According to Professor Cheryl Geisler, president of the Faculty Senate, the proposed changes were voted down 144 to 64. Geisler noted that 45 percent of those eligible voted on the proposal, a percentage much higher than most votes that go to the full faculty. She said that the response was probably higher than usual due to “high interest in the topic” and a change in the way that the votes are electronically collected from faculty.

Professor Geisler said that some compared the importance of the vote on the proposed curriculum revisions to the “4 by 4” reform from the last decade that changed the normal RPI semester load from five 3-credit courses to four 4-credit courses. She said that vote passed only barely.

When the recent vote took place, the faculty rejected the entire package. Initially, the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee sent their recommendation on curriculum changes as one package to the Faculty Senate, which then decided that more information could be gathered from the vote if the proposals were voted on one by one, according to Geisler. At the January faculty meeting, a motion carried to amend the ballot so that faculty would vote on one package as opposed to the 22 proposals separately.

Opinions varied as to why the proposal failed. Geisler said that many questioned “not whether the objectives were reasonable, but whether they should be required for every student.” She said that she felt the proposal failed in part because it was one package; and that the Senate could have received a much clearer message from the faculty if the proposals were voted on individually.

Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education Gary Gabriele said, “I think a lot of faculty were confused about where the outcomes came from, about the voting process, and about what these outcomes actually meant, and this led to the large negative vote we saw.” He also said he was disappointed with the vote, stating, “The document represented over two years of work by a number of faculty committees who created a wonderful statement about the kind of student we are trying to graduate from Rensselaer.”

Professor Christoph Steinbruchel, chair of the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee, disagreed with Geisler over how faculty should vote on the curriculum revisions. He believed that the vote should have been conducted, as it was, on the entire package; he also said this was the intent of the committee as well. When Steinbruchel saw the final vote he “was a bit surprised at the margin.” He continued, “I was a bit sad because I thought it was a good document. The set of proposals, in my opinion, was a well balanced attempt to bring together different goals.”

Steinbruchel paraphrased one common complaint amongst the faculty as a feeling that the proposal was simply “goals without process.” He said the committee had given many groups input on the process, “or so we thought.”

As for what happens next, Steinbruchel said it is “up for debate.” Geisler said that the proposal has returned to the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee along with information on the vote that they requested from the Senate. Steinbruchel said he was sure that revisions will be made to the proposal and it will again be voted on. While no timeline is set on this process, Geisler said that in order to get RPI’s Middle States Accreditation renewed in 2005, the Institute will need to have objectives spelled out for the core curriculum.

Steinbruchel doubted the curriculum committee would start from scratch and instead felt that they would make revisions based on faculty and Faculty Senate suggestions. He said the revisions need to find a middle ground between telling each department what classes its students need to take and being so open-ended that complaints are heard about ambiguity.

Perhaps the largest, most immediate result of the vote is that according to Steinbruchel, it is highly unlikely next year’s incoming class will have a biology or biotechnology class as a general Institute requirement, as originally planned. He also said that core changes would probably not take effect until at least fall of 2005.

Biology Professor Michael Hanna was among those leading the campaign for the mandatory biology course. He not only worked with Vice Provost Gary Gabriele’s office on the original set of proposals, but also helped to develop the course. According to Hanna, even though it is not currently a general institute requirement, as of next year, it will be a required part of the curriculums in the Schools of Architecture, Management, and Science.

Though the course is still going through changes, it is being piloted this spring as “Introduction to Biology for Non-Majors.” Beginning next fall, the class will just be called, “Introduction to Biology” and it will be the same introductory class that biology majors take.