March 18, 1999
To: Carol Hoffecker, Chair, Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on General Education

From: The Delaware Association of Scholars

The Delaware Association of Scholars appreciates the effort that the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on General Education has made. We support the goal of improving the coherence of undergraduate education at the University of Delaware. The Committee's draft proposal, however, raises many important questions and concerns, which it does not answer or address. In particular, we raise two general concerns and ask four specific questions.

Our concerns:

1. A major concern of the DAS is that the draft proposal, while claiming to improve undergraduate education at the University, actually shifts much freshman instruction from regular faculty members to teaching assistants, including both undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants. Under the proposal, all students, preferably in their first year, would take two four-hour Pathway courses, with teaching assistants responsible for two of the four hours of each Pathway course. In effect, the proposal calls for requiring all students to have four hours of instruction from teaching assistants, which, as the proposal admits, may themselves be undergraduate students. This seems neither sound pedagogy, nor a requirement likely to be reassuring to parents.

2. Our second major concern is that, while the Pathways program would shift much freshman instruction from regular faculty to teaching assistants, both the Pathway and the Capstone courses would shift responsibility for their content, quality, and planning from the various departments themselves to a new administrative office called the Office of General Education, which would "take responsibility for all aspects of the [general education] program" (p.9). Furthermore, departments would not only lose control of a major part of their instruction; they would also have to "re-orient" their promotion and tenure guidelines. "The success of this proposal will depend also on a re-orientation of promotion and tenure guidelines and of other documents relating to faculty responsibilities and rewards to acknowledge the importance of faculty participation in the various activities outlined in this report" (p.9). We see these several shifts as a dangerous erosion of faculty self-governance and a vast, unwarranted encroachment of the central administration into academic matters.

Our questions:

1. How would Pathway courses be staffed? Assuming a freshman class of 3,500 students, the Pathway program will require at least 35 professors and 175 teaching assistants per semester ("Each Pathways section will enroll no more than 100 students, but 80 will be the preferred number," and the discussion groups will have "no more than twenty [students] each" [p.5]. Where would the 35 "interdisciplinary" professors come from, and who would cover the courses they normally teach? At a time when the AAUP and the administration are discouraging the use of part-time faculty, who will pick up the slack? And if part-timers are used, why wouldn't the quality of the covered courses suffer?

Where would the 175 teaching assistants come from, and what qualifications would they have? Under the Pathways proposal, these teaching assistants would have more extensive responsibilities than regular faculty members. In addition to teaching material outside their fields of specialization, they will responsible for developing "key skills" in writing (each of 20 students "will write several reports that will be graded for both content and writing" [p.5]), speaking (each of 20 students "will give at least two oral presentations that will be critiqued for effectiveness" [p.5]), critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and the use of the library, computers, and/or laboratory resources as research skills.

Would staffing the 175 teaching assistants per semester compete with the needs of departments to staff their regular courses with teaching assistants? Would the new demand drain both numbers and quality from regular department courses? We find it telling that the Committee's proposal concedes that "advanced undergraduates" (p.5) may be needed as teaching assistants.

What sort of training would the teaching assistants receive? The proposal's only answer: "A compensated training period of three to five days will...be required for the program's teaching assistants in late summer" (p.6).

2. Are there facilities available to handle the Pathways courses? Pathways courses would add at least 35 courses per semester; in each, 100 students would meet together twice a week and in groups of 20 twice a week. From what we have been able to gather, there is no way that the University can even begin to accommodate this demand. The TR sequence is already at or near capacity, and there are simply not enough large classrooms to handle 70 meetings of 100 students or enough small classrooms to handle 350 meetings of 20 students a week.

3. The Committee also proposes that at least some Pathways courses forge ties with residence halls. While students enrolled in the course need not live in the residence hall, "they will be required to take part in the planning and execution of programs related to the course that is sponsored through that hall" (p.6). Would this requirement be fair to non-traditional students?

4. The Committee's second major proposal concerns senior-year Capstone courses. Capstone courses will require another 120 professors per semester. Although the Committee does not address their size, we estimate that the Capstone courses can hardly average more than 25 students, if the professor is expected to grade journals and portfolios, to offer advice on professional ethics, to supervise internships, service projects, and research projects, and to interact as a personal advisor who ensures that each student has satisfied the ten goals of the general education program. Where would these faculty come from?

As with Pathway courses, the answer is not clear. Nor is it clear who would cover (and pay to cover) the courses the instructors normally teach. One thing, however, does seem clear. The Committee's proposal mentions that "Many majors already require a senior course, often a seminar, that acts as a capstone to the major" (p.8). The new Capstone courses would replace these seminars and shift responsibility for them from the department to a new Office of General Education.

cc: UD faculty and administrators (NOTE to these recipients: The Committee's draft proposal is available on the DAS website: www.udel.edu/DAS/.)