Administration
CLA Document
The structure for curricular change proposed in this Common Learning Agenda will be administered by a Common Learning Coordinator reporting to the office of the Dean.
The Coordinator will be a faculty member appointed by the Dean, on the advice of the Curriculum Committee. The Coordinator will serve a three-year term and be released from teaching one-half time in order to assume the responsibilities of the position. The Coordinator will be responsible for working with departments, interdisciplinary programs, and individual faculty to generate sufficient interest in offering the necessary courses and will be responsible for planning and implementing faculty development activities. The Coordinator will work closely with the Associate Deans of the College, who have responsibility for relevant areas such as faculty development, advising, student progress in fulfilling degree requirements, and the course schedule. The Coordinator also will be assisted by existing College committees on which he/she will sit ex officio.
The Coordinator will sit with the Curriculum Committee as it is the committee with overall responsibility for the curriculum of the College and is recommended herein as the appropriate body to oversee divisions' conversations about the Disciplinary Breadth requirement, to receive and act on recommendations concerning the Disciplinary Breadth requirement, to revise the Distributional Guidelines, to facilitate departments' discussions of Disciplinary Depth, and to review the Foundation Seminar, Disciplinary Breadth, Broadened Perspectives, and Capstone components after several years of operation. The Curriculum Committee will review annually the Coordinator's overall plans for development of the Common Learning Agenda curriculum, including priorities for faculty development. The Curriculum Committee's broad elected membership and history of dealing with graduation requirements and departmental and inter-departmental curricular issues ensure appropriate faculty input as the Common Learning Agenda develops.
The Faculty Advisory Committee on Teaching (FACT) has over the past five years greatly increased programming on teaching at Bucknell. Because of the importance of pedagogical goals in the Foundation Seminar, the Distribution, and the Capstone Experience and in the Foundations for the Future plan, we recommend that the Coordinator sit with and be advised by FACT in order to benefit from the committee's experience with pedagogicallyoriented faculty development. Members of FACT currently are appointed by the Dean's office, with advice from FACT itself. Because of the importance of representative faculty advice to the Coordinator, we recommend that, as the terms of current members of FACT expire, the Curriculum Committee conduct elections to fill half the positions with members elected from each division and at large. The other half of the members would be appointed by the Curriculum Committee from the three divisions and at large to ensure the presence on FACT of faculty with special pedagogical expertise.
In addition to ex officio membership on these two committees, the Coordinator will consult with the Faculty Development Committee, the Committee on Staff Planning, and others responsible for curricular and pedagogical development, such as the Writing Center and Composition Council, Bertrand Library User Education Services, Computer Services, the Committee on Academic Computing, the Race/Gender Resource Center, and the Residential Colleges in order to coordinate activities to maximize achievement of common goals.
