RECOMMENDATION NO. 3: The Committee recommends that the School of Natural Sciences Curriculum Committee review the purpose, criteria, and current course delivery of the Special Topics Category (B-4) and present to the G.E. Committee by the end of the fall quarter, 1998:

A plan for ensuring that B-4 courses will be taught in conformance with the small-lecture format requirement of the category; or

A proposal, with justification, for changing the requirement for the small-lecture format in Special Topics courses to permit instruction in the large-lecture format; or

An alternative recommendation to the preceding to resolve the problem of special topics courses exceeding the small-lecture size requirement for the category.

4. The Breadth Area capstone courses were identified in the G.E. consultant report and the AY 1995-96 general G.E. review report as a problem area of the program which requires commitment of more resources and more rigorous school-level oversight if the courses are to meet their mandates to (a) develop higher-order intellectual skills and (b) provide integration of content within the Breadth Area. The report suggested that the viability of the capstones as they presently are justified in their G.E. criteria may be in question in the AY 2001 five-year program review unless the weaknesses are addressed during the present review cycle. The present review has disclosed that the weaknesses noted in the aforementioned G.E reports persist within the Natural Sciences Breadth Area capstones. It further appears that instructors who most fully comply with capstone requirements do so only through heroic efforts on their part which impose an unfair burden in that comparable exertions are not being made in all capstones. This situation illustrates the structural character of the capstone problem and the need for structural and program-level solutions.

RECOMMENDATION NO. 4: The Committee recommends that the School of Natural Sciences Curriculum Committee review the current delivery of Natural Sciences Breadth Area capstone courses and present to the G.E. Committee by the end of the fall quarter, 1998, a report explaining how it intends to (a) increase support of capstone courses by providing additional workload credit for faculty teaching the courses, student assistants for courses, or both, and (b) improve school or departmental oversight of capstones to ensure that courses consistently include written and/or oral communications requirements which develop the integrative learning and reinforce basic skills expected of upper-division courses.

G.E. Committee

Joe Chavez, School of Natural Sciences

Rong Chen, School of Humanities

Carolyn Eggleston, School of Education

Lee Hanson, School of Business and Public Administration (Chair)

Charles W. Martin, Dean of Undergraduate Studies

Geraldine Stahly, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences