University of Puget Sound
Faculty meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999
President Pierce called the meeting to order at 4:04 p.m. Ninety-two voting members of the
faculty were present.
John Finney was elected faculty secretary for 1999-2000.
Minutes of the May 6, 1999 faculty meeting were approved as distributed.
In response to President Pierce’s call for announcements, Dean of Students Kris Bartanen asked
faculty interested in being involved in planning for a new residence hall to let her know of that
interest. President Pierce added that candidate architects for a new residence hall have been
interviewed.
President Pierce reported on the recent meeting she attended at Wye River, Maryland, sponsored
by the Aspen Institute and the Annapolis Group on the future of the liberal arts. She was one of
four representatives of national liberal arts colleges who met with approximately 20 corporate
executives, journalists, policy analysts and foundation executives. Although the group agreed that
the very best liberal arts colleges in the country are probably not endangered, it agreed that the
liberal arts is not well understood and that in fact many large universities as well as many smaller
colleges make the same claims of providing a liberal arts education that we do. Thus, it is
important that we make it clear that institutions like Puget Sound are the exemplars of the kind of
liberal arts education we value. The group also agreed that liberal arts colleges need to resist
having rigid, unproductive assessment structures imposed on them. At Wye River President
Pierce described Julie Neff-Lippman’s recent assessment of writing across the curriculum, which
as a model was embraced warmly by those attending. President Pierce said she will work with
other Wye River participants to see if our writing assessment program could become the basis for
a national model. The assembled faculty gave Julie a warm, congratulatory round of applause.
President Pierce announced that Bethel Schneebeck has given the University funds for the
installation of an elevator from the first floor to the “garden” (basement) level of the chapel.
Dean Cooney reported that, as the result of the good, substantive projects our foreign language
faculty have accomplished in connection with the Mellon-funded project on the use of technology
in foreign language instruction, Puget Sound is one of three (among the 62 Mellon-funded
institutions) to be invited to take part in a study to assess the impact of technology on foreign
language learning. This announcement was greeted by a round of applause for our foreign
language faculty.
At President Pierce’s request, Faculty Senate Chair Bill Haltom then reminded us that we are still
at Decision III of the five-phase process for reform of the core curriculum approved by the faculty
on October 20, 1998 (see
http://www.ups.edu/dean/zzzz/CommMinutes/Faculty/9899/fcm1020m.html). Chair Haltom
summarized decisions made last year: Decision I: a seven-unit core; Decision II: two freshman
seminars not counting toward any major—one in writing and rhetoric, and one in scholarly and
creative inquiry; and Decision III: a five-unit “ways of knowing” general education component to
promote breadth. These decisions will appear in an omnibus motion that can be modified during
Decision V.
President Pierce opened the floor for additional proposals under Decision III. George Tomlin
M/S(Cannon) “approval of the “Connections” interdisciplinary core course requirement
described in the proposal dated September 9, 1999.” Copies of the proposal were distributed
to faculty by email on September 22, 1999, and hard copies were available at the meeting. A
University of Puget Sound Faculty Meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999, Page 2
copy is attached to these minutes. Both Tomlin and Doug Cannon spoke to the proposal, which
was a slightly revised version of a proposal made by Tomlin at the March 23, 1999 faculty
meeting. They argued that the proposal takes advantage of current integrative, interdisciplinary
offerings by bringing together various threads contained within them.
Haltom proposed as a friendly amendment the removal of the words “from the course section”
from the first sentence of item (2) of the proposal. After Tomlin explained that the intent of those
words was to ensure that “diverse majors, backgrounds, interests, and abilities” is understood to
mean diversity among students within the course, not across the entire university, Haltom
withdrew the amendment and suggested instead that the four words be replaced by “as the
section of the course would allow.” Tomlin and Cannon (the motion’s seconder) accepted this
friendly amendment.
Haltom suggested as an additional friendly amendment the addition of “/or” to the last section of
item (2), to make (2) read: “The projects should entail research, analysis, discussion, deliberation,
and/or resolution.” Tomlin refused to accept this as a friendly amendment, so Haltom M/S “to
add ‘/or’ to the second sentence of item (2).” Taranovski asked to which parts of the prose on
the Tomlin/Cannon written proposal the main motion refers. Cannon responded that the motion
refers to the section beginning “The Connections requirement will be satisfied by . . . . “ and
ending with item (4). He said the rest is simply justification for the Connections course. President
Pierce suggested holding amendments until we talk about the basic ideas for the course, in
response to which Haltom withdrew his motion to amend.
Mott Greene said he favored dropping item (2): “Courses satisfying the Connections requirement
should include projects to be undertaken by groups of students with diverse majors, backgrounds,
interests, and abilities, as the section of the course would allow. The projects should entail
research, analysis, discussion, deliberation, and resolution.” He said it would probably be very
difficult to create all these projects and that the language meddles too much with faculty teaching
prerogative.
Harry Velez-Quinones argued that a single individual can develop “the skill of interdisciplinarity”
and that this doesn’t require two individuals. He argued also that departments should be able to
fashion their own capstone courses, rather than having one capstone course prescribed for all
students. He said the current proposal makes the core more complex, not simpler. Tomlin
responded that he agreed that one faculty person could offer interdisciplinarity.
John Rindo wondered if existing “connections” courses would all be lumped together under this
new core area. David Balaam asked what the rationale was for requiring that the course be taken
the junior year. He said that, given the level of background expected, the course might be taken
the freshman year or the sophomore year. Tomlin responded that taking the course the junior
year keeps it out of the senior year, when students are taking capstone courses in their majors.
Alva Butcher agreed with Greene that item (2) was problematic, then suggested allowing the
course to be taken the junior or the senior years in order to avoid a “bottleneck” of students in any
given year or semester. She also wondered how one would demonstrate interdisciplinary
expertise. Peter Wimberger wondered whether there could be interdisciplinarity within a single
department. Tomlin responded that interdisciplinarity would be demonstrated by scholarship in
more than one discipline. He quickly added in response to Wimberger that interdisciplinarity
should be “broadly conceived.”
John Lear said he liked the idea of an upper division core requirement and he liked the idea of an
interdisciplinary core requirement, but that he was not sure one course should be expected to do
both.
University of Puget Sound Faculty Meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999, Page 3
Dean Cooney suggested we shouldn’t need to be overly precise about what we mean by
“interdisciplinary.” He said the term may mean “not disciplinary” and that whatever the pressures
are that lead to development of interdisciplinary courses, it is healthy to maintain a rich variety of
curricular initiatives.
Suzanne Holland said she likes the idea of an interdisciplinary core course, but she is not in favor
of “capstone” courses that, she said, are artificial. She said that comparative values is supposed
to be a capstone course in the current core, but that sophomores who take her comparative
values courses are perfectly able to integrate the material appropriately. She said she was
worried about having too few sections of very large courses under the proposal.
Suzanne Barnett said she likes the general idea of the proposal, but that it seemed to her we were
trying to write guidelines for the course right now, and she said we shouldn’t be doing that. She
said that all courses proposed for the core category would be evaluated against guidelines to be
developed later. She went on to say she doesn’t like item (2) in the proposal and favors
eliminating it or changing “projects” to “tasks.”
David Sousa said he was worried that this “upper division capstone course” would look very much
like an introductory course, given the pragmatic absence of relevant student background. He
suggested the course might not be “satisfying for high powered juniors and seniors.”
Ted Taranovski said he thought the proposal was too detailed, and that we should separate the
connections described in parts (a), (b), and (c) from items (1) through (4). He said these last
items should be left to the Curriculum Committee to work on. He went on to say that we need an
interdisciplinary course that is substantially interdisciplinary and that is “more than a mish-mash
introduction to various disciplines.” Tomlin responded that items (1) through (4) “root” the
proposal in ways described in the “features” section of the document. He added that connections
courses won’t be new, largely. Because many existing courses will fit, the core course won’t be
an interdisciplinary mish-mash.
David Droge suggested we refer the proposal to the Faculty Senate for further deliberations, as
we did last year with the proposals for the freshman seminars. Bartanen said she likes the
proposal because it spells out what we expect of juniors and seniors in an interdisciplinary way.
She suggested we discuss what it is we expect of upper division students and then build an
interdisciplinary course that achieves it.
Haltom said we do need to focus on course characteristics like those in items (1) through (4),
especially if it is being suggested that science in context or international political economy courses
might fulfill the requirement. Haltom added that currently he doesn’t see how these courses would
fit. He said also it is important to plan to avoid problems finding faculty willing to teach the course
in sufficient numbers. Haltom added that he is concerned that, as a capstone core course, the
connections course may not have an adequate link to the freshman core seminars it would be
capstoning.
Florence Sandler argued that sophomores and juniors cannot contribute to an interdisciplinary
discussion because they do not have the background to do so. She suggested that the only
approach that could be successful is to have students work from their own disciplines into new
ones because they won’t already have more than one discipline under their belts.
Keith Ward suggested that perhaps the two ideas of (1) capstone and (2) interdisciplinary are not
combining well in this proposal. He suggested we might want to leave the capstone experience
University of Puget Sound Faculty Meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999, Page 4
for departments to offer their majors and go on to ask: “what presence could interdisciplinarity
have in the core?”
Heather Douglas argued that students do not master their major fields, and that the purpose of
the proposed course is to get them out of their entrenched ways of thinking. This, she said, is why
we should have an upper division interdisciplinary course. Douglas suggested as a friendly
amendment to limit the proposal to the connections identified as (a), (b), and (c). Tomlin did not
accept this as a friendly amendment. Haltom suggested we adjourn so Tomlin and Cannon can
figure out what they want to do in light of today’s discussion.
We adjourned at 5:27 p.m., and President Pierce suggested we exchange our ideas on this with
each other between now and the next meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
John M. Finney
Secretary of the Faculty
University of Puget Sound Faculty Meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999, Page 5
Proposal for an Interdisciplinary Core Course Requirement
George Tomlin and Douglas Cannon
May 6, 1999/rev. Sep 9, 1999
We propose an interdisciplinary core requirement, which we will call "Connections", though
another name might be chosen. We see it as complementing the "Approaches to Knowing" core
requirement that the faculty has already endorsed. It is also intended to bring closure to a core
experience begun with the freshman seminars. This core requirement emphasizes the
interrelationships of various approaches to knowing and the contributions that various approaches
to knowing can make to an appreciation of human diversity and complexity.
The Connections requirement will be satisfied by interdisciplinary courses which create
connections between knowledge and values embodied in
(a)
the methodologies and results of different disciplines,
(b)
the thought and experience of various cultures, of various literary,
artistic, or scientific endeavors, or of various socio-political
systems, or
(c)
conceptions and practices relating to race, gender, or other
dimensions of human difference.
Connections courses should encourage deliberation and resolution with respect to dilemmas in
human experience.
(1) In their inception and in their ongoing delivery, courses
satisfying the Connections requirement shall incorporate contributions from
more than one academic discipline. This may result from the collaboration
of faculty from different departments, or from the efforts of individual
faculty members with interdisciplinary expertise.
(2)
Courses satisfying the Connections requirement should include projects to be undertaken
by groups of students with diverse majors, backgrounds, interests, and abilities, as the section of
the course would allow from the course section. The projects should entail research, analysis,
discussion, deliberation, and resolution.
(3)
In order to serve as a capstone experience in the core curriculum, courses satisfying the
Connections requirement shall be offered at the upper-level and should be taken in the junior
year.
(4)
Where appropriate, there may be courses satisfying the Connections requirement that
also satisfy the requirements of a major or minor.
As we propose it, this core requirement includes the four conditions listed. Yet we believe that it
would remain a coherent and worthy requirement if the faculty wishes not to adopt all of them.
Thus we have listed them separately to facilitate amendments adjusting or eliminating one or
more of these conditions, as such amendments may be proposed by other members of the
faculty.
Features of the Proposal
University of Puget Sound Faculty Meeting Minutes
September 22, 1999, Page 6
Serves the University's stated mission with respect to "knowledge of self and others,"
"appreciation of commonality and difference," and "the integration of learning."
Incorporates the University's educational goals of "an understanding of the interrelationship of
knowledge," and "appreciation of self and others as a part of a broader humanity."
Elaborates the core curricular goal of increasing each student's awareness of his or her place in
the "broader contexts" of "history, human society, and the physical world."
Challenges students to perform intellectual work in heterogeneous groups
Creates a forum for course development serving the aims of diversity.
Takes advantage of our substantial investment in International Political Economy, Science in
Context, Humanities, Asian Studies.
Highlights the University's ongoing commitment to inter-disciplinary studies.
Provides a specific basis for encouraging, and funding, faculty interaction.
Interdisciplinary Proposal
May 6, 1999/rev Sep 9, 1999