|
CC FIRST-TERM LANGUAGE COURSES TO BE EXCLUDED FROM
G.E. LIST?
|
|
The proposed exclusion of all first-term language courses other than
English from consideration for fulfillment of the CSU General Education
Breadth requirements for Area C2: Humanities will be a primary topic of
discussion at the 2002 California Community College Foreign Language
Council Conferences: For those who would like to become more familiar with the issue before the meeting(s), I have included below transcripts of two related (electronic) discussions. I have also posted copies of CSU's Academic Senate Academic Affairs Committee agendas & minutes, where the discussion originated, with areas relevant to the discussion highlighted. To view these, click here. Denise Cabanel |
| DISCUSSION 1 |
|
gangelo@sprintmail.com writes: Dear Dr. Kegley: I am the current president of the CSU Foreign Language Council and am writing to ask if you can give me more information on the resolution pending to remove first-term language courses from the GE C2 block. One of our members sent me a note about this, but I do not have complete information on it. Obviously, this is a matter that would concern our membership greatly, so I would like to get as much background on it as I can Could you answer the following questions or let me know whom I should contact about them? 1. What was the motivation for this resolution? Who introduced it? 2. Why does the resolution mention first-term language courses only? Would second through sixth term lower-division courses still be eligible for inclusion in G.E.? 3. At CSLA, for example, our foreign language courses are in a separate block - C4, which is simply foreign languages. Would this resolution affect campuses which have foreign languages in other blocks than C2? 4. Is this a binding resolution on all CSU campuses? I notice that the wording simply says "urges." We certainly do not see our goal in our courses as merely "language skills acquisition," but as an introduction to the cultures of other countries, an understanding that goes hand-in-hand with the ability to communicate with other people in their own languages. Our Council will certainly want to send a memo about this issue to the Academic Senate. That is why it is so important to me to get a full understanding of the resolution before addressing it. Once we draft such a memo, what is the procedure for sending it to the Academic Senate? Thank you very much for your time. Sincerely, Gretchen V. Angelo ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-1 |
|
jkegley@ccsub.edu writes This item was brought to our Academic Affairs Committe from a representative on the IGETC Committee (Intersegmental GE Transfer Curriculum ). I will forward your questions to the chair of our Academic Affairs Committee (Robert Synder, CSU, Humboldt) and Katy Kaiser, CSU Chico, the person who initiated the issue. Jackie Kegley ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-2 |
|
Bob and Kathy- can you please respond to these questions. Thanks. Jackie ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-3 |
|
From: Bob Snyder (ras1@humboldt.edu) Dear Professor Angelo: Attached is the resolution from the Academic Affairs Committee. This resolution was motivated by the past and current chairs of the GE Advisory Committee. A subcommittee of this committee, the Course Review Subcommittee, reviews GE courses from the CCC system. I will try to answer your questions but I am going to copy Ken Nishita, the current chair, and Kathy Kaiser, the past chair, and they can correct my mistakes. I do not serve on this committee and therefore may be wrong about some of the details. 1. What was the motivation for this resolution? Who introduced it? My understanding is that the Course Review Subcommittee looks at proposals from community colleges which are to be approved for GE transfer in the CSU and UC. These courses can be approved for just CSU transfer or for the intersegmental transfer that lets students go to either system. Currently, both systems work with the same language for what foreign language courses have to do to be approved for GE, but the intersegmental transfer system does not consider 1st term courses at all and the CSU transfer system does. The subcommittee approves very few 1st term courses for CSU transfer because it feels they do not have enough cultural components in them. They feel it would be easier to prohibit all first term, community college courses, in trying to achieve the requirements for GE. 2. Why does the resolution mention first-term language courses only? Would second through sixth term lower-division courses still be eligible for inclusion in G.E.? All other term courses would be considered for inclusion in GE. They may not be approved, depending on the cultural component. The reason first-term courses are mentioned is because they are the ones most likely for not have a cultural component. 3. At CSLA, for example, our foreign language courses are in a separate block - C4, which is simply foreign languages. Would this resolution affect campuses which have foreign languages in other blocks than C2? I do not think that this resolution affects CSU campuses at all. (If I am wrong about this, Kathy or Ken will correct me. This is my understanding, but because I am not on the committee I am concerned that I might be wrong. I realize this is a very important point and we need to get it right.) CSU campuses have their own approval processes for GE. I think on a campus it is much easier to get further input to clarify course content. The Course Review Subcommittee is reviewing courses for all the CCC system and it is much more difficult to to oversee curriculum content at that level of review. 4. Is this a binding resolution on all CSU campuses? I notice that the wording simply says "urges." As above, I do not think this is binding on CSU campuses. It is also not binding on the Course Review Subcommittee. We are merely urging them to do this. However, because this resolution comes at their request, I have every reason to think that they will follow this advice. As to procedure for responding to the Senate, please send a memo to me or to chair Kegley. I am chair of the Academic Affairs Committee and will lead the committee in modifying or withdrawing the resolution depending on input from the campuses. This has gone out to all campuses for input. I apologize for overlooking your group in seeking advice. We would be very interested in you input on this matter. Do you know if there is a similar group at the CCC level? If there is, please let me know and I will contact them. I know that we are sending the resolution out generally to the the CCC system, but I do not think we are sending it directly to any councils. Thanks for your input and if there are any other questions I can answer, please let me know. Bob Snyder, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-4 |
|
Dear members of the FLC: Terri Nelson alerted me to this resolution, and I am in the process of getting more information about it. You might want to read the forwarded messages (below) from the bottom up, so to speak, to follow the sequence of the discussion thus far. I have also contacted Tom Blair of the CCCFLC. It appears that this affects transfer courses only, *not* our own campuses' GE courses which are approved on each campus, but obviously that is a key question. Of course, such a resolution might well affect our own campuses' individual efforts to include FL in GE. I think an important point is that the resolution's rationale for omitting the first-term courses is that they don't all include sufficient cultural content. On the one hand, I think we would agree that such content is necessary justification for inclusion of FL in GE; on the other hand, perhaps we need to protest against the blanket assumption that CC courses do not provide such content. I really do believe it is premature to discuss this without more info, especially input from the community colleges. I just sent out my message to the chair of the Academic Senate this morning, and am getting very quick responses. I think we should be able to undertake discussion of this in a few days. I was going to wait until I got more answers before forwarding the matter to you, but I thought it better to key you in now since other members have begun to contact me about this. Unfortunately, this is coming up before the next meeting, so any memo we write will have to be aired and commented through e-mail. That is why it is so important to understand the issue thoroughly before we get into it. The full resolution is attached. I would suggest waiting a few days for further information before opening up a discussion on this, but if you do want to reply immediately, please reply to the entire list. As I get more e-mails from people in the Academic Senate and permission to forward them, I will send them on to you. Gretchen Angelo ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-5 |
|
From: Frongia, Eugenio FYI. Several key questions are asked here. Many of the concerns are parallel to the ones we are expressing in Chico. The system-wide discussion is unearthing issues we want to consider very carefully before it is too late. Eugenio Frongia -----Original Message----- From: Midori McKeon [SMTP:mmckeon@sfsu.edu] Dear Gretchen, Please find attached the letter that the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State sent to Professor Robert Snyder, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, Academic Senate, CSU on Thursday, February 7 (the date on the letter is February 8) by email, to protest against the the AACAS's pending resolution AS-2552-02/AA. Our campus is currently undergoing the process of considering all undergraduate foreign language courses (including Latin and modern Greek) for inclusion in a newly created GE Segment II category E: Language Other than English. Our department immediately responded to the news of the AACAS's move toward passing the resolution not only because its "blanket" assumption that CC's first-semester foreign language courses do not have an adequate cultural component seemed to be unfounded and unsubstantiated, but also because such an assumption would seriously undermine this important work now in progress on the SFSU campus. I hope the attached letter will inform you and others of our perspectives and and be helpful to the discussion on this issue. Midori McKeon, Cahir ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-6 |
|
From: "Kaiser, Kathy" (KKAISER@csuchico.edu) I gues I must plead ignorant on the ? of how the SFSU campus is seeing the accreditation of the CCC courses are affecting this move on their campus. It seems quite vaild for their campus to do this GE focus and not an issue affected by this resolution, since it would only be in effect for Transfer students who meet their GE C-2 NOT at a CSU, ie. not at SFSU. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-7 |
|
Subject: Fwd: RE: FW: Pending resolution on removing first-term language
courses from GE C2 bl ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-8 |
|
Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: RE: FW: Pending resolution on removing first-term
language course s from GE C2 bl] Amigos Memo you have probably already been inundated with these concerns-now you see what YOU have created? The issue is heating up as you can tell and so I plead with you to keep me informed or all our efforts may come to naught. I was under the impression CSU foreign language departments would be in support of the resolution apparently many are concerned they will lose staffing. I expected that from the CCs. I will provide you and Doug with correspondence within the Academic Affairs committee and the CSU Academic Senate, please let me know how things are moving on your end. Do you intend to enter the fray in support of the resolution? Cheerio ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-9 |
|
dkeesey@calpoly.edu wrote: John, Would you like to weigh in on this? -- Doug Keesey ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-10 |
|
Sender: John Harrington (jharring@polymail.cpunix.calpoly.edu) Doug asked me for comments on the exchange over changing the CSU policy governing foreign-language study in General Education. I tried a longer version and decided that not even you guys would bother reading it, so here are what I see as a few key points: 1. Given the movement of students to and from community colleges and both CSU and UC campuses, there are clear reasons to establish both a level and criteria for GE credit for language study. Given EO595, there is even more reason to have consistency within our own system. 2. The CSU requires freshman to complete a minimum of two years of high-school language study for admission. By default, the current CSU policy encourages--and does not prevent--students from repeating beginning language study in the same language used for admission. As the discussion has pointed out, there is little gain from encouraging students to repeat work taken in high school and much to gain from policies that encourage further language study. (Look at current enrollments and it's clear that for far too many students the first term of language study is also the last.) 3. While the nature of the cultural component is clearly the business of the language programs, GE programs need to verify that the cultural component is substantial and reasonably consistent with the intellectual content of courses in the humanities or any other area that might grant GE credit to language study. (Perhaps a reasonable comparison might be made with Area A courses. These courses often have an intellectual component--e.g. literature--but not a sufficiently deep or broad component to also allow those courses to provide Area C credit.) It seems a stretch to imagine any less than a full year's university-level instruction in a second language could equate to the substance of an Area C General Education course. 4. It's also critical that evidence be provided of the substance of the cultural component. Because most Area C courses have a focused intellectual objective and language studies have the additional (and primary?) objective of basic-language instruction, it is logical to assume (in the absence of very specific and documented evidence) that the dual-objective course will take two or more terms to meet objectives equivalent to those of a course without a dual objective. (While one might discuss the writing or speech components of a course in the humanites, one does not hear about "cultural components" for such courses because cultural issues are not simply a component.) 5. The discussion should not be about positions, but rather about how to bring students into language study beyond the first term (thus one assumes/hopes the same number of positions but at a somewhat more advanced level). If one wants to focus on financial questions, it is dishonest to ignore the cost (and wasted resources) of allowing students with two or more years of high-school language study to enroll in first-term study in college. John ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-11 |
|
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:29:37 -0800 Amigos/Amigas Here is some commentary by John Harrington, the former chair of our campus GE&B Committee. [He has been replaced by Doug Keesey who is coming up to speed on this issue] The other person being copied by John is William (Guillermo or "Memo") Martinez the chair of our Modern Languages Dept. It's ironic that although Kathy is taking all the heat for this resolution, the initiative came from this campus and initially from John and Memo both of whom are concerned about the integrity of the GE program as should we all. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I-12 |
| DISCUSSION 2 |
|
Su: Letter of Protest Dear Fellow SFSU Academic Senators, This is an information item. Attached please find the letter of protest that the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures sent by email to Dr. Robert Snyder, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, CSU Academic Senate, on February 8, 2002. At the last SFSU Academic Senate meeting, we heard Bob Cherney's report of the recent meeting of the CSU Academic Senate. Among the items that he reported on, there was the CSU Academic Senate's pending resolution (currently in the first reading and to be placed on the agenda again at the next meeting in early March) to remove first-term foreign language courses from GE Breadth requirements. The text of the proposed resolution reads: "the Academic Senate of the California State University urges the Course Review Subcommittee to exclude all first-term language courses other than English (i.e., beginning or first semester/quarter, college-level courses) from consideration for fulfillment of the CSU General Education Breadth requirements for Area C2: Humanities." The resolution provides the following rationale: "Currently, GE Breadth does not exclude first-term courses in language for its Area C2:Humanities review. Both GE Breadth and IGETC have the same course review criterion that the language course must contain a substantive CULTURAL COMPONENT beyond solely the acquisition of language skills. The IGETC excludes all first-term courses in language and reviews ONLY the second-term courses, or more advanced courses. Very few first-term CCC language courses are approved by the Course Review Subcommittee. ...." In short, the resolution alleges that first-term language courses do not contain "a substantive cultural component" and urges their exclusion from GE C2. Our department's letter rebuts such an uninformed assumption and emphasizes that the national "Standards for Foreign Language Learning" specifically require that students in foreign language classes (regardless of the level) "gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures." The same standards apply, of course, to courses offered at community colleges as well as those offered at CSU campuses. As our department in our letter cautioned the fact that the CSU-Foreign Language Council had not even been consulted, the CSU-FLC has since been brought into the discussion electronically. However the CSU-FLC will not have a chance to review this important matter at its next meeting scheduled for April 20, 2002, if the CSU Academic Senate puts this item on its agenda at its March 6-7 meeting. The California Community Colleges Foreign Language Council, whose next meeting will also be held on April 20, will equally loses the opportunity to fully discuss this issue among their constituents. I urge our campus representatives to the CSU Academic Senate, Bob, Jan and Eunice, to strongly advocate the postponement of ANY discussion of this resolution until it gathers full information and possible implications from both the CSU-FLC and the CCCFLC. Midori McKeon, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II-1 |
|
From: Montoya Carol What? How could the CSU Academic Senate reach the conclusion that these courses do not contain adequate cultural content? All of our language courses - Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Latin, Russian and Spanish. include substantial cultural content at every level. This content is taught and tested. The cultlural content includes history, geography, economics, politics, architecture, dress, customs, music, art, drama, literature and poetry - even at the beginning levels. We are not just talking about cuisine, though that is also of great interest. There is no first semester language class on this campus that does not teach and test all of the above. The department of Modern & Classical Languages at Santa Rosa Jr. College strongly opposes the proposed resolution of the CSU Academic Senate to eliminate first semester community college language courses from the approved list of General Education courses on the basis that such courses do not contain adequate cultural content. Carol Montoya ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II-2 |
| From: Montoya Carol (cmontoya@santarosa.edu) Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 15:24:43 -0800 To: susan.mckillop@sonoma.edu,philip.mcgough@sonoma.edu Cc: suzanne.toczyski@sonoma.edu Subject: FW: Eliminate CC lst semester lang. courses from G.E. list? This is a copy of an e.mail I sent to Tom Blair, president of our California Community College Foreign Language Council after hearing on Thursday of the CSU Academic Senate's proposed resolution. The CCCFLC has sent a letter to CSU Senate opposing the resolution. We are truly at a loss in understanding the thinking behind this resolution and the lack of communication with CCC foreign language departments. We understand there is a vote scheduled for Wed. 6 March - yet we only heard of this on Thurs. Feb 28. As you will note in the e-mail below, we have solid reasons for opposing the exclusion of first semester CC language courses from the GE list due to inadequate cultural content. That is clearly inaccurate. Additionally, I have learned just today, March 4, that there is some debate about whether CC's screen first semester language students or require placement tests or interviews. There is, of course, no prerequisite for an entry level course, however, instructors do interview and assess their students and counsel the "false" beginners to move to the next level. We must do this because entry level classes are very large and we must save room for the true beginner in so far as that is possible. Please e-mail or call me if I might provide more information. I urge you to vigorously oppose this resolution. Carol Montoya ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II-3 |
|
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 16:14:35 -0800 To: Bob Snyder, Chair of the Statewide Academic Senate Academic Affairs Committee Dear Bob, I received the following today and forward it to you for your consideration on Wednesday. Susan ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II-4 |
|
These discussions come from: http://www.humboldt.edu/~aaascsu/Documents/Documents_3_5_02/Montoya_FL_Resolution.htm http://www.humboldt.edu/~aaascsu/Documents/Documents_3_5_02/McKeon_2_14_02.htm http://www.humboldt.edu/~aaascsu/Documents/Documents_3_5_02/Gooden_2_26_02.htm ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ |