Family Finance won’t meet QI need in fall ’07
Effective fall 2007. students fulfilling Utah State University general credits will have one less Quantitative Intensive (QI) course to choose from when Family Finance will lose its QI designation.
At the request of Tom Lee, head of Family Consumer and Human Development, and Alena Johnson, the professor of the course, Family Finance will no longer fulfill the QI requirement as it doesn’t meet the necessary criteria. The class, however, will still be taught.
“The course is the same,” Lee said.
Discussion of the proposal began last spring and was officially approved by General Education Subcommittee at their meeting in December, Lee said.
Lee had the course reviewed by the GES, which found that as it is currently taught, Family Finance doesn’t build on Qualitative Intensive courses, namely MATH 1050 or STAT 1040, and therefore doesn’t fulfill the objectives of a QI course.
According to the provost’s office Web site, a QI class must “interpret mathematical models, such as formulas, graphs, tables and schematics and draw inferences from them.” It must also “use arithmetical, algebraic, geometric and statistical methods to solve problems,” according to the site.
Johnson said she had the choice of incorporating more math into the course to keep its QI designation, but decided against it. She said she wants students to leave the class feeling confident about their financial futures, not dejected because they can’t perform difficult math equations.
Calculators and online helps make it easy to calculate things like mortgage rates, Lee said, and requiring students to calculate them by hand doesn’t fulfill the objectives of the course.
“We hope it’s still a course a lot of students will take,” Lee said.
Family Finance currently fills two general education requirements as a Breadth Social Science and a QI. The removal of the QI designation, Lee said, also means the removal of the prerequisites.
Johnson said she would like to see continued interest in the class as it can be beneficial to everyone, regardless of major.
She said she doesn’t know if the decision will narrow down number of students who take the course in the future. She currently teaches Family Finance to approximately 620 online and traditional students and she said most of them use the course to satisfy one or both of the general credit requirements.
Students who have taken or will take Family Finance before fall semester 2007 will receive QI credit for the course, Johnson said. Students needing to fulfill their QI course requirement after fall 2007 will need to choose one of the other approximately 60 QI classes offered at USU.
-mof@cc.usu.edu