Minutes

Undergraduate Studies Committee of the Faculty Senate, December 2, 2002.

The meeting was called to order at 10:05. Present were Kenneth Koford, Michael Arenson, Hilton Brown, Doug Buttrey, Thomas Leitch, P.K. Krishnan, Dan Taylor, Lou Hirsh, and Maggie Parsons.

The minutes of the previous meeting were read and no problems were found; Koford suggested that they be distributed to all members, including those not present, before approving them.

Old Business

1. The Multicultural Studies review continued.

Michael Aranson noted that in the B.Music major, there are 130 credits, and no distributional requirements. The result is that the multicultural requirement would just add to the total required credits--add 3 credits, and it would have to be 133.

Maggie Parsons talked about the study abroad programs, indicating that they give students a good perspective on a different (non-Delaware) world in a variety of ways, outside the classroom.

Doug Buttrey noted that the knowledge of ethnicity and gender has changed over 15 years, so the criteria might need to be different. Later, how would one define multicultural?

Thomas Leitch proposed a set of decisions, which eventually we largely voted on.

1) Should there be some multicultural standard (0r none)? Y 8, N 0, Abs 1.

2) Should the requirement be changed? Same 0, Change 7, ? 2.

3) Should there be a list of accepted courses, vs. some other system?(Interpreted that we keep status quo vs make some change, including establish the list of courses anew) Y 3, N 0, Abs. 6.

4) What should be in the multicultural requirement?

Lou Hirsh asked Why have a multicultural requirement? Doesn’t that reflect badly on our teaching success? Shouldn’t we always bring the students to new places? It was suggested that the general education requirement should include this goal. Lou suggested that the courses on the list included too-narrowly focused courses. [My thought--should the classes satisfy some of the Pathways goals?]

We then voted in a straw vote on what areas seemed appropriate to include:

1) International non-western Y 9, N 0, Abs. 1.

2) Ethnic, black American Y 1, N 0, Abs. 8.

3) Women (non middle class) Y 3, N 2, Abs. 5

It was suggested by Maggie Parsons that I check on what the General Education committee is doing--I did that on Friday, and they requested, particularly the Chair, Avron Abraham, that we connect our efforts with the Gen Ed guidelines passed by the faculty

senate, particularly points 9 and 10. I agreed to bring them to the committee at our next meeting.

2. At this point we turned to the items from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

a. Revision of concentration General Animal Science in the Animal Science major. We noted some lack of clarity, or perhaps a contradiction between the different requirements.

Is the ANSC 140 course (Functional Anatomy) being eliminated in favor of ANSC 345 (Comparative Physiology of Domestic Animals) or not? It was explained by P.K. Krishnan that the changes regarding horses (equine) are do to a retirement. We agreed to question the department about the specific details, so that we understood them clearly. [A letter has been sent to Prof. Rosenberger describing these issues].

b. Revision of Plant Science major in Plant and Soil Sciences. The changes were essentially cleanup, due to changes elsewhere in the university. Courses elsewhere had been changed, and this revised the major to be consistent with those changes. The proposed revisions were approved unanimously.

c. Revision of two concentrations in the major Engineering Technology, in the Department of Bioresources Engineering.

P.K. Krishnan explained the rationale for the changes, in terms of the review of the program that argued against two majors, and so instead there would be one major, with two concentrations.

The MATH 117 requirement seemed unnecessary to some Committee members--why not advise students who were not prepared for calculus to take this, instead of requiring it of all students and then exempting those who were already prepared? Why not encourage PHYS 207/208 and MATH 241/242 by allowing the alternative by permission of the student’s adviser?

The approved list of technical specialization classes should be listed in a public form--say, on the department website. Students are expected to get approval for the specific classes and this should be noted “courses appropriate to the student’s professional goals subject to agreement of the student’s advisor”. This point was voted on, 7-1 in favor.

P.K. also noted that the 25-31 credit variation depends on whether the student has a minor--this should be stated.

The above apply to the concentrations as well.

The major’s last line “Enrollment in EGTE 300 and 400 level courses...” has “...approval of the faculty”. The two concentrations have “...approval of the Department”. Does this mean approval of the faculty teaching the class, or approval of the student’s adviser?

It was voted to ask the department to address these concerns. The Committee is in favor of the direction of the changes as a whole, and in principle.

d. Agricultural and Technology Education. This proposal did not have much clarification as to why the specific changes were made; the Committee asked for clarification.

The Committee adjourned at 11:55 a.m.