Kris -
While not nearly as overstuffed as your department seems to be, ours, too,
is bad - one of the highest majors to faculty ratios on campus. One thing
we require is a full year of bio (basically a year-long course in anatomy &
physiology). Does St. Michael's require that? Just a thought.
Johnna
P.S. Of course there's always the calculus solution... :)
At 2:27 PM -0500 3/30/99, Dr. Kristina Lewis wrote:
>Tipsters,
>Our department is trying to address a "problem" that may be facing some of
>you....we are a department of 7 full-time faculty (6 tenure-line and a one
>2-year visiting position) and 320 majors at last count. This is a college
>that prides itself on small classes and individual attention.....I think you
>see the problem....we're dying here! We have 50 advisees each, our classes
>are bursting at the seams, we can't offer upper-level seminar classes
>because we have to offer so many sections of lower level classes to meet
>demand, we can't require upper-level seminars because we can't offer them.
>The administration's response so far has been adjuncts; currently we have
>11-13 adjunct sections per year.
>
>We have been tossing around ways to a) get the administration to take us
>more seriously; b) make our situation more workable. One alternative is to
>limit the number of majors by imposing minimum criteria to be met to be a
>major. The criteria we have come up with are C in general psych and C in
>research methods and/or overall GPA of 2.5.
>
>My question (finally).....do any of you have such criteria in place? How
>well do they work? Any other suggestions? How have you dealt with the
>influx of majors?
>
>If you respond to me I will compile the responses and post them to the list.
>But if this is an issue of wide interest, I would love to see some
>discussion....
>
