To: Ron Bontekoe, Chair, UHM Faculty Senate
From: Carolyn Stephenson, Chair, CAPP
April 10, 2015
Re: Quantitative Reasoning resolution
Thank you for forwarding the Quantitative Reasoning Resolution that GEC has put forth,
based on the work of the Quantitative Reasoning Working Group. Since CAPP only
received this issue on March 18 and met for the first time since then on April 8, we are
only able to provide feedback now. The short and long of our response is as follows:
first, the entire committee voted for the first action clause of the resolution, that
“the Mānoa Faculty Senate recommends that the current Foundations Symbolic Reasoning
General Education core requirement be replaced by a Foundations Quantitative Reasoning
General Education core requirement to be implemented with the Fall 2018 Freshman class.”
Our response to the second and third clauses of the resolution was more complicated;
while no one was in favor of approving the resolution as written with those clauses, we
did not have substantial agreement on what might be best. Thus, we are communicating
to the SEC our concerns and some ideas of how they might be resolved. Our concerns
include the following: 1) clauses #2 and #3 seem to still follow on to a substantial degree
from the originally proposed and rejected model 2, as do parts of the background
document, 2) clause #2 does not really suggest any change in student requirements, nor
does there appear to be any provision for how to report or keep records on what courses
might include QR elements, and 3) a member of CAPP received word from a member of
the Math department about concerns with implementation of QR in courses beyond the
foundational level. In addition, we do not understand why it recommends starting with
General Education Diversification courses; why might those be more suitable than others
for QR?
Two proposals were brought forth: the first, that the resolution include only the first
action clause, received 5 votes. The second, that we drop clause 2 and modify clause 3 as
follows, received 4 votes:
The MFS recommends that the General Education Committee further develop the
document attached to the resolution and that the General Education Office make it
available to faculty members to aid in the implementation of adding quantitative
reasoning to the curriculum.
CAPP’s reasoning in preferring this language is that the current document still contains
elements of model 2, including QR focus courses at the upper levels, and it needs to be
tweaked to relate more directly to the changed requirement. We appreciate the hard work
of the committee in compiling this attached document, but feel it still needs more revision
before official adoption by the faculty senate. Thus leaving revisions to GEC and GEO
after senate approval would seem to be a solution, given time constraints.
I believe the SEC has already fixed the change of the word “our” to “the” in last whereas.