Millersville University, Faculty Senate
Attachment #3
Faculty Senate Minutes
May 2, 2006

Report to Faculty Senate
Task Force on Future Directions for Major Campus Lectures and Events

In Spring 2005, President McNairy shared her thoughts with Faculty Senate regarding what future directions might be indicated for our major campus lectures and events. She asked the group if they felt the Academic Theme was continuing to fulfill its purpose and received an interesting array of responses. She commissioned a presidential task force to explore this matter, which commenced meeting in July 2005 and has continued its work throughout the fall semester. It was anticipated that the task force would develop recommendations to be shared with the Faculty Senate for review and input in January 2006. In the course of its work, the Task Force determined that it was important to wait for the final report of the institutional identity initiative, which will delay the report to Faculty Senate until early April. The charge of the task force is:

Recommendations of the Task Force:

Purpose of University Theme:
The primary purpose of the academic theme is to provide a co-curricular experience in the Liberal Arts, designed to build intellectual community, engaging students and faculty in discussions of broad questions of importance across a two academic year span. The theme will be informed by the goals and purposes of general education, serving to make the University’s liberal arts curriculum more explicit. The selected thematic question must also foster interdisciplinary and inclusive conversations.

As a secondary purpose, the university theme will serve as a bridge to the regional community.

An important consideration is that it will support and address the University identity.

Planning and Organization

The academic theme (or question) will cycle for two years to facilitate intentional planning for course development (topics or seminar courses) and related events, and available monies may be allocated differently. Where possible, major lectures will “take turns” at getting a larger portion of available funds so that special, big name speakers may be brought in one time per cycle. Also, while we want to maintain a rich array of offerings, LESS is BETTER, and we must look for natural synergies across existing or newly planned programs in both Academic and Student Affairs to see where they might be combined. This reduces competition among many offerings and should facilitate attendance and active participation.

The theme committee will be reconfigured to be a combined Joint Faculty-Student Theme Committee, so that we will foster programming across the major lectures, an array of other programs, courses, co-curricular and extracurricular activities. It will permeate the entire campus experience as best as is possible, without force-fitting(some years, some major events may not lend themselves well to tying into the theme but should be held). Faculty involvement is central to the success of the theme and the Theme Committee will be restructured to include faculty leaders for all major lectures, the director of the Center for Academic Excellence, as well as staff, student and community members. The Committee’s work will be expanded to include major responsibility for planning theme implementation throughout the year. The Committee needs a new mission, objectives, tasks and broader membership.

The task force recommends continuing the citizenship theme for at least another year. This will foster the conversations on general education. We further recommend that citizenship needs to be viewed broadly as, “from family, to neighborhood, to community, to the world.”

The first new approach to the academic theme should begin in Fall 2007 with the change in student orientation from summer to immediately prior to the fall semester. It will be coordinated with a reading program for all new students, which will be expanded to include upperclassmen (and graduate students where appropriate) as well so that dialogue on the reading may occur across all student groups.

Theme Days and Events

Early in the fall semester and late in the spring semester, theme days should be held. These days will serve as a focused beginning (a “kick-off”) and ending (a closing) to the academic year. An evening and following all day venue appear to be the best way to schedule these theme days. A major lecture/event will be held on the opening evening and the following mid-day. Numerous other activities will occur throughout this day as well so that faculty, students and staff will be afforded many different approaches to discussing the theme question.

In addition to theme day activities, there will be multiple conversations, opportunities to engage in significant dialogue and discussion on issues related to the theme throughout the entire academic year. The campus will be alive with events, and integration of these co-curricular events into course syllabi and included as course requirements with expectations of participation should be fostered to the fullest extent possible. The inherent benefit to all on campus will be explicated and all students and faculty will be strongly encouraged to participate in the programs that are provided.

Suggested Questions for Theme Consideration

Who am I? Who are we?

How do we define sustainability?

What does it mean to be human?

What defines a liberal arts education?

What does it mean to be a citizen (American/global)? Do we have a civic responsibility?

What does it mean to be an educated person?

How do we discover truth?

What does it mean to be thoughtful?

Can there be peace? What is peace?

How can I (each individual) make a difference?

What (is) about privacy in the 21st century?

University Theme Committee

Task Force Committee Members


Return to Faculty Senate Home Page
Return to MU Home Page