“When the senate was working on the proposal for (general education), it proposed the capacity to class sizes as one way of attempting to assure the academic quality of the program,” said A-Senate Chairman Phil Squattrito.

A-Senate voted that the writing intensive courses will not have more than 30 enrolled students per class, since at least 70 percent of the total course grade must come from written work.

Robert Lee, chairman of the Gen. Ed. subcommittee, and Guy Newland, secretary of the Gen. Ed. subcommittee, presented the implementation plan to A-Senate.

The courses include the competency requirement for quantitative reasoning, the elimination of subgroup IV-A, the end of the written English competency requirement, called Writing Across the UP and its replacement by a writing requirement.

Shapiro said it contravenes an agreement between the university and the Faculty Association. It would also violate the Shared Governance document produced in the 1990s, which states which groups on campus has input or is eligible to make decisions on such issues.

“It is clear from that Shared Governance, that the senate does not determine the size of classes,” Shapiro said.

A-Senate has no role in issues concerning budget, according a memo sent to A-Senate from Academic College Deans sent Dec. 9, 2008.

However, the deans who had agreed to reject the limit to class size no longer hold those positions.

Former provost Julia Wallace had also sent a memo to former chairman of A-Senate Ray Francis April 1, 2008 regarding Shapiro’s memo which stated her agreeance with Shapiro’s objection.

“It’s clearly the senate’s responsibility to try to assure the academic quality of our programs,” Squattrito said.

Raising concerns

Shapiro hopes A-Senate will discuss further actions with the administration.

The first step to approaching this issue is to have some discussions about what the rights and responsibilities of A-Senate, CMU’s Administration and the Faculty Association, Squattrito said.

“The Academic Senate does not have these rights. We have a Faculty Association-university agreement that deals with workload issues,” Shapiro said.

The deans will not sign any of the master syllabi that states classes will have a limit on class size, Shapiro said.

“I have stood before the senate and said how important it is to change general education, and so I am very in favor of making revisions of our general education program to better serve the needs of students,” Shapiro said. “But it cannot include this violation.”

Lee had no comment on Shapiro’s announcement.

“It’s a very critical issue,” Lee said.

Laura Frey, associate professor of counseling and special education, was caught off guard when Shapiro had announced his opposition.

Frey said she believes that Shapiro gave the perception that there was no room for discussion on the issue.

“I felt like the meeting had been hijacked by Provost Shapiro, and that a gauntlet was laid down,” Frey said.

Squattrito said he does not necessarily believe the university should be responsible for deciding class size because class sizes are an aspect of work load.

He said he believes limiting the size of the class would ensure the students got the intensive experience in writing and instruction in writing.

“In order to do that, the classes needs to be on the small side,” he said.