|
Gore continues protest of Florida results By Ron Fournier Al Gore insisted “there are more than enough votes” to reverse Florida’s make-or-break election results, ignoring GOP demands that he bow out even as George W. Bush plunged into the work Monday of building a new government. Democratic leaders rallied behind their vice president, though the party’s rank-and-file raised scattered voices of dissent. A day after Bush summoned TV cameras to press for Gore’s concession, the vice president prepared a prime-time address to the nation — perhaps his last chance to explain why the closest presidential election in 124 years didn’t end Sunday night when Florida’s top elections officer, a GOP partisan, certified Bush the winner by 537 votes out of 6 million cast. Gore protested the results in a Florida state court Monday, where attorneys for both sides wrestled over schedules for a hearing that may be held late in the week. The state case was assigned to Judge N. Sanders Sauls, a folksy jurist with broad authority under Florida law to “correct any alleged wrong and to provide any relief appropriate.” The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear GOP argument against recounts Friday. The stakes could hardly be higher. “The integrity of our democracy depends upon the consent of the governed, freely expressed in an election where every vote counts,” Gore told Democratic leaders before his brief TV address. With the agonizingly close election stretching into its fourth week, neither side appeared ready to give way in a fierce struggle that has entangled the judiciary in the business of presidential politics, threatening to spill past the Dec. 12 deadline for selecting state electors. Bush moved quickly to take on the work, if not the title, of president-elect. Running mate Dick Cheney criticized the Clinton-Gore administration for refusing Bush access to $5.3 million in government transition funds and a federal office building set aside for the presidential changeover. He announced the Bush team would raise money to finance its own operation. “This is regrettable because we believe the government has an obligation to honor the certifiable results of an election,” Cheney said at a Washington news conference, naming an executive director and press secretary for the transition team. He took a swipe at Gore for not dropping out, as the Bush team sought to rush the vice president from the race before the courts have an opportunity to renew recounts. Gore is “still unwilling to accept the outcome. That is unfortunate in light of the penalty that may have to be paid at some future date if the next administration is not allowed to prepare to take the reins of government,” Cheney said. Cheney’s appearance was part of a fierce public relations fight as the Gore camp tried to show Democratic solidarity and the Bush team attempted to discredit the vice president’s challenge of the Florida certification. Bush’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, quietly signed the paperwork required by federal law to certify Bush the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. That would put him one vote over the 270 required to become the nation’s 43rd president — if courts uphold Jeb’s verdict. High-minded principles aside, Gore said the issue was also personal: if state or federal courts re-open hand counts that concluded Sunday, Bush’s 537-vote edge would be at risk. “There are more than enough votes to change the outcome and that’s an important factor as well,” Gore said. But the vice president was handed a heavy burden when a Florida Supreme Court deadline expired Sunday night, freeing Secretary of State Katherine Harris to declare her political ally the winner of Florida’s election and America’s White House. Gore’s lawyers protested results from Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Nassau counties and asked the judge to “certify that the true and accurate results of the 2000 presidential election in Florida is that the electors of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman received the majority of the votes cast in the election.” Gore believes he would overtake Bush if the final tally would include recounted ballots that were rejected by Harris — minus the 174 votes added to Bush’s lead during what Democrats claim was an illegal, eleventh-hour scramble for GOP ballots, including military votes from overseas. Gore now faces a tough legal fight — persuading a court to overturn a certified election — and an electorate with limited patience. An overnight poll by ABC and the Washington Post found that 60 percent of those surveyed thought the vice president should concede. Thirty-five percent said he should not. Urging Americans not to rush to judgment, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle conducted a conference call with Gore from Florida. Gephardt said the certified totals were “incomplete and inaccurate and it’s premature for either side to declare victory or concede.” At the White House, President Clinton called for calm and, echoing Gore, said the “the integrity of the voter, every single vote,” is at stake. Report defines 8 skills UCR should provide By Angie Chang The Curriculum Outcome Committee has released a report specifying eight skills a TCU student should possess upon finishing the University Curriculum Requirements. Undergraduate skills that should be generated early in a student’s college studies include critical thinking and effective communication skills; a broad literacy in the natural and social sciences, humanities and fine arts; and a recognition of relationships among disciplines. Bob Seal, chairman of the committee, said the report also examined 16 skills, characteristics and qualities that should define a recipient of a bachelor’s degree from TCU. According to the report, informed decision making, an openness to different perspectives and the ability to continue learning new skills and concepts are some skills that should be developed upon graduation. Seal, who is also university librarian, said the committee met twice a week for three weeks and submitted the report to Chancellor Michael Ferrari, Provost William Koehler and Nowell Donovan, chairman of the Faculty Senate, on Nov. 17. Seal said he doesn’t know when the reports will be officially released to the TCU community, but it will be decided at Thursday’s meeting. “A lot of editorial work was done (by the committee) to condense the list,” Seal said. “The characteristics are pretty general. We didn’t think we were coming up with something completely brand new.” Seal said the committee acknowledged the importance of interdisciplinary teaching and considered it something that TCU should have in the future. Richard Allen, a member of the committee, said the compilation of characteristics was a group effort with each member pulling input from their individual departments. “There was a really good cross-section of professors in the committee,” Allen said. “But this is just the beginning. All of us are anxious to see how this will be finished.” Phil Hartman, a professor of biology, said the committee kept the TCU mission statement in mind as they created the list of skills. The committee also conducted research by looking at other universities and received input from meetings with the Faculty Senate and from the student forum that was sponsored by the Faculty Senate and the Student Government Association, he said. “Basically, the input evolved into the final document,” Hartman said. “As a group, we are all pleased with the way (the report) turned out. But during the process, we kept on trying to suggest specific courses for the new core, but that is not what we were charged to do.” The committee is the first of three that will be created to help revise the UCR. Donovan said the second committee won’t be created until after a meeting Dec. 7 with the chancellor, the provost, Seal and himself. The second committee will focus on the design of the new core curriculum, he said. Angie Chang Changes discussed for UCR By Reagan Duplisea As TCU launches into revamping its University Curriculum Requirements, students and faculty are debating how to make the new core effective. The eight members of the Curriculum Outcome Committee met in November to come up with a philosophy statement for the new UCR, said Bob Seal, committee chairman and university librarian. The committee is the first of three formed to reevaluate the UCR. “The bottom line is coming up with a new UCR that will distinguish TCU from other institutions and serve as a recruiting tool,” Seal said. The UCR is defined as “the general education requirements that make up approximately 50 semester hours of any degree awarded by TCU,” according to “Getting Started Academically: A Guide for New Students.” Currently, the UCR is divided into foundations, explorations and physical education requirements, requiring students to take, among others, classes in writing, mathematics, history and fine arts. “The whole core needs to be revised,” said Sherrie Reynolds, interim director of graduate programs in the School of Education. “It’s not a core — it’s a distribution list.” William Koehler, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said TCU is concerned that students are not getting the necessary education from the current UCR. “We need to ask ourselves, ‘What do we want our students to derive from this experience?’” he said. The UCR needs evaluation because it is outdated, Koehler said. The current UCR were implemented in 1988. “The average life of a university-wide curriculum is about 10 years, historically,” he said. From this point, the second UCR committee will soon be created to determine how TCU can put its philosophy statement into action, said Nowell Donovan, chairman of the new UCR implementing process. “The provost and I are choosing a mixture of youth and wisdom to get a breadth of vision — a design that will knock people’s socks off,” said Donovan, a professor of geology. The core will undergo a complete revision, he said. According to the Fall 1999 Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, less than 47.9 percent of incoming freshmen cited a good academic reputation as an important reason for selecting a college. Senior political science major Adrianne Anderson said she came to TCU for its academic reputation. “I don’t know how many students look at the core, though,” she said. Jackie Hernandez, a senior elementary education major, said she came to TCU for its education department and a desire to be close to her family, not for TCU’s academic reputation. “I don’t know how you can make requirements appealing,” she said. “When you’re looking for a college, you don’t look at requirements; you look at the camaraderie — how you’re going to fit in. As far as academic, you can just get that in your major.” Mary Volcansek, dean of the AddRan College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said a core such as the one Columbia University implements may attract prospective students. Columbia’s core centers on the great thinkers, ranging from Socrates to Confucius, to contemporaries such as Maya Angelou. “They address who the great thinkers and writers are with whom any student should be conversant,” Volcansek said. Koehler said there are concerns that the current UCR doesn’t uphold TCU’s new mission statement: “To educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community.” “If you look at the mission statement and ask, ‘Does the current UCR support it or support it as well as it could?’ the answer would be no,” Koehler said. According to the final report of the Commission on the Future of TCU, many task forces recommended a reevaluation of the UCR. “There are a fair number of faculty, including myself, who were dissatisfied with the core,” Donovan said. “The commission was a catalyst.” The current UCR is too structured, said Matt Strand, a graduate student in educational research who served on the Distinctive Programs and New Directions Task Force. “The way it is, with so many demands, students don’t have
time to explore what they’re interested in,” he said. “It really clicked after I graduated,” he said. “I really saw that life is not broken up in different pieces, even though we tend to teach that way. Breaking them into smaller parts doesn’t mean you can put them back together in the same whole.” The University of Pennsylvania is currently exploring interdisciplinary education, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian. Their School of Arts and Sciences will test a new curriculum that would require students to take four broad interdisciplinary courses. In the next five years, 200 students a year will be chosen to try the experimental General Requirement. McDorman said the Honors Program has moved toward a cross-discipline
curriculum with seminars and classes, such as Honors Intellectual Traditions,
that bring in professors from several different departments. “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Jack of all trades and master of none,’” he said. “But it’s in that kind of context that you discover what your strengths are.” Reynolds said interdisciplinary courses should be introduced within the first two years of an undergraduate’s career. “We need to introduce people to big ideas that would create a context for what they will learn the rest of their time at the university,” Reynolds said. However, a move toward interdisciplinary education would be difficult to put together, McDorman said. Some professors may have to increase their class load and think beyond their discipline, she said. Problems regarding scheduling and having enough professors to teach the new interdisciplinary classes may also arise. “Most professors would love to be involved in interdisciplinary classes, but their departments already place so many demands on them,” McDorman said. Based on her experience, McDorman said a move toward a more interdisciplinary core would require the establishment of a coordinating director or chair. “You can’t just send out a call and say, ‘Two or three departments get together,’” she said. Some departments may be hesitant to move toward interdisciplinary classes because there would be a question of which department got credit for the class, Strand said. Departments are partly evaluated and allotted budgets based on the number of students they have taking classes in the department, he said. Koehler said the administration considers many variables when allocating resources to academic units. “The simplest way to allocate resources is a formula based on the number of undergraduate and graduate students, size of faculty, etc.,” he said. “But, this is not the best method because judgment and planning are not involved. “We consider a number of variables but not in the context of a formula. For example, is the program one that has been designated as very important at the present time? Is the unit one identified as needing additional resources to reach a goal important to the entire university?” McDorman said her task force also discussed making an ethics class part of the UCR. “The educated and informed public is asking about the outcomes of education,” McDorman said. “Once students are out in the world, what did they learn from you to conduct themselves in a rational and ethical manner?” An ethics class could prepare students to properly deal with the power they will have in the professional world, rather than just skills they need, she said. “We do owe our students opportunities for a liberal arts education, not job training,” she said. The Global Positioning Task Force recommended a Global Awareness course added to the UCR, said Larry Adams, task force facilitator and associate provost for academic affairs. “We need to help prepare our students to live in a global community,” Adams said. “Since all our society is interdependent, we need to put international content into our curriculum.” McDorman said the main problem with university requirements is their
need for constant revision. Volcansek said the core revision may include classes from departments
that have previously been left out. Chuck Williams, associate dean for undergraduates in the M.J. Neeley School of Business, said the addition of a business requirement may fill a need that students are already expressing. “Seventy-five percent of the students in our introduction to business class are non-business majors,” he said. However, Volcansek said she anticipates the liberal arts will still be included in the new core. “I can’t imagine a core that wouldn’t include history, philosophy, religion, sociology, English and political science,” she said. Volcansek, who began at TCU in July, said she’d like to see more organization in the UCR. “I read the catalog and had no idea what (the UCR) was,” she said. “I went to our associate dean and he pulled out a huge manual. It seems a bit Chinese menu-ish — take something out of Column A or Column B, etc.” There are traditionally two schools of thought regarding university curriculum: the core model and the general education requirements, Koehler said. “We now have more of the general education requirements if one defines ‘core’ as a very tightly coordinated set that every student has to take,” he said. Jason Sutton, a junior psychology major, said he considers many of the
UCR classes a waste of money. Having a core exposes students to various disciplines across the university, McDorman said. “We’re not in the business of job training — we’re in the business of educating,” she said. “We’d all like to stick with what’s familiar but we all begin to learn when we get out of our comfort zones. If all we did was get a person and train them, we might as well be DeVry (Institute).” Even if students are just looking for an education that will help them in their careers, that knowledge isn’t necessarily found in their department, Strand said. “I know some people are excited about their certain field and are ready to get down to the nitty-gritty, but with interdisciplinary courses, you can draw upon your knowledge from different sources,” Strand said. Volcansek said if students were able to take more classes in their major their first two years at school, they could better decide if their major was for them. Students may benefit if the new core was set up to combine UCR classes and classes in a student’s major all four years. “It would be neat if you were able to start with what you think you want to major in at the same time as you’re building your UCR base,” she said. “You’d also be taking more challenging UCR courses. Their relevance to your major and your life would make more sense.” Volcansek said a new core should include classes that are more applicable. “More (students) take the UCR classes just to knock off (their) requirements, but (they) should be able to use them the rest of (their) life,” she said. After finding that students were not studying enough subjects with their previously flexible requirements, Duke University implemented a stricter system this fall for its incoming freshmen. Duke Curriculum 2000 requires students to take three classes in arts and literature, civilizations, social sciences and natural sciences and mathematics. More students seem to have trouble meeting the requirements for their major, rather than the UCR requirements, said Andie Piehl, assistant to the dean of the College of Fine Arts. The main way for students to avoid problems is to file for a degree plan in their dean’s office, Piehl said. The plan will allow students to see what they are still missing. “The problem is that too many aren’t getting advised any more,” she said. “They’re guessing their requirements and they’re not guessing right.” Koehler said a number of groups, including the National Alumni Board,
the Student Government Association, deans and the Faculty Senate, will
be consulted regarding a change in the core. He requested the dean of
each college to ask his or her department to report on what they would
like to see in a new core. Another committee will be set up to evaluate the new UCR once it is implemented, Donovan said. “We’ll be asking (students) when (they’re) a senior, ‘Did we do it right?’” Donovan said. “Then we’ll go back and modify. It’s going to be a continually active process.” McDorman said she hopes the new core will inspire faculty and get them out of their rut. It’s almost soporific to teach a Western Civilization
class again,” she said. “You don’t have to change the reading
each year. A new core not offering the same old thing would inspire and
re-energize teaching.” Task force submits facility upgrade proposal to Board By Melissa DeLoach For TCU’s science programs to remain competitive, modern facilities are needed in the 29-year-old Sid W. Richardson building, said Jeff Coffer, associate professor of chemistry. Facility upgrades are one of many recommendations the College of Science and Engineering Task Force of the Commission on the Future of TCU is proposing to the Board of Trustees. Mike McCracken, dean of the College of Science and Engineering, presented a final report to Provost William Koehler last month describing the magnitude of the classroom and laboratory conditions. “(The classrooms and laboratories) vary from state of the art to deplorable,” McCracken said. “It is very fair to say many labs are not equipped with anything even close to state of the art.” The board is not dealing with individual college recommendations yet, but Koehler said it will consider prioritized recommendations from all academic units when it meets in March. Coffer said he often faces difficulties teaching his students different experiments because the room and equipment required are not available. It is even difficult to put an overhead projector in the lab, he said. “We are working in a building set up completely different with the state of the art equipment of 30 years ago,” Coffer said. “The nature of the experiments has changed and we do experiments much differently. (The facility) does not reflect the ability to do modern experiments with instructional technology.” McCracken said the organic chemistry lab that Coffer teaches in hasn’t undergone any major renovation since the building opened 29 years ago. The equipment used is highly specific to the individual department, he said. “Unfortunately, we have not kept up with the instructional technology needed to teach science and engineering,” McCracken said. “We have reached the point that all departments need new equipment in order to train students with the current technology that they will use in their professional career.” Improvements in the building are needed for both undergraduate and graduate students, said Ken Morgan, professor and chairman of the geology department. The importance of the graduate programs is dependent on the quality of the labs, he said. “It is vital to make the undergraduate programs as strong as possible, but it is important to look at the total package,” Morgan said. “The stronger the graduate programs, the better faculty we get. This in turn strengthens teaching at all levels.” McCracken said the commission enabled the task force to develop a blueprint of the college’s future programs and growth. Ed Kolesar, professor of engineering, said with the completion of the Tucker Technology Center, engineering students will be able to earn a bachelor of science degree in mechanical or electrical engineering. Right now undergraduates are only able to put an emphasis in either area, he said. Additionally, a master’s degree in engineering will be implemented to allow graduate students to blend engineering with other programs in the college such as physics or computer science, he said. Other internal additions to the college will include a Board of Visitors, comprising members of area industries and the community who would evaluate the college’s progress. Joint Ph.D. programs in science and math education and an honors sequence in science, math and engineering would also be added. “We are seeking to make our programs more interdisciplinary,” McCracken said. “We hope to develop the point of view that we are a coherent whole of nine departments within one college.” Melissa DeLoach |
| The TCU Daily Skiff © 1998, 1999, 2000 Credits |