5 Questions
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let departments do what they want without all the "red Tape" so they can experiment to grow.
Schedule better. Don't allow underenrolling courses to make.
Shift to outcomes based grading uniformly across all classes.
The way the question is phrased seems to imply we have a problem with low quality. Perhaps it would be better to say 'maintain or improve quality'. One thing is we need more large classrooms spaces. Going to larger classes may be one option in tandem with innovative support for student success. Loss of tenure-track faculty is certainly not the way to do this. We probably need to revisit some elements of general education. There seems to be very little evidence of effectiveness, and very little current support, for continuing New Freshman Seminar. What is NFS accomplishing? NFS is very resource intensive and is taking away from our ability to deliver high-quality courses in our majors. As budgets become tighter more and more NFS (and IS) are pushed into CAS even though we do not 'own' these. IS as a requirement may also be useful to revisit. When done well IS courses can be very valuable but so often they don't appear to adhere to the spirit of IS - they are not easy to teach and are even more difficult to teach well. Online classes are an option, but do us no good if they 'poach' SIUE students from other classes. Online programs could be a good revenue source, but only if delivered to students would would not otherwise enrol in SIUE classes.
