Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee
Minutes of October 21, 2008
BCC 204
Present: Elizabeth Petrino (Chair), Jessica Davis, John Miecznikowski, Shannon Harding, Joan Weiss, Maggie Wills, Jim Shanahan, Les Schaffer, Bob Epstein, Nels Pearson, Robbin Crabtree (Dean), Dawn Quintiliani (Asst. Dean CAS)
The meeting was called to order at 3:30 PM.
I. Announcements
Prof. Petrino reported that:
- All courses provisionally approved at the last meeting had been approved. All the professors whose course proposals had raised questions had responded with amended syllabi or explanations, and a memo with the full approvals had been forwarded to Joan Weiss for the UCC and to the Registrar.
- One procedural error had been made, in that Edrik Lopez's EN 258, as a "Special Topics" course, did not require ASCC discussion, but only approval of ASCC Chair.
o Miecznikowski noted that weeks 13 & 14 were missing from Prof. Lopez's syllabus. The Chair made a note of this and said that she would query Prof. Lopez.
- The next Arts & Sciences Curriculum Committee meeting was scheduled for November 11, 2008.
II. Approval of Minutes of 9/30/08
Proposed corrections:
- Prof. Davis neglected to list herself as present.
- Prof. (Shannon) Harding noted that first names of discussants were occasionally used instead of last names, and suggested this be corrected for consistency.
- On p. 3 of the draft minutes, under "Intermediate Intensive Arabic," Prof. Pearson says "Fall 09" but apparently meant "Spring 09."
Prof. Harding moved to approve with corrections; Prof. Miecznikowski seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
III. New Business: Report of the Subcommittee on Internships, Independent Studies, and Supervised Research (Steve Bayne and Beth Boquet)
Prof. Steve Bayne and Associate Dean Beth Boquet joined the meeting to present the report of the subcommittee.
Prof. Bayne began by noting that there are difficult questions involved with internships, independent studies, and supervised research that the ASCC is right to address. Some of the issues involved, including compensation, may lie outside the committee's purview, but there are also clearly curricular issues involved. The subcommittee has forwarded to the Dean its findings on the need for consistency, encouraging the departments to have discussions on issues of organizing credits. The report includes the proposal that such credits could be bundled together, and that a bundle of 15 would count for the equivalent of one course. If the bundled credits were the responsibility of more than one instructor, and if a department had a large number of such credits, then there should be a professor officially in charge of them, and this position should be rotated. The person deemed by the department to be the professor of record for a given semester should have additional responsibilities, including communicating with other instructors and coordinating the student work. Finally, the report also includes a suggestion for a banking system, by which an instructor could receive one point for each time he or she supervises a student receiving 3 credits of work. Once the instructor reaches 20 points, he or she would earn a one-course teaching reduction.
Assc. Dean Boquet then commented, with regards to the curricular piece, that this is an opportune time—in light of College planning initiatives—to consider how all undergraduate experiences are being coordinated. She suggested that we should make sure that this conversation is taking place within the departments, and that there is some regularization across CAS. That is why the subcommittee is bringing the report to ASCC, and in that regard it is a forward-thinking document. It is designed to incentivize department-based conversations on this topic.
The floor was opened to questions.
Prof. Harding thanked the subcommittee members for tackling this complex set of issues. She said she was not sure that "supervised research" meant the same thing across disciplines. Some supervised research is much more demanding and time consuming than other kinds, and Prof. Harding wondered if the subcommittee discussed these issues.
Assc. Dean Boquet replied that this topic constituted the bulk of the subcommittee's conversation. Many possibilities were discussed, including leaving numbers out of the document entirely. Some guidance on the issue came from the work of the Subcommittee on Full-Time Faculty Teaching Equity. She added that determining compensation is not in the purview of the subcommittee nor of the ASCC. She asked if it would be a good outcome if everyone were left to make his or her case individually to the Dean? She suggested that it would not, and urged substantive discussions at the departmental and college levels.
Dean Crabtree commented that the Equity Subcommittee was found a number of issues quite fraught and was unable to reach substantive conclusions. AD Boquet said that one purpose of the present report is to offer something that could have substantial consequences. Another piece, she said, was a recognition that if the College intends to ratchet up research in some science areas, then there needs to be discussion of counting certain types of work, like grant proposal writing, toward teaching credit.
Prof. Schaffer asked how the subcommittee had arrived at the numbers 15 (for bundles) and 20 (for banking.)
Dean Crabtree noted that 15-20 is a typical number for course enrollment. AD Boquet added that the number 20 was imported from the guidelines of the Equity subcommittee. It was related to the number of students, not the type of work.
Prof. Bayne said that the subcommittee had decided that trying to determine actual numbers based on time worked would not be feasible. AD Boquet commented that there is room for inaccuracy or subjectivity when people self-report their time spent on projects.
The Dean said that we do have numbers that represent the norms for student encounters. At the end of the day, there needs to be a series of conversations on where these experiences lie in the curriculum, and if they are important, then they need to be standardized.
Prof. Miecznikowski noted that in Chemistry, the most productive time is the summer months, and students work with faculty at that time. He asked if there could be any banking or compensation for that.
The Dean said yes—if the students are registered for credit.
Prof. Davis asked if students should therefore be registered for summer work, if the faculty want to bank credit for those interactions. The Dean responded that this is part of the question of commensurability that needs to be part of departmental discussions. AD Boquet pointed out that there is money available from University College for working with students singly or collectively over the summer.
Prof. Shanahan asked what the previous situation was. Did people who made the best deal with the Dean get the greatest compensation? AD Boquet responded that, from what the subcommittee found, people are not being compensated directly for this kind of work. Some exceptions are those programs that have been formalized with a designated director, like some departments' internship programs.
Dean Crabtree said that while there are a few departments that have a great deal of intensive work with students, most faculty in most departments have such intense interactions with students only rarely. So there is no regular compensation for such work. All students in the Honors Program do a senior thesis, but rarely does a professor have more than one Honors thesis in a year.
Prof. Schaffer asked if other departments required independent study capstones, as Physics does. AD Boquet replied that supervised research and independent studies are treated as equivalent.
Prof. Weiss remarked that any departmental decision would have to be approved by someone. Dean Crabtree said that anything having to do with faculty load has to be approved by her. She added that there is a lot in the subcommittee's report about different approaches to work and compensation, but endorsing the document would say that the ASCC understands that these are specific types of work that should be respected, reviewed, and recognized, and so the report should be referred to the departments and to the Dean.
Prof. Petrino commented that the document is valuable for recognizing what constitutes important work, and it encourages oversight for these experiences, to ensure that they are rigorous and consequential.
Prof. Shanahan, while recognizing that the report is just to be used as a starting point for discussions, wondered if the ASCC could endorse specific points within the document. Discussion ensued on how to treat the document, how to present it and its details, including numbers, to the departments for discussion, and whether to highlight particular elements within it as having ASCC approval.
Prof. Harding moved: That the ASCC endorses the report of the subcommittee, with the understanding that its numbers are contingent and subject to review by the Dean, and that the report be passed on to the departments within the College with the encouragement that the document be used as a starting point for discussions of teaching load and credits; Prof. Schaffer seconded.
The motion passed; 8 votes in favor, 1 abstention.
IV. Old Business: Brian Torff's AS 403/MU 403
Prof. Petrino noted that changes had been made to Prof. Torff's proposal: The required papers were lengthened and a research paper was added to the requirements, as well as additional readings. But she and Dean Crabtree and others noted that the course has not been reviewed by VPA as a 400-level course.
In the discussion, many members of the committee found that details in the course description were essentially undergraduate in their description.
The Dean moved to approve the course with the AS prefix (not cross-listed MU), exclusively for graduate students, and contingent on a revised syllabus that consistently reflects the standards and discourse of a graduate-level syllabus; Prof. Davis seconded.
Prof. Weiss remarked that the syllabus indicates the course will meet for two hours, and asked if it should not meet for longer.
Dean Crabtree confirmed that it should be required to meet for 2.5 hours per week.
Prof. Harding said that she was not certain what a "concert paper" is, but it seemed to be another example of the syllabus not meeting the requirements of a graduate-level syllabus.
The question was called. The motion passed: 7 in favor; 2 against.
V. The American Studies Curriculum Committee's 5-year Curricular Review
Dean Crabtree moved to table the ASCC's discussion of the American Studies review in favor of a brief discussion of graduate review guidelines; Prof. Pearson seconded.
The motion to table was approved unanimously.
After a brief discussion of the complexity of the review of graduate programs, Dean Crabtree moved that the ASCC form an ad-hoc committee on graduate curricula and course review procedures, with the Dean to recommend members from within and without the ASCC, to be approved by the ASCC. Prof. Miecznikowski seconded.
The motion was approved unanimously.
VI. Motion to adjourn
Moved by Prof. Pearson; seconded by Prof. Davis. Approved by a show of feet.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert Epstein
November 9, 2008