1. Call to Order - Dean Richard Meadows called the meeting to order at 3:35pm in MER 131.
1. Announcements - Dean Meadows made the following announcements.
   
   
   • The College's annual retirement dinner will be held at the University Club on May 12; everyone is urged to attend.
   • The accreditation visit of the NCA will be April 25-27; there will be sessions open to faculty, staff, and students.
   • The College's recruitment this year will be restrained, probably only six or seven new faculty members.
   • Twelve L&S faculty members to date have received outside offers; the College has been able to retain all of these individuals so far.
   • Tuition revenue figures for this year show a large drop on the 101 funding side, but this is due to shifting a lot of instruction to 189 funding; although the analysis of this information is not complete, the College should be fine.
   • The UW System faces a $65 million cut over the biennium. Budget savings are to be achieved through three mechanisms: administrative efficiencies in procurement, asset management (selling off some assets), and administrative cuts. Instructional faculty and staff are not to be cut. The College's share is likely to be $1.47 million in the first year, half in base cuts and half one-time cuts. Year two will require a $183,000 base cut. The College can achieve some of this through deferring various commitments, but that won't address the $920K in permanent cuts. This scenario responds to the Governor's budget proposal. That is likely to be changed by the legislature. Even if the Governor's proposal is a worst case scenario, we will be facing significant cuts.
     
     
2. Question Period
   
   Genni McBride remarked that the Chancellor has indicated we will decrease enrollment. She asked if it is not time to start looking at changing standards for admission rather than to continue to absorb more students with no increase in the number of faculty members. Dean Meadows said that this is being discussed. There will be open forums in two weeks at which this matter will be debated. Genni asked if we would have some control over admissions given that L&S is the entryway for most freshmen. Dean Meadows noted that we can control admission to L&S, but not to the University.
   
   

Gabrielle Verdier moved that the order of the agenda be suspended to discuss Fac. Doc. 701 because a number of the foreign language faculty members had to leave in order to teach at 4:00. The motion was seconded and approved unanimously.

		L&S Faculty Doc. No.
IV.D.	Recommendation to Amend the Foreign Language Requirement of Fac. Doc. 677 - Kent Redding moved approval of Fac. Doc. 701. The motion was seconded. Kent explained that the requirement as approved in Fac. Doc. 677 last year would be too expensive to implement. The curriculum committee, in consultation with the foreign language departments, revisited the issue. The recommendation in Fac. Doc. 701 does not alter the B.S. requirement, but it proposes to change the B.A. requirement to require all B.A. students to take four semesters of a single language or three of one language and two of another. In addition, the proposal allows high school years to count as equivalent to college semesters. Gabrielle noted that she and Larry Kuiper had discussed the proposal at a meeting of high school foreign language teachers, who applauded the proposal. They indicated it would help them encourage students to take more years of language in high school. She also suggested that the 3-2 option would help the less commonly taught languages at UWM. Kathy Wheatley noted that the new proposal is very similar to UW-Madison's requirement, although our B.S. requirement will be weaker. She noted that many campuses in the System require 12 credits or four semesters. There was no further discussion, and the motion was approved with one abstention.	701

The Faculty returned to the order of the agenda.

Agenda

L&S Faculty Doc. No.

2. Automatic Consent Business - There were no objections to any of the Automatic Consent items; they stand approved.

A.	Minutes of the November 4, 2004 Faculty Meeting
B.	Recommendation for Consideration of Candidates for Degrees and Honors for May, 2005		696
C.	Annual Reports
	Certificate Program in Pre-Medical Studies Annual Report, 2003-2004		697
D.	Academic Planning and Governance Committee Nominations Report		698

3. Old Business

A.	Status Report on Faculty Recommendations to Revise the L&S Degree Requirements - Dean Meadows reported that he had not forwarded the degree requirements proposal to the APCC because of the cost of implementing the original foreign language requirement proposal. With the new requirement just approved, he has no objections to the proposed degree requirement changes.
B.	Status Report on Implementing Criteria for Courses to Meet the L&S International Requirement - Margaret Atherton noted that she was speaking for Kathryn Dindia, the subcommittee chair, who was unable to attend the meeting. The subcommittee's charge was to set up the process for implementing the criteria for international courses that were approved last year. The subcommittee looked at the history of the requirement and at requirements at other universities. Members concluded that the requirement should encompass courses that give the historical and cultural contexts underlying current international issues. A proposal to revise the approved criteria has been submitted to the Academic Policies and Curriculum Committee, citing the following reasons: international understanding is improved by a grasp of the historical and cultural background to current world matters; the inclusion of courses covering historical and cultural background brings UWM in line with similar international perspectives at other institutions; approving courses with only contemporary content would make it difficult to implement the requirement from our current array of courses. Tom O'Bryan stated that he had examined the current list with this altered criterion in mind and didn't see any courses that would not fit. Margaret said the committee members did not look at the list with that in mind. Genni McBride noted that the set of criteria was approved with the goal of narrowing the definition of international courses and reducing the size of the approved list. She asked how the choices will be narrowed if the revised criterion is approved. Margaret responded that narrowing the choices was not supported by the subcommittee. Kathy Wheatley asked when the new degree requirements would be effective. Dean Meadows said that we needed to let people know about the changes, so the implementation date would be Fall, 2006.

4. New Business - no later than 4:30

A.	Nominations for L&S Faculty Committees for 2005-2006 - Mark Amsler, acting for Kathleen Dolan, Chair of the Academic Planning and Governance Committee, called for additional nominations for the L&S committees or the Graduate Faculty Council. There were no additional nominations. The slate of nominees was approved.
B.	Request for an Entitlement to Plan a Master of Arts in Women's Studies - It was moved and seconded to recommend to the Dean approval of Fac. Doc. 699. Merry Wiesner-Hanks gave background on the recent approval of a major in women's studies and noted that there was strong support among the Regents for women's studies. They especially liked the online aspect of the major and the offering of internships in the city. The Program decided to capitalize on the Regents' interest, the success of the certificate, and the Chancellor's interest in new graduate programs. Merry noted that Madison, Illinois, and Minnesota have MA programs. Madison's program, however, is a traditional, in-class, day-only program; it has no distance learning aspect. Minnesota's also is traditional, while Illinois' is more like the proposed UWM program. There were no questions or comments, and the motion was approved unanimously.		699
C.	Request for Authorization to Implement a Major in Microbiology - It was moved and seconded to recommend to the Dean approval of Fac. Doc. 700. Mary Lynne Collins explained that microbiology has existed as a track in the biological sciences major since 1985. Ten percent of the department's majors are in microbiology. The requirements for the free-standing major are the same as those of the track. The new status will give the major more visibility and allow the department to identify more readily the students in microbiology. The new major will not require any additional resources. There were no questions or comments, and the motion was approved unanimously.		700
D.	Recommendation to Amend Foreign Language Requirement of Fac. Doc. 677 - see above		701
E.	Recommendation to Amend the L&S Rules Governing the Faculty - It was moved 702 and seconded to recommend to the Dean approval of Fac. Doc. 702. Mark Amsler was asked to explain the substantive changes in the Rules. He noted that the Rules had not been updated in many years, so they were being revised to reflect the changes in the Faculty committee structure. Language was changed to be gender-neutral. In addition, the proposal removes the Chancellor as an automatic member of the L&S Faculty. Kathy Wheatley asked if the definition of "faculty" included permanent teaching academic staff. Connie Jo stated that teaching staff could be recommended by departments for faculty status, but they were not members automatically. The motion was approved unanimously.		702

5. Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned at 4:29pm.
   
   
   

Respectfully submitted,

Connie Jo, Assistant Dean
Secretary to the L&S Faculty

cc: Secretary of the University