Meeting Notes (prepared by Mary Gauvain, Chair)
May 28, 2003

Present: R. Head, C. Wall, L. Wright, and M. Gauvain
Absent: T. Bandyopadhyay, E. Elliott, , S. Lyubomirsky

This was the third and last scheduled meeting of the CHASS Ad Hoc Curriculum Advisory Committee. Discussion focused on our overall evaluation of the various models we reviewed and on our recommendation regarding the ingredients that we consider essential in any revision to the college’s breadth requirements.

Summaries of our evaluations of three of the four models, specifically the Report of the General Education Review Committee, the Hewlett Pilot Program, and CHASS Connect, were included in the minutes of the committee’s meeting of April 16, 2003, and will not be repeated here. The committee’s evaluation of the fourth model, the Freshman Discovery Seminars, is as follows:

Freshman Discovery Seminars. The committee views these seminars rather favorably. However, this evaluation is based largely on the topical content represented in the seminars, which is designed to have wide appeal, and the tendency in these courses to emphasize the process of intellectual inquiry. The committee is concerned about enrollment issues, which declined precipitously over the course of the academic year. In Winter and Spring quarters, few of these seminars had a reasonable number of students, and several have had very few students enrolled (3-5). Better advertising and counseling is needed to get students into these seminars throughout the year. There is also concern that offering the seminars for 1 unit may undermine enrollment. If it is possible to increase the time commitment so that the seminars carry 2 units, a student who enrolls in two seminars over the freshman year would earn credit comparable to a 4-unit course. This change may also increase enrollment.

Summary and Conclusions of the Committee’s Discussions

Based on the materials reviewed and discussion by the committee members, the committee recommends that the following issues be considered in any revision to the present college breadth requirements.

1. The committee believes that the current Menu approach to satisfying college breadth adequately meets many of the concerns that are raised in one form or another in all the models we discussed. This does not mean that the Menu approach cannot be improved upon, it can. As it stands, the Menu approach has the advantage of offering breadth and substantial choice to the students, which is consistent with the general consensus of the CHASS faculty. However, the committee believes that the Menu option could have a related option, which we refer to as Menu Plus (Menu+) that would be available for any student who wants to combine the current Menu requirement system with a set of options that are more structured in design and focus and follow that general ideas put forward in some of the models we reviewed. Specifically, the Menu+ option would include a set of courses that are similar to the type of coverage evident in the CHASS Connect courses and the Freshman Discovery seminars. In addition, these courses would include the type of academic rigor, continuity, and support for students that is part of the CHASS Connect program.



2. The committee is concerned that several issues need to be considered carefully in any breadth requirement change. These are listed below in no particular order.



• Student motivation. None of the models reviewed address in any explicit way the issue of student motivation. Indices of motivation that are of concern to the committee include poor class attendance, low rates of compliance by students reading the course material, and inadequate student preparation prior to class enrollment. How a course that is included as a breadth requirement can address student motivation remains an open question.
  
  
• Course coverage. The committee assumes that any breadth requirement should expose students to a broad experience of learning. However, breadth does not mean that there need not be coherence across the courses. The committee feels that course coverage in all the models we reviewed tends to lack coherence across the areas and methods covered. The committee feels that one goal of any revision to the requirements should be clarification and explicit recognition of the overarching coherence of the courses, albeit a coherence that still allows for the inclusion of a diversity of views.
  
  
• For a student to be successful at any breadth system, including the Menu and Menu+ approaches, students need counseling and support from the college at two levels. First, they need counseling before enrolling in the courses, a task that we hope will be part of the new Office of Undergraduate Education. Second, students need counseling and support within the courses themselves that assist them in the knowledge base and the techniques that are the focus of the course. This latter type of support is one of the major strengths of the CHASS Connect program, though we stress that this support involves systematic training, involvement, and continuity of the teaching assistants who are assigned to the courses.
  
  
3. A major outstanding issue for the committee in evaluating any of the models is the fact that in the three models that have been conducted as pilot programs (Hewlett, CHASS Connect, and Freshman Discovery Seminars), all the students who participated self-selected to do so. Thus, any results from these pilot programs reflects the fact that the students involved had some initial willingness or motivation to be involved in these programs and this motivation may explain any positive outcomes that occurred. It would be ideal in any future development of the breadth requirements to somehow randomly assign students to different types of courses in the hope of determining if an approach is successful with students who have not self-selected to be in the program. This type of trial might also provide information about the role of student motivation (see #1 above) in any new approach that is being considered.