Department chairs discussed the guidelines crafted with the assistance of the Dean's Curriculum Committee concerning the new faculty affiliations policy and the establishment of curriculum committees at a department chairs meeting last Thursday.The streamlining of majors was also briefly under discussion at the meeting, according to department chairs who were present.

The Dean's Curriculum Committee's task is to advise the dean on ways to continue delivering the curriculum with fewer faculty members. Those include having faculty affiliated with departments outside their own, forming curriculum committees for each major and examining ways to reduce major requirements.

According to a draft of the guidelines, discussions regarding affiliation can originate from a faculty member or another representative from either department. The affiliating faculty member, the home department or program and the affiliating department or program must agree to the affiliation, which a letter from the dean to all three parties will formalize.

Affiliation will last three years, during which time the faculty member will teach one course in the other department at least once or provide equivalent service; after the three years, the faculty member also has the option to renew the affiliation. The affiliating faculty can serve on the other department's curriculum committee and advise honors theses and Ph.D. students in that department as well. According to the guidelines, the dean of Arts and Sciences will invite the chair of an affiliating department to provide input on the contributions of affiliating faculty for annual performance evaluations and promotions.

The guidelines draft also states that the above criteria for a "formal affiliation" policy for faculty does not mean that "informal" affiliations of faculty from different departments or programs can no longer exist or that every faculty member needs affiliation.

Given future reduction in faculty, "[having affiliated faculty] is a way to give us some breathing space and accumulate some good collegial collaboration . for the benefit of students," Prof. Ann Koloski-Ostrow (CLAS) said. "What was exciting to me was how many faculty already came to me last spring to say they want to affiliate with Classics."

Koloski-Ostrow approved of the three-year time frame, explaining "that if [an affiliation] wasn't working, . that person wouldn't continue as an affiliate." With a faculty of four in Classical Studies, she said that she did not think she would want more affiliates than the number of faculty in the department.

The department chairs also briefly discussed recommendations by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee regarding the streamlining of majors. That recommendation states that "Brandeis currently provides no guidelines regarding the structure or construction of a major, other than requiring that the majority of courses counting for a major be taken at the university." The UCC encourages all departments to review the total number of courses required for the major.

In an e-mail sent to Psychology majors last week, department chair Prof. Malcolm Watson wrote that "in conjunction with the efforts [of the University] to increase the efficiency of the required-course structure of majors," the department faculty were recommending reducing the number of quantitative courses from two to one and reducing the number of required 100-level courses from three to two.

Psychology Undergraduate Departmental Representative Jonathan Cohen '10 said faculty felt that "having students get caught up in calculus, which was definitely a significant hurdle for many students, or not adding much to their psychology education, wasn't optimal."

Prof. Gary Jefferson (ECON) noted that his department recently added econometrics as a requirement in part because many potential employers expect economics major graduates to have this skill. "I don't think in Economics we're likely to cut back on the number [of] requirements," he said, noting that most peer universities now require econometrics as part of an economics major.

The guidelines further state that each undergraduate major will have a curriculum committee, to be established by Oct. 1. The department chair will appoint the committee in consultation with the members of the department. In addition, the guidelines state that it is optional whether committee members hold specific roles or not; whether the department chair is a member of the committee; or whether departments offering multiple majors set up one committee.

The curriculum committee will create an initial three-year curriculum plan to be finalized by the department or program chair by Dec. 1, specifying which courses will be offered when, as well a teaching plan for the following year and who will teach certain courses. In addition, the guidelines suggest that the committee identify curricular gaps that existing faculty cannot fulfill and discuss sharing resources with the curriculum committees for other majors.

In an e-mail to the Justice, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe wrote that the DCC decided that it was "not a practical exercise" for the curriculum committees to make hypothetical projections based on the target faculty sizes suggested by the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring steering committee. The CARS committee initially suggested that practice to examine whether the new numbers would be viable. He wrote that DCC would be talking about another process for "stress-testing" and would share it with department chairs after finalizing such a proposal.

Koloski-Ostrow also noted that it was up to individual departments to form the curriculum committees for each department and that the committees could differ depending on a department's size.