define better outcomes? career? Aren't we doing well there?

No emphatic mention of what weaknesses are

So what happens to departmental capstones?

From Tina:

1. First and foremost, this is not a liberal arts curriculum. Students are not being asked to stretch themselves intellectually by exploring academic areas and modes of thinking beyond their comfort zones. We replaced a highly structured (too structured?) gen ed program with something that has as much structure as a bowl of jello. The typical Drew student needs at least some semblance of structure. This has absolutely none. Our current Gen Ed was supposed to foster “intentionality” rather than a check-box mentality (although it largely had the opposite effect, especially since Ladder actually has check boxes). However, this proposal doesn’t even pretend to foster intentionality, with its “anything goes” approach to course selection.

2. DREW 100 is fine since it is the same as the DSEM. But it’s hard enough to get people to teach a DSEM—AND teach it well. The description DREW 200 basically says it is another course that is not content-based. Who exactly is going to teach these courses (and teach them well?). As it is now, we have have a hard time offering a sufficient number of courses that cover the breadth of content in our discipline. There are also a lot of goals for this course: problem solving, teamwork, ethical reasoning and written and oral communication. And they are supposed to be team taught or multidisciplinary? Not all faculty are “multidisciplinarily” trained, nor is it easy to team-teach a course (even with faculty members you like!). And what’s with the jargon: can’t we just call an “Explore” activity an “exploratory” activity? seriously, folks

3. Analytical thinking is not the same as scientific thinking nor is it the same as quantitative thinking nor does it always require technology (being able to use SPSS does not make one technologically competent). These are false equivalencies and these assumptions do a disservice to all modes of analysis outside the natural sciences or math/stats. Being able to run a statistical test does not mean you understand the question being asked. Designing and carrying out good experiments or research studies does not necessarily require quantitative analysis of data and information (Yes, this is me saying this!). But is there no analytical thinking required of social scientists? of linguists? of English majors.

4. Numeracy is thrown under the bus in this proposal. Already Drew is a bit schizoid re: quantitative skills: we don’t care one whit about quantitative competency in admissions (for those who choose not to submit test scores, we require some artifact to show verbal competency but there remains no similar assessment for quantitative skills). Yet for some reason, our current Gen Ed privileged quantitative skills above almost all else by requiring not one, but two, quantitative courses, a well-intentioned but poorly executed requirement to led to some rather um, loose, interpretations of quantitative skills (theatre tech counts but pre-calc does not?).

5. What exactly does the foreign language requirement entail? The current FL requirement needs to be evaluated first before being reintroduced.

6. Speaking of which, what happen to the assessment of our current Gen Ed? Surely there are some parts of our current Gen Ed that work. Shouldn’t we do a full critical assessment of what we have until we get rid of the entire thing? While assessing gen ed is challenging due to the wide range of courses that can be taken to fulfill various requirements, at least there were some defined learning objectives—I don’t see any of them there other than “make sure students get a job”. If that is what our goal is, we might as well be the University of Phoenix or DeVry Institute. How will this be assessed, especially since it is supposed to be “developmental”?

7. There is absolutely no mention of the creative arts here (or creativity in any form). Or the humanities. Natural sciences are loosely mentioned under the aegis of “analytical” courses and many social science courses could count as “intercultural". There is nothing in this structure to encourage students to explore more than one or two courses outside of their major (see item 1 above).

8. The student project: so is it independent or collaborative? Right now I have about 8 people in my lab working on a collaborative project: there is no way every single student can be “central” to this project. This also discounts the collaborative nature of science, where lab members work as a team of equals. And you can’t have 8 head chefs in a kitchen. It is far more productive (for the students, for the faculty member, for the research) to establish broader collaborative enterprises.

9. the student project: it is not financially sustainable. Not when antibodies are upwards of $300 each and a simple single-variable rat experiment would be $400+ to conduct (and would be ethically questionable, since the outcomes would likely be unpublishable). Our facilities are already stretched to their limits and we would need significant capital investment in equipment to provide all students with a disciplinarily meaningful “project” or “experience” that is more extensive than what we already do in our labs. And we are limited in the space available for student research outside of our teaching labs (faculty research labs can only accommodate a limited number of students). Oh, and there is that “faculty need to be present when students are in the lab” safety consideration...

10. the student project: it is not sustainable with regard to faculty resources. Presumably mentoring numerous student projects will count toward teaching load. But the faculty who are currently teaching full course loads, with classes where all of the seats are filled, are also the ones who are mentoring the most student research projects while teaching in the disciplines with the greatest number of students. This proposal will do absolutely nothing to equalize workload across the faculty—it will only exacerbate the demands on faculty in the largest majors.

11. the student project: ok, just think of the worst honors thesis you’ve ever read and multiply it by 350 (assuming 100 are good). Just saying…

12. I see they want to hire a director of Career and Experiential Learning Center. However, as described here, there will be a need for more than one more person to do all of the career advising. And this will take considerable $$$ to attract and retain good people. AND they want to put undergraduate research in this new center as well? Oversight of DSSI could maybe work, but overseeing "undergraduate research" does require some fairly specific knowledge regarding the different demands, methodologies and standards for research in different disciplines.

13. This proposal reads as a defensive reaction to the misconception that “liberal arts graduates don’t get jobs”, a conclusion that is simply not supported by the data. Seems like our students (and those from like institutions) actually do pretty well regarding employment. The value of a liberal arts education goes beyond just the ability of getting a job, however; this proposal seems to devalue the educational process and journey (knowledge for knowledge’s sake) while overemphasizing the end product.

14. I’m not going to touch “digital badges” and a 2-3 course “mini-minor”. Gimmicks.

15. This proposal is going to require an exponential increase in administrative support for all of these career services, experience coordinators, career advisors and advisor coordinators, credential compliance oversight, etc. Is this how we want to spend our money? Was this proposal developed with any thought given to Drew’s current financial situation? Seems to require way to much front-end expenditure at this point in time.