More about less

I know very few details, but apparently the latest move is to ramp down the Dance program at UNCA, letting students finish up the courses they'll need to complete a minor before letting it drift.

UNCA readers: I don't know how effectual it'll prove, but there's a petition at the dance marathon going on outside of Phillips Hall protesting cuts to the Dance program.

I'll update if I learn more.

Recent developments

Breaking news: the administration has asked that our department cut six core mathematics courses from our fall schedule (including Calc I, Precalc, and STAT 185, our introductory non-calc-based statistics course) in order that we can free up people to teach in the Humanities program and LSIC courses (like the 179 I'm teaching right now).

Leaving aside the question of the relative value of the courses in question here (how much do we as a university value the Humanities program and our ILS Colloquia?), this is pure asininity, plain and simple. It's wrongheaded.

The effects would be staggering: already-huge sections of the classes mentioned above would get larger. We're already teaching with caps of 32 in Calc I and Precalc (effectively pushing numbers up to 35 or so for these courses when flexible instructors let a few folks in over the line) and 28 in STAT 185. The classrooms we're given barely hold those numbers, if they hold them at all. Cutting even a single section of Calc I would push numbers in the remaining sections up by about 5-6 students. We're now talking 40-person sections of Calc I and Precalc, and perhaps 35-person sections of STAT 185 (computer shortage is an issue there).

It is impossible to provide the meaningful student-centered instruction expected at a liberal arts institution in a course with that many students. My suspicion is that the powers that be who are mandating this move are operating under the impression that mathematics instruction is unidirectional and purely lecture-based. They run the danger of turning mathematics instruction at UNCA into something akin to the large-lecture methods employed at our giant sister schools down the road. Despite innovations like classroom response systems, this arrangement's still got nothing on one-on-one interaction between teacher and student.

Even from a simple human resources standpoint this move is silly: it takes faculty away from courses capped at 32 to courses capped at 22, at a time when we need to make the most of every faculty member's time and energy. Of course, in most departments this would be an even trade-off, since (according to a senior colleague down the hall who ran the numbers this morning) our department teaches more 30-plus-student sections than the rest of the university combined.

That same colleague and my department chair are now at a meaning at which they hope to try to reverse this request. I'll update later.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: after further negotiations this morning, we've managed to keep Calc I and Precalc intact, compromising by scrapping one section of STAT 185 and taking on two sections of Humanities. We've also pulled one of the longtime administrators (a former regular member of our department before leaving us mortals behind) to teach one section of our Nature of Mathematics (the name for our "general education" math course). I'm actually very heartened by this gesture, for I know how busy this woman is anyway. I'm grateful to her.

This should be doable. Further bulletins as events warrant...

Everything you always wanted to know about UNCA (but were afraid to ask): Vol. 2

We had another round of "Everything you always wanted to know about UNCA (but were afraid to ask)" in MATH 179 today. It came at the end of the class (after further discussion of Jupiter's moons and an overview of the Integrative Liberal Studies program at UNC Asheville), so we didn't have enough time to address every question asked, but we got a few in. We'll finish the rest on Tuesday.

I'm impressed by the students' candor and curiosity, and I'm equally impressed by the students' knowledge of campus functioning. Some of these kids are definitely up with what's going down.

Questions?

• What is the cause for the recent budget cuts?
• What are the advantages/disadvantages of declaring a major?
• If 179 is one of the writing intensives, what are the other 2?
• What all will the new health and wellness center have to offer?
• Will any majors be dropped with the budget cuts?
• Where do I find info on clubs?
• What are the rules for the disc golf course? And how many holes is it?
• How much of my tuition is going toward building the community/campus gym?
• Where do you apply for a learning disability? (I write on the side WITHOUT lines, I'm such a rebel!)
• How many hours are required to graduate?
• When will the construction for Governors Village be finished?
• If I took a Spanish at my other school and it counted as both Spanish requirements if you passed and I passed then I scored below that level on the placement test what happens?

We got around to the first four of these today. I have to admit to a little relief that some of the others have yet to come up: I'm going to have to look up the answers to a few of them!

Times is hard

As I hinted a couple of posts back, things could look a bit rosier for our campus, budget-wise.

Word around the campfire is that the state legislature's looking at cutting us back 5% for this fiscal year, rather than the 3.5% we'd anticipated and planned for. This is on top of substantial cutbacks during the past couple of years, the last round of which left our entire campus pretty must adjunctless, jeopardizing even year-to-year (and not-so-year-to-year) lecturers. Tenure tracks are safe, but even seasoned teachers who've been with the school for many, many years may find themselves cut loose if they've not got such security.

Meanwhile, despite tuition hikes, enrollment is high (I'm sure in no small part because our public-school price tag is drawing some students who might otherwise go to our private competitors), resource availability is low, and everything is tight, from copier paper and computers to classroom space. It's not simply cliché to say that last dollar counts.

So what's next for our school?

The Integrative Liberal Studies program (ILS) is the crown of UNCA's curriculum, a rich array of courses including a four-year Humanities sequence (the jewel in the crown, if you ask some...tarnished silver and dusty stones if you ask others), topically clustered courses, four intensives, first-year and transfer "welcome to a liberal arts college" colloquia, and various other supporting cast members. (For the past year and a half I've been the faculty chair of the committee charged with overseeing several of these components; I've felt honored to work with a half-dozen or so wonderful people on this body.) Several of the sorts of courses ILS comprises, including the last-mentioned colloquia and the Humanities course, are taught by faculty from across the campus. In times of plenty the departments these faculty call home can spare the folks who traipse off to teach ILS courses, for adjuncts are available to carry the load of the "service" (I hate that word: it's condescending and debasing) courses in the meantime.

No more. Right now it's all-on-hands-on-deck time, and every department on campus is drawing up plans to make sure they can cover their own course offerings before sparing people to teach ILS courses. It's looking more and more like the ILS program may have to be trimmed back, though it's unclear where exactly the cuts might come.

Clusters? The faculty perceptions survey put out a couple of years ago showed that the ILS Topical Clusters program is the most poorly understood and most unappreciated aspect of ILS. Though there is rhyme and reason to its arrangement, many faculty (even many of those who are on board with the rest of ILS) perceive its restrictions as arbitrary and its organization as byzantine. To many faculty and many more students it's a labyrinth of requirements and checkboxes standing between convocation and commencement. In these persons' defense, several of the clusters are exquisitely mismanaged, and several others, though put together with good intentions, fall short of their lofty goal of giving students an interdisciplinary analysis of a single topic.

Intensives? This segment of the ILS program is pretty well-thought-of by faculty, and even if students grumble about having to take one more QI course than they'd like to, at least they understand the theory behind the requirement. Besides, the requirements are easy to understand, at least in comparison with those for the ILS Clusters. Moreover, for most departments, most of the intensive requirements (diversity, information literacy, quantitative, and writing) are met through required major courses. The most vulnerable of the intensives from this point of view are the Diversity Intensives, but the political implications of cutting those back are liable to keep them off the chopping block.

The ILS Colloquia? Many (myself included) consider these the most vulnerable ILS courses overall, especially the transfer colloquia, the LSIC 379s. Some of my colleagues have argued that much of what these courses do can be done in a one-hour "welcome to UNCA" seminar which would meet once every other week in a lecture hall full of 100 or more students. The LSIC 179s (for first-year students) have more, and more critical functions, not the least of which is providing a first-year writing-intensive experience to supplement LANG 120, our one-semester first-year composition course. Historically we had a full-year composition sequence, but like many schools we cut this back to a single semester, meanwhile asking 179 instructors to provide a rich writing experience to replace that once offered by the second semester of composition. Were the 179s eliminated, students would have to seek out another writing-intensive course elsewhere, since the Language and Literature Department is in no position to offer once again a full year of composition to every student. (They're barely able to cover enough sections of their single semester comp course.)

There are complicating factors beyond those I've mentioned above. Some of the smaller departments would likely cease to exist were the ILS courses their faculty teach to disappear. Some have few (if any) majors, weak upper-level offerings, and what offerings they have often don't make enrollment. Faculty in some of these departments make a living (literally) off of teaching Humanities courses, and without such courses they'd have a hard time, from a financial standpoint, justifying their positions. The argument has been made aloud (not by me, I should say) that these programs, and not ILS, should be the first to go should the budget force some out into the streets.

I ask again: what's next?

I have no idea. I hesitate to speculate further than I already have here. We're sure to get news soon. Meanwhile, I intend to keep doing what I do well, and what I love doing: writing my book, working away at my research, and above all else, enjoying the company of my students. Yesterday (Friday) afternoon as I stood at the door of the Math Lab and watched a dozen or so of my Calc II and 280 students hammering away at their homework, it hit me how much I love my job. Despite the relatively low pay and the laughably long hours, I've got the best gig on Earth.

Colleagues, how's your school being hit? Students, are you feeling it, too? I'm curious to know you stories. Please take a few minutes to check in in the comments, even anonymously, and let me know where you are right now. Please let me know I'm not alone.

So far

So far, though it took a little while to build up steam, this semester's been great.

After three straight days of canceled classes and (and a couple more late starts thrown in the next couple of weeks), we got enough ground to get some traction, and I'm starting to feel like I'm in the groove.

Both my Calc II and 280 classes are large...I'd even call the 280 class huge: 33 in Calc II and 36 in 280. Yes: three, six. I'm always anxious about classes this large (I seem to attract them), but the students in both have set my mind at ease: they're all very engaged, outgoing, and willing to both ask and answer questions, in both classes. I've got fantastic students in both, and they're making the classrooms' atmosphere lively, spirited, safe, and fun.

I think I've done a good job in encouraging a healthy learning environment so far this term, downplaying grades, up-playing collaboration, throwing in a good number of writing-to-learn opportunities...the students are receiving this well. I sense a greater-than average willingness to learn on these students' parts. It's going to work out well.

I was particularly excited about today's 280 class. This morning we had our "LaTeX seminar," in preparation for which I asked everyone to install a compiler and a text editor on their computers and bring them, if possible, to class. Roughly three quarters of the students had laptops with them, and most of these (after a few fits and starts and glitches involving flavors of Texmaker and odd configuration settings) were able to get LaTeX up and running within five or six minutes. And they liked it. Comments like "This is so cool!" were fairly frequent. It's the best reception LaTeX has ever gotten in a 280 course.

Meanwhile Ethnomathematics is steaming along, picking out a course through the Marshall Islands. Literally, actually. We've spend the last week talking about the mathematical aspects of the mattang, the stick charts used by traditional Marshall Islander navigators in order to plot their path from one atoll to another in the sprawling and sparse archipelago. The students have even been working on building their own mattang out of various materials, including everything from pipe cleaners to pretzel sticks.

Late last week I tried to get the students to cast aside their "Western" assumptions about the make-up of maps by asking them to create maps from our classroom to various important offices and organizations on campus, maps which could not make reference to human-made objects, could not use any sort of reference to fixed units of distance (feet, miles, paces, etc.), and would be followable by someone who had not had a hand in creating the map in the first place. I realized after the fact that I should have included additional stipulations: no text, and mandatory use of "nontraditional" materials: the vast majority of the texts included copious textual commentary and were drawn on paper. (I admit that I'd hoped to see more "tactile" map-like objects like the mattang.)

Nevertheless, the students are doing well in what I think is a highly nontraditional course. I'm eager to see what they come up with for the brochures I'm asking them to make, one for each of several important campus services (like the Math Lab and the Student Health Center).

That's all I'll say for now. I'm sorry this is a bit of a banal post, but I've had nothing heinous happen so far this term. I could say something about the book (coming along, in bits and pieces) or the state's budget situation (in a word, bleak...think "how in the hell can we keep providing the quality of education we pretend to provide?"), or even about my upcoming visits to various writing programs around the state, but I'll leave those for other posts to come soon.