Almost a year after a committee of senior professors was commissioned to evaluate the education department, the Dean of Faculty Office said it expects to respond to the committee's report by the end of this month.
The report released last spring recommended the cancellation of the education department or urged the department to re-focus its course offerings so that they are consistent with a liberal arts education and less pre-professional.
A decision on the department's future has been stalled now for months since the report was released so that the education department could respond to the committee's findings.
Acting Education Department Chair Robert Binswanger said yesterday his department filed a response last October.
Dean of Faculty James Wright would only say yesterday that his office will have a response within a month, but he declined to comment on what the response will say or how it will be presented.
"Dean Wolford and I are reviewing the materials submitted by the department and expect to respond to the reports this month," Wright said.
George Wolford, associate dean of faculty for the social sciences, has been working closely with Wright in determining the future of the education department.
The report - which still has not been released -criticized the department for in-fighting among professors and for offering what the committee considered a pre-professional teaching program at a college dedicated to the liberal arts, according to sources who have seen the report.
Binswanger declined to comment yesterday on his department's response.
"All of those reports are the deans'. They are private," he said.
Binswanger said Wright met with the education department a number of times in November but would not discuss what Wright said to the department.
Despite earlier promises that he would do so, Wright has not yet released the review committee's report or the department's response.
While reports were being passed back and forth between the education department and the Dean of the Faculty Office, students were left to speculate about whether the department would continue to exist in a year.
According to Binswanger, upperclassmen were advising freshmen not to take education courses or to pursue a teaching certification program because of reports of the department's uncertain future.
Binswanger sent out a BlitzMail message last September through the Freshman Office to the Class of 1997 that said the education department will continue to offer a minor program and a teacher certification program to all students currently enrolled at the College.
"We are not out of business," the message said.
But shortly thereafter, administrators said they could not guarantee the department's courses will be available through 1997.
Wolford called the department's announcement "a premature communication."
"There wasn't sufficient consultation between their department and our office," he said.
Regardless of what the review committee recommends, the Dean of Faculty has the authority to change courses or the content of courses in departments.
But the process is longer and more difficult if administrators choose to shut down the department. That would require authorization from the Dean of Faculty Office, the Social Sciences Divisional Council, the Committee on Instruction, the Executive Committee of the Faculty and a vote by the entire faculty, a process that would take several terms to complete.
