We are currently exploring the resuscitation/revival of the residential colleges through the offering of LSP courses in them. I certainly approve the concept of teaching in the rez college AND getting paid (having it count as part of my load), but I'm becoming seriously concerned about potential logistics problems.

If the students in a rez college course come ONLY from that college, what happens to the students who want (need) that course who reside in other colleges, or off campus? The LSP courses we offer usually fill; they fill early; and many of the students who take them are already juniors or seniors completing requirements. I don't know how this runs in other divisions, but our LSP classes usually enroll around 40 students. So if 15 or 20 students from a particular residence opt for a rez college class, is that class then considered closed? Will each division have to staff extra non-rez college sections of those courses to take care of the student demand? And what major course must be taken off the course list while some faculty member teaches an extra LSP section?

The same consideration arises in the area of the Junior Interdisciplinary Writing-Enhanced Seminar. The "writing-enhanced" label specifies a course cap of about 24. Faculty from all disciplines have been encouraged to develop these courses; necessarily so, since about 60 sections per year must be offered when the new program is fully instituted. Note, please, that these courses will not all be staffed by English faculty, as Comp. II has been. Where will the various divisions find the faculty (who usually teach larger classes) to staff these courses?

Last, but certainly not least: we have no administrative oversight in place for making these decisions. Division Heads have had the job of making sure that their Divisions offer the appropriate number of LSP classes as well as their major courses. Will Division Heads be required (by some administrative officer?) to offer a given number of Junior Seminars no matter what it does to their own program? Or will the entire load fall back on English de facto? At least one excellent proposal from an English faculty member was shot down before it ever got well into the pipeline. My own experience with Undergraduate Council has not encouraged other English faculty to propose Seminars.

We face a full-blown logistics problem here, one which the Division structure is not designed to cope with. And so far, we have seen very little administrative oversight employed, with the exception of the grants for Seminar development.

In at least one sense, this should not be a faculty problem. But past experience leads me to wonder if we won't turn out to be the goats that have to munch down the weeds allowed to grow in these spaces.

-- Anonymous, December 08, 1998

Answers

The problem seems to be, once again, that we have a decentralized organization trying to accomplish organization-wide goals. Predictably in such situations, the effectiveness of the attempt at structural change will be inversely proportional to the significance of the change attempted--particularly as it might impact the relatively autonomous academic divisions.

So (leaving aside the question of need), the implementation of extended freshman week went fairly quickly. Implementation of the LSP --not. The plan for residential colleges and designation of writing-enhanced courses both have fairly significant ramifications for academic divisions (especially Lang & Lit), so it is not surprising that we are again discovering that the details are left to the goats. If it is a goat path we are on, let's hope that weeds are the only thing we must munch.

What is needed is a 5hp mower from the centralized shepherd. And some direction. A good beginning is the list above, which could be enhaced perhaps, and submitted to the VPAA in writing.

An informative web page on the subject is a nice idea, and Shirley M. has clearly done a tremendous amount of work, but the page is not well advertised and not easy to find. The address is below; I count three (as yet unapproved) courses now being considered.

http://www2.truman.edu/we/wehome.html

Looks like mighty big weed patch up ahead; do goats have a rumen?

-- Anonymous, December 18, 1998

Another continuing problem about course loads and logistics: the number of essential, introductory courses offered each semester does not match the demand. I have an advisee with a psych minor who could not take Intro to Psych until her junior year, because the course was filled before she could register. We have a waiting list for English 209, in spite of offering a third section, and many students wind up in the 1-credit-hour Missouri Statute class simply because they never can get into the 4-credit-hour courses that are supposed to fill that requirement. We absolutely must offer our students access to the courses they have to take in order to begin their majors. And we cannot, in conscience, ask them to wait until their junior year to do so.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 1999