4 thoughts on "Faculty Senate – April 9, 2025"

1. For over 20 years I’ve handled external transfer admissions and credits for my department. I’m okay with everything, modulo obvious needed flexibility in cases where the union of multiple courses at another school suffices to cover a single Cornell course, except the business about agnosticism with respect to instruction mode, online vs. in person. Online doesn’t measure up for countless reasons. Hadas Ritz’s point about academic integrity is only the tip of the iceberg. Lisa Nishii intimated that this instruction-mode thing comes from Middle States. Is that correct?

   Log in to Reply

2. I applaud the rationale for standardizing these matters, but I have a few questions about the proposed transfer credit policy and the determination of equivalence in the case of First-Year Writing Seminars. (Never mind the issue of what happens to “regional accreditation” when the Department of Education is dissolved.)

   If a student petitions an external writing course from an English department, does Literatures in English here evaluate the course? What if the petitioned writing course instead comes from Anthropology, Philosophy, Communications, etc.?
   Traditionally–I admit this may be more customary than explicit policy–the minimum grade for FWS transfer has been B+, but if that will be lowered to a C instead, I don’t really have a problem with it. (In practice, it’s vanishingly rare for a petitioning student’s grade in a writing course to have been below B+.) I’m also fine with the “80% rule,” which more or less describes my approach to FWS transfer petitions in practice.

   More problematic could be the provisions regarding Pass/Fail and online courses. Many if not most postgraduate programs such as medical schools require that “English composition” courses (or their equivalents, like Cornell FWSs) be letter-graded–indeed, at Cornell, FWSs cannot be taken S/U. Would this limit or discriminate against those transfer students with a “Pass” or “S” in a writing course petitioned for FWS equivalency/credit? (Or would some exception obtain under the category of “degree requirements” or “college/school policies about the type of coursework for which transfer credits will be awarded”?)

   Regarding “online” writing courses: the FWS has always been touted as a unique and characteristic aspect of the first-year Cornell experience. Surely a defining feature of this is the face-to-face, discussion-based, individual-attention, intersubjective dimension of that experience of a seminar; surely this experience is part of the reason why all the colleges require some version of a writing course, as well as why all the colleges accept any Cornell FWS as fulfilling one of its graduation requirements. (It’s also why a student cannot fulfill a FWS requirement with a one-on-one Independent Study with a professor, robust as such an experience might otherwise be–an Independent Study is not a seminar, just as a course that happens to assign a few papers is not a writing course. Nor is a large lecture course with discussion sections led by, and papers “graded” by, a “TA,” considered an equivalent–we have been through that battle during curricular reform. After all, this seminar-based experience of writing instruction–minimum guidelines/workloads, the teacher of the course and the teacher of writing being the same person, etc.–is the basis on which all Cornell FWSs are to be considered equivalent to one another.) An adequate equivalent of this learning outcome, grounded in discussion/peer interaction/feedback/revision, cannot really be provided by “online” writing courses–not by asynchronous/distance-learning writing classes, and only partly by “synchronous” or Zoom-based courses, as we all discovered during COVID. I am not sure it qualifies as “discrimination” to point out this obvious fact. Would an online course in acting or sculpture, or an online chemistry lab be seen as adequately equivalent? Middle States, which is quite properly all about learning outcomes, could be made to see reason on this point, not least of all because their very model of assessment consorts harmoniously with the design and pedagogy of FWSs.

   Finally, a smaller point: there seems to me a potential discrepancy, especially regarding writing seminars, between the mandate to evaluate a course via its syllabus on the one hand (rightly so), and to obtain “prior approval” for transfer courses on the other–how will a student acquire the syllabus for a writing class not yet taught, to be offered next semester or next summer?

   Log in to Reply

3. In reply to the question about whether Middle States prohibits denying equivalency credits based solely upon mode of instruction, specifically, online instruction – yes, Middle States requires that institutions “will establish written criteria regarding transfer of credit that do not discriminate against particular institutional settings or modes of delivery.”

   Log in to Reply

4. In reply to the several questions about First-Year Writing Seminars:

   A course is evaluated for equivalency by “the academic department/major that offers (or is the parent department of) the Cornell course in question.”

   External courses that are ungraded or graded pass/fail or satisfactory/unsatisfactory may receive credit if the external institution provides a written statement that the mark represents a grade of C or better.

   As mentioned in my reply to the above comment, Middle States explicitly prohibits discrimination based on mode of delivery (e.g., online instruction). However, if interactive, in-person exercises, such as you mention, are essential to a Cornell course so that course learning objectives would not be achieved without this component, appropriately, an external course lacking this element, such as an online course, may be denied equivalency credits. Such individualized determinations contrast with blanket restrictions against a type or types of courses, such as online courses.

   Lastly, by your reference to “prior approval,” I believe you are referring to instances of currently matriculated Cornell students seeking approval to take courses elsewhere (e.g., over the summer)? If so, current practices raise the same issue; this is not something new. If a syllabus is not available for a course, the student can work with the college/school registrar’s office to determine appropriate documentation for approval.

   Relatedly, based on feedback from the faculty senate, we have revised the proposed policy to include the following clause: “Customarily, a syllabus should suffice to evaluate equivalency along the above dimensions. If a syllabus is insufficient, a student may be required to provide an annotated syllabus or course outline that furnishes more detail. In those unusual instances when it is not feasible to assess equivalency based on provided materials/information (i.e., the syllabus and, if requested, a supplemental syllabus and course outline), the course will be treated as a course without equivalency.”

   Log in to Reply