Faculty meeting Minutes
April 17, 2001
Dean Terry Cooney, serving as Acting President while President Pierce is on sabbatical, called the meeting to order at 4:04 p.m. in McIntyre 103. Forty voting members of the faculty were present by 4:15 p.m.
Minutes of the April 4, 2001 faculty meeting were approved as distributed.
There were no announcements.
We returned to discussion of the proposed Curriculum Statement. Dean Cooney said that he hoped before the meeting ended we would determine whether another faculty meeting is needed this spring in addition to the meeting already scheduled for May 7. He reminded us that if we are to vote on the proposed core on May 7 we will need to add another meeting between now and then if we do not finish discussion of the Curriculum Statement today.
Dean Cooney raised two issues that had come to his attention based on action taken at the April 4 meeting. First, he noted that at that meeting we passed the motion: “In order to receive the baccalaureate degree from the University of Puget Sound the student must earn at least three units outside the first major at the upper division level, which is understood to be 300 or 400 level courses or 200 level courses with at least two prerequisites.” He said that the question had been raised whether the motion redefines “upper division” in all cases for the university. He said his interpretation is that the motion defines upper division for the purpose of the graduation requirement only, and not in all cases for the university, and he asked for our concurrence that this was the correct interpretation. Faculty Senate Chair Bill Haltom agreed that we were “trying to reach a shared goal” and were defining “upper division appropriate to that motion only.” All agreed by consensus.
The second issue Dean Cooney raised concerned the parenthetical statement approved April 4 to appear at the end of the foreign language requirement: “(Students with documented learning disabilities that affect the ability to process language are eligible for waivers).” Dean Cooney reported that after the April 4 meeting informal discussion revealed there was disagreement over whether “eligible for waivers” meant “eligible to apply for waiver but you may not get it,” or “waiver is automatic.” He raised the issue for clarification.
Haltom argued that if “eligible for waivers” means that “you may be able to get it waived,” then “the sentence doesn’t do any work,” because all degree requirements (except for a limited few) may be waived by the Academic Standards Committee. Haltom therefore M/S/P “that we excise the parenthetical statement ‘(Students with documented learning disabilities that affect the ability to process language are eligible for waivers)’ from the foreign language requirement.”
Breitenbach, noting that Dean Cooney had said he had looked up the word “eligible” in the dictionary, asked Dean Cooney what the dictionary had said. Dean Cooney said that his
Webster’s Collegiate dictionary had said “eligible” means in effect that students can apply for waiver but they won’t get it automatically.
Haltom’s motion then passed on a voice vote.
We returned to discussion of the proposed Curriculum Statement. Remembering that Ted
Taranovski had indicated at the end of the April 4 meeting that he had additional concerns with section III, Dean Cooney turned to Taranovski, who said he had reconsidered and had decided not to raise the issue he had in mind at the end of the last meeting. There was no further discussion of section III so we moved to discussion of section IV.

Suzanne Barnett asked that we discuss the issue of transfer courses in the core. Dean Cooney, noting that transfer issues were addressed in part C of section III, asked if there were any concerns with parts A or B.
Bill Barry noted an inconsistency between the “first three years” language in the first paragraph of section IV and the “anytime during the undergraduate years” sequencing language in part B.
Taranovski favored retaining “the first three years” language because he thought it would be good for students to finish their approaches to knowing courses in the first three years to avoid the current situation in which seniors take one-hundred level courses, such as western civilization, that they should have taken as freshmen or sophomores. Barnett argued that the wording should not imply that the core is something “just to be gotten out of the way.” Taranovski responded that the core “is something you to do build a foundation which needs to be built before the roof goes on.”
After two or three false starts, Taranovski M/S/vote reported later “to replace in part B
‘Anytime during the undergraduate years’ with ‘Years one through three.’” Martin Jackson asked if he was correct that, while this would be an expectation, it would not be “an out and out requirement.” Barnett followed up with the question, “students can take an approaches course in the fourth year, right?” The consensus was that Jackson and Barnett were both correct.
Hans Ostrom M/S/P to close debate. The motion to close debate passed on a hand vote.
The Taranovski motion then passed on a voice vote.
Renee Houston pointed out a formatting error in part B, and Barry agreed that “Junior or Senior
Year: Interdisciplinary Experience Connections” should properly read “Junior or Senior Year:
Interdisciplinary Experience,” with “Connections appearing indented on the next line.
Harry Vélez-Quiñones M/S/F “to excise ‘interdisciplinary experience’ from section B.”
Vélez-Quiñones argued that the name of the requirement is properly “connections,” not
“interdisciplinary experience connections.” Barry reiterated the formatting change that would put
“interdisciplinary experience” on a line separate from “connections,” but Vélez-Quiñones stuck with his motion. He said he didn’t like “interdisciplinary” attached to the connections requirement at all. The motion failed on a voice vote.
Nancy Bristow M/S/P “to replace ‘two freshman seminars’ with ‘two first-year seminars’ in the first paragraph of the Curriculum Statement and in section B to replace ‘The Freshman
Experience’ with ‘The First Year Experience.’ After brief discussion that clarified that calling the requirement “The First Year Experience” does not mean that students in the courses must necessarily be in their first year, Bartanen M/S/P to close debate. The motion to close debate passed on a voice vote. Bristow’s motion then passed on a voice vote.
Then began a brief exchange over the wisdom of insisting on maintaining parallel sequencing language throughout part B. Bill Beardsley M/S/F “to send section B back to the Curriculum
Committee for stylistic consistency.” Barry argued that the Curriculum Committee “had spent itself” on this issue, having come to the conclusion that certain inconsistencies were necessary.
The motion failed on a voice vote.
There was no further discussion of parts A or B in section IV and we moved to discussion of part
C.
Barnett said she was concerned that students who transfer to Puget Sound after the first year would not be required to fulfill the Scholarly and Creative Inquiry Seminar (SCIS) requirement. “If they don’t have to do it,” she asked, “then why should anyone have to do it?” She argued that the requirement would lose its meaning and that “we need to talk about what distinguishes our curriculum and what doesn’t.” Barnett cited the possibility of a student completing the first year elsewhere to avoid the SCIS requirement and Hans Ostrom said he couldn’t imagine any student

going elsewhere first just to avoid this course. Barnett argued that the fact that some graduates would not have to take it might result in students who do take it feeling they’re doing something not absolutely important or required.
Bristow said she thinks of the SCIS requirement as a collection of seminars taken during the first year in college, and that including in the seminars transfer students beyond the first year would change the experience for students in their first year. Vélez-Quiñones added that, in creating the
SCIS requirement, faculty were thinking of a cohesive experience among first year students just out of high school. He said that a sophomore transfer student will have missed that “and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He said he believed the waiver was an unfortunate necessity.
Barnett responded that the Writing and Rhetoric Seminar (WRS) is also a course no place else teaches, and yet transfer students must fulfill that requirement. She argued that all graduates should have to take both first year seminars.
Priti Joshi asked why it is being proposed that transfer students complete the WRS requirement but not the SCIS requirement. Barry responded that the seminars came out of two different task forces; that the SCIS task force adopted the view that Bristow articulated earlier in the meeting, and that the WRS task force felt there should be no waiver in order to ensure that all students take a course in writing and argumentation. Ostrom, a member of the WRS task force, reported it was divided on this issue.
Vélez-Quiñones M/S/vote reported later “that the waiver that applies to the scholarly and creative inquiry seminar apply also to the writing and rhetoric seminar.” Dean Cooney clarified the motion by suggesting its effect was to delete “Writing and Rhetoric” from the first sentence of part C1 and to add “Writing and Rhetoric Seminar” to the second sentence in part C1.
The motion, if passed, would mean that transfer students would need to fulfill neither the SCIS requirement nor the WRS requirement.
Kate Stirling asked if the waiver would it be automatic, and the answer was yes, both seminars would be automatically waived.
There was some confusion expressed about which core courses transfer students would and would not be required to take at Puget Sound until it was pointed out that part C1 simply lists the core requirements transfer students have to fulfill, and that part C2 identifies which of them must be fulfilled in residence. Transfer courses that fulfill core requirements would be identified through the normal academic transfer evaluation procedures approved by faculty and implemented in the
Office of the Registrar.
Stirling argued that using the same evaluation procedures currently in place means that much of the language in part C1 is unnecessary. Dean Cooney clarified that the only purpose of part C1 is to define which core requirements can be waived and which cannot be waived.
At this point Barry declared he was persuaded by Barnett’s arguments that all students, including transfer students, should be required to complete the SCIS requirement. He said we could create sections of the scholarly and creative inquiry seminars for transfer students only.
Breitenbach spoke against the motion, arguing that it was important for all students to have exposure to a writing and rhetoric course. He added that it is not necessarily a bad thing to have older students in freshman courses; that sometimes the older students can “help push the level of learning.” He said he was skeptical of the notion that we should keep the seminars restricted to freshmen only
Barry M/S/P to close debate. The motion to close debate passed on a voice vote. The
Vélez-Quiñones motion then failed on a voice vote.

Barry M/S/vote reported later “to strike the second sentence from part C1 and to replace
‘must meet core requirements in Writing and Rhetoric, the Five Approaches to Knowing, and Connections’ in the first sentence of part C1 with ‘must meet all core requirements.’
Barry said that the motion gets rid of the transfer student exemption from the SCIS requirement.
Doug Cannon asked to hear from SCIS task force members the reasoning behind asking for the waiver in the first place. Vélez-Quiñones said that the waiver arose because transfer students will come from institutions where the freshman seminars may not be available. Barry said Bristow’s reasoning articulated earlier in the meaning was essentially the argument task force members were making. He added that the task force’s purpose was to put something before the faculty for consideration, that it’s now a faculty decision, and that we shouldn’t defer to the task force at this point.
Vélez-Quiñones argued we should admit transfer students who have had essentially the same first year experience elsewhere that we require of our own students here, so that when they arrive as sophomores they “mesh nicely with what our own sophomores will be doing.” He said we should not admit transfers who have not had the appropriate freshman courses. He said this would take care of the issue of forcing a first year experience on transfer students who are no longer in their first year.
Jacalyn Royce argued that the SCIS course would be entirely different for students not in their first year, and that setting up separate sections for transfers “makes a lot of sense and is a good idea.”
She said that sophomores and juniors are not being introduced to college as freshmen are and that the SCIS course should be a different experience for them.
Barry M/S to close debate. The motion to close debate passed on a voice vote. The main
Barry motion then appeared to pass on a voice vote and did in fact pass on a hand recount. Part C1 now reads: “All transfer students, prior to receiving the bachelor’s degree, must meet all core requirements.”
Taranovski asked how we were to understand what we had just done. He asked: “If all students must meet all core requirements, then everything is in theory transferable except the connections course, right?” Dean Cooney said that this is how it works in the current core, with only comparative values and science in context not being transferable. By consensus we agreed that
Taranovski’s interpretation was correct.
Then began a brief discussion about whether transfer students would understand that the connections course must be taken in residence at Puget Sound. In response, Haltom M/S/P
“that ‘Connections must be taken at the University of Puget Sound’ be added to part C of the curriculum statement.” The motion passed on a voice vote.
Cannon expressed concern that part D identifies target enrollment limits for the first year seminars, but does not do so for other core areas. He said that the natural science task force made a recommendation to the Curriculum Committee about this. Cannon M/S/motion withdrawn later “that Lecture sections of courses in Natural Scientific Approaches should generally not be larger than the equivalent of two laboratory sections.”
Barry reported that all task forces did in fact “weigh in” on the class size issue, and that their recommendations were included on the memorandum sent out to faculty earlier this year. He said that the task force recommendations targeted numbers that were used pretty much already in the current core. He said that every task force recommendation reflected a statement of principle to reduce class sizes, so the Curriculum Committee decided to take out all numerical references
(except for the first year seminars at 17) and to state the principle to get the sizes as low as possible. Barry said he opposed the motion because until we know what the consequences would be we should not mandate class sizes too specifically. He said we cannot hire more faculty to get the enrollments down and we would have to meet any imposed limits with existing faculty. He

argued that this might have impacts on upper division courses in the majors. He argued that “we don’t want to box ourselves in--the principle of reducing class size is good enough.”
Ostrom asked how close current enrollments in natural science lecture courses were to the proposed limit in the motion. Barry responded for biology and geology. Dean Cooney said that some natural science lecture courses are currently team-taught, which might not be possible with lower limits.
Taranovski predicted that enrollments would “balloon” without stated limits, and said that we are already on record as adopting a guideline of 25 students per section in the “Other Considerations” section of the “Approaches to Knowing” core proposal.
Vélez-Quiñones spoke against the motion, saying that with no word from natural science faculty that having lectures no larger than twice the lab size is critical, we should be prudent and not alter the language. Barry reminded us that the omnibus motion directed the task forces to address the class size issue, but said nothing about identifying specific class sizes.
Cannon said he would be willing to withdraw the motion if he could be assured that the class size clauses written by the task forces would have some kind of standing “that is more permanent than something that is quickly forgotten after this meeting.” Dean Cooney responded that when contraction occurs for enrollments in one part of the curriculum expansion often occurs elsewhere, as Taranovski had suggested. The deans would try to “make any class size directive happen if the faculty says so,” but this would need to happen without the addition of faculty.
Cannon withdrew his motion. He indicated that he would introduce a resolution in the fall that faculty are behind the sense of the task force recommendations.
Dean Cooney, noting that the time of adjournment was imminent, asked whether we wanted to schedule another faculty meeting before the May 7 meeting.
Taranovski M/S/P ‘to extend the faculty meeting by 15 minutes so we can go through section V.’
We moved to discussion of section V.
Walter Lowrie, reporting data he received from Carrie Washburn indicating that about fifty per cent of departments have received permission from the Curriculum Committee to exceed the stated nine-unit limit on major requirements, M/S/vote reported later “that the Curriculum
Committee reexamine the maximum number of departmental or program units allowed for a major, including cognates, and report to the faculty prior to the adoption of the omnibus motion before the body.”
Lowrie argued that the issue is important. He said that we should look at this issue because we have made so many exceptions to the stated limit in the past. He said that we should not be pushed in our examination of such an important issue by a rush to meet a deadline. Breitenbach agreed, saying we were acting in haste just to vote on May 7, and that “there’s no great loss if we hold off.” Jackson suggested that perhaps the Curriculum Committee doesn’t need to look at this before we approve a set of core requirements. He said the Curriculum Committee might look at this issue next year.
Bartanen explained that there is a time issue regarding approval of the core because new course proposals and freshman orientation planning, for example, are awaiting the outcome of our decision. Taranovski spoke against the motion saying it would be counter-productive to ask the
Curriculum Committee to do this now. He said “enough is enough and it’s time to move ahead.”
Barry suggested the Curriculum Committee could be charged with looking at this issue first thing next fall.

Taranovski M/S/P to close debate. The motion to close debate passed on a voice vote.
Haltom raised a point of order, asking if Lowrie’s motion required the Curriculum Committee to look at the issue now or later. Dean Cooney pointed out that the motion specifically requires the
Curriculum Committee to look at the issue now, prior to a vote on the core proposal. The Lowrie motion failed on a voice vote.
Stirling asked if it was our understanding that we will ask the Faculty Senate to charge the
Curriculum Committee with addressing this issue in the fall. Dean Cooney responded that it is not an understanding at this point, merely a suggestion. Haltom promised that “what Stirling would like to have happen will happen provided no such motion is made.”
Dean Cooney asked if there were any further discussion of section V. Barry pointed out that section 5G should say “within the minor area” rather than “with the minor area” and we agreed by consensus that this change could be made.
Dean Cooney asked again if we were finished discussing the Curriculum Statement. He said he wanted to make it clear there was no administrative interest in rushing this through; that it was entirely up to the faculty to decide when we were finished discussing the document and when we were ready to put it before the faculty for a vote.
Agreement by consensus was that we were finished discussing the document and that the core proposal, consisting of the curriculum statement with the core learning objectives and guidelines included, would come before the faculty for a vote at the May 7, 2001 meeting.
Taranovski moved that we adjourn, and we did adjourn at 5:39 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
John M. Finney
Secretary of the Faculty