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The Rice Thresher
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by MEGHAN MILLER THRESHER STAFF Students will have to look somewhere other than the creative arts for distribution credit next year. Two studio arts courses and ENGL 103: Introduction to Argumentation were not included on the approved distribution course lists, available today in department offices in time for preregistration. The humanities distribution list will include not only courses approved by the department's standing committee on courses in January and February, but some language instruction courses recommended and approved this past month. The introductory drawing and photography courses were turned down along with ENGL 103 by the committee because they did not conform to distribution criteria approved by the faculty in May 1999. According to the criteria, Group I distribution courses must be accessible to non-majors and represent the "knowledge, intellectual skills and habits of thought that are most characteristic of a discipline or of inquiry across disciplines." Art and Art History Department Chair Bill Camfield and Art and Art History Professor John Sparagana will meet with the committee on April 25 to discuss the future of creative arts courses. As of preregistration, however, neither ARTS 205 : Photography I nor ARTS 225: Drawing I will be available for distribution credit. "We won't cycle through the schedule in time for preregistration," Committee Chair Ira Gruber, a history professor, said. "[Students] might discover when they come back in August [that courses] will be available for distribution." A Student Association committee circulated the petition the last few weeks to gauge student support for three introductory creative arts courses - ARTS 225, ARTS 206 and ENGL 201: Introduction to Creative Writing. According to the petition findings report by Hanszen College junior Gwen Hoben, the 50 percent drop in interest for courses made unavailable for distribution indicates "a large number of students would like to take these courses to fulfill their distribution requirements, and recent recommendations ... [jeopardize] the capacity of these students to take creative courses." Results for the petitions were reported to Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho, interim provost David Minter and Dean of Humanities Judith Brown. One quarter of undergraduates read and signed the three petitions assessing the demand for introductory creative writing, photography and drawing courses last week. Of these, ARTS 205 and ARTS 225 are no longer offered for distribution. More students are interested in all three courses than can be accommodated, according to the petitions. The petitions were drafted by the SA committee, chaired by Hoben. The Office of Institutional Research helped the committee eliminate bias and improve clarity in the petition. Seven hundred and eighty-five students, or 29 percent of the undergraduate population, signed the creative writing petition, 712 (26 percent) signed the photography petition, and 651 (24 percent) signed the drawing petition. Sampling error may account for the variance in number of signatures, Hoben said. Because the petitions were circulated as a packet, some students may not have seen all three pages. "The limiting factor was time. It takes a while to read and sign three petitions," Hoben said about student response. "In terms of bulk, I think it turned out well." In order to gauge student demand for the courses, each petition asked students if they had ever been unable to enroll in the course because of the limit on its size and if they would be interested in taking the course even if it were not offered for distribution. Between 8 and 10 percent of the signers said they could not take one of the classes because of an enrollment cap, and 42 to 52 percent said they were still interested in taking the courses even if they were not offered for distribution. "In a way, this tells us what we knew already, that the interest was there regardless of distribution status," Camfield said. English Department Chair Wesley Morris, who received the report, agrees that the only way to accommodate student demand is to add more sections, which costs money. "Behind the difficulty of providing more courses is the difficulty of staffing them, and behind that is the difficulty of funding them," Morris said. "We have some people who can do them and do them quite well, but we have to pay them if they teach more. It really depends to some degree if the funds are available." Both departments are working to increase availability, he said. Brown will support adding sections if she is able to produce sufficient funds, Camfield said. Brown could not be reached for comment. English Professor Marsha Recknagel, who teaches ENGL 201, said she offered to teach another section of ENGL 201 to alleviate the demand she saw for the course but was told the funds were unavailable. "In the spring semester, I counted heads. There were 55 people. I can only take 14. Every semester 20 more students show up on the first day than have registered," she said. - back - |
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