A-Senate tweaks general education proposal

The Academic Senate made a number of modifications to the proposed changes to the general education program at Tuesday’s meeting.

Senators passed a proposal introduced by assistant engineering and technology professor Brian DeJong, which kept some of the language from the Hartshorne/Stecker amendment and changed other parts.

DeJong’s amendment reinstated the concept of limits on the number of courses allowed in the University Program.

DeJong said he has heard arguments for and against caps and tried to address concerns on both sides.

The amendment states the number of courses in the UP will initially be restricted to 100, but up to two additional courses may be added each year as new courses emerge.

“One point of the Hartshorne/Stecker amendment was to eliminate caps,” said philosophy and religion professor Robert Stecker.

He said he wants to be able to offer a diverse choice of courses to students.

The Senate voted to strike Section 5 of the Hartshorne/Stecker from the document. Section 5 encouraged courses applying for UP status to try to “address applications to and implications for diverse populations when appropriate to the subject matter.”

Foreign Languages and Literatures Chairman and professor James Jones said he did not like the language of the section. The wording could encourage a course to include diversity in one class period of the semester rather than infusing it throughout the semester.

“I don’t think that is what we want in the way of trying to include diversity in courses,” he said. “The route to go is to do something that (Associate Vice President of Institutional Diversity) Denise Green is working on or something from MDEC, but this is vague.”

Section 6 was also stricken from the document. The section states courses with an interdisciplinary perspective or focus are encouraged as part of the UP.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea; we’ve already taken a big section of interdisciplinary programs out,” said psychology professor Gary Dunbar. “Some institutions are going to exclusively interdisciplinary programs because they cover so much general education.”

Stecker said he supported removing Section 6 because of the UP course limits.

“If people want to develop interdisciplinary courses, that’s fine, but I don’t think we should necessarily encourage it,” he said.

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