---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patricia Sloane-White <pswhite@udel.edu>
Date: Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:39 PM
Subject: Re: Question About Islamic Studies in UGS 0120 Proposal
To: Fred Hofstetter <fth@udel.edu>
Cc: pswhite@udel.edu

Dear Fred,

 Thank you for writing to me to enquire about how I intend to make it absolutely clear to students which courses "count" for the Islamic Studies minor each semester and how, especially upon Senior Checkout, those courses will be recognized as counting towards their minor. These are important subjects which I believe I have addressed by my current practices as director of Islamic Studies.

 

1. Each semester, I meet with faculty who are affliated with Islamic Studies and those faculty who I understand are seeking to address Islamic topics in their teaching. In concert with the Islamic Studies Advisory Board, we establish which courses contain sufficient material (our rule of thumb is 50% of the content of the syllabus) to "count" for Islamic Studies credit.

 

2. Each semester, well in advance of registration, I communicate in various ways with all students who have declared a minor in Islamic Studies (by e-mail, by notations on UDSIS records) which courses in the following semester will count for Islamic Studies credit.

 

3. Each semester, I put the list of accepted courses on the UDSIS "notes" section of every Islamic Studies minor, so that when the Undergraduate Services Coordinators in the College of Arts and Sciences who handle Senior Checkout evaluate transcripts, they will see the list of courses that qualified and counted for every semester.

 

4. I send the list of approved courses to the Undergraduate Services Coordinators every semester so that they can maintain a separate file of these courses.

 

5. When I learn that a student has elected the Islamic Studies minor, I send him or her a list of courses that have "counted" in the past, so that if he or she has taken those courses in the past, he or she can request to have them added as approved courses retroactively.

 

Does this procedure satisfy you? I believe it is working well thus far (this is my first year as Director and I am initiating these policies for the first time).

 

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

 

Best wishes,

Patricia

 

 

 

**********************************
Patricia Sloane-White, DPhil
Faculty Fellow for Student Enrichment, College of Arts and Sciences;
Director of Islamic Studies; and
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
John Munroe Hall
46 West Delaware Avenue
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
USA
Phone: 302 831-1856
Fax: 302 831-4002


     --- Original message ----

Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:44:43 -0500
From: Fred Hofstetter <fth@UDel.Edu>
Subject: Question About Islamic Studies in UGS 0120 Proposal
To: Patricia Sloane-White <pswhite@UDel.Edu>, Karren Helsel-Spry <karren@UDel.Edu>



Dear Patricia,

This year it is my honor to chair the UD Faculty Senate's Undergraduate Studies (UGS) committee. This morning, UGS met and considered your proposal, which is numbered UGS 0120. The committee voted in favor of your proposal but before sending it forward, the committee wanted me to ask you to explain something for us, as follows.

We note that several courses in your program state that the student must take them when the courses contain Islamic content.

The committee wants to know, when and how do the students know whether a given offering of the course contains Islamic content and therefore counts in your program?

Further, when checking out students for graduation, how do you know whether the course numbers appearing on the students' transcripts had the required Islamic content in them?

Thanks in advance for explaining how this works.

Dutifully,
Fred