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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: College committed to implementing reform

TO THE EDITOR:

As the chairs of the departments and curricula of the College of Arts and Sciences, we are charged by the dean of the college to oversee the academic units responsible for the instruction of students at the University of North Carolina. We write today to acknowledge that the failures chronicled by the Wainstein report, including a shadow curriculum of sham courses perpetrated on the academic community, represent a betrayal of our most fundamental obligation to our students.

We specifically note that this could only occur because a department chairman failed in his responsibility to his — and our — students. We deplore this breach in responsibility, and we apologize to the students who were deprived of the opportunity for inspired learning in all their courses.

While we represent the full variety of disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences, we share a common goal — to provide a rigorous, effective and sophisticated education to every student enrolled in our courses. This is not just our job: it is our mission. We are firmly committed to this goal and we welcome the assistance, oversight and recently-implemented reforms provided by our dean, provost and chancellor, as well as accrediting bodies, to help us in this mission. Moreover, we understand from experience that no merely bureaucratic system of reporting and evaluation will succeed without the vigilance of chairs and faculty alike.

Finally, we admire and support our colleagues, the many faculty members in our departments who have dedicated their careers to higher education, and look forward to working at their sides to build a better UNC. We are intent in pursuing our mission, and we invite the UNC community to join us in this.

James Hirschfield

The Council of Chairs of the College of Arts and Sciences

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