Present: Faculty—Bruce, Dohse, Friedenberg, Hardy, Konz, Krumpe, McKnight, Moseley, Nelms, Pons, Rizzo, Ruiz, Katz; Student—Spencer; Alumni—Perry

1. Discussion of APC Report on Humanities requirement (with original report submitted to APC)— Dr. Bill Spellman was present to help GERTF members with questions about the Humanities and to comment on curricular directions the program might be interested in pursuing. Our discussion began with staffing difficulties that the Humanities Program experiences. Asked what might alleviate these problems, Dr. Spellman said that he believed that we need a Dean of General Education, who would oversee staffing of all General Education components and would be able to deploy resources to attract faculty into those General Education courses. Dr. Spellman observed that General Education often suffers for lack of administrative leadership. Currently, the Director of Humanities has little actual authority to bring faculty into the program from the departments. Dr. Friedenberg asked if it would be possible to empower the Director of Humanities in some way to address this issue, and therefore not have to add another administrative position, which so often results in funds being moved away from teaching lines. Dr. Spellman thought perhaps this might be possible, but that it would not be easy and could not really happen as the position is presently structured. Dr. Moseley observed that the Director of Humanities is closer to chairs in terms of administrative position and that a chair of one department has no authority to compel a chair in another department to make any changes or to deploy faculty resources differently. Also, Dr Spellman observed, Humanities must have a voice when departments do their searches to ensure that candidates understand that there is a commitment to the Humanities Program. Currently there is no way to enforce that search criteria include the candidate interest in interdisciplinary teaching and a willingness to teach in the Humanities. A Dean would be able to help with this. Dr Spellman noted that departments don’t currently document their General Education agreements; Dr. Friedenberg replied that there are no provisions for written contracts to clarify General Education commitments, but that this might be a good idea.

The discussion remained on staffing issues, but turned to the connection of class size and its impact on the number of sections that required staffing. Dr Spellman said that there are 65-70 sections of Humanities this fall and that as many as a third are currently labeled "staff" because faculty had not yet been confirmed for those sections. Dr. Krumpe asked what might happen if the class size was raised to 27 or 30; this might reduce the number of sections to a number more easily staffed. Dr Spellman responded that this would limit the amount of discussion in class and the amount of writing that faculty could deal with, which might undermine the function of Humanities within the liberal arts paradigm. Dr Spellman did think, though, that our shift to counting Humanities courses as 4 credits each, while not yet making an impact on staffing, would eventually be seen as an attractive way for faculty to get, in effect, a 3/3 load.

Dr Pons asked whether or not the name of the program, the Humanities, needed to be revised, as it tends to suggest that the subject of the sequence is the study of all humanity. Dr Moseley replied that the Humanities has lately been opened up to the social sciences and to the natural sciences more so that in the past, and that this may have added to this impression. Dr Spellman said that he thought that this direction was not problematic so long as the Humanities—Philosophy, History, Literature—were still at the center of the experience. Dr Moseley pointed out that most schools that do not have a core requirement like ours, but use a menu to satisfy the liberal arts component of the general education program, tend to require two courses in History, two in Literature and one in Philosophy, which is about the same number of credits as we have in the Humanities.

We discussed the APC contention that there was little integration between Humanities and other General Education courses. Dr Spellman said that this was not clear to him. He noted that the Humanities has faculty from all divisions; that the first three courses are integrated historically and thematically; that Hum 414 begins with a lecture that looks back at the first three courses and then leads to a series of lectures over several weeks that engages global power relations, human rights (including here women’s rights), environmental issues, and broader cultural developments in the contemporary world. In this way, Hum 414 has been working to make more conscious connections to the Social and Natural Sciences, and their roles in the world today; this suggests a concern for and a strengthening of "integration" with other disciplines, he observed. Dr Ruiz noted that the sciences are working toward such integration by using the history of science in their General Education courses. Dr Dohse said that the Math Department does this as well.

Dr Friedenberg asked what would happen if Hum 414 became the Social Science requirement. Dr Spellman said that the students would lose what is made available through the study of contemporary art, history, philosophy and literature. Just as the Natural and Social Sciences have important contributions to make to the understanding of the contemporary world, so do these Humanities disciplines, he noted; these elements should be incorporated into a capstone experience.

Dr Katz noted that in section 2.c of the APC report on the Humanities Program it is suggested that putting the Humanities Program at the center of the General Education curriculum places demands on it that are not placed on any other program. Katz asked Dr Spellman what might lessen this burden on the Humanities? Dr Spellman replied that institution should commit itself more strongly to the Humanities Program. We should admit that it is a central part of the students’ core experience. Dr Moseley also noted that often such praise is a strategy to avoid committing adequate funding. Formerly, Dr Spellman added, it was promised that new faculty lines would receive priority if the requesting departments would make a firm commitment to the General Education and to the Humanities Programs. There was no formal contract, however, and this resulted in a lack of continuity over the years. A higher-level administrator in charge of overseeing and advocating for General Education might helpful in providing continuity, he said. Dr Friedenberg added that a formal contract might be a good way to clarify departmental and administrative responsibilities.

Dr Krumpe asked Dr Spellman whether he thought that, while a generalist approach to the liberal arts might get faculty out of their departments and into contact with colleagues, might not a specialist approach—in which faculty teach, lecture, and participate in the General Education curriculum through their areas of expertise—be a better model for bringing more faculty into the program? Dr Spellman replied that generalism models humility, a desire to learn what one does not yet know, and an acknowledgement of our limitations as intellectuals. If the Humanities Program is about common human problems, Dr Krumpe asked, why do we need to focus on chronology? Why not examine these problems topically? Dr Spellman responded that ideas take shape in time, and that students need to understand this, especially without a comprehensive history requirement.

Dr Spellman concluded by observing that Hum 414, which received criticism in the APC report on the Humanities, has worked hard to make connections to the main themes of the sequence as a whole. It has worked to achieve a global focus and has begun editing a new reader with selections from world cultures that take up the themes of the course and the program itself. In 414, as in the other courses in the sequence, the point is not to find a canon, but to discover enduring issues.

Our discussion took up the entire hour of the meeting and so most other issues were tabled for a future session.

2. Listening projects—Katz said that we were wrapping up this phase of our work. Continue to send in your finished reports as you receive them back from the departments. Katz will begin posting when he has all the reports. Also, he has added one more listening session, this time with Arts and Ideas. Thanks to those of you who volunteered to do this session (there were several volunteers). Drs Katz, Konz, and Krumpe will visit the Arts and Ideas faculty on 19 Feb at 11 am in KH 005. Dr Ruiz said that he’d also like to attend; Dr McKnight, who is the Director of the Arts and Ideas Program, said this would be fine.

3. Student forum—We will discuss student forums on General Education in a future meeting.

4. The next phase of our work—Dr Katz asked if GERTF members would like to spend a meeting, after discussion of the Social Sciences requirement, regrouping and taking a look at where we are; or, would we prefer to get through with the review of the APC reports. There was a unanimous view that we should just finish with the APC reports, especially since, after the Social Sciences, there are only the Natural Sciences and the Arts and Ideas left to do. These can be done in three additional meetings.

5. Our next meetings will be 20 Feb, 27 Feb, at 4:30 pm, in the Red Oak Room. Also, remember to keep the Wednesday, 4:30-5:30 timeslot clear throughout this semester and next year. The next meeting will be devoted to Social Sciences (20 Feb). Katz is in the process of scheduling Natural Sciences.