A three-year debate about how and whether the concepts of diversity, inequality and social responsibility should be taught at University of Illinois Springfield could culminate Feb. 18.
The Campus Senate, made up of about 30 faculty and student members, will consider resolutions at that time dealing with the Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) curriculum. The curriculum is a three-course graduation requirement for all students that has been in place for more than a decade.
Faculty members who support retaining the curriculum without changes say they worry diluting it would leave students ill-prepared to recognize societal problems and work toward change after they graduate and get jobs in Springfield and elsewhere.
“We would create less well-rounded students,” said Kristi Barnwell, an associate professor of history. “Springfield is made up of a diverse group of people. We need to prepare our students for that.”
Other faculty members want to see the faculty group that decides on which courses qualify as ECCE classes broadened so the classes are not so focused on the liberal arts.
“My biggest gripe is it’s not being administered fairly,” said accounting professor Frank Nation, a Senate member and acting chairman of the Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance.
Nation said he and other faculty members also want to give individual colleges within the university the authority to decide on which classes qualify for ECCE credit.
That way, he said, officials in those colleges could make sure ECCE requirements don’t make it more difficult to attract students to UIS academic programs outside of the liberal arts.
When the ECCE curriculum began, UIS was one of the nation’s few higher education institutions with something like it, Barnwell said. UIS has become a national model that a growing number of colleges and universities are adopting, she said.
“This is a time when universities are scrambling to highlight their commitments to community and diversity,” Barnwell said. “UIS’ ECCE courses teach students how to engage with tough conversations and create change in their local and global communities. We should be celebrating this accomplishment, not attempting to destroy it.”
Courses that satisfy an undergraduate’s ECCE requirement include Global Media and Culture: China; Social Health Care Informatics; Global Women; Latino/a USA; and Policing in America.
Barnwell said internships, research experiences and study abroad also meet some of the requirements for the curriculum.
The Campus Senate decides on general education requirements, and the administration hasn’t taken a stand on the ECCE debate.
Barnwell said the debate about ECCE has been a divisive issue among faculty and staff members, though at least 70% of UIS students responding to a May 2020 survey said they agree with the goals of the curriculum. However, almost 60% of student respondents did say the required nine credits were “too many.”
Several student members of the Senate didn’t respond to emails from Illinois Times.
Debate on the ECCE curriculum began three years ago, when several classes that had been certified for ECCE credit were removed from the approved list for reasons that were vague, Nation said.
The situation affected several courses in the department he supervises. Classes that satisfy the ECCE credit requirements have an easier time attracting enough students to make them economically viable, Nation said.
As a result, he said the removal of ECCE credit required his department to scramble and rearrange schedules for faculty members whose classes had been taken off the list.
Since then, potential changes to the curriculum have generated “heated debate” among faculty members, often related to the “political stance of some people,” Nation said.
“To me, it seems like partially it’s the political stance of ‘left’ versus ‘right,'” he said.
Nation said he would like to see more courses in the College of Business certified for ECCE credit, especially courses that deal with international business relations.
Allowing colleges to decide which classes deserve ECCE accreditation, or creating a new campus-wide oversight committee with more faculty members outside the liberal arts deciding which classes satisfy the ECCE requirement, would make such decisions fairer, he said.
Barnwell said she and other supporters of the curriculum worry that the proposed resolutions will either do away with the curriculum or reduce its benefit for students.
The Campus Senate’s Feb. 18 meeting will begin at 10 a.m. and will be conducted exclusively on Zoom. It will be open to the public. Links and instructions on how to attend the meeting are available online at uis.edu/campussenate/docs.
Dean Olsen, a senior staff writer with Illinois Times, can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com or 217-679-7810.
This article appears in Thousand-Year Statehouse.
