This page is part of the UCSB GE project (homepage), created by Harold Marcuse in 2003-04
It has bearing on the Western Civilization reform we are attempting in 2004 (WCiv page)
See also the May 2004 IMPAC history report, below

From: Academic Senate for CCC <ascccadmin@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
To: HISTORY@LISTSERV.CCCNEXT.NET
Subject: IMPAC Invitation for History Faculty
Date-Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004

Dear Academic Colleague:

We would like to request your participation in the following initiative, please.

The Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum (IMPAC) project is an intersegmental, faculty-designed and faculty-run project which focuses on ensuring that students transferring from California community colleges to UC and CSU institutions will be properly prepared for progressing in their chosen major immediately upon transfer, (i.e., that they will not have to repeat any course work). The project, funded by a grant, enables faculty from the state's three higher education systems to meet regionally at intervals throughout the year in order to address potential problems of established curriculum requirements and procedures that may impede the smooth progress of a transferring student. These meetings provide a forum where faculty may review and reconcile the prerequisites of course work both within their particular disciplines and between disciplines.

Some of your colleagues may have attended the meetings held this past year in San Jose, Newport Beach, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. At these gatherings in 2003-2004, the IMPAC project brought together faculty from 26 different disciplines, and this term five more are being incorporated into the discussions. Please visit the project's website at www.cal-impac.org for a listing of all 31 of the specific disciplines, as well as the subject clusters into which they are grouped.

Attached is the report of discussions and contributions made by intersegmental faculty in your discipline. A Lead Faculty Discipline member who facilitated the dialogues and summarized these findings has prepared the report.

We ask of you the following:

(1) Please share this report and its important findings with your faculty.

(2) Solicit their comments and forward them to the IMPAC staff at asccc@ix.netcom.com by November 5, 2004

(3) Encourage your department faculty to keep abreast of IMPAC by regularly visiting our website at www.cal-impac.org.

(4) Urge members of your department or program to attend the IMPAC regional and statewide meetings now scheduled for 2004-2005 as an official representative. (Please see the attached announcement). South and Metro regions attend the regional meeting scheduled on November 13th, 2004 at LAX Sheraton Gateway, and North and Central on January 29th, 2005 at San Francisco Westin.
Then, ask your official representatives to share their IMPAC experiences with colleagues who are responsible for the baccalaureate education of transfer students in their major.

We look forward to your prompt response to this document, and to seeing you and your faculty at our meetings this year. Your department's review of this document and your continued participation are critical to IMPAC's work, and ultimately to the ability of California faculty to enhance the successful transfer of community college students.

Cordially,
IMPAC Lead Coordinators (HIST) (back to top)


IMPAC
HISTORY ANNUAL REPORT
MAY, 2004

Summary of Identified Issues:

The history faculty from the community colleges, the CSUs, and the UCs who attended meetings this year resumed their discussions from last year. At the top of the list were proposed changes in the CAN course descriptors. To summarize the proposed changes, the faculty in attendance agreed that each CAN descriptor should include information on the time frame, the subject areas, and the historical thinking skills of the course. The specific changes proposed will be presented in Appendix 1 of this report. Hopefully these changes will fit into the proposed changes in the requirements for CAN.

Several other issues were quickly reviewed. We reaffirmed the value of the ASSIST project and considered ways of passing this information on to students in the community colleges. We discussed changes in the teacher preparation programs and the implications these have for the CCs and CSUs. Questions were raised about the OSCAR system and how changes may affect the various systems. The critical issue is who will be in charge of the review of course outlines.

The conflict over Western Civilization vs. World History as lower level transfer curriculum remained unresolved, but there is hope. While more of the two and four years schools now offer World History in their curriculum, and many have eliminated Western Civilization, not all campuses have made the same decisions. One core issue here is what should historians be teaching? Historians should be in charge of determining our curriculum. This issue speaks directly to the reasons IMPAC was funded. These conflicts over curriculum mean that students attending a community college need to be careful in selecting their history courses so they will have the course work that will be accepted by the transfer institution. The problem, of course, is that some may not be able to transfer to their school of preference. And truthfully, others do not initially imagine that someday they might transfer and obtain a bachelor’s degree. Ideally the decisions about curriculum offerings have to remain in the hands of historians, and we need to work collaboratively.

Our discussion of adding new courses to the CAN system was not fruitful. Several faculty from the community college faculty raised questions about the offering of additional curriculum at the lower level, specifically California history, a historical methods class, or area studies, such as Latin American or Asian Studies. Most of the faculty from the CSU held that these courses are upper level course work and some are was part of the major. Even though the same textbook, course syllabi, and course work appear to be the same at some two and four year schools, the CSUs want these courses to transfer as general education, not for the major. We did establish that individual schools may make exceptions to that pattern and discussed ways of informing students how to best handle this situation. We recognize that some of the problems are the result of the overlapping but divergent missions of the two- and four-year schools. At the community college we serve everyone in our community, not just those seeking degrees. And we often have students become interested in transfer when initially they were not. While the community colleges do not want to see these students penalized, the CSUs retain the authority to decide.

To end on a positive note, we are developing a communications network for California history faculty.

Identified Trends/Future Directions

Transfer problems are may be exacerbated by proposed legislation that will set limits on the number of units a student can transfer. At the community colleges we see many students who do not have sharply defined plans and truthfully, some come just to explore and then get excited about the history curriculum. If penalties are established for students who have taken too many courses, we may find that competent students may be denied transfer or have their transfer deferred. Of course, for educators it is ludicrous to think a student might be getting too much education, but this is an issue we will have to address to our legislators.

The Dual-Admissions Program also needs to be watched. At the core of our concerns were the problems our systems face in trying to keep track of students who have UC admission but could end up at anyone of more than one hundred community colleges. This makes it hard to know how to fix problems that might arise.

With regard to the Western Civilization/World History issue, more of the recently-trained historians have had World History as part of their curriculum. Ideally perhaps both curricula should be offered, but in budget hard times it is hard to do that. While some of the tenured faculty has not taken on this new and rather large venture into the history of the world, from origins to modern times, there is faculty now available to teach the curriculum demanded by the credentialing system. On the bright side, it means that more institutions can offer World History. But there is another side to this issue imbedded in this curriculum issue. In the budget crisis our state now faces, there is little funding to hire new faculty. Thus World History professors may be affordable only as adjunct. Whether this directly affects student transfer is not clear. But we must be sensitive to this situation.

The offering of the World History curriculum has raised important concerns for Anthropologists. They also are interested in the world. We met briefly with anthropologists to open a dialogue on how to respond to the apparent conflicts that have arisen.

Changes in the CAN descriptors may also raise questions about the use of CAN courses to meet requirements other than major preparation or general education. For example, if a history class engages students in critical thinking exercise, will the course be considered to meet a critical thinking requirement.

Another question raised with regard to CAN numbers has to do with the community colleges on the quarter system. Are there no CAN descriptors for schools on the quarter system, and if not, should there be?

We need to pay particular attention to the OSCAR system and who will have the authority to approve course outlines in the new system.

Comments from Statewide Meetings and the General Field

The gathering of faculty from the two and four year schools as part of the IMPAC project has opened up discussion that otherwise would not have occurred. From these sessions we have come to better see education from each other’s perspective. While we may not always agree on solutions to the problems we see, we are able to craft answers and working together we can test them to see if they work.

Our work on the CAN descriptors was productive and we will seek to move the recommended changes through the approval process rapidly.

Recommendations for Support Courses

There are no recommendations for support courses, although we did discuss the value of writing across the curriculum in helping prepare students for history classes.

Topics for Further Discussion

  • We agreed that we need to explore the impact that Dual Admissions has on student transfer.
  • We need to remain attuned to what happens in the OSCAR Project.
  • We should discuss ways of moving students through their educational programs, but never to a mechanical/industrial model where time and efficiency are the driving values.

Recommendations Forwarded/ to be Forwarded to:

CAN: none at this time

ASSIST: none at this time

CIAC: none at this time

Report Submitted by: Peggy Renner
Institution: Glendale Community College

 

HISTORY APPENDIX 1

Proposed revisions as of April 30-May 1st, 2004

A COMPLETE LIST OF THE HISTORY COURSES WITH CAN NUMBERS (proposed changes appear as strike-outs or in italics)

CAN: HIST 1

TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 1st quarter

DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from ancient the origins to medieval times. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of western civilizations. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 2

TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 1st semester

DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from ancient origins times to the early modern era. A comparative analysis Analyzes the change and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces. of western civilizations. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political and social forces. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

 

CAN: HIST 3

TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 2nd quarter

DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from medieval times to the dawn of the early modern era. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 4

TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 2nd semester

DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from the early modern era to the present. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 5

TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 3rd quarter

DESCRIPTION: Western civilization in from the modern era to the present. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 8

TITLE: United States History

DESCRIPTION: American peoples and institutions from the earliest times to pre-colonial through Reconstruction. Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces among the American peoples and institutions from the pre-colonial period through Reconstruction. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 10

TITLE: United States History

DESCRIPTION: Analyzes the changes and continuities in cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces among the American peoples and institutions American peoples and institutions since Reconstruction the end of the Civil War to the present. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

 

CAN: HIST 13

TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 1st quarter

DESCRIPTION: The origins and early development of and the interactions among world civilizations. A comparative analysis of cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of world civilizations. Includes topics related to Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 14

TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 1st semester

DESCRIPTION: The origins, and development of, and interactions among of world civilizations to the early modern era. A comparative analysis of cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of world civilizations. Includes topics related to Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 15

TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 2nd quarter

DESCRIPTION: The continued development of and the interactions among of world civilizations to the early modern era. A comparative analysis of cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of world civilizations. Includes topics related to Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: HIST 16

TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 2nd semester

DESCRIPTION: The continued development and Interactions of world civilizations from the early modern era earliest era to the present. A comparative analysis of cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of world civilizations. Includes topics related to Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

CAN: 17

TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 3rd quarter

DESCRIPTION: The continued development and Interactions of world civilizations from the early modern era to the present to the early modern era. A comparative analysis of cultural, economic, geographic, political, religious, and social forces of world civilizations. This course will at least Includes topics related to Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Engages students in critical thinking, in reading, writing, information competency, and research. . Engages students in the basic elements of historical thinking and analysis.

In effect these recommended changes were intended to move away from a focus on single nations or areas and rather, to emphasize the interactions among countries and regions. In addition these changes seek to establish the historical skills that are to be part of the curriculum in CAN courses.

CAN: HIST SEQ A

TITLE: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 1+3+5 or CAN HIST 2+4

DESCRIPTION: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 1+3+5 or CAN HIST 2+4

CAN: HIST SEQ B

TITLE: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 8+10

DESCRIPTION: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 8+10

CAN: HIST SEQ C

TITLE: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 13 +15+ 17 or CAN HIST 14 & 16

DESCRIPTION: Sum of the content of CAN HIST 13+15+17 or CAN HIST 14+16.


Statewide IMPAC History Meeting
April 30, 2005
Radisson Hotel
LAX, 6225 West Century Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
(310) 670-9000
Please check our website (http://www.cal-impac.org) for any changes to this schedule

page created by H. Marcuse, 11/30/04
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