Senate Document Number 6400S

Date of Senate Approval 5/4/00

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 51:   Clarifying the number of hours allowed for major fields of concentration

delete on page 38, 1999-00 catalog, after "A major field of concentration … hours of cognate courses,"

"exclusive of any departmental foreign language requirements."

add on page 38, 1999-00 catalog, after "A major field of concentration … hours of cognate courses,"

"exclusive of any departmental requirements that also satisfy general education requirements."

Impact Statement
This change will temporarily remove some of the ambiguity that exists with respect to the number of semester hours that are currently allowed within a major field of concentration. It is intended to clarify an existing ambiguity until the university can discuss and decided upon an appropriate distribution of hours within majors, general education hours, and hours for free-electives.

Rationale
In light of the flood of information that has hit most fields of study and UNCA's commitment to a philosophy of liberal arts, departments are being forced to cull the important information from the expendable. This is particularly true for the sciences and fields at UNCA that have a significant technological component because of the larger number of hours (53) that are dedicated to general education. No longer can departments cover everything and remain true to the philosophy of a liberal arts education and its principle of a broad experience for students through free-elective courses.

Unfortunately, the guidelines that currently exist count hours within a major field of concentration that also satisfy general education requirements twice, once for the major and then again for general education. When the sum of these two categories is subtracted from the 120 hours required for graduation, an artificially low number of free-elective hours is obtained. This number is artificially low because credit hours for certain courses have been counted twice. The proposed change allows for a more accurate calculation of free-elective hours since courses that satisfy both major/cognate and general education requirements will only be counted once.