MINUTES
Social Change and Development Meeting, October 1, 2003
Present: Harvey Kaye, Andy Kersten, Craig Lockard, Larry
Smith, Lynn Walter (Chair)
Absent: Andrew Austin, Kim Nielsen, Omar Sanchez
The meeting began at 12 p.m., and included three agenda
items:
1. Various celebrations:
a.
Craig
Lockard’s M.A. thesis, completed in 1967, was published as a book by the
Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association in
b.
Andy
Kersten has been asked to give a public talk during the campuswide reading
project on “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He has also been asked to write a
commemorative history of Green for Voyageur Magazine.
c.
Andrew
Austin has been asked chosen as a favorite faculty member by the UWGB women’s
soccer team, and will be honored at one of their games. He has also had an
article accepted in the Journal of Poverty and a review essay in Nature,
Society, and Thought.
2. We briefly discussed the need to elect a new chair for
the 2004-5 year.
3. We had a long discussion on the proposal for revising
General Education offered by the dean of liberal arts. Major issues included:
a.
Most
faculty shared a certain ambivalence about the proposal
b.
There
was concern that the proposal was based not on a vision of General Education
but mostly on a need to accommodate an ever increasing number of freshmen.
c.
There
was some concern that the proposal was premature, given that the General
Education Council will soon complete a comprehensive evaluation of the present
program.
d.
There
was interest in teaching freshman courses capped at 30. But most felt that
defining a class with 30 students as a seminar was misleading, since more than
20 students renders a seminar format problematic.
e.
Most
faculty expressed a willingness to teach a larger 250 student section of their
particular basic general education course (such as Intro Sociology or Modern
World History) if that counted as 2 courses. But there was some concern that
limiting these to just 9 sections was unfair and favored a limited number of
faculty. We favored making this option available to all faculty currently
teaching large general education courses
f.
There
was also some concern as to how this new configuration would serve the many
non-freshmen who also take general education courses.
4. Under new business, Andy Kersten expressed interest in
developing an SCD course on Comparative Labor Movements for the Global Studies
track.
The meeting adjourned at 1 p.m..