Courses and Curricula - Minutes - 2006-2007
Minutes for UCCC Meeting
September 27, 2006
Chair Andrea Atkin convened the meeting at 12:30 pm in the Walnut Room.
Members present:
A. Atkin, chair, J. Ambrose, C. Ashwell, R. Braham, H. Charlton, P. Domingue, R. Ellovich, H. Hergeth, C. Ji, J. Lavelle, D. Orcutt, D. Parish, M. Pause, S. Weiner, S. Fair, M. Williford, T. Branoff, K. Young, M. McConnell, C. Freeman
Guests:Larry Blanton, Director of University Honors Program
Remarks from Chair:
GER proposal discussion will continue at the conclusion of new business. One posting has been made to the UCCC Forum Website related to the GER and the new General Education Program.
Remarks from Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs – John Ambrose:
At the conclusion of the new business, GER recommendations from the UCCC will be discussed.
Approval of Minutes:
The minutes from September 13, 2006 were submitted and approved with the following corrections:
Dr. Ambrose presented the recommendations by the GER Task Force, bullet #3
- Remove the statement, “The members from CHASS were particularly displeased with the reduction in hours from the Humanities and Arts and felt that the “theme” concept was unnecessary.”
- Replace with the following, “The CHASS faculty does not support the idea of formal GER themes nor does it support the idea of five hours of interdisciplinary course work (the intro course and the capstone).”
New Business
Nominations for 2007-2008 Committee Chair were requested.
Sue Carson and Ted Branoff were nominated.
Consent Agenda
All actions were approved
Applied Sociology minor – revision- AEE 490 – revision
- ANS 408 – revision
- MB 351 – revision
- NS 100 – revision
- VMS 490 - drop
New Business
Major Actions – Course Actions
All actions were approved pending corrections
AEE 350
The following corrections to the action are needed:
- Page 4 – Site university policy for incomplete grades
- Page 5 – Add course reading assignments to course outline
BIT 468/568
The following corrections to the action are needed:
- Page 3 – Correct prerequisite to read BIT 410, BIT 510 and BCH 454
- Page 5 – Change grading scale for BIT 468 and BIT 568 from 96.6% to 96.9%
- Page 6 – Replace disability statement url with the current policy url
FLG 492
The following correction to the action is needed:
- Clarify the use of International Studies Minor as an elective on the course action form
HON 343
The following corrections to the action are needed:
- Specify scheduling for every year on course action form
- Page 8 – Clarification requested for grades assessed on a curve
- Page 8 - Friendly suggestion, consider using number grades in lieu of letter grades
HON 391
The following corrections to the action are needed:
- Specify scheduling for every year on course action form
- Page 6 - Change course number to 391
- Page 10 - Friendly suggestion, consider writing out grading scale
MA 222 - Approved
Discussion of the proposed changes to the GER by the committee included the following points:
UCCC Discussion on General Education Proposal September 13 and 27, 2006
The committee agreed that the following aspects of the general education proposal were positive:
- Hours reduced from 50-53 to 39
- Free elective
- ENG 101
- 2 hours of healthy living (p.e.)
- 6 hours of social science
- 13 hours of math and science
- Diversity co-requisite (but see discussion below)
- Providing a frame for the general ed experience, making it cohesive
- Resource support from the Provost
The committee agreed that the following aspects need reconsideration:
- 6 hours of Humanities and Fine Arts - most members of the committee stated that the two should not be clumped together; some stated that humanities should be 6 hours, and arts be in a separate category
- Consider an ethics requirement
- Themes – most members had strong concerns about themes: the focus that themes conflict with the “general” nature of a GER/GEP; interdisciplinary minors would be a more substantive way for students to focus their interests
- Diversity co-requirement — While the committee was favorable about a diversity co-requisite, the members generally felt that a focus only on US cultural diversity was limiting. Most members strongly support including non-western and/or global awareness in the GER/GEP and perhaps the FYE and Capstone could be a place where these are presented.
- List of GER courses — GER courses – which courses end up in the lists of GER courses can determine how easy or hard it may be to revise curricula; concern that we may be pushing into 5-year degrees; if majors cannot subset GERs, will it be possible to get all the courses that are required for a particular degree into the hours outside the GER?
- Capstone, First-Year course – For both of these courses, many members of the committee wanted specifics in order to evaluate them. Some questions were: how large would the courses be? Who would teach them? When faculty shift to teaching these courses, they are not teaching dept/major courses (even if only one), which is a resource cost to the depts.
- Capstone – many majors already have a capstone course—was it appropriate and fair to students to ask them to do an additional course with substantial work requirements; non-theme students will go to STS courses – how many of these courses will be needed and who will teach them?
- Freshman course – committee members expressed strong concern that this course have academic content; many depts. have their own first year course; could such courses be modified to fulfill this requirement? What would these courses look like?
Meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm
Submitted by Peggy Domingue