May 24, 2000

To: Members of the Faculty

From: Jim Swartz, Chair of the Curriculum Committee

Re: 1999-00 Annual Report of the Curriculum Committee


The Curriculum Committee's responsibilities are two-fold: routine supervision and approval of all specific course changes, and discussion and recommendations on curricular policy guidelines. Students are voting members of the committee. Student members were identified early and carried a full share of the ongoing work. Their participation was exemplary. In almost all cases, the Committee achieved a consensus.

The Curriculum Committee acted on a number of routine changes to courses including title changes, modifications of descriptions, additions or deletions of prerequisites, and approval of new courses. These changes are reflected in the 2000-01 Academic Catalog.

The committee approved a proposal that applications for Independent Study will be due the term prior to the term when the courses are to be taken. Applications for Summer Independent Study will continue to remain due in early June. The purpose of this change in procedure is to provide more planning time for both students and faculty to develop independent study projects and for the College to have adequate time to process these requests. This procedural change will not go into effect until pre-registration for fall 2001.

The committee had a discussion with Steve Langerud regarding the number of internships for credit per term, the process used for approving internships, supervision of internships, and the possibility of summer internships without credit. Given the size of the faculty, the size of the staff that oversees all internships and the follow-up activities for each internship the maximum number of internships for any semester has been set at 35. There is a limit of 2 internships per faculty member per semester. Last summer 33 faculty members sponsored 46 internships. There is no limit on the number of summer internships as summer is not a semester. The number of summer internships has grown because there has been an influx of money to sponsor them. Currently the curriculum committee reviews fall and spring internship applications but it does not review summer internship applications. Summer internship applications go directly to the Dean for approval after each committee has awarded the summer grants. Currently, in order to receive a grant for a summer internship a student must enroll for credit. The tuition for summer credit is waived if a student receives a grant. There is a concern about the use of faculty time over the summer in sponsoring internships. The growth of fund raising for summer internships is outdistancing the number of faculty available to sponsor them. Students have expressed difficulty in finding faculty sponsors, and faculty members feel pressured to serve as sponsors, else the students do not receive grants. The committee decided that beginning in the summer of 2001 the default position for all funded internships is that they will not carry credit. In order to receive credit for a summer internship the student and faculty will have to make a case for credit to be awarded. Tuition will still be waived for those who want credit.
Early in the first semester of 1999-00, the Executive Council asked that the Curriculum Committee review the current state of the 'capstone experience' and return with a proposal that would move the responsibility for definition of that experiment from the administration, which had "jumped-started" the idea last year for interested faculty, to the faculty as a whole. In response to that request, the Committee initially discussed the matter over several meetings in the first semester. In the spring, we broadened the discussion so that it was campus-wide. In April, the Committee forwarded a statement of proposals to the Executive Council. The Executive Council made a few modifications and the final version was presented to the Faculty for approval on April 17, 2000. The faculty approved it. The Committee would like to thank Paula Smith for her hard work on and assistance with this issue.

At the October 4 Faculty Meeting the proposal to change the title of the tutorial was tabled for further discussion. In preparation for that discussion, the Curriculum Committee polled the faculty. The Student Curriculum Committee reported to the Curriculum Committee that when they polled their members, most of them favored keeping the title as it is presently being placed on the transcript. The committee felt that in light of new student opinion on this issue and the fact that we were currently in the middle of the Capstone discussion, this issue should be tabled until we finish our assignment with respect to the Capstone experiment.

The Committee had a preliminary discussion of the calendar. It discussed three issues: 1) 4 or 5 weeks between semesters, 2) Martin Luther King Day, 3) Buffer days before final exams. The Committee immediately recognized that there were many issues regarding the calendar, and they were not limited to curricular issues. Any substantial change would need to include discussion by a broad constituency. The Committee felt that some faculty liked 5- week breaks, but that 4- breaks worked OK and fewer weeks between semesters would give rise to more summer weeks. The Committee felt that it was more important to celebrate Martin Luther King than to simply avoid classes on a particular day. One possibility that the committee discussed was to hold a special scholars convocation on Martin Luther King Day at 11 AM. Classes scheduled to meet at that time would be postponed and meet the following Thursday at 11 AM. There was little support from either faculty or students for more buffer days between the end of classes and the beginning of finals. The Committee has passed this discussion on to the Committee on Academic Standing for further discussion.

Thanks once again to excellent work by Steve Langerud, Internship Coordinator, the Committee's internship review process continued to work well. Currently during the academic year we had 28 students apply (27 were accepted, 1 denied and 5 opted not to do an internship) for internships for the spring term and five students apply (5 were accepted and 2 opted not to do an internship) for the fall term. Nineteen faculty members were involved in 25 internships in the 1999-00 academic year. 1999-00 Curriculum Committee members:

James Swartz	Ann Ellis	Josh Blue	John Aerni
Gerald Adams	Ed Philips	Mike Kleiber
Katya Gibel Azoulay	Elizabeth Dobbs	Sarah Luebke