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Philosophy

Intro by Jeff Cox

• Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
• Laying out of fall work
• Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

• History of A&S process
• Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
• Schedule for committee’s work

Comment:  The new A&S curriculum has created barriers for interdisciplinary teaching by requiring a class to live in a department.  Guest lecturers do not fit in the model – we have had to use “freshman seminars” as a solution, but that does not serve the real audience.

Comment:  Universities across the country are doing more than what is their core mission.  This has resulted additional administrative overhead, and ultimately in the cost of higher education increasing faster than household income.  We need to focus on our core mission.

Comment:  Interdisciplinary teaching should be placed on a level playing field as regular teaching.  That being said, there is still a case to be made for smaller classes with a standard teaching model (better student participation, can assign additional papers and provide more in-depth feedback, stronger relationships between students and instructors).

Comment:  Interdisciplinary teaching is great for freshman since they do not always know what they want to do – they can make a better-informed decision on where to go.

Comment:  We need a campus core curriculum based on values that transcend any particular college.  We need a good model on how to do this (e.g., that doesn’t shift all general education to adjunct instructors).

Comment:  We have been talking about diversity for years, but still do not have it. Diversity would benefit all of us – better for students, instructors and research.

1. Diversity/Inclusive Excellence is a principal of the process and a topic of discussion.  It’s not that we don’t have a voice, it’s that we need to find a way to organize to make our voices heard.

Comment:  We need to create a good climate for both teaching and study.  There is a concern that faculty are not always respected by administrators.

Comment: Other colleges have more control over what students they admit than A&S does, such as the overflow from Business and Engineering.  This results in many students in A&S that do not really want to be there.  A&S needs to have the same level of control of admitting students.

Comment:  There is no positive incentive for faculty to engage in public outreach, such as visiting high schools or writing op-eds. We need to provide incentives for community engagement (and at the least, remove disincentives).

Comment:  We need to do more to protect undergraduates from all forms of abuse, including sexual predators, whether at home or at the university.