Minutes, March 1999

Committee for the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education
City University of New York

Minutes: Meeting of March 26, 1999

Progress Report from the Chair

Professor Lemke reported passage of the Letter of Intent by Graduate Council in December and its acceptance by the Board of Trustees committee in January. The Committee is expected now to produce a full formal Proposal for external review and consideration once again by Graduate Council and the Trustees. It work is being assisted by three Faculty Advisory Groups, one for each concentration option within the proposed program. The aim is to produce the draft Proposal by the end of this semester; during the term outside consultants will also be available to us to help prepare the document for external review.

The Committee and its membership: Resolution

On the motion of Professor Lemke, after discussion and amendment, the Committee passed the following three-part Resolution seriatim and without dissent:

A. The Committee instructs the Chair to insure appropriately broad representation in the membership of the Committee including all major Education programs on the CUNY campuses, relevant levels and specializations within Education, partner disciplines and other relevant CUNY doctoral programs, and prospective participating faculty; and specifically to:

(1) invite the Dean or administrative head of Education programs on each CUNY campus which offers a Master's degree in Education to designate a faculty member liaison to join the Committee, or approve as liaison a current member; (2) invite all current and future members of the Faculty Advisory Groups to join to Committee; and (3) communicate with the CUNY community colleges regarding appropriate forms of cooperation and participation;

B. That we adopt as our name: The Committee for the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education; and

C. That we simplify the name of our proposed program to: The Ph.D. Program in Urban Education, retaining our two concentrations as Curriculum Studies in Urban Education and Policy Studies in Urban Education.

Admissions and matriculation requirements for the program and the concentration options

The Committee received with thanks the reports of the Faculty Advisory Groups; presentations of recommendations were made as follows:

Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies Education -- Professor Anderson

Science, Mathematics, and Technology in Education -- Professor Lemke

Education Policy Studies -- Professor Seeley

In the subsequent discussion a number of issues were raised and the convenors of the advisory groups were asked to draft an overall admissions policy for the Program proposal, along with admissions guidelines for each concentration option. This draft will be circulated to the Committee for further action at the next meeting. It was the consensus of the Committee that the program should set high academic standards for admission but allow sufficient latitude to selection committees to recruit promising students from a wide variety of academic and career backgrounds.

Initial research focus areas for the program and the concentration options

Additional reports were received from the advisory groups, as above. The convenors were again asked to draft a statement of the overall initial research priorities of the program, drawing on the reports and incorporating their recommendations for the specific concentration options.

In the discussion, it was recognized that identifying research priority areas needs to be linked to the expertise of current and prospective CUNY faculty members; that there needs to be a clear sense of the overall research focus of the program and of the linkages between curriculum studies and policy studies; and that the priorities will be relevant to future faculty searches and the development of new elective courses.

The draft reports are available on the committee website and in our CAUCUS conference pages:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/cpse

http://caucus.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~caucus/caucus.html [Urban_Ed conference]

The next meeting of the Committee will take place on Friday, April 23, 1999 in Room 202, GSUC (33 West 42^nd Street) from 10:30-12:30.