College Council held its first meeting of the 2013-2014 academic year on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 11:30 a.m in the South Lounge at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC). The meeting focused on the new programs and the changes that will be taking place at FCLC in the fall of 2014 including the restructuring of the FCLC campus over the next three years. Modifications to existing programs and majors as well as the statistics of the Class of 2017 were also discussed by the council.

Rev. Robert R. Grimes, dean of FCLC, explained that the opening of the new law school and residence hall in the fall of 2014 will leave a significant space available on the FCLC campus. The proposed plan as of now, according to Grimes, is the lower level of the current law school to be used as a student center and in 2015-2016, Quinn Library will be moved to the current law school library. This will allow for Quinn Library to be renovated and equipped with the facilities needed to possibly accommodate the communications, visual arts, and theatre departments. However, these plans are not definite according to Grimes. “Nothing that I have said is set in stone,” he emphasized.

Associate Dean of FCLC, Mark Mattson also discussed changing the registration time at FCLC to take place at the same time as registration at Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH). “We will be following the schedule FCRH follows so there will be two days for senior registration, two days for juniors, two days for sophomores, and two days for freshman. This will alleviate some of the crowding in LL804 and will extend advising another week for us,” Mattson said.

Associate Professor for Economics, Shapoor Vali, had some concerns regarding the system’s capacity during the week of registration as well as the amount of courses that FCLC students took at FCRH in comparison to the ones they take at the FCLC campus. Mattson explained that Information Technology (IT) has reassured him there is capacity for registration to take place at the same time on both campuses and that the amount of courses taken at FCRH in comparison to FCLC will be monitored in each department.

Following, was a proposal to modify some of the study abroad and core requirements. According to Grimes, both FCLC and FCRH faculty proposed that study-abroad courses at programs approved by Fordham would count towards the completion of the foreign language requirement with the approval of the department of modern languages and literatures, completion of the advanced disciplinary requirement with the approval of the academic department the course applies to and lastly, that students studying abroad in either Latin America, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East would complete the global studies requirement with the approval of the Dean’s College at the student’s campus. These proposals were approved by the college council.

Vali then discussed the proposal to revise the mathematics/economic major requirements. The major currently requires nine courses and four electives. The proposal was to add another required course, mathematics for economists I, and reduce the amount of electives from four to two. “This [course] is pivotal. This is where everything comes together,” Vali said to the council. The revisions to the major were approved.

The council also agreed to approve the proposal for a creative writing concentration within the English major.

Grimes also announced that for the Class of 2017, FCLC had 7,750 applicants and accepted 47 percent of the applicants. The campus welcomed 449 students, with 69 percent being female and 31 percent being male. Forty-six are international students from various countries.

In addition, US News and World Report ranked Fordham University 57th along with Pepperdine University and the University of Connecticut.

College Council will hold the second meeting on Oct. 24 at 11:30 a.m.