The faculty approved new course distribution requirements at their most recent monthly meeting.
Geoscience professor Fred Soster, head of the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP), presented these changes, which are aimed to make it easier for students to complete their social science courses by the end of their sophomore year. Early last week, Registrar Ken Kirkpatrick sent out an email to all students explaining the new requirements.
The new change allows students to take a social science within the same department as long as it is in a different subject area. This change applies to the art and art history department as well as the sociology and anthropology department. This means students can now, for instance, take one sociology course and one anthropology course and it will count as their social science credit. Before this change, students had to go outside one of these dual departments to find another course to meet the old requirement.
Soster said juniors and seniors have often found out that two of their courses were in the same department so one did not count towards this credit area. His students would end up scrambling to find another course, hence, one of the reasons why the committee proposed the change.
Soster thinks this change will be beneficial.
"This will alleviate some of the enrollment pressures in the social sciences area and help students meet these requirements," Soster said.
The social sciences have 400 fewer seats than other areas of distribution, making it difficult for students to meet the requirement, Soster said.
By allowing students to take a course within the same department, it becomes easier for the students to fill in these seats.
Sophomore Emily Vincent said the change makes more sense than the original requirement.
"I think students will have a better chance for meeting the requirements by the end of their sophomore year," Vincent said. "This change will be good for us."
CAPP also briefly introduced an idea unlinked to distribution credits to the faculty.
In his State of the University address, President Casey said the university's goal is to move towards a two- to three-course workload, in which the faculty will only teach five courses a year instead of six. In order for faculty to teach fewer courses, CAPP has thought of a couple solutions.
One way is to exchange higher-level courses with lower-level courses. This would allow more students the opportunity to take a course that they might have been weary of before because of the 300-level.
Another way is to offer classes that are typically under-enrolled less frequently - as in every other academic year. This opens up a faculty member to teach a lower-level course with more students.
A new committee on administration has begun looking into this idea, but it is remains an idea off in the future.