The Faculty Senate approved the suspension of the Speaking Across the Curriculum requirement for all upperclassmen.

The senate met last Tuesday, and voted to suspend the courses after nearly an hour of discussion.

Diane Timmerman, theatre professor, said the workload professors must take on to teach this course is too much.

“Some of my colleagues have had a difficult time squeezing in the amount of time that has been designated for Speaking Across the Curriculum,” Timmerman said.

The vote passed with the necessary majority, a count of 24 in favor, eight opposed and two abstaining.

Vivian Deno, assistant history professor, said the timing of the vote was what made her decide against the motion to suspend.

“I think we need to hear more discussion on the issue,” Deno said. “I support the spirit of the vote, but the timeliness will make me vote against the motion.”

Any students who started their studies in the fall of 2012 will still have to take a course to meet this requirement.

Chris Bungard, assistant classical studies professor, said he wants the senate to recognize a decision needs to be made regarding the course and current first-year students.

“This vote is leaving the course as a requirement for freshman,” Bungard said. “We need to make sure first-year students can reasonably fulfill this course by the time they are juniors and seniors.”

Other agenda items during the meeting included the new executive director, the proposed parking garage and a retirement phase committee.

Most topics, aside from Speaking Across the Curriculum, were tabled for more discussion at the next meeting.

Some Butler University students may soon have different core curriculum requirements than the rest of the student body.

A proposal that would give Butler’s colleges the power to exempt students who entered Butler before the end of the 2011-12 school year from completing the Speaking Across the Curriculum requirement passed Faculty Senate’s curriculum committee. It will be brought to a vote at the meeting on Nov. 27.

The motion was created because there may not be enough speaking courses  offered in all colleges to allow students to meet the requirement before the May 2014 graduation date, said Bob Dale, curriculum committee chair, in an email.

“I hope that, by the summer, there will be enough new courses to meet the need,” Dale said. “If so, there will be no need to suspend (or waive) the requirement for anyone.”

Dale said the course deficiency is most prevalent in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Unlike other colleges that may offer one speaking course for the majority of its students, Jay Howard, LAS dean, said his college would need to offer 15 to 30 different courses for the approximate 30 different majors in the college.

“Are we going to tell hundreds of students, ‘Well you can’t graduate because you didn’t take this course. And the reason you didn’t take this course is because we didn’t offer it.’ ?” Howard said. “That would not go over well.”

Janis Crawford, the Speaking Across the Curriculum coordinator, said she expects the senate will approve the proposal because the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences needs it to be approved in order for their students to graduate.

“Whether or not I agree with it, I get it,” Crawford said. “There’s just not enough courses. My hope is that we can get more courses, so that there will be enough, so that we won’t have to do this again.”

The curriculum requirement must be satisfied by an upper-level course that requires students to give three presentations, one of which must be revised and presented again.

Diane Timmerman, Faculty Senate member and professor in the Jordan College of Arts, said the reason the requirement was made for a 300 or 400 level course is because upperclassmen have more to say than they did as underclassmen.

“Unfortunately, the professor also has a lot to say, and a lot of course material to cover at the 300 or 400 level,” Timmerman said. “So people are finding it difficult in some areas to get the students’ speaking time to mesh with the rigorous course demands of a 300 or 400 level course within the majors.”

The requirement is the only core course that requires prerequisites, meaning the class often becomes a part of students’ majors.

“It’s nice that it’s good and effective as part of your major,” Crawford said. “And I think people feel like it applies more if it’s part of your major, than just a basic public speaking course.”

Howard said that was not the original idea, and students were supposed to be able to take classes outside their major that would fulfill the requirement. Students cannot do so because of the prerequisites required. Howard said the requirement has changed in other ways since it originally passed the senate.

Howard said the curriculum committee has implemented and enforced a restriction unapproved by the Faculty Senate that does not allow for the speaking requirement to be fulfilled by courses that also fulfill the Writing Across the Curriculum core requirement.

“You can’t meet both requirements with a single course, even if all the expectations for each of those requirements are fulfilled in that course,” Howard said.

Howard said eliminating this restriction would go a long way to solving the problem and ease the burden of LAS professors who teach the majority of core curriculum classes.

Dale said the curriculum committee has been examining this restriction.

“It was thought that meeting both sets of criteria in a single course would occur at the cost of losing too much other course content,” Dale said. “We are currently re-evaluating that opinion.”

The issue of whether or not colleges have the authority to suspend a core requirement for a limited period of time will be debated by the Faculty Senate and determine the fate of this requirement, Dale said.

If the senate approves the proposal, Howard said LAS would suspend the requirement for the applicable students and said it would buy Butler time to fix the problem. Howard said some students would miss out on the opportunity to refine their public speaking skills because of such a decision.

“Students really need the opportunity to get up and give presentations,” Crawford said. “If they don’t get that opportunity to have some sort of integrated experience, they may not get it until they have to go out and have a job.”

Timmerman said she does not think anyone wants to eliminate the requirement and all faculty members understand the importance of having students who can speak effectively, but she thinks a resolution remains unclear.

“I really don’t know what’s going to happen—stay tuned,” Timmerman said.

Each year, Butler University students spend an average of 15 hours a week sitting in classrooms.

Even more time is spent outside the classrooms working on homework, cramming for tests or completing cultural requirements.

For 16 weeks each semester, students are bogged down with college commitments.

And while a heavy load is something each student  agrees to do, it’s not something each student likes to do.

If students are going to spend such a huge amount of time dedicating themselves to their schoolwork, they should have an opportunity to enjoy nearly every minute of it.

For some students, the core classes seem to drag on for all 16 weeks.

When students register for classes for their first semester at Butler, they often find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a First Year Seminar to squeeze into their schedules.

Those seminars are often about some microcosm of the universe that people rarely pay attention to.

When students have to pick other core classes, like GHS or science courses, they often find themselves in similar situations.

The core should be evaluated to make sure that courses can hold the interest of students and teach something valuable along the way.

More courses that interest students in their individual programs should be available.

Students should be able to make their education interesting and rewarding.

Sitting through a 32-week course about a topic that really carries no impact for students often turns them off from the subject.

It’s not fun for students or professors when students tune out during class time.

No one benefits.

Administrators should look into making classes more colorful, more relevant and more beneficial for students.

Plenty of professors are dedicated to education at Butler.

Some programs rank high above others in the nation.

So why not make sure that students can benefit from more of those classes or programs?

When students care, the entire Butler community benefits.

The liberal arts focus at Butler University is an integral part of students’ educational experience.

This becomes especially important during scheduling, when it is much easier to notice and disparage the problems with the core curriculum.

Although the core curriculum needs some improvements, students must not forget the importance of a liberal arts education.

The process of scheduling can be frustrating, but it can still bear worthwhile results if approached with an open mind.

The main point of education is to enrich one’s mind, explore multiple fields of thought and grapple with one’s own worldview.

Unfortunately, many students tend to believe the purpose of education is to prepare for future jobs.

In fact, 85 percent of high school students and 59 percent of college graduates list “qualifying for a better job/preparing for a career” as a primary reason to attend college, according to a study by Richard Hersh.

Training and preparation for future professions should not be condemned.

But focusing solely on upcoming careers misses liberal arts educaton’s bigger picture and purpose.

Students often disapprove of Butler’s core curriculum, especially when it involves courses that fall outside their majors or—put more directly—courses that won’t tie directly into their career paths.

Instead of embracing opportunities to expand their minds, students write off these interdisciplinary courses.

This is incredibly problematic and telling.

Students receive this opportunity that a number of other people are shut out from, and they scoff at it.

The core curriculum is well-publicized before a student enrolls at Butler.

In this sense, people should know what they are getting into when they enroll at Butler and have no reason to complain because they chose to attend a liberal arts university.

Students who have general knowledge about subjects outside their specialization will likely have a wider array of employment opportunities.

That said, the core curriculum does have a few kinks that need to be worked out, such as limitations it puts on students’ schedules.

But instead of decrying the liberal arts education or demanding the core be reworked for each major, students should think of ways to improve its current state.

Otherwise, Butler students will miss out on one of the most enriching, positive experiences they could have: an eye-opening education.

Butler University’s core curriculum no longer faces a budget gap as the 2012-13 school year gets underway.

The core curriculum faced a budget shortfall of $400,000 last April.

“Funding for the core was never in jeopardy,” said Ben Hunter, chief of staff and executive director of public safety. “The core will always be funded.”

Hunter said numbers in the spring were preliminary before the resources for the budget were allocated.

The necessary funding for the core was found before beginning the new school year, said Bruce Arick, vice president of finance and administration.

The gap was closed with $350,000 to $375,000 from the university’s contingency fund, Arick said.

The contingency fund is a sum of money in the university’s budget that has not been committed to any specific program or area.

“(The contingency fund) is money that we have if something happens that was unforeseen that we can dip into,” he said.

Arick said he likes to start the year with at least $1 million in the contingency fund.

The university was able to fund the core during the planning stages of the budget before the 2012-13 school year, Arick said. It was able to start the year with the million dollars still in the fund.

Arick said these budget gaps are not unusual.

“As we go through the year planning process, the information becomes more specific about enrollment and what colleges it will affect,” Arick said.

Arick said when budget gaps arise, the deans and faculty are the first to become aware of it. If further attention is needed, those budget issues are taken to the provost and then to her advisory committee, which is made up of the deans.

Finally, it is taken to the president’s cabinet for review and approval, if it is determined university-level funding is needed.

Getting approval for the core curriculum funding is what Interim Provost Kathryn Morris did.

“It’s my responsibility to advocate for resources to make sure we have what we need to deliver the core curriculum to our students,” Morris said.

Figuring out what resources the core needs starts with looking at which faculty members are teaching which classes already. Then they look to see how many students will be coming in. Finally, best estimates are made about what additions the core needs, Morris said.

Morris said most first-year students have at least one other core course in addition to their first-year seminars.

“Things are going well,” Morris said. “We’ve got the resources to support the need.”

As far as next year’s core resources, Arick said budget gaps appear annually but not always in the same spot.

“It is certainly a possibility it could be in the core,” he said.

The planning process for the 2013-14 budget will start in the spring.

Faculty Senate members read through a motion Tuesday that could urge Butler University administrators to fund and staff the core curriculum, which is $400,000 short of funding for next year.

The motion states, “It is imperative that the university fully staff the current core curriculum, which was approved by the faculty in 2005.

“We must ensure that we have sufficient funding and faculty positions to support the core curriculum.”

The Senate decided to take two weeks to think about the motion and will discuss and vote on it at the next meeting on April 24.

“This has always been a problem,” Elizabeth Mix, associate professor of art, said. “I think it’s beneficial that we have a serious conversation about it.”

Tom Dolan, a biology professor who serves on the university’s core curriculum committee, said the point of the motion is to get the core curriculum taken care of and to get a decision made.

“If this motion is a way to support a discussion about funding the core, then view it as that,” Dolan said.

Published April 10, 2012

OUR POINT THIS WEEK: Hiring unnecessary staff while vital positions are being cut is not the way to help Butler students succeed | VOTE: 27-0-4

A core curriculum program  $400,000 in the red. Four percent increases in tuition.

Recent controversies whirling around campus seem to be following the tone of money, money, money.

Despite all of these fiscal mishaps and concerns, Butler University’s administration stands unfazed with its hands on its wallet. Butler President Jim Danko will be hiring three “advising staff” for the sole purpose of “mitigating student concerns.”

While these three overqualified individuals fill up space in the administrative offices, several committed, necessary faculty and staff are being undervalued.

From faculty put on constant one-year contracts—deservedly or not—to the elimination of the College of Communication’s internship coordinator, people on campus directly involved in “student concerns” are being removed while Danko stuffs his office with unnecessary positions.

Even worse, when approached about the elimination of CCOM’s internship coordinator, Interim Provost Kathryn Morris said it was simply a CCOM problem.

The problem is that some CCOM majors require an internship in order to earn their degree, not to mention that internships guarantee an increased likelihood of scoring a job after graduation.

The provost’s job is to oversee the university and ensure that students recieve the best education possible, and that includes involving herself in the grimy issues of the individual colleges.

By writing off the administration-mandated termination of a position that greatly benefits students as a college problem, the administration makes itself appear callous to the concerns students have about their education.

This administrative tendency to appear and act out-of-touch affects more than just CCOM. It stretches campus wide.

This becomes especially clear when looking 15 years back, during a financial crisis. Despite the severity of the situation, the administration found ways to retain and fund crucial positions, including the internship coordinator.

Students, staff and other community members have voiced their worries about widespread issues including parking, hiked tuition, financial aid and underfunded classes and programs.

But the administration has not proposed a long-lasting solution or, rather, not prioritized its spending in a way that reflects student concerns.

Instead of finding ways to work with the current budget to fund the core or save some vital positions, Danko’s administration has taken money from the same “underfunded” system to pay for three positions.

Instead of making pay equitable or expanding swamped departments, money is spent on installing fireplaces in Atherton and purchasing a Charger for the Butler University Police Department.

Instead of concrete, honest solutions and outlooks on Butler’s multitude of issues, we have more evasive answers and mixed messages about Butler being a “community of care.”

Enough politicking.  Enough unclear goals and innovation funds.

Butler administrators, if they really believe we live in a community of care, should prioritize spending to improve the very reason for their existence: the students and their educations.

Butler University is $400,000 short of funding next year’s core curriculum, the 30-hour set of required classes for all Butler students.

Administrators said they are trying to find creative solutions to fix the problem—such as rewarding students credit for high AP test scores—but the funding shortage could signal future tweaks to the current core, which was instituted fall of 2010.

“It is an open question about whether we can afford the core as it’s currently constituted,” said College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Jay Howard. “You could make an argument that we can’t afford this one. All of that hasn’t been fully fleshed out.”

Associate Provost Laura Behling, who also serves as the senior core administrator, said it is always a challenge to allocate money.

“Sometimes we have resources in the places we need to have them, and sometimes we don’t,” she said.

Howard said part of the challenge with directing the core is that the authority over the curriculum should come from the bottom up, but administrators control the purse strings.

“Faculty need to control and own the curriculum,” Howard said. “I’m a little cautious as an administrator to start telling the faculty what to do, but there are resource constraints on what can be done.”

Behling said the university is still offering “a robust selection of courses in all of the areas” and is able to staff the number of seats needed, but that it has made them reevaluate staffing.

“I think we’re able to do some interesting things given the way we’re able to staff,” Behling said. “On that level, students are seeing positives in the way we’re able to staff the core curriculum.”

Interim Provost Kathryn Morris said the core looks “pretty good” for the fall, although the university is in the process of hiring four more instructors and adjuncts as needed.

Biology professor Tom Dolan, who serves on the university’s core curriculum committee, said the core requires additional resources even though the university tries to staff it internally.

Staffing decisions are made by individual departments and colleges, but the committee can ask them to “step up and embrace the core,” Dolan said.

“We are in our resource constricted environment, but I think we deliver a fine and unique core,” Dolan said. “We can be vigilant and cover what we offer.”

One change that was approved in Faculty Senate on March 27 was to allow AP credits from high school to fulfill relevant core requirements for incoming freshmen. This would start next spring.

The AP credit policy also would be applied retroactively to all current students.

Sophomore Tako Iwai said that since he achieved at least a four on two AP tests in high school, the new policy would help him and other incoming freshmen.

“It would give me more time to take on a minor now,” Iwai said.

Freshman Carly Messinger said it would have been helpful to know this in high school because she took four AP classes but decided not to take the tests because Butler didn’t recognize them.

“Knowing that now, I would’ve taken the tests,” Messinger said.

Howard said that tweaks like this could begin to solve the core deficit.

“If you accept AP courses as equivalent then you reduce demand,” he said. “With a number of tweaks, we may be able to solve this problem. There’s no single magic bullet that solves everything.”

Dolan said that while accepting AP credit will reduce staff and student numbers in certain areas of the core, that was not its initial intention.

“It’s an evolutionary move that looks at what students are bringing into the core while taking into account that it existed in the old core,” Dolan said.

Also, since Indiana’s public universities must accept AP credit, Butler would be following the state norm.

Morris said that this motion is part of a “fine-tuning process” that attempts to make the core as effective as possible.

It’s not realistic to go back to the old core, Howard said, but he put the authority on the faculty.

“I think it would be a mistake for administrators to top-down say, ‘here’s what’s going to happen,’” Howard said.

Behling said the curriculum should be part of an ongoing conversation, and that it is an important concern.

“Our commitment,” she said, “Is that students get the courses they need over the years they are here in order to graduate.”

For the next two weeks, Susan Zurbuchen will be busier than usual.

On top of her regular class load and the responsibilities that come with her role as chair of Butler University’s Arts Administration program, she is taxed with finding enough time to schedule half-hour appointments with each of her 35 advisees.

The two-person Arts Administration department shares the burden to accommodate students with faculty members across the university who all face growing program sizes, a competitive faculty line addition process, a tight budget and demands for faculty to contribute to Butler’s core curriculum.

The result of these challenges is a delicate balancing act for university administrators, deans, program chairs and faculty to maintain department sizes that comfortably serve both the students and faculty.

“It is indeed a balancing act,” Zurbuchen said. “For us, the most important thing is to serve the students.”

A university-wide glimpse at the ratio of a program’s size to its number of full-time faculty reveals the Arts Administration program is among the most strapped, along with Communication Sciences & Disorders, Psychology, Journalism, Marketing, Biology and others.

But determining Butler’s overall faculty stress-load is much more complicated than just simple division, said College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Jay Howard.

“If we want to be true to Butler’s identity and mission, then you’ve got to think more broadly about head count,” Howard said. “It’s about their contribution to curriculum as a whole, and it’s a value judgment.”

Tiny programs that appear to be breezing by with a high number of full-time faculty for how many students major in that area, such as Religion or Media, Rhetoric and Culture, aren’t sitting idly by though.

Professors in these areas contribute to the core curriculum.

Howard said that the religion professors also are among the most internationally recognized at the university, which contributes greatly to Butler’s reputation and level of prestige.

LAS has a unique staffing challenge because of how many of its programs are imperative to having a unique and diverse core curriculum, Howard said.

Foreign languages and the natural sciences, both in LAS, are areas that have a low number of full-time faculty for the amount of students who need to take their classes in order to complete Butler’s core.

Most Butler students need to take one natural world class and at least six hours in upper-level foreign language courses, which can sometimes strain faculty in these programs.

To prepare for next fall, the university is in the process of hiring four more instructors and adjuncts to help carry the load, said interim Provost Kate Morris.

Individual departments are in charge of determining what they will contribute to the core, even though there are overarching university initiatives in place, she said.

A goal in the core is that 80 percent of it be delivered by tenure-line faculty members, Morris said. That goal has not been reached.

Morris said the percentage of courses taught by tenure-track faculty varies across divisions of the core and that she did not have specific numbers.

Howard said he thinks this goal is a “tall order” and that it would be more realistic to stress having 80 percent of the core delivered by full-time faculty instead.

The goals create a tension between two things that the university values, he said.

“Tenure-line faculty are typically the best experts and the ones teaching the upper-level courses,” Howard said. “If you’re taking them out of those areas and plugging them into the core, who are we going to have teach those courses?”

Carmen Salsbury, chair of the biology department, said things have improved, but, historically, her department has not been able to keep up while balancing core and major class offerings.

“We’ve been able to keep the problem at bay a little,” Salsbury said. “Unfortunately, you’re sometimes faced with the dilemma of what to do. Do you move faculty from a core section into a major section and hope that someone picks up the slack in the core? You don’t want to have to do that.”

Since it is strapped for time, Salsbury said her department is not able to offer as many upper-level electives as students might want to see.

Biology professors also are not able to keep up with the demand to serve students who are interested in completing independent studies or research projects.

Salsbury said she has been lucky to have three instructor lines in her department’s budget for the past 10 years, but as the program grows, she said she thinks another full-time faculty member will be useful.

“Something is going to give soon,” Salsbury said. “We’re right on the brink.”

The process of adding a full-time faculty member to a department’s budget is competitive, Howard said, since there are limited resources.

“The reality is resources are finite,” Howard said. “You’ve got to make hard choices.”

Faculty requests are made in early spring, discussed by the deans, and approved or denied by the provost.

“No one gets everything they think they need,” Howard said. “It’s about trying to keep the big picture of the university in mind. You have to be sensitive to the needs of other colleges.”

If the university is not able to fund another full-time faculty member in a department, the department could hire an adjunct professor to help out.

In a program like arts administration, Zurbuchen said she is very grateful to hire talented adjuncts to help lighten her course load as well as help diversify her students’ learning.

“It’s important that our students get multiple perspectives,” Zurbuchen said.

For biology, managing faculty is a little harder. Salsbury said she usually does not use adjuncts because they are difficult to find.

“It can be a great educational, experience because adjuncts bring something different to the table,” Salsbury said, “but they have to have the proper background and expertise. It’s hard to find a random biologist out there that’s not already engaged.”

Students may now be shopping for next semester’s classes during advising, but it won’t be until next semester that some realize their classmates may be better or worse prepared than they are.

Certain classes are cross-listed, or listed twice in the Butler University course catalog. The course may be listed under two different subjects or two different call numbers.

This means that for non-major students, a class may have a different level than it has for majors—for example, a 200-level course for non-majors may be listed as a 300-level for majors—raising concerns that course loads may be too challenging for non-majors or not challenging enough for majors.

The core curriculum committee is looking into how the university handles them, Thomas Dolan, biology professor and chair of the committee, said at the Oct. 4 Faculty Senate meeting.

Dolan said approximately half a dozen cross-listed classes have been identified so far.

“The issue is making sure that the course levels really represent the discrepancies,” Dolan said. “Asking, for example, ‘Does this course carry appropriate level of rigor for 300-level course?’”

Junior English literature major Emelia Abbe said she has taken classes in the English department cross-listed as text and ideas classes.

“I think [cross-listed classes] can sometimes be a little frustrating for people who aren’t in that particular program,” Abbe said. “[The frustration] has to do with having to be more meticulous in the way you write and present your arguments because a lot of majors who aren’t in that field don’t have to be so meticulous.”

Junior English major Hannah Stiller currently is enrolled in two cross-listed classes.

“I have to spend much more time going over the information [in these classes] in order to get what I feel is a good grade,” Stiller said. “Even with as much time I spend going over the information, I do not always

achieve the grades I deem as acceptable.”

Butler’s core curriculum is the basic set of classes that all students must take regardless of major. According to the Butler University Bulletin, the core curriculum is “a set of academic requirements embodying our definition of what it means to be a liberally-educated person.”

In order to fulfill the core curriculum, students must take at least one class in each of the five divisions that does not include their major.

“Departments are expected to contribute to the core,” Dolan said. “Some [departments] can do this better than others.”

The cross-listing of courses, Dolan said, is meant to accommodate the limited number of resources and professors at Butler.

“It’s a balancing game in making sure that courses are offered to satisfy major and core contribution requirements,” Dolan said.

Cross-listing allows departments to offer classes to students who are not majors but may be interested in taking a course for core credit. The university’s eight-student minimum means that some classes might not be offered if not for cross-listing, especially in smaller departments.

“It’s only a positive for students,” Dolan said.

Abbe said she recognizes this.

“I think [cross-listing] is a good thing because it helps you develop as a writer,” Abbe said.

However, Stiller said that some adjustments need to be made to cross-listed courses.

“The professors of cross-listed classes need to be aware that their class is catering to more students than those in that major,” Stiller said. “They need to make sure that they don’t assume that all students will have background knowledge of the subject.”

Dolan said that the level of the course is what is listed in the core curriculum.

For students worried about potentially having problems, Dolan said that there is no need for such concerns.

“There is a curriculum review process, and all questions are tended to in this process,” Dolan said. “The focus here is on taking care of students.”