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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday September 21,1987 Vol.98,No.21
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
(USPS 650-640)
Administrators want to test new core-curriculum
Staff writer
By JENNIFER ROWLAND
KU administrators are working to find ways to test how the new liberal arts and sciences core-curriculum is prepared for freshmen and transfer students.
A College Curriculum Evaluation Advisory Committee was formed this summer to evaluate the new curriculum, which went into effect this fall, and to find ways to measure its impact on students.
Susan Twombly, assistant professor of educational policy and administration and chairman of the committee, said different departments within the college might be asked to come up with assessment methods.
Those might include evaluating skills or giving standardized tests.
The college adopted the new curriculum in part under the assumption that students were putting off math until later in their schooling, she said.
"We want to look at people at the sophomore level now, and we want to look at people under the records of the new curriculum." Twombly said.
"We want to see if the pattern of course-taking changes."
Under the new requirements, students:
- must enroll in freshmen-level English courses and remain enrolled until they successfully complete English 102 or 105.
- must enroll in an introductory math course by their second semester and remain enrolled until they successfully complete Math 101 or 102. Enrollment by the second semester in a second-level math course exempts students from this requirement.
- must postpone Western Civilization courses until they successfully complete English 102, unless they are eligible for honors sections.
- must satisfy the foreign language requirement with four semesters of one language instead of two semesters of two languages.
- must take a non-western culture class.
- can no longer use a logic course to satisfy the math requirement. Logic now will satisfy the oral communications requirement, however.
The new curriculum also limits the number of courses that satisfy the freshman/sophomore distribution requirements.
The requirements apply to students who entered KU this fall or transferred with fewer than 25 credit hours. Students failing to meet the requirements will be placed on academic probation.
The committee will meet weekly for the next two months. It plans to submit a proposal of assessment methods to Robert Lineberry, dean of liberal arts and sciences, by mid-October.
"We want students to understand that this shouldn't be a punishment to students. What we're concerned about is the quality of education and that the students get what they pay for." Twombly said.
Howard J. Baumgartel, associate dean of liberal arts and sciences, said the decision to examine the curriculum's impact on students stemmed from concerns about the skyrocketing costs of higher education and a growing sentiment that colleges were not doing enough to educate students.
"If we gather information, we can figure out in what ways we're doing a good job, in what ways we're doing a job and how we can improve," he said.
Baumgartel said universities previously had been evaluated on the basis of how much was invested in their programs — such criteria as degrees held by faculty and salaries paid to them.
Also, he said, the KU administration and the state Board of Regents wanted to know what Kansas was like and the effectiveness of higher education.
"This is a shift of evaluating institutions on the basis of inputs to outputs — how much students know when they graduate." Baumgartel said.
Even though it was Parents' Day, Wendell and Belva Hicks of Wellsville didn't get to watch the KU-Kent State football game with their son, Don, Wellsville sophomore. But they did watch him and the rest of the KU Marching Jayhawks during the halftime show Saturday.
Band fans
Group against faculty union
By NOEL GERDES Staff writer
KU faculty and administrators should be colleagues, not management and labor, said Marion Bickford, professor of geology.
Faculty members will vote Nov. 17 and 18 whether to form a union. The three choices on the ballot will be for representation by the KU chapter of the National Education Association, representation by the KU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, or no representation
"It's ironic," Bickford said. "In order not to be organized, you have to form an organization."
Bickford said he wanted to use campus mail to persuade people to vote against a union, and to use the campus to form a registered campus organization.
He said he was against a union because it would not benefit the faculty economically and would creep in with universityary divisions within the University.
"I believe the University of Kansas needs better salaries, better support and better facilities," Bickford said. "I am not about that. However, the union route is an adversarial relationship. The desired route is a collegial relationship.
"I've always thought of the dean, the vice chancellor and the chancellor of the school. We should work together as colleagues, not as management and labor."
Bickford said that he had heard no comment from the administration about the KU Independent Faculty, and that it would be inappropriate for
See Union, p. 6, col. 6
Cellist enjoys playing at universities
BY KERSH MOEL
Arts/entertainment editor
Bv KIERSTI MOFN
When famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma goes on stage at Hoch Auditorium tomorrow, it will be to play for some of his students — a university students and faculty.
"It's some of the best audiences," he said Thursday in a telephone interview from his home in Winchester, Mass.
"That's one of the greatest attractions of coming to Lawrence. It's nice to play for people that are interested and enthusiastic.
It's kind of a very honest reaction. If they like something, they get excited. It's great. I just love that.'
Yo-Yo Ma
"It's kind of a very honest reaction If they like something, they get excited. It's great. I just love that."
In addition to performing live around the world, both solo and in ensembles, Ma has made several recordings, which have received four Grammy Awards during the last four years. At age 23, he received the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize in 1978.
Ma's concert at 8 p.m. tomorrow opens the University of Kansas' 1987-88 Concert and Chamber Music Series. For Ma, the concert will be the second in a tour of North America, which opens in Iowa City, Iowa, tonight and includes performances in Baltimore, Chicago and Toronto.
Issaac Stern, virtuoso of violin and musical politics, plays with Ma occasionally and has called him "one of greatest instrumental talents alive."
Music reviewers use phrases such as "silky beauty," "impeccable technique" and "electrifying virtuosity" to describe the 31-year-old cellist's prepare him to cello masters Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich.
traveling with a string trio that performed in Romania and Italy, among other places.
Next April, he will visit the Soviet Union for the first time, and in October, he will travel to China, Japan and Hong Kong.
Ma returned last week from Europe, where he spent three weeks
Although he plays in music capitals around the world, he still tries to find room to visit smaller cities, such as Lawrence.
"I love to travel," he explained. "It's great to go to different places. You're always surprised at what you see and what kinds of people you meet. For me, it's the greatest education.
Andy Pavich/KANSAN
"Every year, I try to go somewhere. I haven't been before, so that by the time I die, I can look at a map and say, 'This was great!'"
For the Lawrence concert, Ma will play a cello sonata by Beethoven, one by Bach and one by Hindemith. He will also play a Brahms violin sonata, which Ma himself transcribed for the piano. Patrist Pictat Zander will accompany him, as she has for several years.
Yo-Yo Ma
Ma gave his first public performance as a 5-year-old and studied under Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School of Music. When he was 7, his family moved to New York, where Ma's music education continued. He attended many degrees from art and sciences from Harvard University.
Ma has played Bach sonatas since, as a 4-year-old, he learned to play them two measures at a time on a 16-size cello. His father, a music teacher who emigrated in the 1930s from China to Paris, instructed him.
Although Bach sonatas have been on Ma's repertoire for 27 years, he never tires of them, he said.
One reason is Bach's messages, which may be universal truths about life and humanity, taking the view that God is at the center of the universe. Ma said.
When he plays, Ma tries to bring the composer's message to the audience. He compared the process to a composer and listens: composer, artist and listener.
"The description of the other-worldliness — it's amazing, and it's also incredibly joyous."
"Without one of the three elements.
it's impossible," he said. "The circle is complete when I feel something—be connected to somebody else, when it there's, it's absolutely magic."
"It's possible to reach out to someone who speaks of sham 'em, up," he said, laughing.
Tickets for Ma's concert are on sale in advance at the Murphv Hall
box office, or after 7 p.m. tomorrow
at the Hoch Auditorium box office.
The concert is sponsored by money from the National Endowment for the Arts, distributed through the Kansas Arts Commission; the KU University Faculty Society; and the Kansas University Endowment Association.
Artist's work blooms on a 17-acre canvas
Margaret Dixon had driven by the 17-acre field in eastern Douglas County many times but had never made her suspect it was a piece of art.
All she ever saw were patches of cover and alfalfa, rows of soybeans and corn.
Staff writer
By MICHAEL HORAK
Yesterday her impression of that field changed forever.
Monday Morning
What Dixon saw were three enormous blooming sunflowers in an ornate flower vase. The image, which stretches over several acres of farmland near Eudora, was created by Lawrence artist Stan Herd.
"It was just beautiful," she said after circling the field in an airplane. "You could see details so clearly. I had no idea it would look like that."
Organizers said they had to turn
their own property because of the
unexpected high turnout.
Herd was at the terminal to greet visitors before and after flights and to answer questions about his art. He returned to Lawrence just before the final trip on another flaid image in Lincoln, Neb., for the Farm Aid III concert.
Dixon and about 400 other people took advantage of Sunday's sunny, mid-70s weather and went to the Lawrence Municipal Airport for Art from the Air, an all-day event sponsored by the Lawrence Arts Center and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the day, pilots in 12 planes took curious onlookers for a bird's eye view of the field.
"What I do is really crop sculpture," he said. "I plow the ground in a certain pattern and plant crops to show color and texture." The field near Eudora includes areas of alfalfa, clover, sunflowers and soybeans.
husband wanted to go, too. He's up there now."
See Sunflowers, p. 6, col. 1
NBC fares well at Emmys
The Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. — Bruce Willis of "Moonlighting" and Sharon Gless of "Cagney and Lacey" yesterday womemys for acting, and "Promise," a stark drama about mental illness, won four awards.
James Woods, who portrayed the schizophrenic brother on the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation, beating out co-star Jamar Garner.
Gena Rowlands is honored as best actress in a dramatic special for *The Voice*.
"Promise" also yielded awards for director Glenn Jordan, supporting actress Piper Laurie and writers Christopher Jackson and Jennifer Flowers and Blackwell.
Sticking out his tongue and then staging a swaggering filbuster, Willis thanked everyone associated with the show, his mother and her inspirations: Al Pacino's performance in "The Godfather" and the Three Stooges.
Gloss won her second consecutive award; her partner, Tyne Dale, had been a close friend.
"It is lovely the second time around," said Gless, who said she became teary-eyed on stage because of her mother's kindness of her father, who is hospitalized.
The creators of NBC's "L.A. Law," Steven Bocho and Terry Louise Fisher, won for writing and Gregory Hobbit was honored for directing the show's pilot. Alfre Woodward won an Emmy as best guest performer for her portrayal of a rape victim in the pilot.
John Larroque of NBC's "Night Court" won his third Emmy for his role in导致 other NBC winners include Bonne Bartlett of "St. Elsewhere."