|
Course and Curriculum Committee Recommendation to Incorporate New Elements of the L&S Degree into the Two Special Degree Propgrams Recommended: That the "Applied Mathematics and Physics" and the "Course in Chemistry" special degree programs incorporate the following requirements: a Writing-Intensive course, the formal reasoning, a seminar, foreign language, international courses, and capstone. Rationale: The College faculty, in 1996, approved a new set of degree requirements for students who would earn an L&S degree. The requirements were the faculty's statement of what it believed should constitute the education of students in the liberal arts. Because the two special degrees, "Applied Mathematics and Physics" and "Course in Chemistry," are distinct, self-contained degree programs, the new elements adopted by the faculty as essential parts of a liberal arts degree do not apply automatically to these two programs. This recommendation serves to assert for the faculty that all of its students should complete the requirements that the faculty believes are essential for liberal arts students in today's world. The incorporation of these requirements does not impose a burden on large numbers of students. There have been only 16 graduates in the two programs combined over the past five years, with 12 of those in Applied Math and Physics. Between the two programs, no more than two students have graduated in any one semester. In addition, the requirements themselves are not an undue hardship on students in these programs. Half the students began their studies at UWM and could easily have incorporated the new requirements into the GER courses required of all students. The potential for difficulty remains with transfer students. The impact of each requirement is described below. WRITING INTENSIVE COURSE The AMP Degree currently requires "satisfaction of the proficiency requirements." The "proficiency requirements" per se no longer exist. If one assumes that this statement implies that all AMP students must meet the minimal writing requirement of the College, then the new W-I requirement would meet the sense of the current statement. "English 201 or 206" is a requirement in the Course in Chemistry. Both of these courses are/will be approved W-I courses, so there is no additional burden imposed by adherence to this provision of the new degree requirements. FORMAL REASONING Because students in both programs complete at least three semesters of calculus, the formal reasoning requirement is met automatically. SEMINAR COURSE Students who begin their studies at UWM may select a Freshman Seminar course to meet the distribution requirements in both programs. Among the transfer students, all but one student still had distribution requirements to complete upon their arrival at UWM. A seminar course could have been selected in meeting these requirements. FOREIGN LANGUAGE For students who graduated from the two special degree programs in the past five years, 9 of the students had at least two years of foreign language in high school and, therefore, would have met this requirement before entering their university studies. One student had one-and-one half years, one had one year, and one had half a year. Information was unavailable on the remaining student. Of the three students who would not have met the requirement with high school work, one elected foreign language studies at the university as did the student for whom information was unavailable. Furthermore, the University is about to implement a foreign language requirement for the entire campus that will be equivalent to the L&S requirement. INTERNATIONAL COURSES Three international courses beyond the minimum foreign language requirement are needed. A review of the records of graduates of these programs over the past five years shows that half of the students, in meeting their College distribution requirements, took a sufficient number of credits in courses now approved as "international" to meet the current requirement. All but three of the remaining students had room in their schedules to meet the requirement simply by selecting different courses. Three students transferred to UWM with too few remaining electives to complete the requirement, but two of those students would have been only one course short. There is strong support on campus and in the system at this time for internationalizing the university's curriculum. The globalized societies of the 21st century will require students to be educated from an international perspective. CAPSTONE Both programs allow students to select from a wide range of courses in Math and/or Chemistry. Students should have no difficulty electing a course that is approved as a capstone course. |
·| © 1998 UWM - College of Letters and Science Last Updated: December 8, 1998 www.uwm.edu/letsci/committees/docs/degreeprog.html |
 |