Faculty
Council
November
7, 2002
152
330-530
Present: 37
Guests: 6
1.
Announcements
Council Chair Gene Mumy made
announcements regarding Faculty-Student luncheons, the CIC Conference in
2. GEC Revisions
Professor Marilyn J. Blackwell (Senator, Humanities), Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee (UCRC) and author of the GEC report, asked Faculty Council to submit their opinion on the report. She explained that it would not only to be helpful for faculty to cast a vote on the main issues of the report but that a failure of the faculty to do so, that central administration may look upon this action as faculty indifference to the report, which is singularly not the case. Chair Mumy said that he would submit the tally of a vote as well as a report highlighting the opinion of the Council. Dr. Blackwell explained the main issues in the report and the council voted as follows:
A. Issue 1#: Number of Credit Hours in the GEC.
Dr. Blackwell said that she would like Council to vote for either option A or option B as a whole. She explained the committee was pressured by a number of sources to cut the number of credit hours that should encompass the GEC. They cut the GEC from 105 hours to 98 hours for the BA in the ASC and from 110 to 103 for the BS. 98 hours would be one hour below the average of the benchmark institutions and that the current number of hours places OSU in the middle of the spectrum. Faculty Council agreed to vote on option A.
B.
Curriculur Recommendations
1. Replace Sequences with Clusters in the natural science, social science and history requirements
They hoped to provide more flexibility in the GEC by allowing departments to define clusters (courses which have an important relationship). This would allow flexibility because a student would be able to take for example, History 152 and then take another logically affiliated course at a higher level in a subject that interests them, which the History department defines as a logically progressive course. There were concerns that there would be a shepherding by departments to keep students in their department. It was noted, that many departments could cooperate to name clusters
2. Diversity Courses
Virtually everyone agreed that these were important courses, and that it was important to retain them in the GEC. They decided to eliminate the stipulation that one of the two international diversity courses has a non-western focus. She explained that it was not the UCRC, but the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee that gives a class the designation. A diversity course is one that deals with “race, gender and ethnicity.”
3. Allow Students to chose between a Capstone and a Third Writing Course
The capstone would have a significant writing component, and would therefore qualify as a third-writing course. This was one option to scale back the number of required credit hours. Steve Fink proposed another option, called the Fink Amendment, to mandate both courses, since they have significantly different content, and to drop the GEC requirements from a student’s home college.
C. 3 and 4-credit courses, Courses vs. Credits
This proposal has garnished a great deal of protest at ever meeting, most of them fiscal. The reason the committee promoted this proposal was to allow more flexibility to students, who were very interested in this idea. There was much concern from the faculty that students would not take an extra course in an almost full schedule, but that students would have a tendency to take only 13 or 14 credit hours a quarter, delaying graduation. Dr. Blackwell explained that because OSU students are on a 5 credit hour standard, they are taking significantly fewer classes than students at the benchmarks.
D.
Ancillary Recommendations
Dr. Blackwell explained that there would be a 58 credit hour minimum in the intellectual core, despite the reduced number of credit hours or courses in the GEC. She discussed some of the more controversial issues. One issue she stressed was the review committee for the GEC. She urged the Council to take the matter seriously, because the implications of the final decisions will effect thousands of people.
E. Embedded Competencies
She explained this issue regards that certain issues such as critical and logical thinking, speaking, writing, etc, should be competencies that are embedded in the GEC curriculum.
Ballots for the above issues were tallied and the results are attached as an addendum to the minutes.
3. Position on the ASC Restructuring
The due date for comments on the ASC Realignment report is tomorrow. Faculty Council argued that they would like to see a proposal before making any final comments. Chair Mumy told Council that he agreed that there should be a formal and final proposal, but that other constituencies have made comments expressing their concerns with the report.
Professor Richard Gunther (Senator, Social and Behavioral Sciences) expressed his high concern with the hasty publication of the committee’s report. He explained that much of the vagueness of the report is due to a lack of consensus in the committee. He distributed a copy of a resolution that he felt should be adopted by council which requests clarification on several suggestions of the report and asks for more time and a formal proposal before any final decisions are made. There were minor alterations made to the proposal and the resolution overwhelmingly passed 32-1.
There was a discussion on reconvening the ASC Senate.
4.
COMPH Proposal
Chair Mumy told Council that the College of Medicine had responded to his letter regarding the proposal to eliminate the cap on clinical faculty and distributed copies to members. Professor Caroline Whitacre referred faculty to the last page of the response where differences between the tracks are compared and contrasted. She said that the emphasis of this proposal is to assist the areas that are dealt with by the clinical track. She offered to answer any questions and had brought faculty from the clinical track to answer additional questions.
Council expressed concerns over the quality of teaching, tenure, governance and the threat to the regular-track faculty. Faculty from COMPH explained that there is much overlap of duties between clinical faculty and regular faculty, and said they would follow the guidelines of the university when dealing with these issues.
The meeting was adjourned at 530.