From: Shermeyer, Frederick C. <fcsherm@udel.edu>
Date:
Subject: RE: UGS Requested Changes to Proposal to Delete Special
Breadth Requirements for CHEG
To: "Hofstetter, Fred T" <fth@udel.edu>
Fred,
Thanks for your email. We will continue to work with
what will be clear and beneficial. Truthfully, I had the same concern
about the twice-listed Breadth Requirements phrase, but was not sure
how we would be allowed to word it last year. Your guidance makes
sense to me and I will note it to discuss with our Catalog Editors.
Thanks also for the heads up on the typographical errors. We will make
sure to fix them.
See you on Tuesday! Have a nice long weekend!
Chuck
From: Fred Hofstetter [mailto:fth@UDel.Edu]
Sent:
To: Shermeyer, Frederick C.
Subject: Re: UGS Requested Changes to Proposal to Delete Special
Breadth Requirements for CHEG
Hi Chuck! Based on further messages that have been exchanged this
week, I am no longer sure about the requirement that supplemental
breadth must be "in" the catalog. Your list is online, and it is
linked to from your College's breadth page in the catalog, and as I
have pointed out to my UGS colleagues after looking into this further,
I have discovered that your list actually is being religiously
archived at www.archive.org, which has
about half a dozen copies of
your list going back several years. Therefore I believe there is
enough of an audit trail here that maybe your list does not need to be
moved physically "in" to the catalog. Before you invest a lot of time
in doing that, therefore, maybe we should talk about this when you
come to the UGS meeting on Tuesday, January 18, at
Elliott Hall conference room. It still is possible, however, that UD
will require the lists to be "in" the catalog, so we shall see when
we
discuss this Tuesday with the representatives from the Provost,
Admissions, and Registrar who serve with us faculty on
Also let me share with you that several members of
confusing to have University Breadth listed twice in your programs. By
listed twice, I mean that the University Breadth requirements are
listed at the beginning of your curriculum requirements just as they
should be, but then they are listed again (and counted again) where
you list 21 credits of breadth, which is the sum of the 12 credits of
University Breadth plus the additional 9 credits of College Breadth.
Something you may wish to consider is changing that so that the
college breadth shows as "Additional College Breadth Requirements: 9
credits" as some other colleges have done. The concern I am hearing
from this year's
the 12 credits of University Breadth are listed twice. Just between
you and me [please keep this comment private between us] I do not
personally have this problem with how your breadth requirements appear
in the catalog, but I believe you will agree that if there are ways to
improve and further clarify what is listed there, we may want to hear
what the critics have to say and consider possible improvements.
Also let me point out that when I was surfing your breadth
requirements in the catalog this week, I noticed that "beyond" is
misspelled as "beyone" and the word
multicultural has a hyphen that
should not be there because multicultural is all one word. So we
should fix those typographical issues regardless of whether we make
any other changes.
Thanks for your patience, Chuck, as we work through this. Your faculty
are doing an outstanding job, meantime, providing
"side-by-side" comparisons of their current and proposed curricula
for
the proposals we are considering this month. Hopefully we can get them
all approved when we see you on January 18.
Have a nice weekend, meantime.
Fred
On Thu,
<fcsherm@udel.edu> wrote:
Thanks, Doug.
Last year's group didn't require us to list our Supplemental Breadth
Requirements in the Catalog. Now they have changed their minds and it
feels like we are being chastised for not doing it before...we'll get
it straightened out.
Chuck
F. Charles "Chuck" Shermeyer, M.S.
Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Advisement
e-Mail: eg-advisement@udel.edu
College of Engineering
141 P.S. DuPont Hall
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
P: (302) 831-8659
F: (302) 831-8179
www.engr.udel.edu
________________________________
From: Fred Hofstetter [fth@UDel.Edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 5:22 PM
To: Buttrey, Douglas J
Cc: Helsel, Karren Ann
Subject: UGS Requested Changes to Proposal to Delete Special Breadth
Requirements for CHEG
Dear Douglas, UGS met yesterday to discuss your proposal to delete
special breadth requirements for CHEG. In my role as UGS chair, I am
hereby communicating some additional work we need you to do before UGS
can approve this proposal and move it forward.
The first issue has to do with the manner in which you list the
University and College Breadth Requirements. We suggest separating
this into two separate categories, one called University Breadth where
you list the 12 credits of University Breadth, and then you can have a
separate category entitled either College Breadth or perhaps
Additional Breadth, in which you specify your additional college
breadth requirements. We believe the description of College Breadth
should be stated in the same standard way in all of your programs. In
your college's proposals that have come before us this year, there are
differences in some of the wordings in this common section that, once
again, we believe you would want to have worded the same way since it
refers to your college's standard additional breadth requirements. I
will be writing another message about this to all the
engineering
faculty who have submitted proposals this year, so you can look to
receive that additional message within the next hour or two.
Second, University regulations require that the list of courses from
which students can take their college breadth must reside in the
catalog, and therefore the link you provide in your description of the
college breadth requirements needs to go to the page in the catalog
that lists the courses that can be taken to fulfill your college's
breadth requirements. The reason for this is because the catalog
serves as the "contract" between the student and the university. For
auditing and other FERPA related reasons, the list needs to be in the
catalog and not in some separate list that you maintain outside of the
catalog. We realize that your list is dynamic and will change from
year to year. Each year, therefore, you can update the list that is in
the catalog. And because this list is in the catalog, it will be
archived each year along with the catalog, such that the record of
these requirements will be complete and auditable as university
regulations require.
Third, I need to ask you to do something I know you will not be happy
hearing me ask you to do, but I am going to provide you with a model
that may facilitate your doing this. UGS is requiring that you provide
the side-by-side comparison of the before-and-after version of the
complete curriculum your proposal. In the "after" column (i.e., the
proposed column) you should highlight in yellow the changes you are
making. To facilitate your creation of these side-by-sides, which
requires for every proposal to revise a major or a minor, I am
attaching to this message a model for you to study and perhaps use as
a template. This model is from the Medical Technology program, which
just passed
you to study and emulate. Meantime the Faculty Senate is working to
revise the instructions on the form that prompts you to supply these
things. As Keith Decker and I have discussed, UGS realizes that the
wording on the form asking you to provide a "side-by-side comparison
of the credit distribution" is obtuse. Again, the attached Medical
Technology example shows what that wording intends for you to provide,
but I totally agree with Keith that the wording on the form does not
adequately define what is needed. Along with the revised version of
the form, the Faculty Senate will be providing examples of what is
intended, so there will hopefully be no further misunderstanding about
this.
Fourth, there is no such thing as a "mini minor" and
that term appearing in your proposal. This term appears four or five
times on the form and in your proposal. You should find alternate
wording to describe what you are proposing.
Fifth, where you say "breadth courses have different rubrics" you
should revise that to say "breadth courses are in different subject
areas."
Sixth, in the last sentence of your rationale, where you say
"demanding that two breadth courses must be upper level" we would
like
you to insert before the word "two" the adjective "College"
if you
mean college breadth, or "University" if you mean University breadth.
Finally, under Technical Electives, where you say 12-9 it should
instead say 9-12.
I am learning a lot this year in my rookie year of chairing UGS, and I
hope the guidance I am providing here will help you get your proposal
approved soon. UGS meets next on Tuesday morning January 18.
Dutifully,
Fred
Dr. Fred T. Hofstetter
UGS Chair
www.udel.edu/fth