Provost reports more minority, transfer students enrolled
There are more minority and transfer students than ever this year Provost Gary Shapiro said at Tuesday's Academic Senate meeting.
But Shapiro said the freshman class decrease of 400 students is a reflection of demographic reality of fewer high school students, and the intentional design to reduce the size.
"The good news is that in general, student credit hours are only down very slightly," Shapiro said.
During the meeting, members chose to eliminate the Master of Arts in Community Leadership program which has not had any enrollment since 2007.
The proposal to delete the program was brought forward by the Professional Education Curriculum Committee.
The senate also voted to change part of the core writing intensive requirement, rewording the requirements of outside University Program writing intensive courses to make an exception for foreign language courses.
The exception decreases the requirement for final writing products from 18 pages to 12 for students majoring in foreign languages. Additionally, six of these pages will be graded as formal products after they have undergone revision.
Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition Melinda Kreth was critical of the proposal.
"The WI (writing intensive requirement) was not intended to help foreign language students write in that language," Kreth said. "It was intended to get our native-speaking students learn how to write competently in their native language, English."
Professor of political science Orlando Perez also spoke on the matter.
"Why carve out this exception just for foreign language courses?" he said.
Questions regarding the Faculty Association contract dispute were generally saved until Wednesday's first fact-finding hearing at 9 a.m.
