College of Liberal Arts

Faculty Comments: Anonymous I have some questions about two of the flags in the proposed core: global cultures and multiculturalism. I've been looking through the report for any details about how these two qualifications are going to be defined, but I haven't been able to find anything. Here are some specific questions that I have: 1. Would a course in any region of the world count toward the "global cultures" flag? Are North America, Europe or Australia excluded, for example? 2. Must the cultures studied in a global cultures be extant today? For example, would a course in the ancient world -- China, India, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean - be counted? 3. To count as multicultural, must a course deal exclusively with contemporary cultures of ethnic groups in the United States? Can historical courses count, or courses dealing with ethnic groups in other parts of the world? 4. To count as multicultural, must a course deal with more than one ethnic culture? Would a course exclusively devoted to African Americans count? If so, is there any limitation as to which ethnic groups may be included? Could a course on Irish American or German American culture count? 5. If there is, explicitly or implicitly, a list of relevant ethnic groups connected with the multicultural requirement, must a course meeting this requirement deal exclusively with the cultures of these groups? Primarily? Substantially? 6. Would non-ethnic minority groups be counted as meeting the multicultural requirement? E.g. a course on Muslims in America? Pentecostals? Mormons? Gays or lesbians? Women? 7. If both the global and the multicultural requirements are intended to exclude courses that deal substantially with the history of the majority culture in Europe and America, what is the justification for not requiring any exposure to that tradition? Anonymous I applaud the Task Force's concern for lower-division students: 1. I like the insistence that core requirements be satisfied in residence rather than by Advanced Placement. I think the method of earning “flags” should work. 2. I agree that courses that currently satisfy core requirements should be made more useful for students who are not going to major in the subject. I think, however, some of the Task Force’s other proposals need some refinement, and that the large sum of money they envisage spending could be better allocated. i. I passionately dislike the idea of the First Year College (could we please drop Fresh-man? That word seems to be the last bastion of the assumption that the general term is always masculine.) The last thing we need is another administrative structure in a university that is already top-heavy with administrators. I would also prefer not to slow down those students who already know what they want to do, whether it is business or engineering or something in the Liberal Arts. Suggestion: We could spend some of the money that would have gone to the creation of the College on strengthening professional departmental advising (which I think is already very good) and require all First Years to visit with advisers early on. Perhaps we could put a bar on their registration for the second semester if they haven't talked to at least one adviser. ii. I like the idea of the First Year (and Sophomore) Signature courses, and their placement within the core curriculum, but a large lecture class is hardly a distinctive experience at a big state university. We have many core requirements that already get filled that way. Reasons for rethinking the large classes: a) I have taught large sections with armies of TAs, and I think they can work well, but not if the improvement of speaking and writing is your goal. TAs are not yet trained to teach writing (that happens in their third year, when they become AIs), and are often themselves struggling with the basic pedagogical challenges of running class discussion, stimulating student interest, and learning to grade. (I’ve taught a pedagogy class associated with one of the big sections, and I know how uncertain TAs can be.) b) And the problems are not just with TAs. Very special professorial skills are needed to make the big sections work; believe me, it took me a while to master it. Almost everyone can do well with 20 people, but the big lectures are a huge pedagogical challenge. Many professors just cannot succeed in this format, and even more are unwilling to try. The number of circus performers amongst us is quite limited. c) If, as was suggested at the meeting where the report was unveiled, the idea is that UT students will, ten years down the road, remember their “Signature” experience and roll off to the bar to reminisce about the good old days, they are more likely to recall a small and intimate seminar where, from the very beginning, a tenure-track faculty member took their ideas seriously and required them to speak in class, read and think about major issues, and write often. The Task Force has noted the alienating anonymity of the freshman experience: instead of another large and anonymous lecture class, let us give them a seminar in which chemists will mingle with linguists and philosophers, and perhaps make lasting interdisciplinary friendships. (We have already tacitly recognized the need for this by instituting the voluntary First Year Interest Groups.) Suggestion: Use the extra money (I think I heard a figure of four million mentioned at the first presentation, but I am not sure) to hire more faculty across the whole university (thus also reducing our faculty/student ratio from 19/1 to 16/1 in conformity with the aims of the Commission of 125). Require all regular faculty to teach small (20 person) interdisciplinary First Year seminars on the model of Plan 2 TC 301, with serious writing and speaking instruction built in. (There should be no lectures.) The Liberal Arts Writing Across the Curriculum Initiative could be broadened to help faculty work out the most effective way of integrating writing instruction into whatever subject matter is chosen. Assuming a student intake of 6,000 a year, we would need about 150 of these seminars per semester, so I suppose we would need to hire about seventy-five new faculty, over and above the three hundred already suggested by the Commission of 125? Perhaps faculty could teach in pairs, each pair taking two groups and switching between them? This would ensure the interdisciplinary nature of the courses. Topics: I would prefer something like Ethics to something as vague as Nature, but the subject is much less important to me than the size of the class. I like the idea of the major University lectures or performances targeted specially to First Year students. So; I do agree we need to do something about the First Years, and build on the efforts of the Task Force. I'm looking forward to the discussions of this important topic: thanks for facilitating it. Tom Palaima, professor, classics The bureaucracy (and expense) required for a creation of a new College and for the training and funding required for the kind of University-wide advising (and the interfacing that existent colleges, etc., will have to set up) they envision raise the serious question of opportunity costs. That is, given the fact that the University is 52nd and stagnating nationally in the USNWR ratings of our undergraduate education and that funding for faculty and funding for students are below 100th nationally, what will setting up these things make it impossible for us to do ($-wise and human-resource-wise) in other areas. Do we have a rough cost-analysis and a flow chart of bureaucracy that we may consider so that we know what the total bill, in start-up and in recurring dollars might be and how the prposers think the college will develop and what they will be spending in the future? How will centralized advising be effective? Will they rotate advisers through the major colleges for a period and then put them on the University-wide advising staff so that they have some idea of just what they are advising? And will they increase salaries so that one can retain good people for the length of time required? Have they investigated how many major research universities like UT Austin lack a true sabbatical system whereby tenured professors can have guaranteed periodic time off, independent of research projects, to do just the kind of expanding of interdisciplinary boundaries that this schema desires? What would be the cost of supplementing the existent URI funds so as to create a true sabbatical system which would improve teaching enormously? How about an increase in the funds for travel to professional conferences? It is now $350 for one conference per year. That hardly pays airfare these days. The design for freshman signature courses will require 28 faculty and minimally 336/4 = 84 TA's. These TA's will have to be highly trained to 'develop a culture of writing and speaking'. And one might ask whether large-lecture (prof as distant image) interdisciplinary courses are really appropriate at this stage rather than aiming at the upper-level stage for these kinds of courses where resources directed at making possible team-teaching by faculty to small numbers of students in existing interdisciplinary area centers might not be a better alternative. The size of sophomore signature courses is left intentionally vague ("ideally taught in smaller sections"). It is impossible to critique this recommendation without knowing whether smaller means 60 (i.e., 25% of the freshman course size) or 20. Given the fact that UT is thought to do a poor job because of 19:1 student-faculty ratio, to have courses of even this size is not going to be a real improvement. Julia Mickenberg, assistant professor, American studies One thought occurred to me after Monday's discussion of the Signature courses: The emphasis on training for the teaching assistants made me wonder whether there will be any special training for faculty who teach these courses, in terms of finding a way to assure some kind of continuity across the courses offered (without constraining the creative leeway of faculty who are designing the courses). In the course of such training, if it were to be set up, we might bring in outstanding faculty from other institutions who have offered similar types of courses to discuss their experiences. We might also consider doing something like having at least one book assigned in common for the courses. I hesitate to suggest the latter idea, however, as it might have the effect of over-standardizing the course. Karl Galinsky, professor, classics “What starts here, changes the world.” One might think that at a university with this motto, periodic revision of the core curriculum would be eagerly embraced by all and considered essential to the University’s mission. Alas, as a member of the previous such task force, a quarter century ago, I know better. The motto at that time was President Peter Flawn’s “War on Mediocrity” and we did win, but it was a struggle. It required, and the same applies now, the unrelenting and energetic effort by the University president and his academic v.p. to bring the various schools and colleges in line. At times it felt as if it were easier to change the world than university-wide requirements. We all know the reason: on such occasions, the immediate academic world, for all its inspiring slogans to change the world beyond it, reveals itself as one of protectionism, entrenched interests, and academic feudal states and principalities. They are quick to erect firewalls; a favorite at the time was the appeal to the almighty accrediting agencies. The basic issue is not the quality of the individual programs.  Many of them are good, if not excellent. They know, in their own realm, that they need to update, revise, and improve their curricula in order to stay competitive. But they are almost endemically resistant to any effort that is trying to do the same on a university-wide basis. It’s the classic issue of university vs. multiuniversity, and e pluribus unum. The forest, then, tends to get lost for the trees. That was precisely the perspective of the Commission of 125 which provided the impetus for the core curriculum revision: “The current curriculum lacks sufficient common intellectual experiences shared by all undergraduates, whatever their discipline.” This group of distinguished leaders in the real world in which, as per our motto, UT graduates are meant to be agents of change, asked that we make appropriate changes in our core curriculum. I like the synergy. Here are the primary reasons why I and others strongly support the task force’s recommendations: 1) They are not timid. They do not amount to some incremental tinkering with what’s already there. Instead, the creation of a University College, for one, is precisely the kind of bold departure that is needed, both for the intrinsic reasons spelled out in the report and 2) for asserting the University’s leadership role in undergraduate education on the national scene. More is involved than posturing. We will never be distinct from many of our peer institutions in terms of superior funding per student; like others, UT has become a state-assisted, rather than state-supported, university. Still, the top tier, such as Berkeley and Michigan, have been buffered because of their decades-long ability to set their own tuition. Just as important, their prestige accrues from their cultural capital, the tradition they have accumulated over the years. To close that gap, UT will have to rely a lot on its wits and innovation. The task force’s recommendations exemplify that effort. 3) The recommendation to coordinate core courses thematically again is on target and achievable even with many of the currently available course resources (cf., on a smaller scale, the current FIGs program). That’s the real nub; it is inaccurate to portray the resulting program as consisting mostly of large lecture courses. In fact, there will be just one such “signature course”, in the large lecture format, in each student’s core program. Compared with the present situation, that’s far from excessive. And there will be more quality control. 4) After we got the work done 25 years ago, we basically walked away from it. No university office or official was specifically designated to pay continuing attention to how things were going overall.  That won’t happen this time. Changed curricula and programs are never meant to be static but are a work in progress. It’s one area where intelligent design and organic evolution happily coexist. Another essential aspect, then, of the proposed changes is that their ratification won’t be the end, but the beginning, and they will be an ongoing source of vitality, innovation, and improvement of the quality of undergraduate education at The University. We should aim for nothing less. Daily Texan Op-Ed piece, November 28, 2005; copied with permission of Karl Galinsky. Anonymous. I appreciate the hard work done by the Committee, and enthusiastically endorse the goal of creating a shared *academic* experience that defines UT. The Committee's call for reshaping the core curriculum is eminently sensible, and the method of doing so (specifically the flags) is both thoughtful and practical. I do have, however, two main areas of concern. I. Signature Course I worry that the Signature Course is expensive and ineffectual. The College of Liberal Arts recently conducted a survey of graduates, and the graduates were invited to describe a particularly memorable course. They did *not* mention lecture courses; almost unanimously the great courses were small courses. If we could increase enthusiasm for academics with a slap-up brilliant lecture by a dynamic professor, then we would already have a Signature Course in English 316K. That course (which is not in my Department and which I've never taught) is staffed by among the best faculty in the University who are dynamic, brilliant, engaged, and engaging. It is always interdisciplinary. Yet, it was not mentioned either by the Commission or Committee as a defining experience. If it is such an experience, and was simply forgotten, then the U should refuse to accept the AP exemption and require the course of all students. If it was not mentioned because it does not serve that purpose, then it is obscure to me how going to great lengths to create yet another lecture course will suddenly have a completely different consequence. The Signature Course was designed as it was, we were told, because the cost of the ideal--small courses taught by faculty--was prohibitive. Yet, it will be an extremely expensive course, and it cannot be a writing course. If there are, as we have been told, 56 graduate students each semester, then each graduate student will be responsible for 60 undergraduates. If they are expected to grade papers and provide writing instuction, that is an exploitative situation. If they are not expected to provide writing instruction, then it is unfair to the students to grade students on their writing ability. That is assessing students on the basis of a skill the course does not teach. If the course load is reduced to an ethical balance, and there is writing instruction involved, then the number of graduate student assistants should be doubled. The course will require fourteen faculty per semester, but will cost all of their teaching time (as it counts for two courses), so it should be thought of as costing 28 faculty per semester. (That is the number of courses which the University College will have to "buy" from the home department.) It is my strong suggestion that the Signature Course be rethought. There are three main ways. First, the ratio could be flipped. Rather than have a lecture with a prof three times a week and discussion with a graduate student one day per week, have a small (twenty student) discussion with a faculty member one day per week and a class with a graduate student three days per week. Or, have the course entirely a guest lecture course. Every lecture is from a different person from a different field. Or, have each department provide some part of the course--it is an opportunity for them to advertise their major. II. University College The preferred model--small classes with faculty--was rejected because of the cost. Yet, there is no cost projection for the University College. This is called playing it both ways. If we are to reject one possible plan because of cost, then we have to think of all other plans (including the preferred one) in terms of cost. Granted, if the University simply institutes the flags with no oversight, they will become pro forma. But, instituting an entire college is bringing out a much larger weapon than is necessary. The analogy to Writing Across the Curriculum was made, and it is apt. If there is no oversight, then the courses will range from thoughtful writing courses to cynical attempts to garner the additional teaching points. The solution, however, was not to institute a College of Writing, but an oversight board. Similarly, boards that do (and sometimes do not) approve courses as fulfilling the flags would be adequate. In short, I see no benefit (and considerable cost) to the Signature Course and University College. I would strongly suggest using the projected costs of the University College to fund small classes with faculty in the first year. *That* would make the University of Texas unique. Daniela Bini, professor, Italian and comparative literature Dear Faculty, I read with great interest the report and, since I could not attend the forum last week I would like to make a few comments. I hope you will have a chance to consider them. My  many years at UT have been devoted to undergraduate teaching. 1. I was unpleasantly surprised in seeing that the task force had not even one representative from a foreign language department. With all the talks on globalization and multiculturalism, with the Provost great investment in study abroad, this lack seemed to me very serious. 2. Although I agree on the necessity to establish a core curriculum (made, however of a list of courses from which the students can select), I fully agree with David Hillis' criticism against the creation of yet another bureaucratic organism, the University College, to handle the new core curriculum, which, beside making the process more cumbersome, will, as Hillis rightly remarks, "divert limited and critical financial resources from important objectives for undergraduate education." The implementation of the new core curriculum could be handle by the individual academic colleges and departments. 3. I also agree with Hillis on the two signature courses. We should try to give more undergraduate the seminar experience, since they already have enough enormous lecture courses with no contact with faculty. I am totally in support of reducing the number of transfer credit, but even more of placement credit. It would improve high school teaching as well. If emphasis were removed from placement courses in high school, teachers could do a much more critical work with their students. As it stands now the entire course is devoted to the preparation of the advanced placement exam at the end of the year; thus the purpose of true learning, exploring and questioning is not realized. Students, moreover, feel they must take those courses because they look good on their transcripts. As for postponing the declaration of major at least (I would add) to the third semester, you could not find a strong ally. I have been fighting this battle for many years when, as an undergraduate advisor, I attended the undergraduate advisory meetings in the College of Liberal Arts. Fred Kronz, professor, philosphy I am a Professor in the Department of Philosophy. I have discussed the TF proposal with colleagues, students and friends. I also attended the Liberal Arts forum last week. Here are some comments on the proposal. The implementation of substantive measures of curricular reform has many barriers. Many programs (especially those in engineering, business, nursing, and some others) leave very little room beyond the mandated core courses; typically, a student is left with just a single elective course. One of the signature courses will take that up and leave such students with no elective courses. The other signature course (the one on culture) for students in such programs will serve to fulfill one or another of the designated mandated courses. The flags merely work with the mandated core courses and required courses in the student's major, and they will be used to enhance those requirements (by ensuring that the student's selections provide the student with certain experiences or skills) with the system of "flags" (not a good term choice--I'll come back to this point below). It would be substantially more desirable to introduce several additional required courses of a substantive character and while doing so institute measures that would prevent colleges from usurping those additional requirements for their own purposes. This would require a University College, or some other university wide administrative body, with substantial clout (enough to hold the line). The problem is that there is already a substantial percentage of "5th year" seniors, and the percentage would likely go up, if several new requirements are instituted. I don't understand the rush to get students through in four years, especially since entering college students will likely be working into their seventies before social security benefits kick in, and (I suppose) their longevity is in the mid to upper 80s. One argument is that it would mean fewer seats open per year, but it doesn't have to be so since there is the possibility of having a serious set of evening classes and a real summer semester (unlike the smattering that is now offered over the summer). Given the current political climate, however, the introduction of additional requirements of that sort is just not feasible. The creation of a University College is feasible and would be a substantial step in the right direction. However, there are monetary/resource constraints that need to be addressed head on. The issue has been talked about some, but no one has really suggested (to my knowledge) that this is the underlying issue, the drag of resistance; namely, that Its creation will take away resources from other colleges and use it for administrative and advising purposes, leading to the perception that this is just more needless bureaucracy. I suspect that there is a very serious turf battle brewing over limited resources. The diplomatic solution of development (raising more money) has no real likelihood of success (since existing colleges will want their share of the gifts for their own purposes), unless the development office can get donors to specifically designate their gifts to the University College, which does not yet exist and thereby makes it a hard sell (but not an impossible sell). One way to sell the UC is for it to have its own faculty, an elite group of professors with a well-established and respected body of research, a strong commitment to teaching, and a reputation for teaching excellence. Such professors would be "university professors" and would receive a substantial increase in salary and perks. Perhaps there could be accomplished by securing a number of university-professor chairs. The establishment of such positions would be an effective way to sell the UC to donors. There are already tiers across campus with regards to salaries (e.g., law .vs. liberal arts) and to curriculum (Plan I .vs. Plan II), and there are good reasons for these differences. If you want the UC to be on a par with the other colleges, it must have very substantial resources. Clout requires capital. If you want the UC to have staying power so that it is not a simple matter to eliminate it when the power structure shifts (as it inevitably will), then its having only an administrative staff will not be enough; it will need to have tenured faculty assigned to it. Perhaps the term "flag" is intended (on some level) to re-enforce the idea that UTA is the "flagship" U of the UT system, but if so then our insecurities are showing. There is a problematic association with something's being flagged (usually its with a red one); and another with the act of a policeman who flags down a driver (not typically to congratulate the driver on his or her driving skills). What term could be used instead of the term "flags"? Flags are to be used to mark are courses that provide students with certain types of skills or experiences that serve to make them "well educated" by contributing to breadth of knowledge as opposed to depth, which is what the major is supposed to do. Perhaps such courses could be referred to as "benchmark" courses. I'm not happy with that either, but it is a bit better than "flags." I am inclined to accept the TF proposal as a step in the right direction, and I would be more inclined to do so provided that the TF commits to the creation of a University College with clout and staying power of the sort described above. That is feasible (perhaps more so than the current plan for the University College) and it would be a more substantial step in the right direction.