During the meeting, debate included questioning the singling out of engineering majors, doubting a statewide centered resolution and the control of administrators in curriculum decisions.
Suha Saya
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Cal Poly voted in support of the California State University (CSU) Academic Senate to re-establish appropriate unit count limits for engineering majors during a meeting on Tuesday.
Despite a debate lasting at least 40 minutes, the Cal Poly Academic Senate executive board voted to amend Title 5 and support the establishment of new unit count limits — a ceiling of 198 units for engineering degrees for Cal Poly.
Title 5 previously aimed to lower all program units to 180, a goal set by the CSU Board of Trustees. Reasons for the limit included hope to increase graduation rates, increase access to the CSU system, save money and indirectly cut upper division general education units and American Institutions classes.
During the meeting, debaters questioned why engineering majors were singled out, and doubted the statewide centered resolution as well as the control of administrators in curriculum decisions.
“For myself and Senator (Manzar) Foroohar, the issue is who controls the curriculum,” Academic Senate representative James LoCascio said in an email to Mustang News. “We both believe that the faculty are the only group to control the curriculum, and not the administrators.”
On March 3, the full Cal Poly Academic Senate will be presented with the same resolution at a first reading. Senators will look for errors in the writing, ask for clarification of intent and make suggestions to improve the resolution. During the second reading, the merits of the resolution will be debated, LoCascio said.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the Academic Senate established a base unit count of 138 units for the College of Engineering. It has since been changed to note the executive board of Cal Poly’s academic senate voted to pass along a 198-unit ceiling for this campus.