Undergraduate Studies Committee

TENTATIVE AGENDA

Friday, November 15, 3-5 p.m.

Old Business

1. Multicultural Studies review.

Hilton Brown, John Courtright and I have discussed this in some detail, and have some proposals for change. We agreed that there is a problem. We also agreed that abolishing the requirement made less sense than “fixing” the problem. We further agreed that there is a VERY long list of allowed multicultural courses at present, that should be less long and probably more focused. (Please bring your Catalogs, so we can talk about the specific courses!)

Here is Hilton’s proposal.

Each student shall have completed a minimum of 9 credits of multicultural course content in any of the following subjects:

1. Gender content courses, including women’s feminish, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer studies

2. Non-western, non-industrialized, non-middle class cultural studies

6 credits in #2, 3 credits in #1.

My suggestion is to require a minimum of 6 credits, and perhaps to request a resubmission of all multicultural courses anew. Some might not actually be very multicultural now. The current charge in the Course Inventory is “the experience or point of view of a culture or people whose perspective is not the dominant (white, western, androcentric) one.

Perhaps the material in the parenthesis should be emphasized, and I would also suggest that one course be “nonwestern”, since we’ve seen the importance of such understanding in the past year.

We have the right to modify the specific courses, given the 1987 Faculty Senate resolution, which requires that all students have 3 credits in courses “stressing multicultural, ethnic, and /or gender-related content. The University Faculty Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies shall approve courses which fulfill this requirement.”

New Business

1. Honors program admission changes. Katherine Kerane will speak on this matter.

2. Permanent Status for Plant Biology major.

3. Permanent Status for Landscape Horticulture major.

I will ask a person from the department to speak with us about these programs.