Commitee seeks to end BSC 101

Buffalo State has recently announced it will consider eliminating the BSC 101 requirement from the college's Intellectual Foundations program.

BSC 101 is an introduction to Intellectual Foundations, and is designed to stress the importance of critical and creative thinking applied to interdisciplinary topics.

A series of internal and external reviews, however, found several problems with the content and administration of the course. These include trouble finding full-time faculty to teach the course and professors' ability to choose their own topics, leading to discontinuity in the way the course is taught.

"There are so many different components to this course that not every student is getting the same education," said United Students Government President Sara Garfinkle. "If you don't want to teach it, then you're not going to engage your students to want to learn and to want to do better."

This sentiment was echoed by the original review conducted by the College Senate Curriculum Committee, which found a general disapproval of the course.

When students were asked in surveys whether BSC 101 is an important component of the IF program, 49 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed, while only 28 percent agreed or strongly agreed. Likewise, in a faculty survey, 49 percent of respondents called for elimination of the requirement.

In addition to staffing issues and criticism, the Budget and Staff Allocations Committee of the College Senate found that BSC 101 is expensive. At only three credits, BSC 101 costs an estimated $185,500, which, according to their report, accounts for nearly 30 percent of the additional budget allocated to Intellectual Foundations.

Still, several faculty members believe BSC 101 is salvageable, and the college should look to revise the course before eliminating it.

"If there have been a number of problems identified with BSC 101, by eliminating the course, you're not necessarily going to eliminate the problem," said fine arts professor Sarah Hinderliter. "Maybe we should rise to the challenge."

Suggested revisions to BSC 101 include opening more sections, placing each section by major, instituting a faculty rotation, and making it mandatory to be completed during a student's first semester.

Curriculum committee chair Michael Lazich responded at a recent College Senate meeting by discussing the practical implications of such revisions.

"We all have to weigh the likelihood of revisions that have been proposed for improving the course with the possibility of them being realized," Lazich said. "It would be very difficult to implement the kinds of revisions that really could address some of the more serious issues associated with the course."

Instead of revising BSC 101, the committee will look to infuse the information management and critical thinking components of BSC 101 into the CWP 101 and CWP 102 basic writing requirement. This recommendation was officially presented at the College Senate's Nov.18 meeting, along with two other recommendations for revision of Intellectual Foundations.

The first was to reduce and simplify the overall credit requirements of the IF program. It was noted in the curriculum committee's report that the maximum 66 credits a student may take in the IF program far exceeds the minimum 30 credits SUNY requires.

According to Lazich, a reduction in these credits was recommended to make it easier for students to transfer within the SUNY system, help students graduate on time, and diversify their college experience.

"We feel that by reducing the number of requirements in the Intellectual Foundations program, we offer students the opportunity to broaden their horizons a bit, or enrich their particular majors by taking electives," Lazich said.

Some faculty thought despite the importance of students graduating on time, the college should make cuts in a way to ensure it maintains the strengths of the current program.

"In principle, I have no problem with reducing the hours," said associate math professor Sue Sanders. "I do, however, have a great deal of problem with acting like the SUNY minimum standards are what we should be aiming for. Quite frankly, those minimum standards are not very rigorous."

Finally, the curriculum committee recommended the college diffuse the writing across the curriculum requirement throughout the individual majors.

"It was the feeling of the committees that higher levels of writing are best handled within the discipline because it varies so much from discipline to discipline," Lazich said.

The College Senate will decide whether to formally endorse the committee's recommendations in a vote at the upcoming College Senate meeting on Dec 9.

Lazich said depending on how the vote goes, the senate will begin to revise the program in the spring, but added that no changes to the IF program will be implemented until the fall of 2013.

Brian Alexander can be reached by email at alexander.record@live.com.