The ad hoc committee decided against changing Eastern’s foreign language requirements, fearing increased graduation requirements would hurt enrollment at the Faculty Senate today.

Earlier this month, the Council on Academic Affiars’ foreign language ad hoc committee issued a report calling on CAA to rescind its earlier decision, which would raise the required number of foreign language semesters from two to three.

Les Hyder, chair of the ad hoc committee, explained how the committee reached its committee’s decision.

“We did not want to establish a precedent that we, as a matter of procedure, would second-guess ourselves on matters of policy that had been voted on,” Hyder said.

Hyder said the committee decided to reconsider the policy, since both Provost Blair Lord and President Bill Perry had expressed concerns about the change.

“We felt that the provost and the president raised some valid concerns,” said Hyder. “We appreciated the spirit in which they responded.”

Hyder said the committee first debated whether to reconsider a policy that CAA had already approved.

“Our gut feeling.unanimously.was that it’s going to have an adverse effect on enrollment,” Hyder said. “We cannot afford to have fewer students. not in this economic climate and this (level of) state support.”

Senate member Andrew White said many of his students opposed the change, especially transfer students who said the change might have stopped their move to Eastern.

“I’ve asked transfer students in my classes, and they were opposed to it,” White said.

Hyder said the committee also wants CAA to encourage departments to set their own foreign language requirements to meet students’ needs.

“This is not something that has to take two years,” Hyder said. “If departments don’t know what the needs of their students are, then it’s about time they start looking at that.”

The senate also discussed new funding for undergraduate research with Bonnie Irwin, dean of the Honors College and Bob Chesnut, research and grants director for the Graduate School.

Irwin said the university is receiving new grants for undergraduate research and attributes the new funding to President Perry’s call for more emphasis on undergraduate research.

“Due to the president prioritizing undergraduate research, we have been awarded $45,000 in undergraduate research funding,” Irwin said.

That is in addition to the $18,000 the Honors College gives out for research each year. Irwin says that she hopes to fund summer research with some of the additional grants.

Joe Astrouski can be reached at 581-7944 or at jmastrouski@eiu.edu.

Journalism professor Les Hyder talks to Faculty Senate about the decision an ad hoc committee made about possible changes to Eastern’s foreign language requirement Tuesday afternoon in Booth Library. (Robbie Wroblewski/The Daily Eastern News)

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