Curriculum And General Education
- Graduate Student Professional Development
- Use of Virtual Worlds and Immersive Learning Environments
- Various Administrative and Support Structure Issues Concerning Graduate Education
(click here to see a list of all issues for all task forces)
COMMENTS
Jim/Verna:
I’m sending this to the two of you since you are sitting in all the special PACs with me and I know your high level of engagement on your taskforce.
Here’s a set of thoughts concerning teaching Gen Ed. I assume we will teach Gen Ed with great style, and at the highest quality, no matter what model we choose to utilize to do so, so I’ll not belabor this email with discussion pertaining to that.
1. Given: we have a budget crisis; we will apparently have far have fewer lecturers and fewer dual-employment faculty next year
2. Objective (trivial): teach all of general education at lower cost (less duplication, larger sections, etc as potential partial solutions)
3. Objective: if we eliminate part of what we teach for Gen Ed, why don’t we try to eliminate that part that costs us money (cost=revenue-expense) and keep that part that makes us money (this is negative cost, aka, ‘profit’).
4. Let’s NOT eliminate that portion of gen ed where we make a profit, and throw away the part where we lose money to do a great job. This is a budget crisis, right? Let’s not make it worse!
My interest in Gen Ed is that there are hundreds of grad assistantships funded by E&G that teach service courses (e.g., math, English) and labs (physics, chemistry, biological sciences) in which the expenses of the courses or labs (lab expense is personnel, expendables, supplies, etc). are less than the revenues (undergrad tuition, suitably accounted for to reflect in state and out of state differences, the 12 credit ‘plateau’, etc). For instance, those five units alone probably provide more than $10M in ‘profit’ as part of this effort….Please take a close look….
Bruce
The concept of a graduate faculty is one that is now receiving a lot of attention nationally (I've been called as a consultant on this topic by the GSG). The simplest analysis I can provide is: "if you already have a graduate faculty, don't bother getting rid of it, and if you do not have one, don't bother forming one".
The interesting point Jim poses is how to incentivize interdisciplinary activity--in this context--to help alleviate budgetary stress. One simple way--rather than ELIMINATE DUPLICATION--(which has the potential to bring along turf issues), instead, REQUIRE each unit that is currently duplicating a course to participate in its JOINT DELIVERY. This approach would have the desireable characteristic of reducing faculty load, while building critical cohort size in graduate courses, so that perhaps some could even be offered in the summer when GRAs supported by external grants and contracts could take them and reduce time to degree Details--TBD, making note that the summer offerings would introduce some additional costs. ;>)
Some efficiencies may be available through better coordination of graduate education efforts, including thesis and dissertation committee service as well as course offerings. On the one hand, this may be effected through reducing redundant coursework, particularly in core general education and methods courses. However this must be done in a way that fits the programs involved. For example, basic statistical training for many programs assumes an experimental approach, but a quasi-experimental approach is better suited to most programs in the behavioral and social sciences. On the other hand, there may be real benefits in opening up the curriculum of graduate programs to increase the opportunities to participate in course work and faculty committee membership across departments. Any number of specialized courses and seminars may be of great value to students from departments other than a faculty member’s home department.
To do this requires mechanism to coordinate interdisciplinary efforts. Approaches may include a graduate faculty or a market-like mechanism to encourage faculty to provide coursework and committee participation to students in other departments. The former is a typical approach at other universities where tenured faculty, and some advanced junior faculty members may be appointed to the graduate faculty. Such an appointment typically carries an expectation of active participation in graduate education across the university and may include benefits including a reduced teaching load. The latter approach is more innovative and would rely on targeted incentives to elicit faculty participation in graduate education outside their home department. Faculty or their departments would earn “credits” for serving on dissertation or thesis committees outside their home department or allowing graduate students from other departments to take part in their courses and seminars. These credits could then be redeemed by the department’s graduate students to allow them to access resources outside their home department.
There is a tight relationship between graduate education and general education at research universities. Most R1 schools utilize an army of graduate students in the general education areas--English, math, biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, business--to teach introductory courses. Clemson is no different with the majority of low-level writing, communication, math, chemistry, bioology, etc., being taught by graduate students. However, at Clemson, hisstorically the conversation has not connected the two which are symbiotically related: any sweeping change in one impacts the other. Further, the model for funding general education at Clemson has relied on performance credits--one time money-to cover the cost of general education rather than using "first fruits" or line item funding to completely fund general education. As a consequence, it looks as though graduate budgets are bloated and over spent, when, in fact, general education has been historically under-funded.
