A special meeting of the Marietta College faculty convened at 5:00 p.m. April 29, 2002, in the Selby Science Center, room 101. Dr. Sidney Potash, Chair of the Faculty, presided.

1. Provost’s Report.
   
   Dr. DeWine made the following announcements:
   
   
   1. Commencement. The bad weather location for Commencement would be a tent on the soccer field beyond Marietta Hall.
   
   
   
   2. Commencment Speaker. Dr. Qin Yaqing, Foreign Affairs College, Beijing, would be speaker at the May commencement.
   
   
   
   3. Amendments to the Constitution. The amendments passed by the faculty at the previous week’s meeting would be taken to the trustees for approval at their May meeting.
   
   
   
   4. Amendments to Appendix V of the Handbook. Amendments to Appendix V, covering the annual evaluation of faculty, had been approved by Faculty Council and were to be distributed in the near future.
   
   
   
   5. Outstanding students. Faculty were asked to send to the Provost’s Office information concerning students who had completed outstanding achievements during the current year.
   
   
   
   6. Senior Week. Dr. DeWine drew attention to events during Senior Week to which faculty had been invited.



2. Curriculum Committee
   
   Dr. Mark Sibicky, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, addressed the faculty. He spoke to a draft proposal for a revised general education curriculum. A copy of the draft is attached as an Exhibit to these minutes. Dr. Sibicky acknowledged the work of several faculty in developing criteria for courses in cognate areas. He also indicated that the committee intended to work through the summer in order to have a final draft ready for consideration by the faculty early in the fall and faculty were asked to submit written responses to the draft before May 17.
   
   The following issues were raised in a far-ranging discussion on the draft. (Responses are given parenthetically.) The language in the international/diversity area seemed unduly restrictive by referring to "U.S. citizens"; international and diversity did not belong together; the lack of courses in sociology made it difficult to deliver "diversity" courses; globalization pointed to the need for some form of language requirement.
   
   Can any department submit a course for consideration under any cognate area (Yes); can a course count in more than one area (Dr. Sibicky responded there was no intention of departing from the current rule that allowed a course to count in two areas, plus in a major or minor); are 1-hour applied courses ruled out in the fine arts area (the committee is exploring this issue); the Music department and the committee need feedback on faculty attitudes towards applied music courses.
   
   Why only a one-lab requirement to satisfy the scientific inquiry area when so many resources were currently being put in the area (the one-lab requirement opened the possibility of courses from other than the natural sciences); the scientific method can be explored in divisions in addition to the natural sciences; the requirement should be for more than two courses; the hours required in the humanities far exceed the hours in science; the proposal represented a weakening of the current science requirement not only in terms of contact hours but also because of over emphasis on process at expense of content-the standard should be 12 contact hours which could be three lecture modules plus a single lab.
   
   Why is leadership, a "value-adding" course, now to be a requirement (a driving force was to integrate the core values into the curriculum); would the leadership and ethics requirement mean several new courses (it was hoped not, but some new courses might be developed); concern was expressed over the possibility of a student satisfying much of the general education requirement within his or her major-students should be required to take more courses outside their major but still in cognate area (an issue is that students often choose a major late in their time at college); once the curriculum is approved each department could identify extra-departmental hours for the major; many students have the g.p.a for Phi Beta Kappa but lack the breadth.
   
   Had the committee thought about a communication requirement that would be satisfied by writing-intensive courses? Prof. Arbuckle, chair of the First Year Taskforce, indicated that the taskforce had brought to the Curriculum Committee a proposal to introduce flexibility into the communication requirement but the committee had rejected it. The FYT supported the position that more writing should be structured into the curriculum. Had there been any estimate of what effect the proposed requirements would have on student outcomes. We have a lot of good goals fighting for limited resources; can we do everything, or should we identify what we can do well; if we back requirements into departments the college will not be offering a stronger liberal arts education, "competency" implies that some standard is being set to be achieved.



3. Adjournment
   
   The meeting adjourned at 5:58 p.m.