Dear Jim,

I had read your grant webpage. I will read it again this weekend. 

Part of the reason for the harsh tone in the dialogue over PBL is the
general atmosphere on campus. Resources are tight. Most faculty distrust the
administration. We are admitting students who are just not ready for
university level work. Money earmarked for legitimate programs has been
funneled into the bureaucracy. Administrators seem to have no idea what is
going on in the classrooms. Tenure-track lines are being cut. In this
atmosphere turf fights over even small sums are going to be the norm.
($30,000 = 3 TA positions = 300 new library books = 15 computers, etc.)

But I think you are also fawning naiveness. It was wrong and frankly arrogant
to take 5 engineering majors and tell them not to go to their calculus
class. You, or the PBL staff, presumed to know better then the engineering
advisors what these students need to become successful in their chosen
field. Greg B. made it clear to you that in his professional judgment PBL
would not work for math and the hard sciences. You chose to ignore him. Greg
is an excellent teacher who is aware of the various trends in math education
and who has been engaged in pedagogical experiments. Why did you disregard
his concerns and objections? 

You state that others should not be concerned over a mere 30 students. But,
you clearly hope to expand the program to 500 to 700 students. It is bad
when 30 students won't learn to write a paper (the curriculum you sent K only
lists one paper, and it is a group project), but it would a disaster if 500
freshman did not have to learn how to write a research paper on their own.
Your grant does state that you want to apply PBL to whole majors including 
math! It states that faculty time will only involve contact hours (after 
training). No time for grading?

The biggest issue for me is what we (SIUC) are not doing. If the energy and
time and money you are putting in PBL was instead going into more mundane
matters, like placement testing and prerequisite enforcement, the educational
payoff would be significant. That is the real tragedy. We want, we need,
administrators who will get down and do the nuts and bolts tasks needed to
make this place work for the students. Instead we get feel good, ideologically
driven programs. 

    [Some] think that truth is only what sounds nice. If truth should
    prove to be something statistical, dry, or factual, something
    difficult to find and requiring study, they do not recognize it as
    truth; it does not intoxicate them.

                                        --- Bertolt Brecht

    We thought it was a joke,
    then suddenly,
    we lost our power to laugh.
    
                                        --- Gunter Grass

Sincerely,

Mike Sullivan