Matters of Curriculum and Teaching

RESIDENT SECRETARIAT Since the annual meeting, the resident secretariat has taken offices on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado in Woodbury Hall. The ad hoc advisory committee is studying the constitution with the probability of proposing modifications for the next annual meeting designed to bring the constitution in line with practices that have evolved in the years since its adoption. An effort is being made to expand the Bulletin this year, with an issue or two in the spring and one just before the annual meeting in the fall. Members are invited to send in papers for consideration, whether or not they have been read at a meeting. Each paper will be considered by two readers and published if it wins their approval as to significance, clarity and conviction, originality, and precision of format. For best consideration, papers should be sent to the secretariat in duplicate, styled according to the latest MLA Style Sheet. MATTERS OF CURRICULUM AND TEACHING The influence of the October RMMLA meeting is already being felt in at least one institution. Ray Newton (New Mexico Highlands University) reports that after he read his paper concerning English Proficiency Examinations , he was asked to plan an English course which would extend over a three-year period and replace the one-year sequence. The program has been approved and will go into effect this coming fall. * * * In the fall of 1963, with the approval of the Resident Instructional Staff, the English Department of Washington State University reduced the composition requirement for all WSU students from six hours (English 101 and 102) to three hours (English 101). Half the freshmen take the course the first semester, the others the second semester. A major reason for the change in the requirement was the greatly improved preparation which the freshmen have received in high school English courses as well as the higher entrance requirements at WSU. * * * A new freshman English program was begun this fall at Colorado College . Students must take a year of English courses, with one semester devoted to major works of literature from the Greeks to the Renaissance and the other to a continuation of the survey of literature or to one of a number of genre courses. In all these courses there is a good deal of writing of a critical and analytical nature. * * * The English faculty of the College of Santa Fe assist in team teaching a sophomore general education course called "Introduction to the Humanities ." The course attempts an integration of history, literature, music and the arts in significant periods of Western civilization. * * * The Department of English of Washington State University offers a course entitled "Shakespearean Drama in Theory and Production" in the summer sessions of the Institute of Renaissance Studies, in conjunction with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at Ashland. A student may receive two hours of graduate or undergraduate credit and may repeat the course for a total of four hours. John Wasson initiated the course and taught it in the summer of 1966. Students electing the course attend lectures as well as the daily rehearsals and nightly performances of Shakespeare's plays, and do research on a problem connected with their studies. In offering it, WSU joins Stanford University, San Fran- cisco State College and Southern Oregon College in offering credit of this kind. * * * English Department members from neighboring institutions assist with the departmental comprehensive examinations at Colorado College each spring. Last year, visiting professors from the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Denver University and the USAF Academy took part. * * * As a result of some reorganization at Colorado State College, the Division of Humanities has been eliminated and departments in various areas have been established. English and Foreign Languages are now separate departments. * * * Because of its rapid growth, the Department of Languages of Brigham Young University has recommended a division of the department into departments of French and Italian, Germanic and Slavic Languages, Spanish and Portuguese, and Classical and Oriental Languages. * * * The University of Utah has approved a full-fledged B.A. program in Russian and an M.A. program in Linguistics. New faculty members and new courses have been added to implement these programs. * * * Utah State University will sponsor its...