Minutes
Curriculum Committee
September 23, 2003
Members:
James Swartz (Chair), Gerald Adams, Diane Robertson, Andy Hamilton, Tyler Roberts,
and Mark Montgomery.
- The minutes
of the 9/9/03 meeting were approved
- Reports on
the new summer MAP application process work:
a. Humanities
Division. The summer application process worked well.
b. Social Studies Division. The summer application process worked well.
c. Science Division. The dates worked well. Part A is a big pain! The
division would prefer to just send to the Associate Dean a list of names
for Part A. Some faculty found part A confusing and suggested that re-formatting
it might help. It was noted that the summer MAPs/MIPs deadlines were different.
It was also noted that the MIPs are not well known among the faculty.
It was suggested that a general announcement about MIPs be sent out to
the faculty in early January. The Dean agreed to draft an announcement
describing the MIPs for review by the committee.
- Continuation
the discussion of Independent study and consideration of compensation for
such activities. (Guided Reading, Internship, Individual Reading, Independent
Project, and Senior Thesis):
The question of whether or not the curriculum committee should be discussing
compensation for Independents was discussed at the Executive Council. The
Council did acknowledge that compensation for independents was much more in
the scope of their responsibility and perhaps the CC should spent its time
looking at how independents contribute to the curriculum and how they stack
up against the MAPs educationally. There was no specific charge from the Executive
Council so the committee spent most of its time discussing what would be involved
in making an academic assessment of independents. What is the role of independents
within the curriculum? How should we measure the quality of an independent?
What factors would one use to quantify an independent in regard to giving
faculty teaching credit? How does one determine the number of student credits
to give to an independent? How many independents would be equivalent to a
course? How can one translate the size and scope of a project into a specific
number of student credits/teaching credits? There is no question that the
college values independents because we are willing to offer them for credit.
Helen Scott last year (see the December 2, 2002 CC minutes) "shared
with the committee her experiences with independents over the last ten years.
Her general impression is that there is a lot of variety in what faculty and
students do together for an independent project. Except for looking at a minimum
amount of contact between student and instructor and the general structure
of the proposed outcome, she cannot really examine much more about the merits
of the proposed project. The merits are left in the hands of the faculty sponsoring
the project. She does make certain that the student rather than the faculty
member is writing the proposal. There is always a wide range of proposals.
For example, individual reading projects can vary not only by department but
also by faculty within the same department. It is hard to quantify any independent
project." The question was raised as to the direction in which we
want to go. Do we want to spend time doing an educational assessment of independent
study and leave the question of compensation to the Executive Council or do
we want to deal with the compensation issue and then work on putting more
"teeth" into what constitutes a good independent project? The committee
appeared to be unwilling to either postpone or abandon the question of compensation
for independents and MAPs. The committee reached the conclusion at this point
to discuss within each division the idea of only providing compensation for
MAPs done during the summer and not during the academic year. The rationale
is that the faculty has nine-month contracts and they have the choice of doing
independents /MAPs or not doing them during the regular academic. But if faculty
is expected to do or want to do MAPs during the summer they should be compensated
with release time. The divisional representatives will explore this question
with their respective divisions.
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