Vol. 19, No. 19

Feb. 10, 2000

Faculty Senate approves two
interdisciplinary areas

At its first meeting of the spring semester, the University Faculty Senate approved two new interdisciplinary areas of study. The new major in mathematics and economics, which involves cooperation between the colleges of Arts and Science and Business and Economics, was established provisionally for four years within the College of Arts and Science. The proposed curriculum for the new minor in leadership, which will be based in the Department of Consumer Studies, was developed with the assistance of 154 faculty, representing four colleges and 10 academic units. Consumer studies is part of the College of Human Relations, Education and Public Policy. The senate granted permanent status to the master of music degree program and to a master of arts degree program with a major in economics for educators. Two other programs were deleted, the international honors certificate, offered by foreign languages and literatures, and the bachelor of science in geophysics, to be relocated as a concentration in the geology major. Senators also revised the election procedure for officers of the senate, allowing the Committee on Committees and Nominations to nominate by April of each year no more than one person for each of the four elected positions. Within a week, any faculty member may then nominate himself or herself as an opposing candidate for any one office. Elections will be held, as usual, during the May senate meeting. Forty announcements for challenge, mostly covering minor course revisions and name changes, were passed unanimously. Among those changes approved were the deletion of the fibers, illustration and metals disciplines from the B.A in art, the B.F.A. in fine arts and the art minor. The illustration discipline was moved to the visual communications program. Among the items approved were new concentrations in economic theory and econometrics and in applied economics; a concentration in paleobiology within the geology major; a concentration in classics in the Latin education major; and five new concentrations within the political science major– American government, global studies, politics and journalism, public law, public policy and public administration. –Cornelia Weil