MINUTES
(approved
A meeting of the
1. Announcements
(a) Accreditation. Professor David Freeman, Chair of the Faculty Assessment Committee, announced that a representative of the Higher Learning Commission would be visiting the College on November 7. The visitor would be discussing the accreditation process in light of the fact that the College’s report for re-accreditation is due in the Fall of 2004.
(b) Website. Dr. Potash announced that agendas for Faculty Council meetings were now posted on the Council’s homepage.
2. Minutes
The minutes of the meetings of September 9 and 30 were approved as submitted.
3. Curriculum
Committee: 21st Century Curriculum
On being moved and seconded, Motion 1 “tabled” at the September 30 meeting, was brought back before the meeting.
Dr. Sibicky, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, reported that the committee had considered the comments from the previous meeting and had decided not to propose any further amendments other than the two contained in the notice for the meeting.
Discussion continued on section V of the document “21st Century Curriculum Proposal.” Questions were raised concerning the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement: how will the formal writing requirement be interpreted, are the requirements sufficiently stringent and do they represent a reduction on what was expected of sequences? In response, it was pointed out that the criteria had been eased from an earlier proposal because of feedback from faculty; also as part of the approval process of WI courses, faculty would be expected to attend a workshop at which some agreement would be reached on consistency of content and expectations of WI courses.
The Oral Communication Competency section was reviewed without comment.
The Historical Perspectives requirement was discussed. It was clarified by the committee that all
the specific criteria listed must be satisfied.
There was some discussion concerning judgments as to an instructor’s
qualifications to teach such a course and whether a course could meet the
criteria where the course employed an historical perspective but the dominant
perspective was, say, literature. The
chair of the committee indicated that the burden of proof for acceptability of
qualifications and course content and perspective rested with the
proposer. He also pointed out that the
expert panel which developed the criteria included historians. Dr. Sibicky was asked if the committee would
consult with the historians if, when considering an historical perspectives
course, the committee lacked an historian among its members. He answered that the proposal as to implementation
contained in motion II did not include such a requirement.
There was some discussion on the Scientific Inquiry requirement, mainly concerning the rationale for allowing two 3-hour courses as a substitute for a second 4-hour course.
A concern already raised under Historical Perspectives re-emerged under Social Analysis, namely unease over the qualifications of instructors and the dominant perspective of proposed courses unless the criteria were applied rigidly.
The Quantitative Reasoning section was reviewed without comment.
When the meeting moved to a discussion of Leadership and Ethics, the chair of the committee responded to a question on implementation, indicating that the number of sections required had been considered and the committee did not foresee any problem since it was expected that some new courses would be developed. It was also pointed out that since only two out of four specific criteria had to be met, some existing courses could be offered under this heading even though they were not currently “Leadership” courses.
Under Fine Arts, it was agreed by the committee that a grouping of 1-hour courses could satisfy the requirement but the specific grouping would require approval of the Curriculum Committee in the same way as a 3-hour course. In response to a question as to why the general education requirements included six hours for fine arts but only three for historical perspectives and three in literature, a member of the fine arts faculty pointed out that some fine arts courses already included an historical perspective. Another fine arts instructor also observed that currently a student could meet the general education requirements by taking four courses from the same humanities field and the proposed requirements would achieve a greater spread within the humanities.
In the discussion on the Literature requirement it was asked if non-fiction had been omitted by accident or design. The response was that non-fiction had been explicitly omitted. The chair of the committee admitted that the meaning of “to study a specific discipline” could be interpreted variously and might require further definition.
When the meeting moved to a discussion of the Global Issues and Diversity Requirement, an amendment to opening paragraph of the relevant section of the “21st Century Curriculum Proposal” document was proposed and seconded. The amendment was:
That the following two sentences be added to the opening paragraph,
“The requirement in global issues…” on page 5 of the “21st Century
Curriculum Proposal,”: “It is expected
that international students will meet this requirement by virtue of studying at
MC. The student’s advisor, however, may
want to suggest particular courses that they believe will be helpful for the
student’s global understanding.”
After discussion, including consideration of removing the first of the proposed sentences, the question was called and received in excess of the required two-thirds majority. On being put to a vote by show of hands, the amendment failed by a wide margin.
Dr. Chase pointed out that this 6-hour requirement would increase the required hours of the Petroleum Engineering major to 141 hours.
There was discussion as to whether “Diversity” should be bracketed with Global Issues, and also whether the area should be removed from the general education requirements. It was noted that the criteria defining the Diversity area were of a different tone to that found in the rest of the document.
Dr. Carol Steinhagen proposed an amendment
To amend the Global Issues and Diversity requirement as described on
page 5 of the document “21st Century Curriculum Proposal” by (a)
removing the reference to “Diversity” in the title, (b) deleting the final two
paragraphs, and (c) reducing the required hours to 3.
The motion was seconded.
In response to a question, the Chair confirmed that a quorum was still present.
The Chair accepted a motion to postpone to a meeting to be called on Monday October 21 further consideration of the amendment and the main motion.
4. Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at
Fraser G. MacHaffie
Secretary of the Faculty