New Brunswick Faculty Council endorses task force report with caveats
Archived article from Dec 12, 2005
By Carla Cantor
The New Brunswick Faculty Council has approved a set of recommendations on the proposals of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education. The council’s recommendations – set forth in 24 separate resolutions – essentially endorse the task force report with some exceptions.
The faculty council recommended combining the liberal arts colleges into a single, degree-granting entity. The most significant difference is that the council proposed that the overarching unit be known as “Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences” with the individual campuses called “residential colleges.” The task force report calls for a new arts and sciences academic unit known as “Rutgers College of Arts and Sciences” and for the colleges to be called “residential campuses.”
“We believe that the name Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences is consistent with the terminology elsewhere on campus, where ‘schools’ are the undergraduate, degree-granting units, and introducing “college’ here would lead to some confusion,” the council resolution states.
It took about five hours for the approximately 50 faculty members who attended the Dec. 2 council meeting at the Busch Dining Hall to hammer out the specifics of its recommendations concerning the task force report. The report calls for fundamental changes to curricula and structure in New Brunswick/Piscataway, as well as transformations in admissions, the student experience and personnel matters. The faculty council comprises representatives from each academic department on the New Brunswick/Piscataway campus.
The faculty council report will be considered by the University Senate before senators make their own recommendations at their Feb. 24, 2006, meeting. President Richard L. McCormick will make recommendations to the board of governors after considering the task force report, recommendations of other university bodies, alternative proposals and comments made at public forums and other group discussions that have taken place during the semester.
Other recommendations endorsed or elaborated on the task force report. They include:
• an entity known as the Undergraduate Academic Assembly to serve as the authority for undergraduate academic affairs relating to arts and sciences students
• giving residential colleges the ability to add academic certificate programs (in addition to a diploma from Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences or a professional school)
• a separate School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences – or whatever name is determined for Cook College – that would admit its own professional students and determine academic requirements and policies
• a common admission standard for all arts and sciences applicants, appropriately
modified for transfer, EOF and nontraditional students
• to eliminate confusion, recruitment materials should be redesigned to emphasize outstanding opportunities at Rutgers-New Brunswick; professional schools must continue to develop their own recruitment materials
• faculty members should play a major role with the administration in establishing undergraduate admissions policies, standards and enrollment goals, including the creation of faculty admissions committees for the School of Arts and Sciences and each professional school
• the formation of a single general honors program for all colleges and schools, with
variations in requirements to meet the needs of various professional schools
• a core curriculum for the School of Arts and Sciences to be approved by the proposed Undergraduate Academic Assembly with advice from the professional schools. “The core curriculum of the task force should serve as a starting point,” the resolution states, but the council did not endorse the model put forth in the task force report.
• a greater number of evening courses of higher quality
• increasing the number of tenure-track faculty and teaching assistants to reduce class size, as well as incentives and rewards for part-time lecturers.
“This has been a very long, deliberative process,” says Kathleen Scott, professor of cell biology and neuroscience and a member of the faculty council’s executive committee. Scott also co-chaired the task force’s student experience working group. “Not everyone on the council agreed with what the council eventually voted on concerning school vs. college and residential college vs. campus,” Scott says. “But I think the term residential colleges – even if it is a bit awkward – is a good compromise. It is an accurate description of what we envision for the colleges.”
Paul Leath, chair of the New Brunswick Faculty Council and a member of the structure working group of the task force, notes that the council generally supports the task force recommendations with a few striking differences. “If the plan of the faculty council is adopted, I believe it will be an improvement over certain aspects of the task force report, while keeping its major innovative recommendations,” says Leath, professor of physics. “Our recommendations may help alleviate much of the controversy that has been swirling around the campus.”
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