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New Students Locked Out of Many Minors
The heads of nearly 20 UA departments have closed minors to new students in the last two years, opting to reserve classroom seats for those pursuing majors. State funding is not keeping pace with steadily rising enrollment, UA faculty members said, making it more difficult for the university to uphold its mission to offer a broad-based education. Since the 2000-01 school year, UA figures show, the total head count is up nearly 3,000 students to 36,932. State funding, constrained by an economic downturn, is not allowing UA to hire needed staff, officials there say. Some department heads and professors said at current faculty levels, letting new minors in to classes often means squeezing out majors and keeping them from graduating on time, which can be anywhere from four to five years. Other departments have reduced minors by, among other things, demanding more prerequisite classes and having grade-point average requirements. In the departments where students are kept out of minors, students choose different minors - because some majors require a minor - or become double-majors, sometimes increasing the time it takes to graduate. Balancing the university's mission with the need to increase students graduating on time is the motivation for a new UA administration policy that puts the Provost's Office, rather than individual department heads, in charge of deciding which minors to close. Department heads who want to close minors after June 30 must submit requests to the Provost's Office by March 15 (see box). The College of Social and Behavior Sciences has the highest student demand at UA. Undergraduate enrollment has increased nearly 25 percent to more than 5,600 since 2000-2001. "The communication faculty would love to reopen the minor," said Michael Dues, senior lecturer in communication. "These limitations damage the quality of the education UA students receive and they seriously impede a student's ability to explore different subjects." Student Bobby Rothschild is familiar with what happens when a pressured faculty increasingly relies on teaching assistants to cover classes. "The concern for me is the training and education of first-year teaching assistants who make bad mistakes that fall on us," said Rothschild, 50, a junior. "And it's not exclusive to the communication department." The outlook is worse as Arizona's three universities expect fewer state dollars. "This university has, for many years, been unable or unwilling to give priority to placing instructional resources where the students are," Dues said. Ara Arabyan, an Undergraduate Council member, said the new policy is meant to bring fairness to the campus. The council, made up of faculty and administrators, addresses issues concerning undergraduates. "The benefits are that the students will graduate as they plan or on time and it would establish uniformity across campus," said Arabyan, an aerospace and mechanical engineering professor. Professor Chris Segrin, head of the communication department, said simply opening minors would aggravate problems, including overloaded advisers, teaching assistants and faculty. This semester, Segrin allowed 74 students to sign up for his nonverbal communication class when he normally accepts about 35. "I'm counting on some of the students not showing up to class," he said. "If all of them show up ..." He shrugged his shoulders. "They have to graduate, and we make every effort to get them in," Segrin said. "We can't always do it, but we try." In the journalism department, about 60 percent of courses are taught by part-time faculty members, putting its accreditation at risk, department head Jacqueline Sharkey said. For a department to be accredited, the majority of courses must be taught by full-time professors. Journalism, which has six full-time faculty members, can't afford to lose accreditation because it could be placed on probation, ultimately costing it funding and students. Sharkey said she hasn't been able to hire full-time faculty members fast enough to meet increasing enrollment demands in recent years. The number of journalism majors has grown by 14 percent since 2004-04. And overall enrollment is up 11 percent in the department. That has put more pressure on the part-time faculty, now numbering 18. "If you are going to have a land-grant institution, then certainly the state should be funding it," Sharkey said. "We need to be able to hire faculty. That's the solution." A few other social and behavioral sciences departments, such as psychology, have managed to hire, but also rely on teaching assistants. Psychology, with 1,700 majors, is one of UA's three most popular departments. It allows minors. It has 35 full-time faculty members and needs six more to "adequately meet" student demand, department head Alfred Kaszniak said. The department is recruiting for one position but must fill two full-time spots for members who left last year, he said. "It's a moving target and an enormous managerial problem," Kaszniak said. For now, his department, with about 300 minors, is developing a computer-based class preregistration system that would automatically block students who have not taken necessary prerequisites. Calley Wilson, a 20-year-old junior minoring in communication, sees the value in such a system. "A lot of professors are understanding and will add you after registration, but it's the student's duty" to take required courses, she said. Communication professor Dues has other ideas to address the problem, such as having a campuswide discussion about possibly eliminating minors all-together and allowing faculty members to focus more time on teaching rather than research. "This university focuses too much on building the great research institution, which we've got to do," Dues said. "We need to figure out how to focus our excellence on undergraduate education, and that's something we haven't done." RESTRICTED UA MINORS: Accounting* Business economics* Business management* Entrepreneurship* Finance* Marketing* (minor study available in summer only) Operations management* Agricultural systems management Communication Engineering Family studies and human development Health education Industrial engineering Journalism Management information systems (minor study available in summer only) Media arts Nutritional sciences Retailing and consumer sciences Studio art *New student minors can access these courses through the general business administration minor in the Eller College of Management. Source: Jerry Hogle UA vice president for instruction |
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