THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE
                         FACULTY SENATE 

                                                             
Senate Document Number   2097S
Date of Senate Approval  3/20/97

Statement of Faculty Senate Action:
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     APC Document 16: Curriculum changes in Mass Communication

Effective Date:  Fall, 1997.
     
Delete:
     
     From p. 165 of the catalog under MCOM 321 Editing, delete:
     
     Copy reading and headline writing; publication layout and
design using desktop publishing software.
     

Add:
     
     On p. 165 of the catalog under MCOM 321 Editing, add:
     
     Computer-assisted copy reading and headline writing; news
judgment; fact checking; libel law.
     
     Also, add:
     
     MCOM 341 Layout and Design (3)
     An introduction to computer design for print media. 
Software applications for text, photography and graphics. 
Typography, studies in composition, color, line, page layout and
image selection and cropping.  Prerequisite: Completion of six
hours in mass communication, or Art 100, or permission of
instructor.  Course offered every fall semester.
     
Impact Statement:
     
     1)  There is a considerable art content in this course, and
we expect that art majors may well take it as an elective. 
However, the Art Department does not wish to offer the course
because the applied nature of the material is in conflict with
the fine arts approach taken by that department.  This course
also appears as an elective in the proposed Multi-Media Arts and
Sciences major which is wending its way through committee-land.
     
     Please find attached a memo from the Art Department and a
memo from the Director of Multi-Media Arts and Sciences.
     
     2) The course does involve the use of computers, software
and an adjunct budget line; however, all of these expenses have
already been incurred.  The course runs in the already installed
MAC lab supported by the Computer Center.  The Department of Mass
Communication has already purchased the necessary software out of
last year's and this year's budgets.  There is considerable
demand for the course.  (In August several people wept in the
chair's office pleading for seats to be added.) The Department of
Mass Communication is offering the new course "Layout and Design"
as a special topic this  semester, and will offer it again next
semester and in the fall.  It is being staffed by an adjunct, the
art director of the Asheville Citizen-Times.  Other people with
similar skills exist in the community.  Academic Affairs has been
able to staff two sections of the course this year.  We assume
that by next fall we will have satisfied pent-up demand for the
course.  Beginning next fall we plan to run the course only once
a year.  If we run into budgetary, staffing or enrollment
problems we will run the course once every two years.
     
Rationale:
     
     This is a division of one Mass Communication course, the
current MCOM 321 Editing, into two courses.  In several outings
of the current MCOM 321 we have found that it is impossible to
give adequate coverage to the topics of copy reading and
publication design in one course.