to try and draw together where we are right now and what questions need to be addressed. With that, we'd like to open it to discussion.
Michael Grady: Well, if you want me, if this is the appropriate time, I'd like to talk about the handout that I gave here. Basically one thing I think we need to consider a lot is the lack of new resources that are being given to us to do the GCP. Basically we're supposed to do it with whatever we have now. So what that means to me is that if we increase the GCP much over the current GCP then we have to decrease somewhere else. And so I'm afraid that that decrease comes in what we honestly think of as important courses, which are elective courses in the majors. That is the only place that I can see that we can cut. So whenever you look at "should I add a new course to the GCP?", keep in the back of your mind that each new course added is a course taught basically. Without new additional resources, there really isn't any other choice.
Bob Rogers: But Mike, isn't it true that you could cut a number of courses that are in the current GCP that would not be appropriate in the new model?
Grady: Right, for that reason, though, I think we should choose a GCP that is about as big as the current GCP. That way there would be relatively little disruption and also, if the distribution of courses is relatively the same as the current GCP, there won't be huge shifts needed in the number of lines in one department versus another. So I suggest we adopt what was called the minimalist program with two changes to make it closer to our current GCP. And those two, where there is another intermediate course, and it was suggested that be a Natural Science course, so I'm going to make that suggestion, which brings us back to two courses in the Natural Sciences, which is what we have now. Another very small change I would make would be to say that there should also be two courses in Social Sciences as we have now. But one of those Social Science courses could count against the American Studies or the Western Civilization or the Other World Civilizations, so a lot of students would choose to double count that second social science course. So it doesn't really add an hour for most students. Another very minor change is that a lot of people don't like the name American and Self, and I would change that to American Studies, but that's just a change in the name.
George Browder: Why?
Grady: To me American and Self just doesn't sound very, just has a funny ring to it. It just doesn't sound very intellectual, it sound like you're teaching students to be selfish. It just seems, it just sounds odd to me. So American Studies sounds more normal.
George Browder: Did you read the description of the concept?
Grady: There's no reason why the concept can't be the same.
Browder: But does American Studies accomplish, clearly identify what you're trying to establish as the students understanding of the extent to which he or she is shaped by American culture and values, that his self is a product of American culture and values? What is American Studies?
Grady: The word self just sounds like you're going to concentrate on what the student already knows as opposed to teaching something new.
Bob Rogers: Actually, I think it would focus on what the student already knows, but would give them a broader perspective. I think that it's more than semantics here. I think you're talking about a paradigm. I think American Studies sounds like, "Hey let's just teach them a bunch of American trivia." At least that's the way, what I hear when I hear American Studies.
Grady: Well, I can just delete C if you want; it's not the most serious part of the proposal.
George Browder: I'd like to talk for a second about your comments on the resource problems. You're both half right and half wrong. Yeah, you're right, the block mandate does threaten some of the resources that we would like to commit to our majors, but we've never been, and will never be in an either/or situation. In other words the course has to be in the major or it has to be in the GCP. We've had a tremendous amount of overlap and we still do and we still will. A lot of the courses that are in the majors and are electives in the majors will be GCP courses under the new program just as they are now. So, though while you're right in that there are resource crunches created by this, it's not an either/or situation.
Grady: I'm just not sure how much double counting is really possible in a practical manner.
Browder: We didn't know when we instituted the current GCP. We created a lot of double counting to solve that problem, and I'm sure that's exactly how we'll address the new situation. If we don't, we're stupid.
Grady: The other thing that I would say would be we could adopt this, see how it goes and then two or three years from now we can always add stuff, if the resources appear to be there. So that's the way in which I think this is prudent, is to adopt basically what's needed to satisfy the Board of Trustees. Keep what we have to the extent that we can and maybe add stuff in a few years time if it seems like we did have the resources.
Browder: Well what you aren't keeping any Part Three.
Grady: OK, well that's what the proposal two is about. Basically what proposal one does, Part Three gets replaced with the Civilizations category. But that, you've convinced me, can't be done immediately at the 300-level, so that's a lower division requirement, so you're replacing a Part Three with a lower division, so something has to replace Part Three. And so my idea is to require a certain amount of work at the 300-level and higher and to try to make the numbers so that that's not just the major. So either require a minor to also be completed that forces the student to go outside their own discipline to a certain extent or to at least complete a minimum of, I chose 40, but after study that could be a different number, hours at the 300-level or higher. This would just prevent a student from taking just the minimum major requirements and then taking a lot of 100- and 200-level courses, because the Part Three is, of course, 300- and above. You'd want to replace those six hours at minimum at 300- and above with some other 300- and above courses. But it seems to me that they could be courses that are in some other major, not the person's own major. So that's the idea of proposal two: to replace Part Three. But we can treat them as separate ideas, I think, to some extent.
Bob Rogers: Would you say the 300-level courses, say that are designed for the GCP, say you have a student who for whatever reason will not do a minor, OK, so they have to pick up 300-level courses somewhere. Will there be a number of 300-level courses that don't have prerequisites for them?
Grady: No, the point, my idea really is that, if they can find them, OK, but...
Rogers: I don't think they should exist.
Grady: Probably not many exist, which is basically going to force them to take a few prerequisite courses in order to take those 300-level courses. So, even if they don't quite get to a full minor, they're at least forced to do sort of a partial minor in a different area.
Rogers: So the other ones would be free electives, I assume.
Grady: Basically, yeah. It doesn't take much to get started in any discipline. Like psychology, you take introduction to psychology and then I think you can pretty much go into the upper level. It's just like one or two more courses to bootstrap yourself up to the 300-level in some other area.
Rogers: I understand, but I'm not convinced that this is going to be a saving on resources because you're still going to have more students in the classes. You may have fewer sections, maybe. But you're going to have more students in these classes that are not normally there.
Grady: Well, my feeling is that these 300-level and upper courses in a lot of majors actually aren't totally full classes, so that you're putting students in classes that aren't quite full in some cases at least. To that extent it doesn't cost resources.
Patrick Jones: I would say, I just find it would be impractical to a require a minor in every degree program across the campus.
Grady: That's why we have the second alternative.
Jones: And I wrote to Cheryl about this, as I've grappled with this issue from our perspective, we offer three different types of degrees at the bachelor level in the School of Music. We offer a Bachelor of Music, which is considered a professional music degree. We offer a Bachelor of Arts, which is considered a liberal arts degree, and we offer Bachelors of Science, one in sound recording technology and one in music therapy.
And as I sat back and contemplated what's the difference, is there a difference between a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Music, and a Bachelor of Science, and indeed there are. There are different expectations, and so I wonder if it would not be prudent for us to adopt... Does there have to be a one-size fits all GCP, or is there a minimalist model that's adaptable for a professional type of degree. The School of Education spoke at the last meeting about all kinds of other types of requirements. But a student who is coming here for a Bachelor of Arts degree, for that to be a meaningful liberal arts degree, there should be a deeper or more expanded type of general college program above and beyond what would be minimal. I think it would behoove us to consider something like that.
Rogers: It seems to me that in terms of a minimalist, and I think this is what the committee has tried to do from the outset, we've tried to distill what we consider we say "any graduate from SUNY Fredonia ought to", OK? And if it seems like we've, kind of, burgeoned it up with extra courses, we were not trying to do that. We tried to say, "every SUNY Fredonia graduate should..." And beyond that, I would say that that's a matter of being in each degree program, each department. If you said, say, a Bachelor of Arts in Music has this, but then again there has to be some kind of common denominator in this doesn't there?
Jones: That's what I'm saying, that perhaps there is a GCP that everybody takes. But if we're offering different types of degrees, are there different requirements beyond that? A Bachelor of Arts to me isn't just one person's perspective. When I see someone with a BA on their transcript, I'm assuming that they have more foreign language, and more history and literature than a person who comes with a BM. That's a different type of degree from my perspective.
Cheryl Drout: There already is a difference, I believe, in the number of hours outside of the major across some of these degree programs. I'm not sure if that goes for the BM, but for example some of the programs have a 63 hour requirement in contrast to the 75 hour requirement that we have for BA's.
Nancy Gee: Let me take a moment just to say that we do have a quorum, just so you know.
Ruth Antosh: Well, given this discussion and the last discussion we had, I'm just a little bit worried that we're thinking too much about money before programs. It seems to me that, if we always assume that the money is not there, we will end up with a rock bottom GCP that will not be the envy of our institution. In the mean time some of the other SUNY schools may be putting in much more ambitious programs, and there may be money for institutions with more attractive and imaginative programs. I've heard no proof that we can't manage more than the minimal model yet. I mean, we're all so worried, I'm just afraid that that's all we're looking at. I don't know what the committee feels, but obviously you took the time, you felt there was some possibility we could do more than the minimal model.
Peter Schoenbach: Absolutely. I agree.
Bob Rogers: When I look at it now, our current GCP, I consider it extremely inefficient. I mean there are all kinds of mismatch all over the place. You have students that are seniors taking courses they should have taken when they were freshmen, and they're bumping out students who are freshmen who really should be in there. I think it's an extremely inefficient program. That's just a personal opinion.
Schoenbach: Well, some of it is advising. I have to say that. Students haven't been advised at all. They've been poorly advised. They shouldn't find themselves in that position at that point in their careers.
Jane Romal: Well, one reason there are no classes is though that they want to take lower-level courses so that Michael's requirement that they have more upper-level courses would address that issue. And I think many schools, some which I don't even respect, require more 300- and 400-level courses. I've always been surprised we didn't require that.
Browder: We did. It's gone by the board.
Romal: Well, OK, then maybe they could limit the number of GCP courses unless they found that they absolutely needed one of those as a prerequisite. They're seniors; they want to take the easiest courses available, and they are taking freshman seats.
Bob Rogers: Actually, I agree with Mike in terms of students taking upper-level classes: trying to get in them. The thing I worry about is that just because something has a 300 number, does that mean that it's going to be a 300 course?
Michael Grady: Well you're trusting the departments to do their numbering properly. I don't know.
Rogers: I think that's where you try and get a program where there's some cohesion to it, which is, I think, what we've been trying to do.
George Browder: Minda Rae, can you remember? We used to have an upper-level requirement. Do you remember what it was, when it went by the board, and why?
Amiran: I don't think that, it may be before I came here in '81 there might have been some upper-level requirement. The old old GCP was just a pure distribution and one of the radical changes of the current GCP was that in Part III, the courses initially without exception, and now almost without exception were at the 300-level or above. It was the first time, in some period of time anyway that students had been required to take upper-level courses within the GCP. I think, though, that we would want, in general, not to confuse the issue of upper level requirements with the issue of the shape of the GCP. There is an overlap, but they are two basically separate issues that need to be discussed.
Nancy Boynton: I just wanted to mention that in some disciplines you take an intro class and then you can start taking 300-level classes. In other disciplines there are detailed prerequisite structures that one needs to get to the 300-level, and I think we would be pushing our students into certain areas by doing that. AndI'm not at all certain that's right to push them, you know, in that direction.
Michael Grady: Well, there's the other option, the minor option. They could do that instead of doing all these 300s, in that case.
Mac Nelson: Just two points of information. I'm fairly sure, George, that we never did have a specific number of advanced hours required, but the one major change that we have had since I came here in 1837 [laughter] was the dropping of the foreign language requirement for the Bachelor of Arts. And, therefore, you cannot look at our Bachelor of Arts as you suggested earlier, and say that person knows some foreign language.
George Browder, Also, the difference between a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science was six hours of history versus twelve hours.
Michael Doctor: I'm a French and English major. One of my main concerns in pushing a student from one area of study... Let's take French for example, I'm a French major. To take an engineering student or a science student and to have a requirement that they fulfill an upper-level foreign language course. Would there be problems, would that pose problems for that person, who has never thought about pursuing a course of study in foreign language? Would that pose a problem for the professor to teach at the same caliber? If you're looking at a 350 course, for instance, in a French course. For example, upper-level literature (19th, 20th century literature), how would the student be prepared? How would that science degree or engineering degree student be prepared to enter into that sort of course and not bring the overall caliber of that education down? That would be my main concern. Would the majors still be able to examine the same literature or the same curriculum in a course with a student who had never even thought of pursuing that course of study?
Cheryl Drout: Foreign language is one of those areas where you have a fairly strict prerequisite sequence. And you wouldn't be able to utilize upper-level courses in a way that would violate that sequence. In the GCP currently, we have some upper-level language literature courses, some in the foreign language and some in English, so students can sometimes take that coursework that's the foreign language in English. Clearly upper-level foreign language has to follow the appropriate sequence. Students wouldn't be able to take that out of order.
George Browder: The courses already exist in the current GCP Part III. Most of the courses in there are forced to have no prerequisite, no specific prerequisite and, therefore, the courses are badly watered down for the majors that are trying to take the course as a part of their major. And that's what we've been trying to correct in this.
Doctor: I can say personally, I considered for a long time sound recording technology. And a large part of that major is University Calculus and Statistics. I barely scraped through those in high school. And I had a very hard time with it. But had I tried to do that and entered into those courses, and there have been a lot of students that have entered into those courses, how would we have not dropped down a caliber for the majors that wanted to learn about advanced physics? I would not have been able to keep up with that. And either I would have failed or a group of us would have forced that class to come down a caliber, which is unfair to the physics majors and the calculus majors.
Bob Rogers: I think the basic issue that comes up on this whole thing is that, can these courses serve two masters? I do want to say that I know that people don't mean derogatory things when they say watered down, but should GCP courses be watered down? I mean, that sounds so negative. It's not that the people in there are stupid. It's not that you have to water it down because they're clueless. It could be just as deep and thought-provoking as any major course, you just can't get very technical. You can't assume that they have a lot of knowledge in that subject, and I think that people have this negative connotation of what general education is about. And I would like to see some kind of program that gets away from that. You know, an when I see proposals being made, and I think there's a lot of good ideas, I see a lot of this negative connotation in them. And that's, that's what I oppose.
Marcus Vink: I want to shift the discussion in a slightly different direction that may be a little bit more specific. Assuming that the committee is correct that the learning outcomes, that there is a consensus, maybe it would make sense to move from the simple mandates to the more complex mandates in our discussion.
Browder: I guess we should as if there is any debate about the so-called simple mandates. If not, yes, maybe we should limit the discussion.
Jon Kraus: I'd just like to say regarding that there's a consensus on this. When I've been listening to the discussions of the last several meetings, especially the mentioning of the fact that several meetings ago, that the dean of the natural and social sciences had indicated that there had been a vote by the chairs in the departments of natural and social sciences that disagreed with this.
Drout: We're saying as an absolute minimum.
Kraus: I find it difficult to understand why you think there is a consensus.
Browder: That's under the introductory additional.
Drout: Right. We're saying an absolute minimum of three with other credits still under consideration. So we've indicated under additional introductory lower-division requirements that one natural science, one social science. But that's still very much under debate.
Browder: There's a difference between the minimal and something else, Jon.
Kraus: They disagreed with that as the minimal.
Peter Schoenbach: Not as I understand it.
Jan McVicker: This would not be the full program.
Schoenbach: This would just be the basis.
McVicker: This is the first 15 hours. 18? 18 hours.
Schoenbach: I didn't hear anything about the natural and social sciences being opposed to having a course in the humanities, or a course in social science, or a course in natural science. That was not what was at stake.
McVicker: This is basically what the Trustees are requiring anyway. I mean, this is not anything controversial except in so far as you think it is. Would you disagree with that, Jon?
Kraus: You're restating it and saying, OK, these are OK so far.
McVicker: That's all we're saying.
Kraus: Originally what you had as a minimal was not acceptable to the people in the natural and social sciences to a certain degree as represented by the votes of the chairs, and that's all I'm saying.
George Browder: This isn't the minimal program. This is just five parts of it.
Kraus: I understand that.
Roger Byrne: As this is just part of it, I think we're still in agreement.
Drout: Essentially what we're saying is that we don't think anyone is proposing zero credits in natural science or zero credits of social science. I think we can clearly find an agreement on a minimum of three and there is still discussion underway as to whether that would become six or nine or something more than that.
George Browder: About the only thing that people really need to understand here, I think, is that the English Department does not assume the responsibility for the oral communication goal that the Board of Trustees mandates. And, therefore, we will meet that with across the curriculum courses in both the GCP and in the majors.
Jan McVicker: We just thought that if we were going to have more engaged discussions, we would move it to the complex stuff and assume that there is consensus. We're not asking for a vote, but that there is consensus on what we are labeling as the simple mandates.
Marcus Vink: I think it makes sense to pick up on the points that you brought on the worksheet. And so maybe it would make sense and be more productive to talk about the specific points.
George Browder: Yeah, things are still pretty badly floating in this area, because A. We are not sure the PACGE is going to come down and B. We are not sure what departments are willing to put forward as legitimate. Starting with American History, you know, we've talked about the possibility of a one-semester American History course that might meet the Columbus to Clinton narrative requirement. The History Department is very nervous about that. You know, college level teaching is done four times as fast as what they do in high school. That's the assumption there; and that's it. We're just faster, that's all, and that's not exactly what historians think of themselves as doing at a professional level. So, we're not really sure what the History Department is going to be able to mount for meeting that requirement, and, for that matter, any other department mount courses that fit the narrative. So, we're not quite sure what is going to come forward there. We're not quite sure we could get away with three hours only, in other words, for anybody who can pass the Regents test and get PACGE approval wouldn't be anything other than a three hour requirement or whether there would be a six hour requirement, no matter what. In other words, this is a part of the problem, I guess, that the faculty is going to have to be flexible about. We'll end up with what we end up with.
Peter Schoenbach: Do we have any confidence in the 70 percent waiver?
Browder: Just what we've gotten from them, that they would take an 80 or higher score. Which would mean then one course only.
Schoenbach: For 70 percent of the students, then two courses for...
Browder: Two courses for 30 percent.
Schoenbach: That's a little more amiable for the History Department.
Browder: Well, everybody else is going to have to kick in on this second course.
Schoenbach: So the other courses come from other places?
Browder: Yeah.
Cheryl Drout: What is the feeling about that America and Self or American Studies category? For quite a few departments, that would be very interdisciplinary. A variety of different departments would need to contribute. Part of the purpose for that is so that not all the students would necessarily take a traditional narrative of American History from the History Department. Is there interest across the board in developing courses like that? Do you see courses that could be molded to fit to that?
Browder: The problem is, without increasing the resources of the History Department, just to staff that American and Self by itself would mean somewhere between 385 - 600 seats offered by other departments. And in order to just simply staff that for every semester we'll need approximately seven more sections in American History narrative. It creates a resource problem right there and a big demand on the other departments that can contribute to this thing that we're calling America and Self.
Elizabeth Nelson: I have one question under the complex mandates, "Western Civ., and Oral History, or Other Civilizations"; is that all the History Department or does that include Anthropology and...
Browder: That's everybody, everybody who can contribute. If you call it world history, in other words, students have a choice between world history and other civilizations. It would be kind of hard, I think, for other departments to offer a world history course, but they might offer something that would cover other civilizations.
E. Nelson: Could it be something from music or something in poetry?
Roger Byrne: Could any of the courses that could be approved for the complex mandates also be available in the simple mandates section? In other words, could you double-dip between the simple mandates and the complex mandates?
Browder: No. Basically they specify very specifically. A course meets the requirement of one area. It can't be humanities or a social science in their one course mandates. Now, in the second course that is being proposed, yeah, we could double-dip all we want.
Byrne: So the simple mandates are such that you can't double-dip between group one, group two.
Browder: Yeah, I'm pretty sure about that.
Cheryl Drout: I'm not sure that that's entirely clear. They made it absolutely clear with regard to the humanities category, for example. It cannot overlap with any other area. I don't know that they've made it as clear, for example, in the social sciences. But they describe the social science category as an introduction to the social sciences, overviewing the methods of the social sciences and including applications and examples of the different concepts and models. So to do that thoroughly and try to cover something like America and Self, I think, would probably be difficult. As the second course, perhaps, but as a sole course that would probably be difficult to do.
Jan McVicker: One thing that could potentially happen, though, for this non-American history narrative course or the civilization courses, they could potentially be, it seems to me, at the 300-level. And that could feed back into what Michael was raising earlier that that section could potentially have something like two 200-level or 300-level courses, which may or may not need a specific prerequisite, but perhaps something from the simple mandates category could serve as an upper-division course.
Patrick Jones: Within the School of Music we already offer world music courses that could fit some of these requirements.
Peter Schoenbach: And American music.
Jones: And American Music. The issue becomes this, though. If our music history faculty are to take our current music history sequence and make them into an American History semester is going to fit this requirement. That pool is 530 students who are already going to take that course who won't have to get that course elsewhere.
Browder: Is there collateral demand on that course?
Peter Schoenbach: If they all took it at the same time.
Jones: But my point is, in terms of opening that type of course to the general campus, if they're not coming in with two years of music theory already behind them, and so and so forth, that they'd swim in it. So if we say yes this course can count in the GCP for students who can handle it and requiring music majors to take it, that's one thing. To say that this course is going to be open to everyone on campus, no, we don't have the faculty to do it. That becomes the issue, the degree of how open some of these upper division courses are. It would be the same thing in other areas.
Bob Rogers: Does the course have a prerequisite?
Peter Schoenbach: No.
Rogers: Will it end up having a prerequisite, then?
Schoenbach: I don't think so, what do you think?
Patrick Jones: Well it would depend on how the course...
Browder: Say you have a Music History Culture at a 100-level, but then you have your period pieces at...
Jones: Actually our history program is currently being redesigned. When I spoke to this person in charge of the Music History Program he said there would be no problem designing courses that meet these requirements. But to say that these are GCP courses open to everybody on campus would be kind of a false assumption.
Rogers: Would it be reasonable to have courses like those have as a prerequisite, say, sophomore standing?
Peter Schoenbach: They really do now.
Rogers: And if it's very well understood that you know life you come in on day one and you say this is what we expect you to know...
Schoenbach: You have to have the ability to be able to read music.
Rogers: So that would be one of the prerequisites.
Michael Grady: Could you have your first music theory course as a prerequisite?
Patrick Jones: Right. No, no, no. What I'm saying is that if we say this is in the GCP curriculum, it's open to everyone on campus.
Grady: But they still have to meet the prerequisites, so it would be mostly the music majors that would take care of their America and Self that way, and not too many other people would.
George Browder: But for instance you didn't offer any seats in American Music last year.
Schoenbach: We didn't offer the course last year. It will be offered this coming year. In something like World Music there is no prerequisite because there is no music to be read. This music is not written, so there's not that problem at all.
Larry Maheady: Since the last time we met, a few of us in the Education Department got together and tried to figure some stuff out. So there were three big issues I wanted to deal with. I mentioned last time that unless our students had the opportunity or freedom to move between the coursework in the GCP and their academic program, they're in trouble.
Just to give you a sense, an Elementary Ed Major on this campus without the General Ed requirements, has between 104 and 130 credits without the GCP. OK? So the way we've been able to get students to graduate with four elective courses over their four years was by allowing to double dip with the GCP and the concentration and so forth. We've put together a proposal that really is just the maximal model here with the Ed courses and with everything thrown into one big pot that we want to give to the committee to look at. I don't want to drive you crazy with that stuff now. We're certainly not advocating the maximal approach here, but we tried to fit it in the most demanding one and we can go from there.
And on the other two, I want feedback too because I'm not really sure here. I just ask that we think about it at some point. We use prerequisites and cutoffs scores with existing state tests to figure out generally how many people may have to take prerequisites. And part of what I was suggesting is both a procedural problem and conceptual. The New York State public school system has changed the rules. They've increased the difficulty level of all of their exams, plus with that, they are no longer scored on a percentage base. They're scored on group. So we're going to have to change that. On top of changing the difficulty level, for example, for each of the graduation areas everyone will be expected to take those exams, which means, probably in order to pass that passing score will probably drop significantly from what they've been in the past.
I don't know what that means in terms of people applying here. But many more people are going to pass the New York State tests in all of the areas, but they're going to pass because they're going to probably lower the cutoff scores, since many more people are taking them. So, I think, at some level, we need to explore what that means. For example, what if everybody does pass these more rigorous exams and come here supposedly better prepared? I mean, if that's one outcome, what does that mean? Just that we spend a little time thinking about that because I don't know what it means. It may be that lots more people are going to make prerequisites or the ones that do meet the prerequisites may be better prepared or not as well prepared, I don't know.
Bob Rogers: Is it reasonable, a question of the whole thought on this... I always toyed with the idea and I don't know how practical it is or reasonable or whatever, that when students are accepted into this college that somehow the faculty here put together some kind of booklet saying here's what we expect of you when you get in here. And it could be very specific in terms of saying, if you're going to get inside this kind of a course, say English 100, we expect that you can... and give examples. So then it's not a matter of looking at what they do on some test. Is it unrealistic to make the students responsible for what they know before they get into a course? And I don't know the answer to that...
Maheady: I really don't either, Bob.
Rogers: But that might address this.
Roger Byrne: In response to that question, currently if a student comes in here as a freshman as a Biology major, it's very likely the last time they ever had a Biology course was when they were fourteen. And asking them to recall material from four years prior is probably asking a little too much. And so a lot of our introductory courses are designed to bring them back up to where they were.
Rogers: That's OK, because when you get into those courses, then, you don't assume that they remember this stuff from Biology, so you certainly wouldn't put it in the booklet that we're expecting you know this. But is there anything wrong with putting in some booklet some expectation of what they are responsible for?
Minda Rae Amiran: About seven or eight years ago, I'm not sure exactly, there was a SUNY Taskforce convened to do this. And they produced a report called "College Expectations," which was to state what the SUNY system as a whole considered in each area that students should already know and be able to do in all the fields. That document exists and as far as I know it has never been revoked. If anybody is interested in doing this, they should look at that.
Rogers: I think that would be helpful, and not necessarily for the faculty, but for the students.
Larry Maheady: My only problem with prerequisites is, I think as we look at them, that they should be something that may be very fluid. That now we're saying well they're only going to need a six-hour prerequisite, there could be many more, or it could be less. I just don't know which way it's going to go.
Cheryl Drout: And it sounds as though you're suggesting, for example, that the foreign language department might need to reexamine their cutoffs for what meets 115 and 116.
Maheady: Exactly. At least that one. My reading of what's going on with the global studies state-wide test is people are getting pounded on it, the kids in school, so they're trying to find lower and lower cutoffs so at least the majority pass. So that rather than doing anything with the tests, they're trying to lower the standard so it doesn't look discriminatory or whatever. I think we just need to think about that, whichever model you go with. There may end up being more prerequisites or less.
And the only other thing that was brought up, and it really goes back to one of the assumptions of addressing the General Ed Program, one that your committee brought up, and that is that the faculty must believe that our college General Ed Program is at least as significant as any other program and deserves its fair share of resources. And to be real honest with you, in the Ed department, we don't have a senior in a class under 35. They're all in classes with 35 plus in their professional year, which is their methods program. It used to be 25, then it became 30, then it became became 35.
So, in our evaluation of resource implications, I understand that for sound pedagogical reasons we want to keep class size small at the intro level. We would like to see that same fair share distributed equitably across programs. We feel we have majors that are going through programs with 70 to 90 students throughout their program and in their professional year sitting with 35 plus. Anything that's going to take resources on campus is going to affect that. So, it's not that we're opposed to it, we just want to see the rule applied across the board. That there should be a fair share of resources at all levels.
Amanda Pecora: I am a communications major. We have so many credits right now that we have to take according to what he said in our majors that all these additional requirements that that Fredonia in Four thing is like getting blown out the window. Right now, it's hard enough to get classes that you need to fulfill your major in time to graduate on time. And like with all these extra classes, I understand it's going to make it more well rounded, and I think that's great, but I'm just worried that people aren't going to be able to graduate on time. And I know like today, I'm already taking two classes that I don't need for GCP or my major for this whole reason I needed fifteen credits to stay a full-time student. I mean I understand this whole GCP thing, but I think it might be more important to make sure that the classes are available that we need to fulfill these things. I mean I think there also might be a problem with the seniors taking lower level classes because they can't get into anything. So why, if you have to take an extra three-credit course just to be a full-time student, of course you're going to take a lower-level course if you can't use it for anything, just so you can get a good grade.
Bob Rogers: Did you take those courses because you couldn't get into the courses that you really wanted to get into?
Pecora: Yeah, well, it's not even that. What is offered this semester that I need that I can take, you know, without having prerequisites, was full, everything was full. Like all the sections were full.
Rogers: Those were GCP courses?
Pecora: No, I'm all done with my GCP's, I'm talking about major courses.
George Browder: The courses that you're taking as electives, are they GCP courses?
Pecora: A couple, maybe. Like I understand that they double-dip, but only Part I can be used for both our major and our GCP's, right?
Drout: It sounds like right now most of the problem is that we're not scheduling enough courses that you need in the major?
Pecora: It's both.
George Browder: And you have completed the GCP?
Pecora: Yes.
An unidentified student: I'm a French Major. I know a lot of people who come back from course selection and they get six credits and that's it. Then they have to take courses they've never heard of and they can't pass and they're not useful to them in their major or their GCP because they can't get into any other classes because we're freshman. And it happens when you're a freshman and a sophomore. I'm a freshman now, and I won't be coming back to the school next year. I have a lot of friends that are making their schedules and stuff and they can't get into anything and they're going to be sophomores. It's just you can't get into anything, and, if you keep adding more and more classes that you have to take, nobody is ever going to graduate from this school.
Rogers: I don't think it's a matter that we're adding courses that you have to take. What it is, is that I think what we're trying to do is put a structure in here so that the seniors that are taking up those spots who have no business being in there, won't be in there. If there is a course that they should be taken at the freshman level, you don't want a bunch of seniors in there. I mean, I think, what we're proposing is, trying to have some kind of flow to this so that it is more organized, so that you don't have, you know, these problems at registration. I'm not saying we're going to solve that, you know, there will probably always be problems. But I think the way it goes now, I think it's very hard to maintain any kind of control. I mean if part of it is keeping prerequisites, you know, saying that this introductory course really is an introductory course. Freshman should get first crack at it. Maybe a senior wants to go back and take them, but they shouldn't get first crack at it because this is really a course designed for that level.
Unidentified student: With respect to French classes, I know I wasn't allowed into certain ones because I took so many years in high school. I don't want to take an introductory French class. I want to be taking an intermediate level French class. It's pretty stupid. It should be like that for every subject whether it be biology or anything like that. Just because French is a different thing and structured and more specific thing, biology and sciences are open and you can take different sciences and stuff like that.
Larry Maheady: Just building on your comments, I think you can see the impact of the requirements that we have, in that the English Department has to offer multiple sections of EN 207, 209, 205, and 211 because we have a couple hundred English concentrations. The History Department has to offer multiple sections of 105, 106, because we have a couple hundred social studies people. So the problem is, sort of, that we're real restrictive already with a big chunk of our students. So they don't have much leeway, they try to take Novels and Tales, which there may be three sections of, but they're already full because everybody else is taking it. You know, I mean, then they come back and can't get it, so they'll go to the Math department where they've been adding sections for us over time. I think the proposal that we have should allow students more options to get things as long as we say structurally what they can do. We control it through the advising, but if it becomes fixed at any part and the School of Ed can't help students make all those decisions, then they're going to continue to get closed out of courses.
Chuck Telly: I just want to go back and graze the proposal here again. I just want to make the comment that it still seems to me that, despite of what George said, that maybe in the past when we did the GCP, they had to just go ahead and, you know, just go ahead, do it because it had to be done. But we know what our GCP is right now, we know the courses and we know the resources and I just have to just agree with Grady that we know what the resources are, so we know we can't have any more resources. And I'm hestitant, although I like very much to do what you guys want to do, it's very esoteric and I'd love to go ahead and do all these things you want to do, but the fact is...
George Browder: What is it that "we" want to do; I'm not quite sure.
Telly: Meaning the maximum...
Browder: There are alternatives!
Telly: There are alternatives; I understand that, but they all require more resources. I can't understand...
Bob Rogers: Wait a minute! I'm not convinced what costs anything anymore. Because when you get down to it, you have the same number of students, the same number of seats, they've got to take the same number of credits. I mean, how are you getting that it's more? Every body is saying more and I'm not convinced it's more.
Jane Romal: But it's the reallocation of resources. If somebody retires, another department that has one of these requirements is going to get that line and so it is a reallocation of resources.
Rogers: Maybe it will be more efficient.
Chuck Telly: Yeah, but the "maybe" is what bothers me. I mean...
Rogers: If we don't do anything they'll definitely not be any more efficient because you won't do it.
Cheryl Drout: If there is an option that doesn't involve reallocation, we haven't seen it. I mean, even if we try to retain parts III.A and parts III.B, they don't just naturally become western civ and world civ...
Telly: But if we go, let's say that we go to the maximum plan.
George Browder: Let's don't.
Telly: That is a tremendous reallocation of resources. If we go to the minimal plan, there is still a reallocation.
Bill Graebner: Is that true? Is there more reallocation under the maximal?
Bob Rogers: I think it's not a reallocation, it's a matter of you have to add on resources because everybody is getting everything in.
Browder: There are significant reallocations under the minimal program. We cannot avoid them.
Jan McVicker: There are automatically a few resource implications in the minimal model. The resource implications are already changed because of the Trustees.
Michael Doctor: I don't agree with the fact that it is status quo, through. Each year there is a large enrollment at this school which is creating more students and we are saving the same amount of seats, which is causing our registration problems. And we're asking for one or two things. We're asking for more hours, which is going to put a greater time and financial burden on the student or you're asking for a minor. I've been thinking of doing a minor in Journalism next year, and I was looking at an extra 18 hours. I simply cannot go for more than four years and there are a lot of students like me that simply cannot afford to go over four years. We have to be out, we have to be in the workforce starting a job.
Rogers: But who said there were going to be more hours?
Doctor: If you're going to implement the higher level courses, then there are automatically going to be more hours.
Rogers: No, not if you get rid of some of the ones that you don't need.
Cheryl Drout: In the Psychology Department, it's just one major for example, but we have a 30 hour upper-level requirement. Certainly native students who start at Fredonia have no problem at all meeting that requirement. Some transfers do have to look closely at courses they take especially those who come in with over 60 hours and they have to monitor that to make sure, but they certainly can complete that upper level requirement. We don't have to talk about specific numbers, but I think it is possible to have an upper-level requirement without necessarily causing students to take additional credit hours.
Doctor: Well, another scenario is, as was already said, opening up higher level courses to GCP enrollment makes it more difficult for majors to get into the courses that they need. So there will come a time, I've already had it happen three times, that I've had to take electives as opposed to taking a required. You're forced to pick a course that you would not normally even consider taking or expending the energy or the money on because it's closed out. And that's going to happen more and more often as you open up these courses to the GCP.
Jackie Swansinger: I was just going to say a couple of things which pick up on points that a number of people have already mentioned. But the first one is in particular we have been looking at two programs that are heavily impacted in terms of credits: Education and Music Ed, if you need another example, Social Studies Ed, all of those, and in those particular cases a number of states are already moving towards five-year professional programs and that, in some ways, they are bad examples to use for our GCP because the constraints are being set up by state ed. Departments all over the place and so they are kind of different from the case we are looking at here. When you're looking at a BA program or a BS program, it's pretty clear you have to take seventy-five hours or sixty-five hours outside your major. There your biggest problem is not your GCP, it's picking your electives. And a couple comments have been made which kind of argue that picking electives that have nothing to do with your GCP or your major are a waste of time. Actually no, that's the basis of a liberal arts education. If that's a waste of your time, part of the issue is, perhaps, that you don't want a four-year college. And I think that needs to be said as well, because that's a piece of this.
Additionally, I'd like to pick up on a conversation that's been going on with a number of you. I think it's really important to consider resources, but I would also agree with Ruth's point. If we don't have a quality GCP, then we might as well go to the BOT and let the Trustees tell us what to do, period. Because obviously, it's either our curriculum or the legislature's. And I think if there is anything we do put into this institution, it's our commitment to our fields and to our disciplines and to our work. I don't necessarily agree with all the various programs that are being submitted, but I really don't want to make resources the only basis for deciding which program we go on, although I do understand that reallocation is highly, highly problematic.
George Browder: As we pointed out in the coversheet, the overview, yeah, we have to meet the Board of Trustees mandated 30 hours, which is smaller than our present GCP, by next year. But what we do with the upper level we do not have to settle on right now. We can worry about that after we see the consequences of meeting the Board of Trustees mandates.
Michael Grady: I just want to point out that I think one thing is that the more categories you have, the more you have a scheduling problem with students getting into classes because they need one from each category. So it's better to keep it as broad and as simple as you can. So that's, that's one point. The other point is that I do think, at least, I know some places where there are empty seats in some of the upper-level classes in some majors. And so if you could encourage more students to minor you will fill some of those seats and that will have, like, positive resource implications, because it will free-up resources that can be used to add sections for the increased number of students and that kind of thing. So there is almost a positive benefit to encouraging minors.
Bob Rogers: I do think, though, that when I teach Advanced Calculus, MA 420, you could do whatever you want but it ain't gonna increase the number of people in that course. People are not going to take that course, just not even minors. No. It's not required of minors.
Grady: If you offered it in a minor as an option....
Rogers: They could take it as option in a minor, but they aren't going to take it. That's all there is to it.
Minda Rae Amiran: In regard to resources, almost everything that we've said today has been a little untrue because the situation is very complex. It is very different for different departments. And I certainly agree, I mean the definition of what an upper-level course is is very different for different departments. The availability of seats is different for different departments and things have been said about our increasing students and not increasing seats and that's not true. It's just a very complex picture and I don't think though that we should focus on it in regard to the GCP except to say this: I would hate to see us miss out on the possibility of having the interesting, creative kinds of courses that the present committee has been thinking about. I think that to make the courses that have multiple prerequisites will be very problematic for traffic, but to have some of them... I would hate to see us go with the BOT minimum and loose all those possibilities.
The other thing, which ties in with this, is that one way to mitigate the history and foreign language resource problem is to have categories of courses in which a great many departments can contribute, which is one of the benefits of our existing GCP. And the more that there is flexibility, say in Self and America so that it could be a literature course, it could be a poly sci course, it could be an interdisciplinary course, intro to woman's studies could fit that category, the more that that is possible in whatever GCP the college adopts, the less severe will the resource implications be. Because you're right, but to some extent we're talking about a given number of students and a given number of classes and not more, but it is the question of where these seats are, and,, to the extent that they can be anywhere, we will be better served.
Dennis Hefner: Minda Rae said a lot of what I was going to say, and it seems to me that we have a possibility of putting together a program that, quite frankly, should be meeting the educational needs that we are looking at for this campus, and shouldn't be solely dependant upon resources. Obviously resources are a consideration, but not the only consideration. And as I've looked at this sheet, which is kind of a smorgasbord of items to select from, I mean, obviously we've got 18 credits that are system mandates that I think there is agreement on, I at least agree with the top six. I think those are pretty straightforward. Then you get into the complex mandates, which are four basic subject areas. I figure maybe that's 12 credits or whatever it comes out to be, whichever the options are. I think it will be tough to do Western Civ. and the History of all other civilizations in one three-credit course. That seems to me to be stretch, so it looks to me like we're looking at, at least 12 as a minimum, to get started.
Personally, I'd like to see a year of foreign language, although we might want to phase that in over several years because I know that this is going to require a test. And it's true, even students who have had a couple years of high school foreign language, if they don't do the foreign language their senior year, they get here on campus and they take the test and all of a sudden they're way back earlier than they could have been. I think we need to be careful with that one, but I think it's one to look at. But then you go beyond that that would be a minimum of 30 credits.
We're currently at 36 and there is no reason we couldn't add a course or two if we really wanted to to our GCP program. So if there were, say, as it was suggested earlier, an additional natural science and social science, which would add six credits there, that would still leave six credits of upper division work. It could be very innovative and unique to this particular campus. And for transfer students coming in, I think they should be taking some capstone general education program. So I think as you look at these areas, there probably should be a little something from the simple, the complex, so many additional, and so many upper-division. At least that would be my suggestion.
Browder: We only have 10 minutes left unless we are going to extend this meeting, and aside from that we are facing a May meeting in which we are going to have to come to a decision, unless you decide on something else. So I guess at this point, we'd better decide on what we are going to do from here. Do you just want to show up in May and vote on something?
Bill Graebner: Isn't there some consensus for avoiding the maximal model? That moves us along; the president seems to be in agreement. Also, I would say that maybe the committee's mandate ought to be to, say, design the whole thing for 36 hours and see what you can do with 36 hours.
Browder: We don't just all of a sudden design this stuff. Every time we design something, everybody takes shots at it. So it's at this point where you guys are going to decide.
Bob Rogers: Actually one of the things that we originally talked about, having the broad categories of courses. Jeez, after that got shot down, and I just heard that maybe we ought to have something like that.
Minda Rae Amiran: That was the elaborate structure of prerequisites. That's what got shot down.
Jan McVicker: At this point, can I just ask, if we came up with feedback from this meeting and other resources and presented a 36 hour program with the stipulation that for some students they will need to add more because they may not have the minimal prerequisites that we are going to assume, would that be something that the campus would take into consideration and not immediately just shoot it down because for some students it would be greater than 36 hours? Even to do what President Hefner just said would potentially be already more than 36 hours.
Dennis Hefner: That would be 42 roughly.
McVicker: I can't conceive of us coming back to the campus with something that didn't do that.
Bill Graebner: Yeah, sure. I think so.
Ted Steinberg: I hope that the committee in doing this will design courses that really are general education courses and that aren't new ways of recycling Intro to Biology, Intro to Psych, and things things like that. Let's have a new program of courses that really are general education.
Bob Rogers: Well, we won't design the courses.
Steinberg: You will define the categories.
McVicker: I thought that's what we did for the very first meeting. I guess nobody liked that.
Browder: Do you really think we're going to go away from here today with what we've clabbered through this time and come back with a redesigned program?
Steinberg: Well, what are you coming to the May meeting with?
Browder: That's what we're asking you.
Steinberg: Then the answer is, yes. [laughter]
Cheryl Drout: I think given the progress today, it would be helpful to have another special session two weeks from today.
Larry Maheady: I think we'd just like to meet with somebody or anybody from the committee to clean up our mess there.
Drout: If we met two weeks from today that would give the committee the opportunity to meet with Education and some of those who brought proposals forward today to try and find a common ground. Would it be reasonable for us to then hold another special session?
Browder: I don't think we're going to deal with the problem of impacting departments first and at the same time, we've got to come up with the general program and then talk about how it affects...
Maheady: Wait a minute, I think what we need to talk with the committee about is just what we're proposing. It doesn't make sense to you, knowing what you know from the state, because if it doesn't fit then we have a problem with all three models and we wouldn't be able to support any.
Marcus Vink: Before we let the committee try to redesign the program, I think they should have an idea what we think of the complex mandates. I brought it up earlier, and we didn't really talk about it. And so I think it would make more sense than putting everything back to the committee and having them come back and basically start from scratch again.
Browder: Beyond that, the additional courses, starting with the languages, what is your sense of a realistic target for implementation, fall of 2001? Do we start there at 115; do we start there at 116? What do we do?
Nancy Boynton: To me, and I think we always all think that what we did when we were in college is what makes sense, but a semester seems like nothing. Two years seems a little overwhelming at this point. So it seems to me that like a year with, you know, placement wherever makes a lot of sense. After we've run with something like that, you know, we may decide we want to do something different. But I'd like to require 116 in language.
Jane Romal: Well, I don't know how we can make that decision without knowing what resources this is going to cost. George knows how many seats are going to be required for the American History things, why can't we find out how many seats this is going to require. Because this is going to cost a lot of...
Bob Rogers: Why can't we try to put a program together and then see how much it costs, instead of trying to see how much it costs first without having a program?
Bill Graebner: They want to know how much it costs before you put it together, because once you put it together it's harder to change. It's the politics.
Rogers: We can't answer that. If it's put together, that's not saying it's going to be accepted.
Ruth Antosh: Well, I think I'd like to just share with this group that I've been in contact with a colleague at Geneseo, and the sense at Geneseo is that they are looking at a four-semester language requirement and they don't appear terribly worried about finding the resources. Now I don't know if Geneseo is wildly richer than we are, but I think we should also consider how we're going to look in that eternal competition, because what I would argue is that the 115-116 sequence it is basically high school level. It is remedial, and we offer it at the college level for those people who have not happened to take a foreign language at the high school level or who want to take a third foreign language. But we basically consider that not college level.
George Browder: Geneseo is fat and happy because they didn't decimate their foreign language program in the seventies like we did. So this looks good for them; it doesn't look good for us. Foreign language, we have figures, they're on the webpage, the foreign language department estimates 75 extra spaces in order to mandate 116 as the max for everybody.
Cheryl Drout: One of the difficulties here is that it is not clear what the guidelines are going to be from the Provost's Advisory Council on General Education. That's one of the things that have made our job difficult. We initially were hearing that we would be able to use Regents scores to place students in foreign language. And based on Regents scores, we would have quite a few students who would test out of even the 116 level entering Fredonia. And so there would be very little impact even in requiring 116. But recently, we are hearing that there will have to be a local placement test in addition to the Regent's scores. Now a local placement test has a whole different impact because students take the Regents tests at different times in their background. They may be much be further away from their foreign language study when they come to the campus and take a local placement test here.
Transfers also introduce another difficult question. We've attempted to look at transfers, but many of them we don't have high school background on, so we haven't been able to judge the level at which they would enter with foreign language. So the committee feeling was that the year is a beginning of a reasonable requirement with the expectation that we would like to revisit the requirement at a later point and perhaps move it up to 215-216. But we saw 116 as a basic respectable requirement that we felt we could probably manage with the resources that we have.
Ruth Antosh: I understand the opportunity, but I just wanted to make a pedagogical point that essentially that that is material that most students should have covered in high school.
George Browder: We find 116 as an embarrassing requirement and we're going to look bad vis-à-vis Geneseo until we finally get ourselves back in gear in teaching foreign languages.
Dennis Hefner: Hold it, George. I think we are even in worse shape now because we require no foreign language. We have not required a foreign language. Geneseo has, in fact, had a foreign language in their GE program for many, many years and so they are not starting from a base of zero. We are starting from a base of zero. So 'm not worried about how we look relative to them. I just think if we're going to move on this, we need to move in a realistic manner, which is one of the reasons I have suggested to the committee that we look at 115 and two years out when we actually have experience, because in California, I was there when we put a test in. We found students were frequently taking three years of high school foreign language, during their senior year not taking foreign language, came to the campus, and they were placed into the first semester course. You can't go based on the number of years they've had in high school when you put that test in. The system has come out and said they are requiring campuses to put a test in place for placement of the students. And so I think it really is an unknown. I think it's one we need to move on, but I think it's one we need to move on in a realistic manner.
Nancy Gee: OK, we're approaching the 5:30 time slot, so I have to interject here. I have to ask you what you want to do? Do you want an extra session? Do you want to hold this and just try to get it in in the May meeting? Do you want to extend this meeting?
George Browder: Are you going to have other business in May?
Gee: We are going to have a substantial amount of other business in May.
Jan McVicker: Can I just say that, at least from where I'm sitting on the committee, I still need more feedback from people about, sort of, step by step issues. Partly that are driven by the Trustees mandates, and partly in what will be the big debate about how much more natural and social science and what level of foreign language we actually approve for the campus, and what we want to do with upper division integration kind of stuff. That's where the meat of this argument is going to come, and it cannot come in my estimation at the May meeting. As a committee, I have very little sense of where the campus is in those really difficult issues. I know where some people stand.
Bill Graebner: One of the problems is that every meeting starts from scratch, you know. You're better of holding a two-hour meeting, because the second hour is where you finally get down to the brass tacks, you know?
McVicker: So if we had another special session to talk about those substantive issues and everybody get information back from their department.
Jon Kraus: I understand what you're saying, and obviously you need feedback. I think you should invite us, we should respond by giving you suggestions relative to what our thoughts are on where you are now. While the open forum is very good for articulating things, it's not good for drafting things, for readjusting the remaining suggestions in ways which they need to fit. We can do that in written format and submit it to the committee, which is not something we can do with the open forum.
George Browder: That still is not going to tell is if we've got 20 or 30 different comments where you're going to come down on Foreign Language 115 or Foreign Language 215. It's just not going to tell us. We've gone through this three or four times now.
Kraus: With regard to that. I think whatever you give us at the May meeting, you can structure specific choices. We have this choice; we have that choice...
Nancy Gee: OK, I need a motion to continue the meeting until 6:00.
Swansinger: I move that we continue the meeting until six o'clock
The motion was seconded and approved unanimously.
Jackie Swansinger: I was just going to suggest maybe we could merge the two concepts. Because we wouldn't be able to have a special meeting next Monday, but the Monday after that, so give us two weeks in which to give some written response to the committee. Have them take a look and possibly see what main arguments are coming out, and then we can have the special meeting and discuss it here. That's a motion.
Cheryl Drout: The motion was that we'd use the next two weeks to actually make written comments in terms of the second half of the proposal, not the simple mandates, but the complex mandates, the additional draft of the lower division and the additional intermediates?
Jan McVicker: You all wouldn't have a full two weeks to do that if we're coming back with it.
George Browder: It takes us a week to digest what you give us.
Jan McVicker: Maybe by the Wednesday of next week, so we would still have a couple of days to turn something back. Tuesday or Wednesday?
Penny Chiappe: One of the things that I've found at these meetings of the faculty is that we meander a lot. I'd like to suggest that it might help with getting feedback if we had specifics: should the requirement be formatted to 115 or 116? Should this and that?
Cheryl Drout: That's how it's been set up.
McVicker: That's really what we thought would happen today.
Chiappe: If comments followed this structure, it might help focus feedback in a way that is most helpful to the committee. Then we'd also have a section for other comments. I'm sure you'll get plenty.
Patrick Jones: Is it reasonable to say that along those lines, that as we've been discussing, 215 seems to not be something we're ready to jump into at this point, but 115 and 116 seem desirable? So, at this point is it good for us to strike 215 from the sheet?
Jane Romal: No.
Patrick Jones: No?
Bob Rogers: You already have a three-year kick-in period.
Jan McVicker: And that's probably why this process is good because we hear from all sides of the campus the campus the pro's and con's on these various issues.
Bob Rogers: At the risk of kind of digressing a bit, because I've been hearing comments. In foreign language there is this idea that this is a living-breathing thing that could change from year to year. A lot of people, from the comments I get, have this feeling that we're going to get together a GCP program and we're never going to look at it again for 30 years. Get that notion out of your head. This is something that is going to continually evolve. So when people say, "Well, that won't work," maybe we will find out it doesn't work and maybe then we will come back and say we need to change. Maybe we won't have resources for that. Maybe we'll say we have to allocate in a different way. Because people seem to get this idea that it's going to get set in stone and that's it. And I think that, in a lot of cases, is what's wrong with the present GCP that people identified. When it was put together it had an entirely different attitude to it than it does now and you cannot wait fifteen years to be looking at it and saying, "Hey does this fit?," because it's not even the same program anymore.
Dick Reddy: I'd just like to make an observation on that. It strikes me that we are going to be in a very fluid situation for a period of time. We don't know, and probably won't know with a high degree of accuracy what the Board of Trustees, the Provost, whomever you want to blame, their dimensions on, what those are going to be. That's an uncertainty. I believe it's likely to be an uncertainty in May. You know, we really won't know for sure what we're approving and it will be a process of our either negotiating or capitulating or whatever it may be with respect to those sorts of things. But we will be approving something, regardless of whether we can take action or not May, which will not be terribly certain.
One of the things that's also going to be true, I suspect, is that we are going to have to approve something that displays our intentions, our directions, to a degree maybe, even our aspirations. But that will also be part of a flow, which you are suggesting, Bob. So that one of the difficulties I think we all have at this stage is that we know we must do some things. It's unclear how much we actually can do, and it's unclear where precisely some of that is going to be leading us. That creates all these, in mathematics or statistics it's called degrees of freedom, and, you know, the more of them you have the less clear the situation is. That is, I think, unfortunately, where we are at this point.
Cheryl Drout: I think continuing discussion, though, does help us to move in a direction. It does help the committee to get a sense of the campus consensus even if we didn't finalize the program.
Roger Byrne: I'd like to get a clarification of the actual timeline here. What we are discussing at the present time is for implementation in the Fall of 2001. Is that correct? Our deadline for getting that in is essentially when we get the college catalog printed for that particular academic year.
George Browder: No, it's tighter than that. It's tighter than that. You've got to schedule those classes in January of 2001. In order to do that, they have to be approved and developed between May and January.
Byrne: Next month?
Browder: This May and January is the developmental and approval time. So go figure what the timetable is.
Nancy Gee: Maybe we should talk about procedure. Are we going to have a special session in two weeks? Is the committee requesting that?
Browder: Yes!
Gee: OK, so I'll see if I can get this room two weeks from today. What about feedback? How are we going to go about that? Is there a deadline set for that for the committee?
Browder: Tuesday.
Gee: Tuesday, a week from tomorrow for feedback.
Browder: A week from tomorrow.
Gee: OK. So who's supposed to provide the feedback.
Browder and Drout: Anyone.
Gee: And where should the feedback be sent?
Browder: To Cheryl, the chair of the committee.
Gee: So send it to Cheryl.
Michael Grady: Can I make just one more suggestion? Somebody sort of mentioned this: the difference between a BA and a BS degree. Maybe we should have a different GCP for a BA and BS degree. It's just another idea, especially as far as the foreign language is concerned. Maybe a BA degree should have a higher level of foreign language than a BS degree.
Bob Rogers: I think that's up to the majors that are offering it.
Ruth Antosh: Well, I'd just like to respond to that and say that I think, as a whole, one of our responsibilities as an institution is to prepare our students for the global workplace. And I think we're just kidding ourselves if we think that students from every major wouldn't do well to know the basic elements of a foreign language. And the other point I would just like to answer having to do with the idea of a minimal 115 requirement. I personally would say don't bother having a language requirement at all, because it's just a joke. A comparison might be teaching arithmetic and you teach addition, but you don't teach subtraction. Don't even bother if it's going to be a 115, because that's not even half the book. So the students haven't learned a meaningful amount of material.
Patrick Jones: I don't think anybody is saying that our students not learning a language is not important. I speak another language and I think that's very important. But I do think that we've talked resource in terms of funding and faculty lines, but we also need to talk about resource in terms of the student contact hours in addition to their credit hours. The reality is that we have professional degree programs where there is just not this space. There is not the space that there is 75 hours outside the major in a BA. It just doesn't exist in those programs. So I think that's maybe a wise thing for us to consider. That there is a one-year language requirement for all students, 115 and 116, but within the BA there is a second...
George Browder: This is the kind of flexibility we have with impacted programs. That is really not the question. We can't make that kind of adjustment with the impacted programs.
Minda Rae Amiran: Establishing different programs for different degrees, that gets to be a total nightmare. Quite apart from the fact that I think it's educationally indefensible. You look at universities that have very aggressive GCP's and then it turns out that those are actually general college requirements only for four percent of their students who are purely in the arts and humanities or in the humanities. And that everybody else, for some miraculous reason, especially accounting majors and god knows who, are actually taking a very small, very limited GCP. I think that is educationally indefensible, and I would hate to see us going that way.
But administratively it's also a nightmare because students switch from BA programs to BS programs back and forth, why go on? And I'm sure within the School of Music people change programs; people get taken out of a B.M. program and put into a B.A. program, etc., etc. It's just pointless. I think we should go for a 36 credit program for everybody because we know that that has worked here and if we can go up a little, fine. That depends on the practicality.
Larry Maheady: I would argue that it hasn't worked here. It has worked here for many people, but it hasn't worked for a significant number of the population that has no electives and who struggle every semester to get through. So there are professional programs on campus that require students to take 70 hours outside of their major and I would argue that those are more defensible or at least as defensible as existing programs. I think there are professional programs that need to opt out, or at least have significant input on what goes into the general ed program. Otherwise, we are going to treat students differentially within the program. We are going to eliminate electives for students and we're going to just mandate everything that they take from the time they come in. Plus, we're going to delay the time to graduation for anybody that transfers internally or externally.
Cheryl Drout: If there are 70 hours outside the major and they're allowed to broadly overlap the general ed requirements, there shouldn't be any...
Jan McVicker: I absolutely agree with you guys.
Maheady: That's what I'm saying. When we talk about it, I think it's fine, but I think...
Browder: We need some clarification on some other things, for instance...
Joan Burke: I have a suggestion about number seven. I really like the description in your proposal, the second proposal for the America and Self. I don't like the title either and I recommend something like American Institutions and the Individual, sort of focus it, but it's not quite as personal. And I do think George was talking the number of seats that were required. I do think that English would be able to accommodate many of those seats, or offer a lot of those seats because we already have American Literature offerings that would qualify. That would not be a burden to us at all.
Browder: I've counted a number of your courses as potentially being used.
Mara Goodman: I just have a general concern that, although we're voicing a lot of good comments, and it's constructive in that respect, we've got a specific deadline. And I would like to see us spend a few minutes discussing specifically, structurally how we're going to handle the next special meeting so we can get to that point. And I think we need to specifically decide if we're going to spend a certain amount of time on each point and get to a certain conclusion before we move forward. Because I don't see realistically, in this type of format all we're doing is frustrating the hell out of our committee and everybody else probably and I think we just need to decide exactly how we're going to handle this so we arrive at a problem-solving, constraining type of solution.
Bob Rogers: Thanks.
Jan McVicker: Well, I don't know, from the committee's point of view, I would absolutely want a vote up or down on which level foreign language. That has to happen; that has to happen as a campus.
Nancy Gee: We could treat each item separately and we could vote up or down. We could do that, if you want to do it that way.
McVicker: Everybody should count on at least an hour and a half.
Browder: We just go through each item one at a time and the chair keeps everybody on the item and off peripheral issues.
Gee: I'll do it if you want me to. OK, that's the plan for two weeks from today.
Marcus Vink: To add elaboration to that, we haven't had the committees recommendations for point 7 and 9 of the complex mandates. As far as point 8 goes, I think we should take the recommendation: Western Civ and World History or Other Civilizations. So we're talking here about six credits. I would just want to leave that as food for thought for discussion next time.
George Browder: And I'd like to move you on to the question of the natural sciences. Do we have two introductions to the natural sciences, or do we have one introduction to the natural sciences and some other kind of course like what we call scientific thinking, which is designed to build on an introductory level and go beyond that?
Roger Byrne: The natural science chairs are pretty unanimous on wishing to see breadth in the natural sciences rather than depth.
Browder: Why? Give us the reason.
Byrne: Because we feel that science itself is, and natural science is, a very broad area. Students who are pursuing it for a general education purpose ought to have an experience in more than just one area of science and then than moving on to a more defined set of courses.
Browder: It's a good argument, but let me play the devil's advocate and tell you what you guys told us when we met with you. You told us that one semester college-level introductions to the sciences, especially in chemistry and physics were no different significantly than what they were able to acquire in a year in high school. You know, you try to be a little bit more sophisticated, just like we do in introductory history courses which repeat the material. If all we're doing is giving them two courses which are sort of just, you know, a little bit better than high school level, are we really giving them something that enables them to understand science? Is that the reason they're leaving us saying they don't feel like they really understand science after being at Fredonia?
Byrne: I don't know why they're saying that. My personal feeling is that we have to do a better job teaching science. We have to a better job teaching, certainly in my area, a better job of teaching Intro to Biology and the other introductory courses in that area in order to better service the students and so they don't have that particular feeling about their science education here. I don't see that you are going to necessarily achieve that by moving from broader based, two introductory disciplinary courses into a sequence of courses which has its own particular logistical problems, which we won't get into.
Browder: So if we don't change the requirement, what is going to induce this more effective two courses?
Byrne: I'm sorry, George, what was your question?
Browder: Well, well, you said, and I would say this about every discipline, but you said, "we've got to improve the quality of what we're teaching in these two courses." If the requirement is not changed in some way, what is going to induce us to offer courses that are different from the two courses that are currently being offered or taken?
Byrne: This is something that the faculty in the individual departments has to decide upon. We are also learning as we go as to what the response of the students are to the scientific component in the general education curriculum. We are not particularly happy knowing that they do not like or did not learn a whole lot in their science courses. We are going to be working to try and improve that. I'm going to again divert a little bit. In the area of science, we can't cover the same course two years in a row; it's very difficult to offer the same content two years in a row, especially in certain areas of biology that have just changed dramatically over the last five years. In other areas of science, I'm sure there is a similar sense that every year is different. That there is a dramatic difference in the quantity of knowledge and the technicality of that knowledge.
For a general education perspective, we feel that there is some argument in favor of your original proposal. But we feel, in general, that we would do better of our students if we were to give them a broader base of current knowledge in science, and current thinking in sciences, and current methods in science, rather than try to go to a more specific area. It's very interesting and, believe me, we've had some discussions as to what sort of courses we could offer at the second level are. They are very exciting but in terms of what's best for the general education student, we still come down in favor of the breadth argument.
Browder: So the best of all possible worlds would be two introductory courses and...
Byrne: And also a minor in science, yeah.
Michael Grady: As far as the idea of prerequisites, I don't think if the first course is in one discipline and then the scientific thinking course is in a second discipline, there is very little that the second person can assume that they learned in the first course. So it really isn't going to help. There really isn't going to be a higher level. Well, you might as well say, "Just take that second course without the first course."
Bob Rogers: In mathematics there is a term called mathematical maturity, which nobody can define. All you can say is I know and somebody has it. Mathematical maturity does not mean that they took certain courses, that means that they think in a certain way, that they analyze in a certain way, and this is something that I cannot give you a definition of what mathematical maturity is. But it seems to me that if you talk about scientific maturity, when students come out of two sciences as they are now, they are not scientifically mature in any way. If you're going to say that that's were they stop, then I say that's not a general education program. They cannot open up the New York Times science page and understand the ramifications of what's going on. I don't know what the answer is, but I'll tell you that what it is now is not it. They are not mature.
Byrne: The alternative to that Bob is to have one course in natural sciences.
Rogers: I didn't say one course. I said one course and I said another one which is of a more sophisticated level. You'll cover less content that's for sure.
Byrne: But in the original proposal, the course sequence, the second course would be from "any discipline".
Jan McVicker: That's not, that's not accurate. We envisioned that as something that would be offered by any of the natural science departments and potentially philosophy, if we had somebody who could teach a philosophy of science course.
Rogers: That category has certain goals that it has, certain aspirations. That fact of the matter is, it seems to me that, if you're going to have broad based categories that have certain goals, it doesn't matter what courses are in there as long as they fulfill the goals. But certainly, I know, let's be realistic about this, if this is going to be scientific reasoning, then the courses that fulfill that goal are going to have to have some kind of deep scientific reasoning to it. But, but I do think, and this is personal, I do not think that these students are going to come out with any more scientific knowledge by giving them more content. To me, that's like saying, "Well if somebody is stone deaf, why don't you turn up the volume some?"
Nancy Gee: OK, can we take the last five minutes and talk about what to expect at the next meeting? First of all, I just want things to be a little bit organized. So the committee will have feedback by Tuesday. Then, will the committee be formulating motions upon which we will act? Is that the plan?
Cheryl Drout: I would think that what we would do at the beginning of that next meeting would be to present additional consensus. We started this meeting with what looked like about 18 to 21 hours fairly agreed upon. So I would think we would get the input from everyone between now and then and try to take it to the next step.
Gee: Will you, as a committee, have information that can be sent out to everyone prior to the meeting?
Drout: I don't know.
Gee: Can we send it electronically?
Jackie Swansinger: If it were a matter of days before the meeting. But it couldn't be a week before the meeting, because we are going to get input in another week.
Gee: So, in other words, everyone here should plan to come and digest the information at the meeting.
George Browder: If you can get something out electronically to the Senate members, we may be able to get it out a day or two before the meeting, like Friday, if people are willing to study this over the weekend. But I can't guarantee it, because we don't know what we are going to get.
Cheryl Drout: When we say, go through it step by step and vote, we're not talking about final vote, we're talking about a consensus.
Gee: Getting a consensus.
Browder: A formulation of what we will vote on in May.
Gee: So we won't have to have a quorum for that kind of vote.
Browder: Yah, right.
Gee: Gottcha.
Nancy Boynton: Are we looking to encourage other people to respond to you or just Senate members?
Jan McVicker: If people can funnel their comments to their Senate reps...
Steve Stahl: One thing that you haven't considered and it's in the deadline is that the Wednesday after the Tuesday is the next round of chairs meetings as well as a joint chairs meeting. If the committee could wait until Thursday then going through the chairs and through the deans to the chairs would be a way of winnowing down the discourse you'll be getting. It would be putting off two more days.
Cheryl Drout: The difficulty with that is that the committee meeting times have been Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Browder: Do we get overtime for working on the weekend?
Jan McVicker: This is not in record toward your discipline, Steve, simply because he raised the issue. If there were faculty who disagreed with something their department chair or the consensus of their department I think I would still want to hear that comment, and if it wasn't being generated by chairs...
Stahl: Then basically you'll want to hear from every faculty member.
Cheryl Drout: Why don't we put it this way? We would like to hear from everyone as much as possible on Tuesday. We would certainly be interested in additional input from the Wednesday meeting that we would consider on Thursday. We'll meet Tuesday and Thursday and perhaps at other times, but we don't want to wait until we get input from every single person.
Browder: We won't close the door, but we've got to get to work on Tuesday.
3. The meeting was adjourned at 5:57PM
Attendance:
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Ruth Antosh
[x] Joan Burke
[ ] Joseph Chilberg
[x] Scott Johnston
[x] Patrick Jones
[x] Jeanette McVicker
[ ] Karen Mills-Courts
[x] Elizabeth Nelson
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[ ] Ted Schwalbe
[x] Theodore Steinberg
[x] Jackie Swansinger
[x] Markus Vink
Ex. Officio:
[ ] Tracy Bennett
[ ] Charles Davis
[ ] Michael Dimitri
[ ] Len Faulk
[x] Nancy Gee
[x] Dennis Hefner
[x] Arlene Hibschweiler
[ ] Jean Malinoski
[x] Mae Reck
[x] Dick Reddy
[x] Paul Schwartz
[ ] Mojtaba Seyedian
[x] Stephen Stahl
Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies:
[x] Ziya Arnavut
[x] Nancy Boynton
[ ] Adam Brown
[x] Roger Byrne
[x] Penny Chiappe
[x] Mara Goodman
[x] Michael Grady
[x] Jon Kraus
[ ] David Ludlam
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Jane Romal
[ ] Amin Sarkar
[x] Cynthia Smith
[x] Charles Telly
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[ ] Jean Branicky
[ ] Carolyn Briggs
[x] Mike Conley
[ ] Vince Courtney
[x] Marianne Eimer
[ ] Karen Klose
[ ] Patrick Mandia
[ ] Kevin Michki
[ ] Charlotte Morse
[ ] Carol Schwerk
[ ] Martha Smith
[ ] Soteris Tzitzis
[ ] Anna Zarczynski
Student Association:
[ ] Andrew Fidurko
[ ] Shamus Hayes
[ ] Heather Koski
[ ] Emily Palumbos
[ ] Diana Ruiz
[x] Pam Wright
Guests:
Peter Schoenbach
Jerry Sun
Amanda Ferger
George Browder
Liza Smith
Minda Rae Amiran
Ricardo Miranda
Christine Henseler
Bill Graebner
Joshua White
Sandi Brown
Kelley Butler
Lenore Loft
Ryan Pais
Kyle Lewis
Minutes prepared by College Senate Secretary, Dick Reddy, with the assistance of Michael Anton Sciortino