Faculty Assembly votes to revise General Education Program

April Reiter & Jessica Baumer

Editor in Chief and Mast News Reporter

Over 120 faculty members voted Friday, May 9 at a monthly faculty assembly meeting in Leraas Lecture Hall in the Rieke Science Center to adopt Plan B, one of the three proposed plans to revise the General Education Program. This vote culminated a four-year process of institutional and outside research to amend the GUR requirement structure at PLU.

The plan must now be approved by the Board of Regents before it can be implemented, according to the Faculty Handbook. Following approval, it will not come into effect until the 2009-2010 school year.

The meeting covered a few other agenda items before the time to vote was announced.

Faculty members were given the opportunity to discuss the plans before the actual vote, but no suggestions for an amendment were allowed. Plan B was mentioned briefly by one supportive faculty member who also remarked on the similarity of all of the plans. 

Following the brief discussion, the time to vote was announced and the room erupted in lively conversation. The faculty would vote three times by paper ballots, which were distributed by the committee chairpersons. Faculty members were allowed to vote for Plan A, B, C, or the fourth option, none of the plans.

The first tally concluded there were 11 votes for Plan A, 92 for Plan B, 19 for Plan C and 5 for none of the plans. The great number of votes garnered by Plan B inspired a motion to accept it without the other two rounds of voting. The faculty accepted the motion with unanimously resounding “ayes.” No one dissented the motion.

The Faculty Assembly is required to meet at least once a month, according to page 29 of the Faculty Handbook. The handbook stipulates that every member of the faculty, except professors emeriti and presidents emeriti, has the right to vote. Additionally, members of administrative staff and other non-faculty members may be invited to attend meetings and speak, but they will be allowed no vote.

The full details of plans A, B, and C can be viewed in on the General Education Web site at www.plu.edu/~gened.

Editor’s note: Two Mast reporters were allowed into the meeting by a motion put forth by one faculty member under the conditions they would remain only for that matter of business, they would not address the assembly and they would not attribute direct quotes to any faculty member.

Edited Sunday May 11, 2008 at 7:23 PM PST by JKMP.