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Thursday, 01 December 2005 05:50 |
By DAVID FORBES
UNC Asheville will soon be hosting a summer satellite of the Masters of Liberal Arts program of the Bread Loaf School of English, Bill Spellman, associate vice chancellor for humanities, announced at the Nov. 10 meeting of UNCA??s Faculty Senate.
The Bread Loaf School, which began in 1920 in Middlebury College in Vermont, is a summer-long master??s program. Past teachers in the program include the poet Robert Frost. Since the late 1980s, the school has been looking to expand into satellite campuses.
?®When I heard about Bread Loaf School, I asked their director if I could come up there and pick his brain about how to run a summer MLA program,?∆ Spellman said.
?®He graciously said yes. So, I go and spend a morning there and he gives me some good feedback, and then he said, ?®For the last couple of years, we??ve been looking for a nice site in the Southeast for a campus. Would you be interested in hosting Bread Loaf???
?®Well, I had no authority to do that, but one thing led to another and UNCA will be hosting 70 students in the Bread Loaf program this summer, and some of their faculty ?? one from Middlebury, one from Arizona State and one from UNCA. If it works out, Bread Loaf will be coming to UNCA and their faculty will be able to enrich our summer curriculum.?∆
The negotiations with Bread Loaf sprang from a larger effort to look at
UNCA??s MLA program and make needed changes, Spellman said. That program
currently holds just over 30 students, though he hopes to get the
numbers into the low 40s.
?®Over the summer, I had a two-day retreat with graduate council and
some faculty who had taught MLA,?∆ Spellman said. ?®We essentially face
three principle challenges out of that conversation.?∆
The first, Spellman said, is length of time to graduation.
?®The length of time to graduate had become very extensive,?∆ Spellman
said. ?®We currently have a 10-year rule to graduation and we??re going
to change that.?∆
The second challenge, he continued, is the workload faculty faced by teaching in the program.
?®The real challenge there was finding faculty willing to teach this
many classes,?∆ Spellman said. ?®This is a very time-consuming program
and there wasn??t enough recognition.?∆
The final challenge, he said, consists of clearing up cross-listed
courses ?±?± those that are taught both at undergraduate and graduate
levels.
?®For many faculty, and I share this view myself, it simply became too
hard,?∆ Spellman said. ?®Increasingly, MLA students were saying that
wasn??t their ideal, that wasn??t what they had registered for.
?®They wanted a free-standing graduate seminar. We weren??t always
distinguishing concretely between the workloads at the graduate and
undergraduate levels.?∆
In an effort to improve the program, Spellman said, UNCA is reducing
the number of credit hours needed to attain an MLA and trying to
streamline the curriculum.
Meanwhile, the senate also discussed the takeover of Asheville Graduate
Center by UNCA from the UNC system president??s office, following a
presentation by Sandra Byrd, the center??s director.
The graduate center hosts programs in areas ranging from education to
environmental science from four universities: Western Carolina
University, North Carolina State University, UNC Greensboro and UNC
Chapel Hill.
?®You might notice that we have more students at the center in 2005 than we have had in the past few years,?∆ Byrd said.
More than 800 students participate in the center??s programs.
She added that some programs that were not drawing students would be ?®moved on?∆ after the completion of a study by UNCA.
?®We??re doing this so we can have room for programs that meet people??s economic needs a little better,?∆ Byrd noted.
UNCA itself might soon be offering graduate programs in computer
technology, as Byrd said the need for such programs is increasing
exponentially, especially in cities such as Asheville.
?®There are people who need professional certifications who have been
going to Charlotte to get them because they??re not offered in
Asheville,?∆ Byrd said. ?®It seems reasonable that that needs to be
offered on campus. I looked at what people are paying for these
certifications in Charlotte and it??s unbelievable.?∆
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