Reporter Volume 25, No.28 Commencement Extra

Provost Responds to Triggle Report on Arts and Sciences

By JUDSON MEAD
Publications Staff
Provost Aaron Bloch on Tuesday announced the formation of the Council
of Arts and Sciences Deans to spearhead a new administrative structure
for the arts and sciences faculties with respect to undergraduate
education. Under the leadership of the new council, undergraduate
general education will be the responsibility of the faculties of arts
and sciences. The Provost also announced that Professor Nicolas
Goodman has been appointed to a three-year term as Vice Provost for
Undergraduate Education.
	Goodman will work as a full partner with the Council of Arts
and Sciences Deans to coordinate the delivery of undergraduate
education.
	Characterizing the Triggle Committee report as a document of
great import for the future of arts and sciences at UB, Bloch
reiterated his appreciation of the care the committee brought to its
work.
	"They bent over backward to consult widely and listen
carefully," he said. "Minds were changed and consensus was hammered
out."
	Bloch has consulted broadly in formulating his response to the
report, meeting with all three arts and sciences faculties, with
committees of the Faculty Senate, and with the Undergraduate College
General Assembly.
	Although charged to recommend preferred structural changes in
the arts and sciences faculties in terms of four issuesQdelivery of
general undergraduate education; institutional identity of the
humanities; opportunities for the fine arts; and the needs of graduate
education and research, especially in the sciencesQthe Triggle
Committee focused on undergraduate education, reporting that they
found it seriously dysfunctional and calling its problems a matter of
overriding urgency for the university.
	The committee's findings were consistent with Bloch's
assessment of the health of undergraduate education delivered in his
annual address to the Faculty Senate in October and with the report of
the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of
Colleges and Secondary Schools which visited UB later in the fall.
They were reviewed and endorsed last month by the Academic Planning
Committee of the Faculty Senate.
	"The Triggle report emphasizes that any solution to the
problems in undergraduate education must entail the principle of
accountability," Bloch said. "The faculty with the authority to devise
a curriculum must have the responsibility for delivering it. The
working responsibility for general undergraduate education does not
properly belong in the provost's office or in the Faculty Senate. The
report has been rightly described as 'a call to ownership' of the
undergraduate program by the arts and sciences faculty."
	While a majority of the Triggle Committee recommended that the
three arts and sciences faculties be united under a single dean, a
significant minority held that necessary improvements in undergraduate
education could be achieved without consolidation. But there was
unanimous agreement on the immediate need to create some structure
that would ensure close coordination among the faculties in the
delivery of undergraduate education. 
	The newly created Council of Arts and Sciences Deans will
organize cross-faculty administrative and governance structures
necessary to coordinate and integrate the general undergraduate
education curriculum, resources, enrollment, advising, and
articulation with upper-division majors in the arts and sciences and
the professional schools.
	The function of the present Undergraduate College, including
its existing curriculum, will be merged into this new coordinating
structure. Under this new arrangement, the position of Dean of the
Undergraduate College will cease to exist after the expiration of the
term of the current interim dean, Professor Stephen Dyson.
	Bloch also announced that he will appoint three committees to
follow up the Triggle Committee's report with in-depth examination of
three issues the Triggle Committee referred for further study: the
future of the fine arts, the role of the humanities, and the
university-wide structure of the sciences at UB. The three committees
will be formed during the summer and make their reports during the
next academic year.
	"I am hopeful that these steps will address our problems
within the current structure of the arts and sciences," Bloch said
about the new administrative coordination among the three faculties.
"If they do not, we will then have to consider seriously a full
consolidation of the faculties."
	Bloch said that the three arts and sciences deans and the Vice
Provost have his full support as they undertake their new mission and
asked that all members of the university community join in that
support.
	"These are difficult changes, but they must be made," he said.
"We won't stop pursuing these issues until we get them right. We owe
this to our students, our university, and to ourselves."