College Senate
Minutes of the Meeting of October 2nd, 2000
Chair Gee called the meeting to order at 4:05PM.
1. The agenda was approved unanimously.
2. The minutes of the September 11th, 2000 meeting were approved by a majority vote with one opposed.
3. Chairperson Nancy Gee (Chairperson's report):
We're now going to hold the elections for the offices of Chairperson and Vice Chairperson of the College Senate.
We'll start with the Chairperson. We have one name in nomination: Jackie Swansinger. I would now like to open up the floor for any other nominations, and they can be self-nominations if you wish.
Hearing no nominations, Jackie is officially elected. [applause]
OK, for the Vice Chairperson, we have Patrick Jones in nomination. I would now like to open the floor for any other nominations.
Hearing none, Patrick is elected. [applause]
I would like to remind you that we are still looking for someone to run for Secretary of the College Senate, so please ask around and get some names to Charlie Davis.
4. President Dennis Hefner (President's report):
Well I'll have a lot more to report in about a week and a half from now when I'll meet with the Chancellor in Albany. All the Presidents are getting together on October 11th and 12th. So, I'll have much more information, and what we are going to be doing during the upcoming legislative session.
I was in Albany last week for the Board of Trustees meeting. Ours was one of the three campuses that were featured in a report to the board on mission review. They wanted to know what we were doing. They especially wanted to know how were we going to spend the money. I told them we could spend $1.125 million without batting an eyelash, and to send us more. But they didn't send more yet, but maybe they will. But it does appear that in the upcoming session that there will be a major initiative to try and get the Governor to put the collective bargaining money into the budget.
There will be a proposal for a tuition policy. We need a tuition policy in this state and that would be for regular and ongoing tuition increases so we don't get the huge jumps that come every now and then, but something that would be reasonable and rational. That that would go into place, and then the hospitals would be the other big issue.
The fourth item that I was, at least, pushing on last week was that they also shouldn't forget about growth funding. That is something that if SUNY is taking on more students for the state, the state should be willing to provide additional dollars for that. That does need to be included in the mix. So I don't know whether that will be one of the top priorities or not, but that seems to be where we are going at this time.
In terms of undergraduate enrollment, it is exactly, once we got census, it is exactly identical to last year's undergraduate enrollment. For the graduate enrollment, it is up about 50 students over last year. We expected to be close on undergraduates. We had a little drop in show-up rate for freshman, a one-percent change, which is down 30 students. We thought we were going to be about 30 higher than we ended up, but we're still in good shape. We're well within the window for enrollment percentages and so forth. But you may be finding that there is a little bit too much parking out there. That's the reason why. [general laughter]
I'm glad somebody laughed. That's supposed to be a joke. I'll never joke about parking again.
The Enrollment Management Committee is working exceedingly hard. They have met every single Wednesday morning from 8:00 to 9:00 since the beginning of this semester. A large number of initiatives are underway. For example: some activities on down-state recruiting; looking for ways to upgrade the campus image; some dollars that will be going back to academic departments to help them with recruitment initiatives, to try and get higher show-up rates in departments; upgrades to the web; and so forth.
So, there is a lot of activity going on in that committee. And I think the money is really going to be very well spent, but I did want to report to you that this has been a tremendously hardworking committee. There are 22 members on the committee. We've never had a meeting--we meet at 8:00 every Wednesday morning--we've never had a meeting with fewer than 20 people in attendance. We've had virtually complete attendance at every single meeting. And we're really making, I think, a lot of progress.
I had reported at the last College Senate meeting that one of our alum's, Dr. Neil Postman, had been designated the SUNY Outstanding Alum. Well, he received the award a week and a half ago. I had the privilege of being there to present him to the group, and I want you to know, the remarks that he gave would have made each and every one of you feel absolutely wonderful. They were terrific remarks. I now have a copy of those remarks and I've asked that excerpts of them be published in the Campus Report. We're also going to put it in The Statement to be sent out to our alums. I think our alums would like to see what he had to say about this institution. And I know when you see those remarks, you're going to feel pretty good about the institution as well. They were just wonderful.
The last item I wanted to mention today, I just received at about a quarter to three today the nominations for the President's Award for Excellence. I have been able to contact the three individuals who are the recipients, but I will mention it here today. The three recipients for the President's Award for Excellence are: Donald Lang, in Music; Gene Bouquin, from M&O; and Chuck Notaro, from FSA. You will be receiving a letter within about a week talking about how we are going to go about making these awards. On October 27th, at noon (that's a Friday), there will be a luncheon where the awards will be made. People on campus are invited to the luncheon. FSA has given us a good price. It's going to be a $5 charge for people to go to the luncheon.
But also, at the luncheon, we will be giving pins for years of service. We've never done that on this campus. We have a pin that has now been designed by Tom Malinoski. It is a wonderful campus pin. So we will be giving a certificate showing the number of years of service and a Fredonia pin for every five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years. Now this being the first time, there will be those who are in the five to nine, ten to fourteen, and so on. We go up to forty years of service on this campus. So it should be a very nice event.
I do want to congratulate all of the recipients of the President's Awards for Excellence. I think you are a great group, and there were a number of fine nominations that came in, too. The committee had to work hard to try to narrow it down, but this is the group that they came up with for this year. That is my report. Any questions?
5.a. Vice President Mae Reck (Vice President's Report):
Two items. If you look at your agenda, you have an attachment for two search committees. I already spoke last month about one search committee: Associate Vice President for Information Technology. This is a slight revision of that committee, so this is the complete committee. That committee has already met for an initial meeting. It is well on its way. The new search committee for the Office of Institutional Research and Planning Director is also listed there. And that search committee will be meeting for the first time this week. Both advertisements were in The Chronicle for the September 29th edition. Any questions?
5.b. Alright, the second item then, we have Randy Gadikian who will report on the Library Advisory Committee. As you recall, the College Senate wants this committee to report twice a semester, so we're doing it for the first time this semester (October), and we'll do it again in the December meeting.
Randy Gadikian: Well, if you'll look at page 3 of your handout, you'll see a page delineating the composition of the Reed Library Advisory Committee. For the purpose of the committee, the composition in terms of membership, we are a jointly appointed committee by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. The current members are: Najia Aarim, Jack Berkley, Linda Brigance, Vince Courtney, myself, Mara Huber, Jim Ivey, Jo Ann Kaufman, Katie Loomis, Dick Reddy, Ted Steinberg, and three students that have yet to be appointed. Our procedures are fairly simple. The committee is directed (or chaired) by me. We meet once a month. Our meetings will last generally an hour, and, of course, we will report to the Senate twice each semester. Questions? Thank you.
6. Melinda Karnes (Faculty Senator):
I have no report this month.
7.a. David Ludlam (Academic Affairs):
I have just one minor correction on the post under EN103 is 101 and 104 is 103. We checked the numbers with the Registrar. I would like to ask faculty members who put in course changes or anything that has to do with course numbers to please check with the Registrar before you send them to us. Although courses may not appear in the catalog, they are still on the computer and many times people request a number, which is for a course that already exists. You really do have to call Nan and find out whether the course number is available. Any questions on anything else?
Nancy Gee: On to the report of the GCP Committee. Len Faulk and Ted Steinberg. I just want to remind you to please state your name, so that we can have, you know, good minutes. Thank you.
7.b. Len Faulk & Ted Steinberg (GCP Committee):
Len Faulk: First, I'd like to thank everyone: departments, individual faculty, and so forth for your input. We've read a lot of it; a lot of thoughtful ideas, and new revisions have occurred. Let me say, this is an ongoing process. So I don't think this is the last time we review the guidelines. In fact, I think what we don't need is a static general education program. We need something that reflects our best desires and that we can learn and develop this program as we go. And obviously this is another opportunity for us to review some of the provisions.
A couple of things. I did add a handout, which you probably haven't seen, which was a list of approved courses under the Board of Trustees categories. That's for this year; we had to do this for this year, to submit courses and departments, and the faculty submitted courses and a short course description. And that was taken through reviewers from the PACGE committee and they then brought it to PACGE for approval and then it went to SUNY and then SUNY actually had their own approval process. And they were looking at the overall guidelines and did this fit with the guidelines? There were courses that were not approved that we felt should be approved.
There is an appeal process, and for example, I think it was Brockport that has a new general curriculum with two world history courses that would cover the world civilizations/other world civilizations. They were not approved initially, for whatever reason. It was probably the fine lines on the language as to how they described it. When they went back to the reviewers of the SUNY System, they approved it and so forth.
Since this is an interim program, and since a lot of the unapproved or not approved weree upper-division courses, that didn't affect us now, and since we're developing a new general ed. program, we figured that when we submit again we'll submit the revised programs, and we will indeed change the language where we need to fit their categories and it has to be in there, so we'll put it in there as appropriate.
So it's really next year that we'll be going through this again for the new general ed. At this point, we don't need to debate, although we will. We did talk to the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, and Assistant Provost about it. But at least this gives you a sense of the categories now.
And even the categories now in Western Civ. and so-forth, they are interdisciplinary. So from the Board of Trustees point of view, the idea that a narrative of history which in one sense, we've said well that's got be a history course, the way it is interpreted by the SUNY System is that it can come from a variety of disciplines and not be a history narrative per se. It has to have historical elements within it.
Just another kind of guideline is the background as we tried to bring in and mesh our system and their system. We'll have to continue to do that. So, Ted has presented you with kind of an approach and revised guidelines. We've had questions, and we want to open up this floor for added discussion.
Ted Steinberg: I have one very small change but, I think, important change to make. It really occurs several times on pages 11, 12, 13, and 14. It's just where it says, "The ability to use electronic resources." I'd like to add, "The ability to use electronic and print resources."
I should explain. We got, as Len says, a lot of feedback. Much of it private, so you didn't see it on Proftalk. And we've incorporated many of those suggestions into these revisions. I think most of them are self explanatory. So, are there any questions?
Ellen Litwicki: There are two different submission guidelines. But I'm a little confused by that. Like there's this preliminary notes thing and then there is these submission guidelines?.
Steinberg: There was a little confusion between us. I guess I'm at fault here; I think I was using the wrong terms, so let me explain it. We have the page that says, "Preliminary Notes." It has the guidelines for the courses that would be submitted. The other one, the one that's "Submission Guidelines," is the process by which those courses will be submitted for approval.
Litwicki: OK. Then I have a question on that. On the submission guidelines.
Gee: Can I just interrupt real quickly. I'm sorry Ellen, we need to focus on this, because this is what we are approving. That is actually Part Two under the report on the agenda.
Ellen: Oh, OK.
Steinberg: Yeah, we'll get to that.
Gee: We are going to come to that. The other thing; I thought maybe we should step through this page-by-page. So perhaps we should start on page one with the preliminary notes. Is there any discussion of the items listed on page one?
Ted Schwalbe: And this is one of the things that we had sent to you at the committee. That item number 1 called basic communication, really is basic written communication. And I would like to make a motion that that section 1's title be changed from basic communication to basic written communication to reflect that.
Nancy Gee: We can, but I just wanted us to sort of focus on the very first page, on page 1.
Schwalbe: This is item number two on the first page.
Gee: Oh, I'm sorry. So we have a motion. Is there a second?
The motion was seconded.
Gee: Is there any discussion of this amendment?
Vink: Could you restate the amendment?
Schwalbe: The amendment is to re-title section 1, "Basic Communication", to "Basic Written Communication" to reflect what, in fact, it is.
Len Faulk: The reason you bring that up, because that term is used by the Board of Trustees to cover both written and oral. In the context of what we're doing it is focusing on written. So, for our purposes, that is a correct title. It differentiates between written and oral.
Joe Chilberg: The, I guess, letter of the law in terms of calling something what it is, is one issue. I'm wondering if there is any guidance from those who have to shepherd this document to the SUNY Central. Is there a rhetorical advantage to call it basic communication? Would they start saying, well this doesn't really do the job, you guys. Basic communication has to have oral, and therefore you can't call it... I'm wondering if that would cause us sticking down the road. It's not their title.
Faulk: Yeah, I think our approach has been that oral is to be infused within the majors, but we still have to meet that criteria. But that's a thought. I guess going on your train of thought, one of the things that happens now within the system is that when a student transfers from one SUNY (community college or four-year) to another, in addition to the regular transcript they need a general ed. transcript, which says what courses they have taken that will apply to other institutions. That's the title that's being used across the system: Basic Communication. I think that what Ted is referring to is that that doesn't meet the oral in terms our definition.
Schwalbe: That's one point, yeah. And basically, you know, under the guidelines that have been developed, it is a basic written communications requirement. It is not a basic communications requirement.
Karen Mills-Courts: Our own guidelines that were voted through last spring, however, make it clear that the oral communication requirement is being met in several ways through other areas.
Schwalbe: Correct. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing the title of the section that is called Basic Communication, is a basic written communication component. I'm not arguing that we're not meeting the oral communication requirements, but were not doing it in this method. We're doing it with oral communication across the curriculum. So to call this basic communication is simply wrong.
Mills-Courts: We'll what I'm suggesting is that inserting written there should not cause a problem as long as we make it clear that we're meeting the oral communications across the disciplines, and we are making that clear, so I don't have any problem with it.
Nancy Gee: Is there any other discussion? Let us vote on the amendment.
The amendment to change the title of Basic Communication to Basic Written Communication was approved by a majority vote.
Gee: Is there any other discussion of page 1?
Michael Grady: I have two things on page 1. The first is item 7; the idea that new courses are probably better than previously existing courses.
Ted Steinberg: It does not say that. It simply does not say that. Look at the language. It just says that we're hoping there will be new courses. Is says nothing about better or worse. You're making that up.
Grady: All right. I just hope that there isn't a bias against previously existing courses as far as being approved for the program.
Steinberg: There isn't.
Grady: I'm not really sure why item 7 is a part of this document. The second thing is item 8.
Steinberg: That's on the second page.
Grady: Oh, on my computer it printed out on the first page. I'll wait on this.
Joe Chilberg: I'm one of those people who teaches a present GCP course that has enrollments between a 100 and 150 and it seems like number 6 is going to give me an easier job. I probably wouldn't offer this course based on the present size because of number 6. And I guess I need to find out what faculty-student contact means, and how this issue of contact somehow makes large courses less engaged in critical literacies, for example, which I thought might be implied because of size.
I have probably one of the, I guess, most demanding critical literacy courses in an introductory class of a large course, and I think we'll loose about 125 seats each semester if we don't allow a course like this to be part of the GCP because of size alone. And I think I should point out that really the size of the class doesn't seem to me to make the critical difference between a course that engages students critically and has to deal with pedagogic strategies, and methods and ways in which you can manage size.
There are people giving workshops on how to make large lecture classes more interactive. In fact, Dick Reddy passed some resources on in terms of books that discuss this very issue. I have a full-blown analysis/research type paper in a course of 137 this semester, so I'm kind of wondering. I don't mind doing a little less and having a smaller class, but I'm wondering if we're kind of assuming that size means you can't do the critical stuff, and I think we need to address that one before we accept that.
Nancy Gee: Would you like to address this?
Ted Steinberg: Well, I'd be perfectly willing leave it to the committee.
Bob Rogers: This is in regards to number 6 right?
Chilberg: Number 6, yes.
Rogers: It says nothing about the fact that classes will be small. It just says that, "it is recognized that one of the implications of number 5 is that class size will have to be controlled." If there is evidence that a large class can meet what it is supposed to do, by all means it is fine. But I think that evidence has to be produced that people are not just being stamped out and thrown out of this class.
Steinberg: Exactly. If you can show that your course meets the guidelines...
Karen Mills-Courts: It says, "departments should determine the ideal size."
Chilberg: Yes, but it says "be controlled." That's what I stuck on: the first sentence. If we said something like Bob said...
Rogers: Controlled does not mean necessarily...I mean controlled could be that they're all going to be at least 500. [general laughter]
Steinberg: Oh, come on.
Rogers: That's not control. It just means that we're going to pay attention to class size.
Chilberg: Could we restate it, as such, that class size will be considered in view of fulfilling the guidelines? In other words, the guidelines are the issue I'm hearing here, not the size of the course. Is that fair to say?
Patrick Jones: Can we change that word to monitored rather than controlled?
Nancy Gee: You can propose an amendment.
Mills-Courts: It seems to me the key to number 6 is exactly the last sentence, and that it's absolutely that departments should determine the ideal size for the CCC courses, and that the committee will assist those departments to the recommended size. What more could you ask?
Ted Schwalbe: We could ask for the first two sentences to be struck entirely then.
Mills-Courts: Why would you wish to do that?
Schwalbe: If, in fact, what we're saying is that is up to the all of the departments to work with their faculty to develop the courses and course sizes that are appropriate for this, then why do we need to say that class size has to be controlled?
Nancy Gee: Joe would you like to propose an amendment?
Chilberg: I move that we strike the first two sentences of that statement. I move that.
Mills-Courts: You'd have to remove the third sentence also.
Gee: Is there a second to the motion?
The motion was seconded.
Chilberg: Let me add the third one as part of the amendment because it does connect. You're correct, so those first three sentences.
Marcus Vink: I think that it is an important principle and ideal to keep in mind.
Jan McVicker: I would simply like faculty to consider that that statement is there to allow the GCP Committee, in whatever form it ends up taking, to be advocates for the faculty, not to be dictators to faculty. We're in an era of increasing class sizes being dictated to us from Albany. This is meant to be an advocacy kind of statement, not a restrictive one. I hope people can at least see that.
Bob Rogers: Also, if it's just really stricken down to the last sentence where it says departments should determine the ideal size for CCC courses, I think if you loose that, it's setting the stage of why it is that departments should be involved in doing this. That last sentence alone, I mean, ideal size... ideal for what? Economic reasons? I think just leaving that alone and saying ideal is too vague. I think that the first three sentences should stay because they say exactly what you're talking about in terms of ideal. They define ideal.
Schwalbe: I would like to propose an amendment then to the proposal which states that the last sentence beginning with "departments' and ending with "ideal class sizes" should be made the first sentence of number 6, and that the rest should follow underneath it.
The motion was seconded.
Joe Chilberg: I could accept that as a friendly amendment to my motion, and make it the motion we're working with.
Gee: Let's do that. We just have one amendment on the table.
Michael Grady: Perhaps it would make it read a little better to say instead of, "it will not be possible for instructors to meet the guidelines..." to "it may not be possible," to recognize that it could be possible in certain circumstances to meet the guidelines in a large class. That seems very absolute to stay, "it will not be possible."
Patrick Jones: But that sentence says it's not possible if there are too many students. So once the ideal size is determined, it's not too many students. Moving that last sentence to the beginning takes care of that.
Joe Chilberg: In terms of the spirit of where this is going, and of course, there would probably be better wording... I kind of liked what Bob said. If the guidelines are the determining factor is, then size would have to be considered in fulfilling the guidelines of anybody offering, but what I want to avoid personally is that, "Oh, it's a large class so that's not going to..." in somebody's mind... that bias against large classes. Ideally, I don't care for them either, but if you can do the job and it takes care of our students and our institutional requirements by the BOT, I think we need to consider them.
Karen Mills-Courts: Could you repeat the new amendment?
Gee: The amendment is to move the last sentence in item number 6 to the very front of item number 6.
Chuck Telly: No other changes?
Gee: No other changes.
Jan McVicker: So we're no longer deleting those other sentences.
Michael Grady: Right.
The amendment was approved by a majority vote.
Gee: Any other discussion of page 1? Keep in mind, we have a number of pages to go through. Let's move to page 2 then. Any discussion of page 2?
Michael Grady: On number 8, I'm just trying to figure out how this is going to work--the review every semester. What I'm concerned about is that the document that you submit a course with is going to be much longer that just the syllabi that you hand to the students because you have to provide all these evidences. How will you, in fact, tell from a review of syllabi whether the course still meets the guidelines?
Ted Steinberg: Well, in fact, that was my job, when the current general college program came into effect. And I read through all the syllabi each semester, which I must say was a very--I found it very encouraging, because I just saw how many good courses there were. But it was possible to look and see what kinds of things were done. If there was information that wasn't available, I asked for it. It was done politely. Often it would happen they would say, "Oh, I did do that." This is not an invasive procedure. It's simply a matter of, if we don't have somebody monitoring the program, it turns into a paper program, which is what happened for a long while to the current program, until the newly-constituted GCP Committee started monitoring that. It's really important that somebody look over this. Otherwise, the program gets abused.
Len Faulk: The committee itself has changed somewhat. The committee itself is involved in many of the aspects.
Bill Graebner: Can I return to number 7 on page 1? Does that violate your procedures?
Nancy Gee: Sure, go ahead.
Graebner: I guess I got a little confused. I heard two things here. One is that there will be no bias against existing courses, and then I had trouble reconciling that with the first sentence in 7, which does seem to be biased against existing courses. I'm sorry, that's just the way it reads.
Ted Steinberg: Well, I assure you it was done without bias.
Graebner: Well, when it says everything should be new or thoroughly rethought, that does seem to imply some bias does exist.
Steinberg: It's not going to be a bias in considering courses. It's just a suggestion that before people submit courses, because they are going to have to meet the guidelines, that those courses be rethought. But it has nothing to do with whether courses will be accepted. If a course meets the guidelines, the course will be accepted.
Graebner: Well, why hope that most of them will be either new or thoroughly rethought? What is the purpose of so hoping?
Bob Rogers: I think the idea in there is that... I'm certain that nobody on the committee is going to sit there with a list of what the old course looked like and what the new course looked like, and say, "Ah! it doesn't look any different." I'm sure nobody is even going to have the quote "old" list in front of them. So they won't know if it's an existing course or not an existing course, or whatever. There are just going to be submissions. I think the idea behind it is that just because a course was in the old program does not mean that it's going to just automatically go in. In fact, rethink does not necessarily mean that you're going to change it either. You may rethink it and say, "Well, I like it just the way it is. I think it's very good." To me, that's all that rethink says. It does not say change.
Jan McVicker: To think about it. You have a new program with new guidelines. It seems to me that in order to submit courses to a new program, people have to look at their old courses in light of new guidelines. I think that's what this sentence means. Look at your old course, with the new guidelines and see if there doesn't need to be some tinkering, some revision, some shift, or nothing. It just means look. It doesn't mean just blindly submitting.
Graebner: That sounds different from what's here to me... vastly different to me, yes.
Steinberg: Can we assure you that that's what it means?
Graebner: No. Why not rewrite it? That would reassure me. You know I don't believe public reassurance has any status beyond this meeting. What about next year, or two years from now?
Steinberg: If a course is submitted, because we took out the business about limits on the number of courses, so, if a course is submitted and it meets the guidelines, then it will be accepted into the program.
Graebner: So then why not just put that down?
Steinberg: Because this says something different. This says what Jack said.
Jan McVicker: Can I offer up some different language? Tinker with it. It is to be hoped that the courses that will be proposed for the new program will be considered in light of the new guidelines.
Steinberg: You don't have to say that.
McVicker: But, if that makes people feel better, then it's worth it.
Steinberg: But if you're going to say that, you might as well leave it out because a course that's submitted that doesn't consider the new guidelines won't be accepted.
Nancy Gee: Are you making an amendment?
McVicker: Not if we don't need it.
Joe Chilberg: I understand the spirit of this. It's to explore and develop new innovative ways to meet these guidelines. Is that fair?
Steinberg: Sure.
Chilberg: It's not that you have to make it a new course. You can still use some of your tests and papers, but look for ways of making the guidelines happen in, you know, kind of a creative developmental way. I would offer this language, and I'll just put it out here: "It is hoped that the courses will explore and develop innovative ways to meet relevant guidelines." The idea or sprit of looking for new innovative and developing new ways to meet the guidelines... The guidelines are the ultimate thing we have to prove we meet here, right?
Steinberg: Right.
Chilberg: Whether it's new or not.
Steinberg: I don't object to that language, but I can tell you that I see that language as much more restrictive than this language. Because that is telling the committee to look perhaps for new things, and this language is not.
Karen Mills-Courts: Ted, can you simply add a sentence that says, "Faculty are welcome to submit existing courses which meet the guidelines."
Steinberg: Sure. I have no problem with that at all. Would that do it for you Bill?
Bill Graebner: Well, I think most of the courses, new or thoroughly rethought is extremely strong. I would say how about some of the courses or many of the courses to be proposed... in addition to this thing.
Nancy Gee: So, are you proposing an amendment then?
Graebner: Sure, I'll propose many.
Gee: In addition to the...
Graebner: Instead of "most," "many" and we add the sentence.
Gee: What was you're sentence again?
Steinberg: I think we're cutting exceedingly fine lines.
Gee: Can you repeat your sentence please?
Karen Mills-Courts: Faculty are welcome to submit existing courses which meet the guidelines.
The amendment was seconded.
Scott Johnston: I just had another suggestion for rewording. If we began number 7 with, "The new general education program gives us an opportunity to create new courses." That goes to the ideal behind this. Then you could add a sentence, "Often this means rethinking current courses and/or creating new ones." You've got the kind of statement along with the ultimate: add new courses or rethink existing ones in terms of the new GCP criteria.
Nancy Gee: We do need to press on. Ted needs to leave at 5:00.
Ted Steinberg: I told them that we'd meet later.
Nancy Gee: OK, let's focus on the amendment that is on the floor.
Jan McVicker: Is that Scott's amendment?
Dick Reddy: Karen's.
Gee: It's the amendment that includes many, and the sentence, and I think I have this, "that faculty are welcome to propose existing courses that meet the guidelines." That's the amendment.
Bill Graebner: Could we stop at just existing courses then? Of course, they're not welcome to propose courses that don't meet the existing guidelines.
The amendment was edited, with "that meet the guidelines" being struck.
Gee: Any further discussion?
The amendment was passed by a majority vote.
Gee: Let's move on to page 2.
Dick Reddy: Just one issue under number 9. There is a discussion of departments, but departments don't necessarily cover the situations of interdisciplinary majors. Is it to be assumed that by "department", it is meant really "majors"?
Steinberg: Yeah.
Reddy: OK, because there are interdisciplinary majors found within departments, but in some instances, they are relatively independent of the department per se.
Steinberg: Sure.
Nancy Gee: Any other issues on page 2? OK, let's move to page 3.
Steinberg: You might notice that, just... it's on page three, but it's in all of the sections, that the assessment guidelines, as someone suggested, I think, is clearer than was in the original document.
Gee: So item 1 would become Basic Written Communication?
Steinberg: Correct.
Gee: Any questions, comments?
Ted Schwalbe: Is it envisioned that there will be one course or many courses that will satisfy this basic written communication requirement? In other words, again, thinking back in terms of the old GCP we have the 1.A model fits one course and the 1.B which is many courses.
Steinberg: I see no reason it couldn't be many courses. I doubt that it will be, but it could be.
Joe Chilberg: So in other words, a department could offer a course for basic written communication.
Steinberg: If you guys want to do it, you've got it.
Chilberg: No, that's alright.
Scott Johnston: So does that mean that composition will no longer be required?
Steinberg: Well it...
Karen Mills-Courts: We voted through the structure of the GCP. We have to be really careful of the structure of the GCP.
Steinberg: But if another department should be so masochistic as to choose to offer a course that meets these guidelines, wouldn't that be acceptable?
Mills-Courts: I don't know. It's not what we voted through last year. I'm not sure. I'd have to go back
Gee: Is there any other discussion of page 3?
Ellen Litwicki: I just had a question on this assessment thing here: number 5 on this page. It simply ends, "...as well as a method for providing for course improvement." I'm not really sure what you mean by this in terms of what the faculty member would be submitting?
Steinberg: My understanding is that this would be covered merely by our evaluations. But it's something that the state wants and so we're saying it. We do evaluations and one can use those evaluations to review the course.
Litwicki: Then you have to explain this statement in your submission for approval? Ways in which you would improve your course?
Steinberg: Yeah.
Litwicki: Evaluation for... there's a lot of other ways...
Steinberg: Yeah., yeah. Right. Right. There are other ways, but I'm just saying we'd be satisfied by that.
Joe Chilberg: This means then that in the GCP courses, there will have to be some mechanism by which you can measure or assess the meeting of the guidelines? The guidelines are outcome-type guidelines. You want people to be able to do X. That would assume to me that at the end of a course you're going to have some, I'll use the word, data. Say that so many of our students were able to do X based on this program of instruction. If, let's say, X was only achieved by 25 percent of the students, it would be incumbent upon the professor to then identify the method in which they will recast or reengineer the instruction on that X in hopes to get a higher number of students achieving it. This is the assessment language that I understand. So although I don't want to open this can of worms, this means that in the review, some data about the achievement of these guidelines has to be presented by the faculty at some point in time or period of semesters or whatever to then establish any retooling to improve upon the results.
Steinberg: This exists now. I mena, you give exams. And you give grades. And you get evaluations.
Chilberg: Yeah, but I'm the only person who receives those grades. I'm the only one who knows what my class can do or not. And I'm the one who decides to retool or not. I don't know. Well, no one's asking me to see what my classes are achieving other than I hand in my grade list.
Steinberg: Chairs get printouts of what grades go out.
Chilberg: I assume they do.
Steinberg: They do.
Chilberg: Put it this way, no one has asked me to retool.
Steinberg: Then you must be doing a good job.
Chilberg: What's that 'C' about. 'C' doesn't tell me that they didn't meet guideline X. Do you see what I'm getting at? And I think that, at least my understanding is that the BOT... this is what they would like to do, whether it is doing to happen or not is another matter.
Len Faulk: Yeah, wee did that generically with FIPSE tests on whether we meet certain critical thinking skills. I think what this is suggesting is that we have to design on campus... The Board of Trustees is saying, well you design on the campus. They may have something else, but we control that.
Chilberg: We control it. Right.
Faulk: But we need to have some idea about what progress we're making. We need to decide if it's within courses. If several people teach the same course, let's say, take critical thinking, what do we feel has happened? We need a way of discussing that between ourselves in a group.
Chilberg: Do you anticipate that that's what the GCP professors, the three C's, are going to eventually have to gravitate toward reporting at that level to their chairs. And to say, here is what I'm going to do to increase people's ability to connect evidence to claims and conclusions and like that. Is that too micro level?
Faulk: We need to have a system where we feel that, indeed, we actually...
Bob Rogers: Actually, if we look at 5 the way it says. I think that people are very concerned that this is a big intrusion, and Joe, I think the way you're saying it, it sounds like a tremendously big intrusion. But I don't think that's what 5 says. It says that, "a brief description of the methods to be used to assess student understanding, as well as a method for providing for course improvement." When you lay out a method, it does not say that, "they did this, and I'm going to do this." It could be that, "I'm going to have a discussion the last day of class and find out what, you know, my students thought about this."
Chilberg: Yeah.
Rogers: It's a summation.
Steinberg: We just have to show we're doing it.
Chilberg: So then, what I understand here is that, let's say in terms of the basic written communication, a professor is going to say something briefly about the level of achievement of one, two, three, and four, whatever it is, I don't think it's too important what they are... That this is what we expect to be happening in that course. Then you have to say, "Well they're achieving at this level on this and most of the class can do this and I'm hoping to improve on number 2 by introducing X."
Steinberg: No.l
Bob Rogers: I don't think so.
Steinberg: No, no, no, Joe. All they're going to have to do is say we are going to have these many papers, we're going to do this much re-writing, this is how we're going to assess them, this is how we're going to grade them, and this is how a course is going to be evaluated. It's as simple as that.
Chilberg: And we'll have the course evaluation.
Steinberg: Yeah.
Rogers: They're just asking for the methodology.
Chilberg: That's a looser sense of assessment than I understand which is OK.
Elizabeth Nelson: I was wondering about number on 3 on page 3: the use of electronic media. As someone who teaches this course, would the Trustees expect me to just talk to them about this or actually get them in front of a computer? Is there any sense of what I'm going to need to do? Am I going to have to get a computer lab and put all fifty kids in it?
Steinberg: I dare not speak for the Trustees,but my understanding would be that, no, you don't have