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From: Academic Senate for CCC <ascccadmin@SBCGLOBAL.NET> 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. 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 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
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
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 CAN: HIST 2 TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 1st semester DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from CAN: HIST 3 TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 2nd quarter DESCRIPTION: Western civilization from medieval times to
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.
CAN: HIST 5 TITLE: Survey of Western Civilization, 3rd quarter DESCRIPTION: Western civilization CAN: HIST 8 TITLE: United States History DESCRIPTION: 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
CAN: HIST 13 TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 1st quarter DESCRIPTION: The origins and early development of CAN: HIST 14 TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 1st semester DESCRIPTION: The origins, CAN: HIST 15 TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 2nd quarter DESCRIPTION: The continued development of and the
interactions among CAN: HIST 16 TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 2nd semester DESCRIPTION: CAN: 17 TITLE: History of World Civilizations, 3rd quarter DESCRIPTION: 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 |