Attendees:

E. Talbott (Chair), David Crossman, Kathy Kelly, Nancy Grove, Peter Hart (University Times), Tony Silvestre, Susan Sereika, Ivanka Nikolova, Nicholas Bircher (President, University Senate), and Dayle Barnes (guest).

1) The meeting was called to order by Evelyn Talbott A light lunch was served. The Committee reviewed the minutes of the meeting. They were approved by Tony Silvestre and seconded by David Crossman.

2) There were two matters of old business. The first involved a request of continuing discussion of an issue which has been debated within the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature and involved: what is the basis for establishing student to teacher ratios for a practice class for Chinese taught at the undergraduate level within this department? Dr. Dayle Barnes, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Linguistics in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature presented the case that the staffing ratio of 7:1 has been increased to 10:1 thus reducing the ability of instructors to help students acquire good or very good spoken proficiency. He circulated a series of letters which were sent to him by colleagues in other institutions voicing their opinion on this matter.

NOTE: The University by-laws indicate that all decisions on scheduling of classes and class size are the responsibility of the Dean of the respective school and departmental chairs. In this regard we are advisory only. The committee agreed to talk to Dr. Barnes as the issue relates to excellence in teaching.

There was long discussion within the committee concerning the material that Dr. Barnes had provided related to the opinions of other departments both public and private and class sizes for practice sessions; however, no members of the committee are in the languages department and it is difficult, given the nuances of any given department or discipline, to develop a true understanding of this issue. It was decided to invite Dr. Hiroshi Nara, Chair of the Department and Dr. David Mills of the East Asian Languages and Literature Department to the next meeting. Dr. Bircher made an excellent point relative to the issue of class size, observing that the only way to definitively know that a seven to one is better than a ten to one student to teacher ratio is to do randomized trials with pre and post testing.

3) The last order of business involved part-time faculty member Ivanka Nikolova, Professor in the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications. She feels that after a period of time, contracts should not be offered only term to term but should be at least a year or longer. Dr. Crossman asked that we re-visit the part-time faculty survey. He believes this issue was considered and no major issue was raised from the part-time faculty. It was decided that we re-visit this questionnaire and consider offering the survey again in the fall. Dr. Nikolova also indicated that part-time faculty evaluations should consider more than just student evaluations. We were not able to take up this matter as the first order of business continued past one o'clock. This will be discussed at the next meeting which will be held on May 17th in 110 Parran.

The final order of business involved the election of a new Chair as Dr.Talbott 's term will expire. We will ask for nominations next month. If there are no viable nominations, this will be the first order of business in the new term.

The meeting adjourned at 1 PM