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Western committee opens online forum

Roger Sauerhaft

The planning of the future for the Western College Program (WCP) at Miami University has long been filled with uncertainty-now it appears to be taking a step forward.

Now available and ready for feedback on the College of the Arts and Science (CAS) homepage is a 13-page draft of the recommendations on the future of WCP from a committee co-chaired by professors Chris Myers and Richard Campbell.

According to the CAS Web site, the committee was originally charged to come up with a proposal for a new WCP to be built within the CAS by CAS Dean Karen Schilling in March 2007.

The decision for Western to become a program within the CAS was made after a report from a committee, chaired by Richard Momeyer, went to university senate. This in turn had been a result of then-president James Garland and the university board of trustees agreeing in June 2006 to take away Western's divisional status at Miami.

 "The new proposal is a preliminary proposal; in fact it's a draft," explained Myers, who said he has served on all three committees now pertaining to the future of Western. "(It is) a conceptual overview of recommendations on how the new program might be structured ... At this stage, now it's on the CAS Web site to get feedback from stakeholders. After we digest the comments we will complete a final proposal, and that final proposal will probably be submitted some time around the end of February, and that proposal will go to the dean (Karen Schilling) and she will act as she sees fit."

Myers explained that with the WCP now in the CAS, there now will be opportunities for working across departments within the CAS-such opportunities were not previously available. He also felt a core belief of the committee, after talking to a variety of student groups this spring, was that student engagement was one of the strengths of the old program and needed to remain a part of the new program. Budgeting for the new program, he said, would not be taken into account until a final plan was settled on.

"The thing to pay attention to in the current proposal is that there's a public engagement center that is central in the mission of Western and it manages the portfolio of partnerships," said Myers, who said Western will not merge with the Honors and Scholars Program because they serve different purposes on campus. "(These include) engaged research hours, so if a student wants to get involved, basically there would be engaged research hours so every

Western student would be engaged through the public engagement centers with partnership projects to bring in new opportunities for learning and applying what they learned to make a difference in the real world."

As seen in the proposal, the recommended site of the public engagement center is within Peabody Hall, most likely taking up a few classroom spaces. Also, partnerships that Myers alluded to may include the Humanities Documentary Unit, the Harry T. Wilks Leadership Institute and Project Dragonfly. These programs, the committee hopes, will create opportunities for collaborative research where ideas such as engagement in community and science are preached.

Myers noted that engaged research hours would be written up in student learning contracts so students would not only be accumulating hours satisfying their own curiosity, but also hours toward their graduation. Furthermore, students who major in Western would have their own courses that would fit the Miami Plan, which will be called the Integrated Miami Plan. This would include all foundation requirements of the Miami Plan except for components such as capstone courses, thematic sequences and foreign language courses.

One additional point that Myers sought to clarify was that of staffing within the new program, as he felt that there was a widespread "paranoia" that faculty of the old Western program could not teach in the new one. He said the new faculty would be gathered from scratch, open to both new and old members of the former program.

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"There is no restriction of any current Western College faculty from teaching in the new program," said Myers, who said staffing decisions would be up to the CAS and the provost.

The aforementioned Schilling, the dean of CAS, said she hoped the proposal would be seen and read by many.

"There is an associated blog for people to offer comment to the committee," Schilling said via e-mail. "Professor (Richard) Campbell will talk briefly to department chairs and directors about the proposal this week and invite them to bring the proposal to the attention of the faculty in their units. The College Curriculum Committee will review the proposal in the next few weeks. I believe that Liberal Education Council will also review the proposal. We will likely discuss the proposal at a meeting of the college later this semester. It is my hope, and I believe the intention of the committee, that the proposed program could be an incubator for new ideas and approaches that could influence other units in the college and university." 

Senior Anne Towne of the current WCP, one of the students who the committee talked to extensively, expressed her satisfaction with how much the committee listened and incorporated the work of previous committees.

"To me, the proposal really shows that the committee did listen to the input of students, faculty, staff and alumni on issues concerning core foundational classes, a living/learning residency program and the idea of a senior project," said Towne, reached by e-mail. "Of course, I have some concerns about the future and what it will look like, but that is to be expected since no one is sure what resources will be allocated to the program and how seriously this program, once implemented, will actually be taken. Nevertheless, on the whole, this proposal is a solid foundation on which to develop a new 'Western' from the traditional practices of the Western College for Women and the Western College Program."

Myers concluded that with this period of feedback all parties with any interest in the issue should speak now.

"If anyone wants to help shape this program, this is the time to do it," Myers said. "If people really do care about the program, I hope they take this chance to help shape its future."