Liberal Studies Committee

Mitchell Klett, Chair

Recommendations of the Committee

October 22, 2009

The Liberal Studies Committee recommends the Senate take action to:

Recommendation 1: Add CH 109, Introductory Organic and Biochemistry for the Health Sciences Division III, Foundations of Natural Science-Mathematics

Rationale: CH 109, Approaching Introductory Organic and Biochemistry for the Health Sciences meet the goals of Division III, Foundations of Natural Science-Mathematics.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to understand and use scientific concepts?

The course teaches the basic principles of organic and biochemistry concepts which are science disciplines.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to understand and discuss general scientific articles?

The texts for this course always include “chemistry in your life” types of sections and homework problems that deal with practical applications of the concepts. These are either assigned or discussed in lecture. These discussions will provide skills needed to understand articles about scientific topics. Also learning the basic principles of chemistry and chemistry as it applies to health will provide additional skills that will aid students in their ability to read and understand scientific literature.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to apply their knowledge of science to everyday experience?

As mentioned above the texts used in this course are geared to practical knowledge and applications that allied health students will need as professionals. By exploring these topics through assignments and/or discussions in lecture will give students the necessary skills.

Recommendation 2: Add CH 109, Introductory Organic and Biochemistry for the Health Sciences as a laboratory science

Rationale: CH 109, Approaching Introductory Organic and Biochemistry for the Health Sciences is a laboratory science course.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability recognize and understand the scientific method?

The students use the scientific method [scientific processes] in the laboratory portion of the course. Laboratory meets for 2 hours once a week. Students collect and analyze data from an experiment related to the topics being covered in lecture.

Recommendation 3: Add NAS 315: Native Cultures/Dynamics of the Religious Experience to Division II, Foundations of Humanities

Rationale: NAS 315 History of Indian Boarding School Education meets the goals in Division II – Foundation of Humanities

Outcomes

How does this course broaden the students’ understanding of the human experience?

Indigenous societies have always had their own orally traditional methods of educating their offspring. With the institutionalizing of American Indian education in the last half of the 19th century, education for Indian young people radically changed. This course illuminates how indigenous North American cultures were forced to adapt to the ways of colonizers as generation after generation was forcibly acculturated into Anglo American mainstream society, along with issues of resulting loss of culture, spirituality and language endured by numerous Indian communities.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to study the individual human condition, needs, values, and potentials and achievements within the multiplicity of cultural values that shape it?

History, education and many other disciplines are taught primarily from a dominant culture point of view. NAS 315 provides an alternative perspective. Through the use of first person texts and testimonies, students learn how individual American Indians lived the boarding/residential school experience and how it affected their subsequent lives and the lives of their children. For example, students read and discuss selected chapters from My People the Sioux by Luther Standing Bear regarding his personal boarding school experience and how that time in his life shaped who he became, his achievements, and his values as an Indian person living in a much larger, Anglo American society.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to examine, using critical thinking strategies, how peoples in different cultures, times and places deal with common human needs and concerns?

NAS 315 requires students to think critically about United States/Canadian education as it was furnished to American Indian students. Students explore, discuss, and respond to lectures about persons of interest involved in boarding school systems and to the content of required texts and films that systematically examine how American Indians from dozens of diverse tribal backgrounds dealt with homesickness, illness, family separation, runaways, scholastic expectations, militaristic dress codes and discipline in many of the schools, corporal punishment, and much more.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to review and evaluate, using critical thinking techniques, the intellectual, spiritual and ethical concerns of the human experience as recorded in literature, philosophy, religion, history or other similar areas?

During class meetings, pertinent questions addressing assigned readings and films viewed in the classroom are put to the students. For example, from Chapter 4 of Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, students have been asked “How did children of different ages experience going away to school differently?” The text maintains that younger students suffered loss of family and community more severely than older students but the question has elicited wide and varied discussions by NAS 315 students on a number of relevant topics including loss of connection to tribal storyteller/teachers and disconnect from spiritual ceremonies. These discussions enhance students’ ability to consider and assess human concerns that are expressed within the humanities.

Recommendation 4: Add NAS 320 American Indian: Identity and Media Images to the list of courses fulfilling Division II, Foundations of Humanities

Rationale: NAS 320 American Indian: Identity and Media Images meet the goals in Division II.

Outcomes

How does this course broaden the students’ understanding of the human experience?

NAS 320 will focus on identity issues of American Indians/First Nations within the film and media industry as well as the contributions of American Indians/First Nations to the film and media industry. They will gain knowledge of the many contributions made by American Indians to the media industry (historically and today); the historical complexities of American Indians, their identities and their distorted portrayal by the mass media; and of how language, text, and pictorial images within films and other media have discriminated against American Indians and continue to perpetuate stereotypes today. Having such awareness and knowledge will afford students the opportunity to understand the range of human experiences and how they are portrayed through film and other media.

NAS 320 will offer students the opportunity to critically engage award-winning films and other media by or about American Indian/First Nations peoples or which spotlight conditions in Native communities. For example, Hank Williams First Nations is a contemporary look at a Cree reserve in northern British Columbia and how individuals in the community interact and react when an elder decides to take a trip to find the grave of Hank Williams Sr. In comparison Skins is a film about two Lakota brothers who grow up with an abusive father and the story revolves around the younger brother who become a renegade police officer and the older brother becomes the victim of a series of tragedies. Both films provide viewers with insight on specific cultural customs but also demonstrate how reservation/reserve communities sometimes function differently from mainstream society.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to examine, using critical thinking strategies, how peoples in different cultures, times and places deal with common human needs and concerns?

Students will be asked to recognize and evaluate stereotypes of American Indians (and other minority groups) who appear in media messages (such as mascots, characters from western era films, and more) and to identify prejudicial practices against them and devise strategies to challenge such practices within the film and media industry. Students will learn how to view films and other media from the point of the “other.” By obtaining these skills, students will be able to critically review all media and be able to distinguish how other groups of people (race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, sexual orientation, and differing abilities) may be negatively impacted by films and media.

NAS 320 students will garner an awareness of the following: of what a stereotype is and how such negative images manifest themselves in films and other media; of the differences that exist among American Indians/First Nations and their cultures and the ways in which these differences affect an individual’s views of the world, their values, their interpretations of the events of their lives, and the impact of the media industry on their view of the world; and of why understanding issues of diversity is important for those going into the world of communication, and developing a critical view regarding diverse populations such as American Indian/First Nations in the media.

Recommendation 5: Add NAS 280, Storytelling by Native American Women to the list of courses fulfilling Division II, Foundations of Humanities

Rationale: NAS 280, Storytelling by Native American Women meets the goals in Division II.

Outcomes

How does this course broaden the students’ understanding of the human experience?

It is believed in some Native cultures that no one knows a person better than their grandmother. Students will be introduced to oral tradition from numerous tribes as shared by First Nations women. Oral tradition, of course, is a fundamental aspect within Native cultures both historically and contemporarily. Joy Harjo, Muscogee author, has stated, “To write is often found suspect” (within Native communities). This point alone makes the course different in that many students may not be familiar with cultures where oral traditions are still held in such high regard. The content of stories will also provide students with alternative viewpoints: those may include being a traditional woman in a contemporary society; tribal values held (and protected) by women; ideological differences (i.e., creation stories); and women in leadership roles.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to study the individual human condition, needs, values, and potentials and achievements within the multiplicity of cultural values that shape it?

NAS 280 introduces students to the fact that, through stories, women provide significant contributions to Native cultures and to society as a whole. By serving as storytellers, culture keepers and life bearers women are valued as life givers in an Indigenous ideological sense. In this course, students will become familiar with many female voices (of elders, grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters) expressed through various media (text, audio, video, film, visiting presenters). Students will gain an understanding of how these women contribute to each other and to their communities. Many tribal stories revolve around the metaphorical figure of the trickster, a character that addresses the need for values within the community. Students will do their own research on at least one accomplished female tribal storyteller, read one additional book by that author (not already assigned) and present their research to their peers in the course. This will allow students to come to their own conclusions of these individuals and their achievements.

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to examine, using critical thinking strategies, how peoples in different cultures, times and places deal with common human needs and concerns?

NAS 280 will ask students to examine contemporary life and traditional lifeways and how they intersect through varying forms of popular culture (books, mass media, music, and film) with all text being authored by First Nations women. Through discussion, written assignments and presentations, students will be encouraged to employ alternative thinking strategies and from the Indigenous lens rather than their own individual lens. This can be challenging and rewarding for the student. Texts to be chosen will reflect varied tribes and cultures to address a wider tribal voice with regards to human needs and concerns (e.g. a Dine’ author may have a differing viewpoint than a Menominee poet who may have a differing opinion than a Chocotaw songwriter, etc.)

Through readings, films, class discussions and written assignments, students will be required to emphasize Native American tribal perspectives on topics of intellectual, spiritual and ethical concerns of the human experience. Areas such as the arts, literature and philosophies of different tribal groups will be included as well as their ethical values and cultural and spiritual ideologies. Students will have the opportunity to review and evaluate several stories, poems, songs, films, etc. that touch upon many of these areas and will be able to compare the traditional lifeways and contemporary lifestyle of Native peoples today.

Recommendation 6: Add NAS 280, Storytelling by Native American Women to the list of courses fulfilling World Cultures

Rationale: NAS 280, Storytelling by Native American Women meets the goals for World Cultures.

Outcomes

How does this course enhance the students’ ability to comprehend and articulate the distinctive worldview (e.g., values, norms and beliefs) of at least one culture that varies significantly from Anglo-American and Western European cultures?

Students may be introduced to the fact that Native peoples have their own Creation stories and oral traditions prior to contact with an emphasis that such stories and traditions still are in practice today. Students will be introduced to several individual cultural traditions and values of Native tribes within the US and Canada through varying text (short stories, poems, films, songs).

Tribal nations have several parallels in an ideological sense (i.e. the eagle is important ideological symbol for several tribes), but do remain unique in beliefs, traditions and ceremonies. The creation stories of the Dine’ are different from the Creation stories of the Haudenosaunee (and so on). Students will not only see a view different from Western European cultures, but also that tribal cultures have their own distinct stories (tribes have differing values based on their traditional homelands).