When members of the English department at Queensborough Community College voted last week against a plan to curtail their basic writing courses to three hours a week from four, they said they wanted to send the school a message: "We support our students," Elise Denbo, a lecturer in the department, said Monday. "Sometimes they need extra time."
The college, which is part of the City University of New York, sent an even stronger message back. In an e-mail, Karen B. Steele, Queensborough's interim vice president for academic affairs, outlined "serious repercussions." The writing courses, currently a requirement for all students, would be canceled, she wrote, and students would be asked to take them at other colleges. The contracts of all adjunct faculty members would be terminated. The employment of all full-time faculty would be reviewed. All current attempts to hire additional faculty would be dropped.
She signed it: "Regretfully, Karen."
In a follow-up e-mail Monday afternoon, Dr. Steele apologized for the earlier message, and said the outcomes it mentioned were hypothetical. But the proposed course changes, and the strong reactions they have elicited, are part of a universitywide program called Pathways that has been a source of conflict since it was introduced two years ago.
A major goal of Pathways is to establish common "learning outcomes" for courses throughout the CUNY system. The chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, has said that it will enforce academic standards and allow CUNY's quarter million students to transfer easily among its seven community colleges, or from a community college to one of the 11 four-year colleges.
But the policy has met with resistance from large segments of the CUNY faculty, who say that it is an attempt to centralize control and to cut costs at the expense of academic standards. "It's hard to understand how teaching less English, less math, less science and less foreign languages could be good for students," said David T. Humphries, the deputy chair of the English department at Queensborough, which is in Bayside. "Under the guise of streamlining transferability we're actually watering down the students' education."
Faculty members have also complained that the administration exceeded its authority to establish the new curriculum. Their union, in conjunction with the faculty senate, has filed a lawsuit over the policy.
In an interview Monday, Diane B. Call, the interim president of Queensborough, said that the college remained committed to teaching students how to write. Offsetting the loss of one hour of classroom instruction, she said, the size of those English composition classes would shrink, from a maximum of 32 students to a maximum of 25. In keeping with that goal, she said, the college has already authorized the hiring of 17 new full-time English faculty members. And in addition to those three classroom hours, the courses in question might include an additional hour for one-on-one student-faculty conferences.
Beyond the English composition requirements, she said, students of every major will still be required to take two courses deemed "writing-intensive," and will have access to counselors at the writing center.
Those assurances do not yet appear to have assuaged the defiant English faculty, which includes 41 full-time and 69 part-time teachers. In a letter to Dr. Call, a universitywide committee on English instruction pointed out that the proposed reductions would not necessarily apply to four-year colleges, where students tend to already have better language skills. As a result, says Ellen Tremper, a member of that committee who leads the Brooklyn College English department, the people who need the most writing instruction would get the least.
Dr. Call said Dr. Steele's original e-mail was not an ultimatum, but members of the department saw it differently. "I understood it as a threat," Professor Humphries said. "As saying you have the right to vote however way you feel as long as it's what we tell you. Honestly, I felt a little like I was being asked to vote for Raul Castro or Ahmedinijad."
In Dr. Steele's follow-up e-mail Monday, she said she regretted the earlier message, "primarily because it was needlessly hurtful to members of the English department and to other faculty as well."
"It was an e-mail sent in haste, out of an over-dramatized fear of the possible impact on the department," she said. Dr. Steele said that the college would work to make sure faculty members had "plenty of classes to teach."
"At the same time, as a member of CUNY, we have the responsibility to comply with the board's policy and the guidelines issued under it," she wrote.
The English department is scheduled to meet again Wednesday, at which time it will discuss whether to reconsider last week's vote.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 17, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the middle initial of the deputy chair of the English department at Queensborough Community College. He is David T. Humphries, not David P.
By MICHAEL POWELL 18 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/nyregion/college-english-dept-fights-class-time-cuts.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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