State University of New York
Course Redesign
Initiative
Risa Palm
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
March 17, 2008
The context: SUNY is a large
and complex system
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427,398 students at 64 campuses
31,000 faculty
30 Community colleges
2 AAU universities (Buffalo and Stony Brook)
5 “statutory” colleges within otherwise private
universities (4 at Cornell, 1 at Alfred)
• 2 stand-alone medical centers
• 6 specialized colleges: Optometry, Environmental
Science and Forestry, Fashion Institute of
Technology, Levin Institute, Optometry and
Maritime
SUNY is young and growing
(founded in 1948)
My previous experience with
course redesign
• A faculty-initiated program at
Louisiana State University.
• Mathematics department’s
goals:
– improve college algebra course,
– reduce the numbers of part-time
instructors and adjunct faculty
– increase the numbers of full-time
faculty and graduate students
My experience with redesign
• Faculty were very enthusiastic and took it
upon themselves to sell this project to the
students and to their peers in other
departments.
• Also, the redesign was adopted in the
context of a strategic plan that provided
additional investment in both English and
Mathematics to increase the proportion of
full-time faculty-to-adjuncts.
My experience with redesign
• However, initial resistance by students –
and particularly college newspaper both to
– removing beloved instructors and
– “de-personalizing” the course
– use of lecture sections
My experience with redesign
• This was eventually overcome once
students adjusted to new format.
• Excerpt from letter to editor:
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Why the Course Redesign? To achieve recognized excellence, the Flagship
Agenda forces us to reconsider the fact that a large volume of students in
our care are taught by instructors without Ph.D.s. This does not occur in the
leading universities of the country, and it diminishes the standing of LSU
and its graduates. Covering the teaching done by these instructors poses
an incredible challenge for the Mathematics Department. Of the several
classes instructors taught, department leadership decided Math 1431 and
Math 1022 should be taught in large sections by Ph.D.-holding faculty
members.
My experience with redesign
• At LSU, the administration was “following” the
faculty in course redesign. This made it very
easy.
• I had become a “believer” in course redesign
even before I met John Ryan (then-chancellor of
SUNY) who wanted our system to experiment
with it after hearing Carol Twigg speak.
• We decided to try a pilot program within SUNY.
Selling this to the faculty
• At SUNY, we expected faculty resistance
based on previous Trustee interference
with the curriculum.
• The Board of Trustees decided in 1998
that all “state-operated campuses”
(excluding community colleges) would
have a standard general education
requirement.
Selling this to the faculty
• General Education at SUNY includes:
– The knowledge and skills areas include
Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social
Sciences, American History, Western
Civilization, Other World Civilizations,
Humanities, the Arts, Foreign Language and
Basic Communication.
– The competencies include Critical Thinking
(Reasoning) and Information Management.
Selling this to the faculty
• While these
requirements are
not necessarily
unreasonable,
their imposition in
this manner
resulted in a
faculty senate vote
of “no confidence”
in the Trustees.
Selling this to the faculty
• In order to overcome suspicion
that system was “pushing” this
on an unwilling faculty, we
decided on to let faculty
decide whether or not to
participate: we set aside a
small pool of funds and invited
faculty compete for the funding.
Selling this to the faculty
• We also showed
faculty data on how
few courses account
for our total student
credit hours, and the
failure rate in these
courses.
• We argued that we
should focus on these
key multi-section,
lower division courses.
At SUNY
About 25 courses (25!) account for about ½ of
community college enrollment and 35% of four-year
enrollment.
So if we can improve just these 25 courses, we
can have a huge impact.
What are the 25 most
popular courses?
They tend to be general education courses such as:
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English composition
Biology
Spanish
Chemistry
Psychology
Economics
• American or world
history
• Calculus
• College Algebra
• Art history
• Accounting
Selling this to the faculty
• 10 grants of $40,000 each are available
for the winners of a competition.
• Further, in order to provide departments
with further incentives to participate,
provosts are required to promise that
any cost savings revert to the
department.
This provides a financial incentive in
addition to other beliefs in “good works”
and general sainthood.
Process at SUNY
• We threw out a wide net for
participation – partly to
ensure all sectors that they
were welcome.
• Informational meetings
where all campuses were
invited in two parts of state:
Genesee Community
College and SUNY system
administration (Albany) in
October, 2007
Where we are in the process:
• Final proposal will be submitted April 18
• 10 grants will be made by May 15.
Departments that are still competing include:
1. Buffalo State
Economics
2. Canton
Biology
3. Canton
Writing
4. Cobleskill
Botany
5. Fredonia
Spanish
6. Monroe CC
Elementary Algebra
7. Niagara CC
Intro to Statistics
8. Old Westbury
College Algebra
9. Onondaga CC
Principles of Info Systems
10. Oswego
College Algebra
11. Oswego
Macro and Micro Economics
12. Oswego
Psychology
13. Potsdam
History
14. Stony Brook
Physics
Process at SUNY
I am optimistic about continued diffusion of course redesign within
SUNY. It is now faculty-driven, and the Senate is actually
interested in getting more money for it!