Wednesday, November 4th 3:00 in LH 331.
Present: Matthews, Snavely, Steege, Feinstein, Presten, Ryan, Pellino
We welcomed two new members to the committee: Rachel Feinstein and Janice Pellino.
Purpose of the meeting today was to discuss the recommendations from our external reviewers for possible revisions to WAC. The Provost’s Office has asked the CC-Oversight and Planning Committee to review the general education curriculum and make recommendations for changes. The tentative timeline for this is to have one or more models ready for the faculty to consider by Fall, 2016.
Matthews suggested that WAC make specific recommendations to the CC-Oversight and Planning Committee for them to consider as part of any larger general education curricular reforms.
In terms of the external review, we agreed to propose the following changes to WAC as part of a more comprehensive general education reform.
1. Any recommendations for curricular change from CC-Oversight and Planning Committee should emphasize the importance of teaching writing during the first year. Currently, students are required to take two WI courses in the form of Western Heritage. Whatever general education requirements the CC-Oversight and Planning Committee proposes should include two WI courses for students during their first year.
We would also like to see the teaching of writing emphasized more during the first year. Our reviewers raised concerns that the teaching (and assignment) of writing in WH is uneven. More effort needs to be made to ensure students are receiving a common experience in terms of writing during their first year.
While we do not believe the first year experience need be a first year composition course, we strongly believe that the students should be taught the expectations of college-level writing during their first year. Currently, WH accounts for half of the writing courses students are required to take. WH is also their first exposure to the expectations of college-level writing. While content of course is important, students need to have a common experience in terms of expectations and types of writing assignments. This is particularly true since the WH courses share a common set of course expectations (and a common course approval in terms of meeting the WI requirement).
2. Our current WI requirement includes two sections of WH, one course in the major, and one other “wildcard” course that may or may not be in the major. Too often departments offer a single WI course for their majors in the form of the senior seminar. This is not sound practice for several reasons. First, students in these majors take one WI course in the major at the end of their career, but it’s better practice to have students take a WI course before the senior seminar. Second, the senior seminar is a high-stakes end of career writing project. It is pedagogically questionable whether such a course is the best place for a department to offer its only required WI course. Third, this practice shifts the responsibility of writing to other departments. Some departments seem to be fine doing this, but for students in those majors the practice raises the question of how effectively they are learning to write in the discourse community of their major.
3. We should be more flexible on enrollment and the percentage of the grade for students. In the past, some departments have noted the problems of enrollment and grade percentage in getting courses approved as WI (Chemistry in particular).
Janice will talk with Chemistry department about finding other WI courses, letting them know the committee is willing to be more flexible on grade percentage.
4. Framework for a “Writing Enriched” major. The WAC Committee willing to work with departments who would like to create writing enriched majors. WAC should work with departments to develop SLOs for student writing, courses identified, and assessment. Students would be acknowledged for having a “writing enriched” major on their diploma. Departments left to create proposals within this framework. Need to create space to do this in the catalog.
Matthews will draft a proposal for CC-Oversight and Planning Committee, and bring it to our first meeting in spring term.
Meeting adjourned at 4:00