Senate Document Number 4504S

Date of Senate Approval 04/08/04

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 36:         Reduction of requirements for a student to declare B.A. Art as a major

Effective Date: Fall 2004

Delete: On pg. 57, A. Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

Before declaring a B.A. major in Art, students must have credit for the following courses: LANG 102, ART 100, 101, 102 and 103.

Add: Before declaring a B.A. major in Art, students must have credit for the following courses: LANG 120, ART 100 and either ART 101 or ART 103

Impact Statement: The deletion of six introductory hours will allow students to be appropriately counted as majors at a sooner juncture in their studies in art. This will allow the art department majors to be counted sooner so that we get a clearer picture of how many students are coming through the system. This will allow us to make better decisions in the curriculum delivery particularly in the sophomore tier of classes. This change will have no impact on the university's requirements, other departments, or future department course offerings.

Rationale:
1) With this change, the art department will have a more accurate count of its majors.

2) With this change, the students will be assigned an art advisor much earlier. Therefore, the student advisee will receive more guidance and counseling as he/she progresses through the major. At the present time the art majors must take at least one year of classes before they are assigned an advisor in the art department.

3) With this change, the art department will be more in keeping with other departments on campus. At the present time, the required courses before majors can declare range from zero to four (art) in the different departments across campus.

4) The campus culture has changed over the past several years. We feel that this change request, if enacted, will be better for our students. The original plan for having twelve hours of prerequisites before declaring, was to improve the major/graduate ratio and retention. (This was a campus directive some years ago). We felt that if students took all twelve hours of foundation that they would continue and then graduate from the department. Now we feel that a more accurate count of our majors will be of much greater use in our planning and also in the way that funding seems to be working. If we were able to institute this request immediately, the major count would increase by the number of students taking Art 101 and/or Art 103 (about thirty-five students).