Section 3.12 Voting
At the first of two faculty meetings, the associate professor presented this information but did not initiate a discussion. Instead the opportunity for a full discussion was clearly stated as being planned for the next faculty meeting.
At the second faculty meeting, the associate professor officially presented the proposed changes in a carefully organized way that first provided information about the proposed core changes, next invited questions to clarify anything that was not clear, and then opened the discussion for comments (see Appendix F).
The opening slide presented the challenges that the committee had identified. The second slide repeated the list of those challenges and added ways these challenges would be addressed. The third slide repeated the lists of challenges and ways those would be addressed but also summarized the proposed changes as well as noting decisions left for the future. The progression of identifying challenges, designing possible solutions, and proposing specific changes was conceptually clear.
The fourth slide presented the proposed schedule with the core changes. A visual display showed the proposed courses during fall, winter, and spring terms. These included two new courses during the sophomore year, six reorganized 5-week paradigms in physics junior-year courses along with three computational physics laboratory courses, an electronics course, computer interfacing course, and junior lab. The fifth slide was quite complex, building upon slide 5, now with arrows visually mapping ways in which the content in the current curriculum would be shifted into the proposed schedule of courses.
The sixth slide repeated this visual mapping of the current courses into the proposed courses along with a large bolded question: Questions on core changes? This opened the discussion for questions to clarify anything that was not yet clear about what was being proposed. The seventh slide repeated the sixth along with a second large bolded question: Comments on core changes? This process of first providing information, next inviting questions to clarify anything that was not clear, and then opening the discussion for comments provided a structure to the discussion that worked well. A moderate discussion ensued until finally one of the faculty members called for a vote. The eighth slide repeated the seventh along with a third large bolded question: Vote on core changes? The vote was unanimous, to go ahead with the proposed core changes!
Attention then turned to the two separable proposed changes, the first of which was whether or not to develop an advanced laboratory course for juniors. The ninth slide presented details about the junior-year laboratory sequence of electronics, computer interface, and proposed new junior advanced lab. The tenth slide summarized the other separately proposed change, involving the computational physics courses. The eleventh slide listed the computational challenges and the twelfth slide added the computational proposal and its advantages. The faculty also unanimously voted to approve both of these proposals!