Academic Standards Committee Minutes
March 10, 1999
Present: Ken Clark, Brad Tomhave, John English, Susannah Hannaford, Marianne Taylor, Wade
Williams, Peter Greenfield, John Finney, Heping Liu, Yvonne Swinth, Peter Wimberger, Kate Evans, Jack
Roundy
1. Minutes: The minutes of the February 24 meeting were approved as written.
2. Announcements: There were none.
3. Petitions Committee: Tomhave submitted the following report without elaboration:
Date
2/25/99
3/4/99
YTD
Approved
8
4
192
Denied
2
2
27
No Action
0
0
2
Total
10
6
221
4. Re-examine the Course Scheduling Issue: English brought forth the Faculty Senate’s revised
charge:
The Faculty Senate therefore charges the Academic Standards Committee with studying
the question of course scheduling in depth and with bringing back to the Senate a
proposal or proposals for a course scheduling framework that might reduce conflicts,
allow a common meeting time, and permit an effective use of classroom resources. The
Senate requests an interim report as part of the committee’s year-end report in May and a
final report by fall semester 1999.
English asked if we wanted to survey faculty about course scheduling. Wimberger pointed out that we
had already discussed all the issues embedded in the new Senate charge, and Finney replied that the
Senate now wanted not just our views but a proposal or proposals for change. Greenfield wondered why
the Senate had not been persuaded by our earlier conclusion that the fixes we were considering might be
worse for us than the system already in place.
Finney thought that ASC’s new charge was to look carefully at the pedagogical needs of students and
faculty, separating them from our accustomed preferences, and to propose a new scheduling design
accordingly. Hannaford commented that the faculty survey circulated prior to the meeting was too vague;
she suggested asking such direct questions as: shall we eliminate the 4-day teaching schedule? and, shall
we move from 120-minute to 90-minute teaching blocks on Tuesdays and Thursdays? She thought such
questions would provoke substantive answers. Agreeing with her, Wimberger suggested also a question
on faculty scheduling needs. He further proposed systematically seeking student input, and asked Evans
how best that input might be gathered. Evans replied that publicizing the issue in the Trail, then collecting
input through a survey administered during registration in April, as had been done with the Survey on the
Core, was the most effective means she could think of.
If such a survey were developed, Roundy thought, it ought to be presented as a set of possible models to
focus student thinking about the direct consequences of the change in their lives. Finney countered that
the survey might use the Faculty Senate’s 5 “considerations” to focus the questions we asked. English
suggested that we do a two-step process, surveying students in April about “considerations,” and
developing models for a second survey in the fall.
Conversation turned to the Finney scheduling plan, discussed by the ASC in the fall, as a model that
could accomplish many of the desiderata sought by the Senate with less disruption and political wrangling
than would be likely with more radical reform. Wimberger suggested an alternate model whereby fourday-a-week classes would be assigned to early and late teaching blocks only. Tomhave pointed out that
in Computer Science/Mathematics, for example, such a plan would make the current situation worse,
given the limited number of classrooms with equipment needed for certain multi-sectioned classes; havoc
would be created if particular classrooms couldn’t be used throughout the teaching day. If the four-day-aweek classes pose our greatest difficulties, should they be eliminated from our schedule?, Roundy asked.
English and Finney said we could not and should not do that, for both political and pedagogical reasons.
The difficulties posed by the four-day-a-week (and five-day-a-week) classes were what led to the Finney
model, Finney said. Dissociating T and/or TH meeting times from MWF meeting times would make it
possible to recapture lost classroom hours that result from our current scheduling system. Greenfield
added that 90-minute blocks on TTH would permit the fourth class day of the week in four-day-a-week
classes to be longer, as well, if the instructor so desired. Wimberger asked if we should put forward the
Finney model, with the slight modification that his proposed 75-minute TTH blocks be redefined as 90minute blocks. Since this would lose us at most one scheduling block on each of those days, Finney
thought that modification would work. Asked how much political and pedagogical impact there would be in
cutting back TTH blocks from 120 to 90 minutes each, Finney thought there would be “some,” though a
good deal less than in moving to a “pure” MWF/TTH schedule.
At this juncture, Williams proposed generating a set of models we could use in a faculty survey.
Wimberger added that we should develop some of the survey questions we want to ask by the time we
next meet. Williams, only half-joking, thought we might expedite the whole process by forwarding the
Finney model, slightly tweaked, directly to the Senate. English expressed his preference for the
intermediate step of developing possible models and surveying the faculty. Once we’ve made a good faith
effort to secure the faculty’s best thinking, he said, we can then propose the Finney model, or some
variant, if it still seems the most sensible approach. English then promised that he, Finney, and
Tomhave would generate models by next meeting.
With that, we adjourned at 8:53.
NEXT FULL COMMITTEE MEETING: Wednesday, March 24 at 8 a.m. in LIB 134.
Respectfully submitted by the ASC amanuensis,
Jack Roundy