Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1984 [PAGE 240]

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1983]

UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS

231

Teaching experience has been required in order to complete a Ph.D. degree in the Neural and Behavioral Biology Program since 1976. T h e teaching requirement proposed here will specify a minimum of two semesters of teaching experience equivalent to an assistantship at 50 percent time teaching, involving a course in which direct contact with students occurs. At the discretion of the student's prethesis (diagnostic) guidance committee, this teaching requirement can be satisfied by prior teaching of an equivalent nature at another institution. Revision of the Master of Arts in the Teaching of German Degree, Urbana The Urbana-Champaign Senate has approved a revision in the requirements for the Master of Arts in the Teaching of German, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. These are proposed changes: (1) strengthening the admission requirements; (2) increasing the number of units of course work in the basic subject area from four to five; (3) providing two options within the basic subject area, both of which require greater depth within each option through a more rigid distribution of requirements; (4) including a minimum of one and one-half units in foreign language education; (5) lengthening the written examination; and (6) increasing the minimum number of units for the degree from eight to eight and one-half in order to accommodate the above changes. The proposed revisions are intended to correct perceived weaknesses by requiring more rigid admission standards, additional course work with greater focus in the basic field, training in foreign language education studies, and more rigorous examination. Revision of the Master of Arts in the Teaching of English as a Second Language Degree, Urbana The Urbana-Champaign Senate has approved a revision in the requirements for the Master of Arts in the Teaching of English as a Second Language, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The major revisions in this proposal consist of: (1) strengthening the admission requirements to include an introductory course in linguistics and an introduction to the theoretical foundations of T E S L ; (2) adding some courses and substituting others more directly relevant to the professional needs of the potential ESL teacher than some courses in the 1966 curriculum; (3) increasing the total number of units required from eight to ten; and (4) adding a thesis option for highly qualified students. A primary motive for these changes is to accommodate the growth in the curriculum. T h e proposed revision focuses more intensely on the field of TESL itself, both by replacing courses from other disciplines with those that are more directly relevant and by requiring students to do advanced work in the form of electives. Revision of the Undergraduate Elementary Education Curriculum, Chicago The University Center Senate has approved dividing the elementary education curriculum into a pre-education curriculum offered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and an upper-division component offered by the College of Education as a professional curriculum. Although the revision occasions only minor changes in the substance of the curriculum, it places the responsibility for advising lower-division students with the college in which they take almost all of the freshman and sophomore courses.

This report was received for record.