Well, it’s not really a manifesto- just a forceful statement of observation. I may retract this whole evaluation later. You never know. I didn’t really get to state these opinions in our meetings today- I was figuring it out all day and finally managed to put it together in the car on the ride home. It is not polished, but I was afraid if I didn’t get it out there in some form, I would never manage to share it>

Manifesto of the Breadth/Depth/Curriculum Problem:

The two areas identified as the source of the gen.ed. breadth problem (from the accreditation report) are two disciplines that require specialized workshop sessions for our students: labs for sciences, and studio sessions for the arts. In both cases, the space/equipment for these activities are limited and cannot accommodate the 50 students required for the FTE of two faculty in a program. When the disciplines of the two faculty are “far apart” from one another, that means that only one faculty can supervise and teach the lab/studio sessions. Splitting classes into two sections and sending one group to a workshop while the other group is being taught by the other faculty is one way of dealing with the problem. It results in a less interdisciplinary approach to the program and does not allow faculty to model co-learner behavior. This is a serious drawback. It also doubles the faculty’s time spent with students, but the individual student does not actually receive more faculty interaction. Instead of a 3 hour lab session, the student experience a 1.5 hour lab session.  This method effectively halves the depth of students’ experience. It is impossible to maintain depth, breadth, and truly interdisciplinary methodology under these circumstances. Something has to be sacrificed. In designing our programs, some of us sacrifice interdisciplinary methodology, some of us sacrifice depth, and of us sacrifice breadth.  These sacrifices are caused by two institutional circumstances that we, as faculty, are powerless to change: our facilities are designed for numbers of students that are too small in comparison to our FTE. Either we need facilities that accommodate 50 students in the labs (and staff to supervise safety in such large groups) and 50 students in the drawing studio/ceramics/wood/metal/sculpture, etc., or we need a significantly smaller FTE (or some way of mitigating the 25 FTE requirement that does not overburden faculty in this situation).

The problem with the curriculum is ultimately NOT the result of faculty abdication of responsibility or failure to value the six expectations, but is instead a symptom of a conflict between FTE and facilities design. It is NOT a problem with the curriculum at all! WOW. That hurt.