A&S; Curriculum Committee Minutes, 10/31/00

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
CURRICULUM COMMITTEE MINUTES

October 31, 2000

Members Present: L. Larson, T. Mackey, R. Powers, R. Roebuck, M. Rohmann, E. Segal, M. Stenger (Chair), R. Taylor

The minutes of the meeting of October 24 were corrected to reflect that Professor Roebuck was in attendance. The minutes were also amended to reflect the committee's discussion of proposals to remove prerequisites from 300-level courses. While this direction caused some concern, the committee determined that it would accept such proposals. Professor Stenger requested to be recorded as voting against the proposal.

The committee discussed the desirability of holding proposed program changes made in light of the new general education requirements and reviewing them all together. Given the December 1 deadline for completing curricular changes, it was thought that it was not logistically possible to delay reviews until all departments had submitted them (deadline of November 15). The committee will begin individual reviews as items are submitted, but will reserve final approval until it has an opportunity to assess what is happening comparatively within divisions.

The committee turned to the revised M.A. proposal in Pan African Studies. The department had made changes in admissions requirements proposed by the committee during an earlier discussion.

In further review several additional concerns surfaced. There was some question if the proposal automatically met the CPE guideline that at least one-half of the coursework in a graduate program must be at the 600-level. The department will be asked to clarify this in its requirements before the proposal is forwarded to the Assembly. The committee was also concerned about the number of faculty in the department who would be eligible to direct theses under the Graduate School's new regulations; this concern will be communicated to the department chair. Additionally, there was a concern that the curriculum was so constructed that students who had been UofL undergraduates could be repeating substantial parts of their coursework in the graduate program. This concern, it was noted, was not unique to the PAS degree.

The committee determined that the proposal met curricular guidelines but expressed concern about its ability to attract and graduate sufficient students to meet the current university guidelines. It was approved, but the committee wished to convey to the Planning and Budget Committee its reservations about the timing of initiating a new graduate program when other of the college's master's level programs are being suspended for inadequate enrollments/graduates.

PAS 532: Slave Trade and Slavery in the African World, PAS 533: The African Diaspora, and PAS 619: Advanced Seminar in African American Studies will be returned to the department for additional information. The proposals needed more detail of the course requirements for graduate students (eg, length of papers). Additionally, the committee felt that the 600-level courses should require more research than the 500 level courses.

The following course actions were approved, effective Fall 2001 (pending Graduate School approval):

PAS 525: African Americans in Contemporary American Society (hanged to 625, and description change)
PAS 604: Thesis (new course)
PAS 605: Special Topics (new course)
PAS 607: Independent Study (new course)
PAS 615: Advanced Seminar on Race (new course)
PAS 660/GEOG 620: Geography and Nutrition Among African and African American Populations (new course)
PAS 385/WMST 346: Women in African (removal of prerequisites)

The committee briefly discussed the history and current status of the proposal for a Ph.D. in Mathematics and will review the revised proposal at its next meeting.