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CEIS in the Senate (April 2019)

Building 6

Happy Spring!

In the Academic Senate meeting in March, CEIS was in the Senate with four committee reports regarding IGE. IGE changed some of its prerequisites for their program courses. It was a minor change that passed unanimously, but it demonstrates how general education, which has the potential to impact all students at the university, is overseen by the Cal Poly Pomona faculty and administration even for what might seem the most inconsequential modifications.
 
Moreover, two important items were discussed that should be of interest to the college. The first item involved discussion on current legislation that may impact the California State University. One particular bill that CSU Academic Senator David Speak discussed is Assembly Bill 1460. AB 1460, introduced by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, would require undergraduate students in the CSU to take an ethnic studies course as a graduate requirement. The bill information can be found here.

Though AB 1460 is still going through different reiterations, Senator Speak shared that it was opposed by the CSU Academic Senate based on the argument that curriculum should be in the hands of faculty and not legislators. Interestingly, the American Institution graduation requirement is mandated in Section 40404 of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations. CEIS Senator Jocelyn A. Pacleb and faculty in the Department of Ethnic and Women's Studies along with Professor Sandy Dixon, chair of EWS, were vocal in advocating the need for ethnic studies. Discussions on ethnic studies as a graduation requirement will continue and it is of great importance to our college and especially in training our students to develop critical thinking skills and grounded solutions to an increasingly complex world.

The second item returns to general education and has ramifications for the departments in CEIS that offer GEs. Humanities GEs at CPP had for decades offered three lower division requirements (C1: Visual and Performing Arts, C2: Philosophy and Civilization, C3: Literature and Modern Languages), and one upper division (C4). The Chancellor’s Office determined in 2016-17 that the CSU should follow the community college pattern which had only two lower division humanities GE. The faculty, along with the president and the provost, attempted to argue for academic freedom of our institution and individual CSUs to determine what courses students should have to take, insisting that curriculum was the province of faculty rather than administration. The provost along with the Academic Senate in 2017-18 implemented a three-tiered categorization of humanities along with the provost’s dictates, but splitting C2 into C2a and C2b, and renaming C4 as C3, thus maintaining Chancellor’s Office mandate, while keeping CPP’s academic freedom in general education intact. In fall of 2018, the Chancellor’s Office determined that CPP was still not in compliance with the edict, and even after President Coley and Provost Alva and their team went personally to argue for our faculty rights on our behalf, they were rebuffed and directed that our institution must comply with their order. The General Education Senate Subcommittee, on which Dennis Quinn from IGE serves, had the difficult charge to submit a report to the Senate to be voted upon which had already been mandated by the Chancellor’s Office. The committee had little choice but to go along with the directive but included a seven-point rebuttal stating that the report was submitted in protest. Read the report here.

After much discussion and deliberation, the Senate, by secret ballot, passed the resolution considering that had they not done so, the protest would not be part of the university, and thus the CSU record. The revised Humanities GE areas of C1: Visual and Performing Arts, C2: Philosophy, Civilization, Literature and Modern Languages, and C3: Upper Division Synthesis will be implemented in fall 2019. Now instead of students being required to take one course from lower division philosophy and civilization and another from literature and modern languages, they will have the choice of taking one from those two (C2), one from visual and performing arts (C1), and another either from either C1 or C2. We shall see if this attempt impacts the quality of education of our students.

The Academic Senate have two more meetings for the remainder of the year, and the final one on May 8th is dominated by pro forma emeriti votes and a final gathering at the president’s house to honor the work of the Senate and award emeriti on retired and retiring faculty. 

CEIS Senators Dennis Quinn and Jocelyn Pacleb can be reached by email: dquinn@cpp.edu and japacleb@cpp.edu.

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