The Arts and Sciences Council, October 16, 2014, 3:30-5:00, UMC 415/417

Meeting Minutes

Representatives present: David Atherton, ALC; Daniel Barth, PSYC; Giulia Bernardini, HUMN; Andrew Cain, CLAS; Cathy Comstock, RAPS; James Cordova, AAH; Bert Covert, ANTH; Vanja Dukic, APPM; Valerio Ferme, FRIT; Amma Ghartey-Tagoe, THDN; Ruth Heisler, IPHY;  David Jonas, CHEM; Daniel Kaffine, ECON; Moonhawk Kim, PSCI; E. Christian Kopff. HNRS; Catherine Labio, ENGL; Andrew Martin, EBIO; Bhuvana Narasimhan, LING;  Lonni Pearce, PWR; Markus Pflaum, MATH; Greg Odorizzi, MCDB; Mark Pittenger, HIST; Rob Rupert, PHIL; Neeraja Sadagopan, SLHS; Christina Sue, SOCY; Greg Tucker, GEOL; Beverly Weber, GSLL; Bianca Williams, ETHN

Representatives not present: Reece Auguiste, FILM; Julio Baena, SPAN; Paul Beale, PHYS; Brian Catlos, RLST; Erica Ellingson, APS; Weiqing Han, ATOC; Alison Jaggar, WMST; Bhuvana Narasimhan, LING; Elizabeth Root, GEOG

Also in attendance: Steven Leigh

The meeting was called to order at 3:35 PM.

Dean’s Report, Steven Leigh

Dean Leigh is co-chairing, with Waleed Abdalati of CIRES, the steering committee charged with implementing the Grand Challenge Initiative announced by the Chancellor in the recent state of the campus address. The committee has begun to look at space issues, including improving cooperation between the Boulder Campus and the Anschutz Medical Campus once work is completed on US 36. Dean Leigh will report back as specifics are fleshed out.

Student recruitment is increasingly competitive. Out-of-state recruiters now have offices in Denver. The relative ease with which our students can have more than one major works in our favor.

Dean Leigh is working with the admissions office to find ways of attracting more arts and humanities majors into the Esteemed Scholars program, in part by not focusing exclusively on a student’s scores (or reformulating the emphasis placed on different types of scores).

Dean Leigh observed that not all universities have experienced similar drops in humanities and arts majors and that Arizona State has not seen a large raise in natural science enrollments. Some representatives expressed concern that the university is not promoting the humanities. One representative referred to research showing that American colleges and universities are producing more STEM graduates than there are STEM jobs. Dean Leigh underscored the importance of conveying that STEM students need the kinds of communication and critical thinking skills acquired in humanities classes.

David Boonin will be leaving his position as Associate Dean for the Humanities on June 30, 2015. Procedures are being put in place for the selection of a new Associate Dean. These will vary depending on the number of candidates and will involve faculty input, including open forums.

The Department of Philosophy has re-opened graduate admissions. Substantial progress has been made by the department since the release of the report on the status of women issued by the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women. Dean Leigh expressed his appreciation of the intensive and sustained work done by the members of the department, under the leadership of interim chair Andy Cowell, to address the issues raised by the report.

Dean Leigh wishes to foster the formation of schools within the College of Arts and Sciences. The point is not to cut costs (creating schools might well increase costs), but to foster interdisciplinary initiatives and make it easier to bring faculty members together and to roster faculty across departments and even colleges without harming primary units. In addition, the existence of schools would create identities that could help with fundraising, which would in turn allow the dean’s office to focus more on its academic mission and less on external relations. Benefits might also include the consolidation of introductory courses across departments, such as the introduction to statistics courses that are not discipline-specific and are currently being taught in a large number of departments. Consolidating such courses would free some faculty members to teach courses more closely related to their fields of expertise. There are different school models to consider and faculty members will have ample opportunity to debate what model, if any, would work best for their particular situation. Dean Leigh hopes faculty members will start or continue discussing the opportunities that the creation of schools might present. There is no deadline or time-line for the creation of any school. Not every department needs to be in a school.

Discussions are under way in some departments. The School of the Arts project is the more advanced of the projects currently under consideration. Amma Ghartey-Kootin of Theater and Dance stated that her colleagues strongly support continued discussions regarding the creation of a school of the arts. James Cordova noted that the Art and Art History faculty were more divided.

Catherine Labio confirmed that the Planning Committee is considering putting the “schools” concept and the structure of the College on its agenda.

Vote on Service Learning Guidelines

The Arts and Sciences Council voted to approve and adopt as College policy the Service Learning Guidelines recommended by the Curriculum Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences on April 30, 2014. The results of the vote were as follows: Yes-23, No-0, Abstain-2.

The Service Learning Guidelines are appended to the minutes.

Votes on the Report Issued by the ad hoc ASC Core Review Committee

The Arts and Sciences Council voted by secret ballot to approve—defined as “enter into the record”—the report submitted by the ad hoc Core Curriculum Review Committee on March 18, 2014. The results were as follows: Yes-24, No-2, Abstain-0.

Representatives then debated and voted on whether they were in favor of asking the Executive Committee of the ASC to appoint an ad hoc committee tasked with making a proposal to revise the core curriculum. The results of the vote, held by secret ballot, were as follows: Yes-16, No-9, Abstain-2 (spoiled ballot-1).

Chair’s Report, Catherine Labio

The members of each committee have been asked to review the language used to describe their committee in the ASC bylaws (and in the committee descriptions webpage) and set written goals for the year. The Executive Committee will draft revised bylaws for discussion and approval by the ASC later in the year.

The BFA Executive Committee has begun to consider the creation of a humanities task force, possibly jointly with the ASC. Some representatives expressed support for such a joint initiative. Catherine Labio will keep the ASC appraised of further developments.

Valerie Simons, the new Title IX coordinator will speak at the next meeting. She will be accompanied by Katherine Erwin of the Office of Discrimination and Harassment. Catherine Labio will meet with Valerie Simons ahead of the meeting to explain the role of the ASC. She will also invite Chris Braider to return to the ASC sooner rather than later to discuss the CMCI Call for Faculty issued by the Provost earlier in the day.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:01PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Janice Jeffryes and Catherine Labio

Appendix

Guidelines for Service Learning Courses

The following guidelines were formulated by the Curriculum Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences, which, on April 30, 2014, voted unanimously to recommend that the Arts and Sciences Council adopt these as College policy.

The guidelines given below apply to dedicated service learning courses only (which can run from one to three credits) as opposed to courses that incorporate a limited amount of outreach or work in the community, by, for example, including one service learning assignment among a variety of different kinds of assignment.

For one service learning credit:

Fifteen hours in class, designed to meet academic objectives through analytical, critical, and reflective examination on the topic of the service learning activity.

10-20 hours on site in an outside commitment.

Pass/Fail grading only. Service learning credit is exempt from the university limit of 6 credits pass/fail.

Requires some kind of contract with the off-campus (or on-campus) site as well as the instructor.

The service learning class can be a separate 1-credit course attached to an anchor course, or it can be a free-standing course (but the contact-hour requirement remains the same for both of these).

The credits awarded for any individual service learning class can range from one to a maximum of three. Increases in the number of credits awarded for an individual class above one credit require proportionate increases in service learning hours (i.e., one credit: 10 to 20 service hours; two credits: 20 to 40 hours of service, etc.). The maximum number of service learning credits that can be counted toward the degree is 6.

Service learning classes can be upper or lower division, but the content of the in-class portion of a given class must be commensurate with the level of the class. Service learning classes linked to other academic classes must be at the same level as the linked class.

[Approved and adopted by the Arts and Sciences Council on 10/16/14]