The role of colleges and universities as centers where ideas and issues are debated and differences of opinion thrashed out is currently on display at Fort Lewis College.
At issue is the intention of the administration to convert all classes to three credit units. Currently, the college offers a mixture of three- and four-unit classes, the favorite configuration of students and many faculty members.
The proposal has split the campus population. Broadly, administrators and faculty from the sciences and education favor the straight-three model. The remainder of the faculty and students like the three-and-four mix.
College trustees, who will make the call, are scheduled to take up the matter at their Friday meeting.
FLC president Dene Kay Thomas explains the rationale for the switch at length on her website.
Campus spokesman Mitch Davis sums it up succinctly.
“The primary reason for returning to the three-credit model is to meet the Colorado Department of Higher Education policy for a seamless transfer,” Davis said. “It means that a student at the University of Colorado, Fort Lewis College or Adams State College can transfer without losing credit.”
FLC is the only public college in the state with a mixture of three- and four-credit classes. A problem arises if a three-unit class doesn’t transfer as a four-unit class or vice versa, Davis said.
“A second reason we favor the straight-three model is that we can’t adequately justify the three-four model to our regional accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission,” Davis said.
FLC comes up for accreditation review next year.
Two faculty members say that returning to the all-three model would strip FLC of the characteristics that distinguish it.
“We have a robust curriculum, which includes an internship program in the community,” said Janine Fitzgerald, a professor of sociology, who has been on campus 20 years. “If our program is dismantled, we’d have to go back to the drawing board.”
Fitzgerald also said the principles of shared governance established by the American Association of University Professors that gives faculty primary responsibility for curriculum, method of instruction, research and aspects of student life related to the educational process is threatened.
Michele Malach, a professor of English and media studies, who has been at FLC for 19 years, said FLC has always had a mix of three-unit and four-unit classes.
Four-unit classes allow greater breadth and more in-depth exploration of topics, and this model of instruction benefits students who have to write a lot, Malach said.
“We don’t have simply lecture classes, but a collaborative, interactive process,” Malach said. “We don’t want a cookie-cutter curriculum, because we’re a real liberal arts college.”
In her analysis of the situation on her website, Thomas addresses shared governance.
The principles of the American Association of University Professors hold that only “exceptional circumstances” should allow diminished faculty power, Thomas says. But the association follows with the caveat that “budgets, personnel limitations, the time element and the policies of other groups, bodies and agencies having jurisdiction over the institution may set limits to the realization of faculty advice.”
Students through the student senate won’t take an official stance on the switch to the three-unit plan until Wednesday, but they are almost unanimously in opposition, student body president Alex Thompson said.
“So far, student response has been overwhelmingly negative,” Thompson said. “They see four units as enhancing their education because of the depth the extra credit provides.”
As an example, Thompson said, in a three-unit philosophy class, students learn the names of philosophers and the movements they represented. A four-unit allows time for debate among students and professor, he said.
In concluding her analysis, Thomas says the mutation over decades of three-unit classes into four-unit credit doesn’t fit with current pedagogical philosophy and practices.
Four-unit classes, Thomas says, are “incompatible with the requirements of state laws and policy and our accrediting agency, the Higher Learning Commission, as well as resulting in many negative internal effects, such as scheduling conflicts and loss of a principled determination about the role the curriculum plays in advancing our mission as a public liberal arts college.”
daler@durangoherald.com
