Section 3.11 Preparing for the Faculty Vote
With the end of spring term fast approaching, the Paradigms 2.0 committee had to decide whether or not to try for a vote on the revisions agreed upon so far even though these did not address all of the issues that had been identified. The alternative was to continue deliberating and to postpone a vote until they were able to propose a more comprehensive plan. Whether that would be feasible before the end of the term, however, was becoming increasingly doubtful.
Planning the coming-to-a-vote process.
Another topic under discussion was how and what to propose to the entire faculty. The new head of the department had held a faculty retreat before winter term for those “under 50” to talk about what they wanted the department to become. This had been part of the new head of the department's effort to develop a department strategic plan aligned with the university's strategic plan. Given this emphasis on leadership by the younger members of the department, the committee agreed to have one of the associate professors make the presentation to the faculty and to facilitate the discussion before the vote.
The Paradigms 2.0 committee decided upon a two-step process to bring the proposed plan to a faculty vote. At the first meeting, one of the associate professors would provide an informal summary of the proposed changes, with handouts. The other associate professor and the assistant professor would each describe the new courses they were proposing. This was to be an informational meeting only. At the second meeting, a week later, the first associate professor would make a formal presentation of the plan, open the floor for discussion, and continue discussion until someone made a motion from the floor for a vote. If things did not seem to be going well, a committee member could signal to the facilitator to delay having the vote until a later meeting.
Communicating the proposed changes.
With feedback from the committee, the associate professor developed the summary of the proposed changes included in Appendix E, Paradigms 2.0 Proposed Changes. This was emailed to the faculty before the first of the two meetings. This document opened with a statement about the need to treat the proposed core changes as a whole, rather than as a series of separate proposals:
We are proposing a few changes that we, the Paradigms 2.0 committee, see as core. By this, we mean that these changes involve moving content from one course to another and coordinating content between courses. Thus these are not and cannot be separate proposals to be voted on independently. That said, there are numerous details, such as the precise content taught in each course, which we expect to shift as we find out what works in the classroom.
Also on the left column of the first page was a succinct statement of the proposed core changes, separable changes, and procrastinated changes:
Summary of core changes.
The intent was first to bring a set of core changes to a vote as one group, to be voted up or down. These were 1) to move the content of three current courses (Modern Physics, Reference Frames Paradigm, and Classical Mechanics Capstone) into two new sophomore courses (Physics of Contemporary Challenges and Techniques of Theoretical Mechanics) and perhaps a new advanced laboratory course, 2) to shift in the junior year from nine 3-week paradigm in physics courses and the mathematics methods capstone course to six 5-week paradigms in physics courses with math bits embedded within these courses, and 3) to shift from nine credits of electronics and computer interfacing courses to six credits of electronics and computer interfacing.
Summary of separable changes.
Acknowledged as appropriate for separate votes were 1) a decision to develop a new junior advanced lab for spring 2018, and 2) a decision to eliminate the introduction to computational physics course and require more of the computational physics laboratory courses.
Summary of procrastinated changes.
Also acknowledged were four issues for which the committee had not yet developed proposals: 1) to determine the requirements for the major, 2) introduce or revive specialty courses, 3) define the content and extent of the senior year capstone courses, and 4) decide what to do about the department's thesis requirement (with the university's increased enrollment, the number of physics majors was nearing or possibly beyond capacity for supervising such individual senior theses).
The rest of this six page document set forth the details: the proposal for each change and its cons and pros. None of this was a surprise to the recipients of the email as all had met with one or more committee members, looked at the index cards on the table, and perhaps moved some around while discussing any concerns that they might have had.