April 23 2008
Final Session

Tony Roark
Nick Miller
Susan Shadle
Lisa Brady
David Wilkins
Shelton Woods
Memo Cordova
Gail Schuck
Mark Buchanan
Lynn Lubamersky
Craig Hemmens
Janet Holmes
Mike Samball


This is the wide open session, where we consider our hopes, dreams, fantasies. What do you want to see?


Have there been other sessions where ideas have been discussed?


Yes, but this is our opportunity to enjoy a wide open exchange


1. An emphasis from the president’s office on the importance of an excellent grounding in the liberal arts. And also in BSU’s striving for an excellent liberal arts curriculum. Seems like kind of a black hole. It’s never foregrounded, it’s always that we come here for practical training. Stanley Fish has a really good piece on the notion that it is hard to argue that LA will get you paid more, but that there are intangibles without which democracies fail. Really interesting pursuit, trying to torque a la education into something that has a dollar value


2. DW: it’s more a personal value – how do you understand other people if you’re trained to do one thing. You need the grounding in all of it, have to tie it together. It’s linking things together recognizing that disciplines are not silos, ought to be more porous, permeable. We ignore that for our own disciplines, focused on the end game, which is getting students out efficiently, expeditiously, can do that but must do it well too.


3. MB: thinking that what if we begin to – for those of us who are more professional – of getting them into the major and saving some of the interdis etc. core till later; maybe they’ll appreciate it more. Maybe they’ll resent it. But what if they took it after the professional stuff. A break to get out of their discipline. Undeveloped idea.


4. Great, but I have advisees who have math late and they just don’t like it.


5. DW a more mature audience might actually be able to take those courses with more depth in mind, not as preparation. Year away from your major? Like a year away from campus.


6. GS: we have capstone courses of some kind, some kind of culmination. What if we used that capstone experience to come back, cross disciplinary, we all like those kinds of connections, opportunity for students to use core areas for that depth at the end. Cross listed senior seminars, things like that.


7. DW I like this thought process


8. GS last year read, not first year read.


9. Read is not a noun!!


10. Memo: little passion for what you really believe in, whatever it is. Where is th epassion to do what we do? What’s our carbon footprint in our drive to become a better person? What’s our primary purpose in being here? What’s your passion?


11. No way to tell a student that because we are passionate about it, we sometimes have to leave the classroom to do something else – present a paper, etc.


12. LL: I do research, I do teaching, I am not your high school professor, you are not in high school – we have split obligations, university Is a place of the exchange of many things


13. The life of the mind, it’s the life of the mind


14. LL: we want a raise could go at the top of the list


15. ??: ML: encouragement to think innovatively, to do things differently, exciting to do it differently than other schools; also to think sequentially, what if it was in this or that year, when do we want students to do what? Mid career, beginning, end, etc.


16. ??: ML: material conditions; adjuncts are challenged, we are challenged, materially, they are serious and need to be addressed, and can be part of the conversation


17. LB to create better facilities, a center, etc. something to focus the Liberal Arts, a place for them to go and feel comfortable, part of a larger initiative
18. GS students treat each other differnretly, have a different discourse than a prof would get; wouldn’t it be great if we had a time during th eweek like 12-2 every Wednesday when we have no classes, nothing to do, totally open, to sit and reflect. Part of the program to have reflection time?! Really cool to have time where everything would be put on hold. Everyone could talk to each other.


19. Some colleges call it a colloquium period.


20. SS: ok, then I can schedule work during that time.


21. SS: another thing she (MY Freshman Year) experienced is that she saw opportunities for students to be engaged in lots and lots of things – she saw them go off in their particularized ways; several times during these for a, “what if we had a series, an institute…”—what we need to do is frame what we already have as a more coherent mission; how is a dist. Lect. Series part of the care and feeding of the liberal arts? Of students and faculty? In a way that becomes explicit, etc.


22. LB also developed in isolation, not getting enough visibility, not marketed to right people.


23. DW students all already overbooked – they get mass emails too.


24. LB making the links would be nice


25. DW could we have university seminar series where students sign up for credit hours, requirement is to take part in these things; team taught, pre-scheduled because we know what is going on ahead of time.


26. That would be great.


27. DW libart prefix, have it as an Area I or II core class. Meet once a week, activities every week.


28. CH: students don’t think about doing these things; do we have to impose these things on them, have to force it on them? How to reach them all?


29. LB how do we pay for it? Biggest problem facing this group? We are all in different disciplines, but there are demands on time and funds that we can’t necessarily shift to other places? We need to hire twenty new professors to do this new thing? Adjuncts to do this?
30. We already have huge needs? If we can’t take a step without hiring, then why are we here? If they don’t want us to innovate until we get paid, then it won’t happen.


31. DW: adjuncts come with own problems for this type of program


32. TR we might be able to do it without a net increase in classroom hours


33. Memo: are the examples of satellite campuses that focus on arts, lit – other examples of places that have a foothold, but we have no basis on which to start it?


34. LL need a change in structure, change in governance, change in ... greater faculty self-governance, we have the ideas, the expertise, the inspiration to do it here


35. Problem in self-governance is that I won’t have time to teach, to do my own writing, etc. if more governance comes my way; so many new initiatives are being offloaded on faculty; there have got to be recognitions of how much work they want faculty to do


36. LL things that are planned are not conducive to the future plans as announced


37. Would be nice to see, but I see no indication that it would be heard


38. MS: we need to market this to upper admin, I’ve been hearing this for 30 years; look at PSU, which did this 15 to 20 years ago…my point is that the prez and the provost have to be, they have to, we have to put the big sell on them. They have to see why rethinking this and the liberal arts, even in the classroom, people flinch when they hear that they are getting a LA education – have the philosophical discussion, with upper admin, get them to see why it matters. Also, what is the incentive for faculty members. This was a long discussion – support for idea that gen ed can go on throughout four years; the point though is that you have to sell promote propagandize etc. and make create excitement for this next four years for students, in a world where everyone is into getting a job.


39. SS general sense is that we’ve talked about creating programs with all the attendant stuff. That may well have a strong impact, but what we may well need is something big, that is part of how BSU is marketed with people, something that tinkers with the way the uni is structured – it is scary to think about rethinking th ecore structure…creating a course…talking to other department…credit for this or that…it’s difficult. But if we do things within our current structure, it could go away.


40. Memo; students are tech savvy – will need to deal with students who are 20 30 40 miles away; that element is there, another dimension.


41. MS: single course that everyone takes; they only do that with hundreds..we have too many students. But you know that argument is bogus these days with hybrid courses, etc.


42. Memo: who’s heard of second life? That idea of another level of access is what interest’s me


43. Mike: what we’d want is something that allows us to think into the future, to be imaginative, to be malleable, not just be these ex number of courses sitting there…need some ablity not to be locked in, not to say ten years later, how do we change it. Instead, have it be flexible.


44. DW needs to be flexible. Lower division tends not to change. It needs to be changeable. Starts with the silos. Higher level classes, they are in a silo. This is ours, that’s theirs.


45. Gail: The metaphor of the silo: huge structural thing. We operate in departments. It’s all about departments. Everything. Starts there. Whatever the big thing is, it’s gotta be looking at how to solve that issue. Then within our department we have disciplines. How they get built. Tends to be within departments. Has to be in here somewhere, don’t know how, what it would look like. Look at what students are doing to get around this stuff? They make the connections…but then they need an advisor, who is….within a department! Will have some type of designation, that gets to be hard.


46. Mike: there has to be someone who is assessing leading pulling in faculty…administration is important, and nobody likes to hear that.


47. LB Center that has resources, library, grant getting resources, engagement…