Undergraduate Education, Council on - Minutes - 2008-2009
CUE Minutes: 8.29.2008
Members Present: B. Matthews; J. Rust; D. Barlage; M. Chu; H. Devine; H. Kellner; C. Levine; T. Morant; C. Jordan; R. Foy; D. Howard; I. Schmidt; H. Marchant; C. McLean; L. Brown; A. Nowel; A. Khater; M. Robinson; A. Joyner; A. Dupont; J. Ambrose; C. Freeman; D. Auerbach
Guests:
Gary Weinberg, College of Engineering
Remarks and Welcome from the Chair: Chair Brian Matthews welcomed the new members and returning members of the CUE committee. New members were introduced.
Catherine Freeman, Academic Standards Coordinator, of DUAP, serves as the coordinator for the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) committee and University Courses and Curricula (UCCC) committee. Freeman walked the committee through the Provost website at http://www.provost.ncsu.edu/governance/standing-committees/undergrad-education/2008-2009 and identified where to find the CUE agendas, minutes, reports, and member roster are located. Also highlighted were the new evaluation rubric, GEP homepage link, and member resource packet pdf for committee members to review available from this page.
The structure of the meeting, responsibilities of the members in regards to course actions, and overview of responsibilities of the committee to general education and the General Education Program (GEP) were also reviewed and included an overview of the course Evaluation Rubric and course checklist available for members when reviewing GEP course actions.
Remarks and Welcome from the Interim Dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs (DUAP):
Dr. John Ambrose thanked returning members. He noted last year’s group was very hard-working and accomplished important tasks in regards to the GEP. Ambrose welcomed the new members to CUE and reminded them of a busy year ahead. Dr. Ambrose introduced Dr. Jon Rust who served as past CUE chair and will be serving as the interim Associate Dean for General Education Program Implementation within DUAP. He also represents the College of Textiles.
Dr. Ambrose informed the committee that two curricula with GEP revisions were just approved this week in the University Courses and Curricula Committee (UCCC). UCCC expects CALS and COE to bring forward curriculum for review soon.
Setting up Quorom:
After minor discussion, a motion was made to approve a quorum of 14 active assigned voting members. Seconded. Approved Unanimously.
Approval of Minutes: 5/2/08; Moved, Seconded. No revisions, Minutes approved unanimously.
Course Actions:
- HI 435: Europe since 1945 for the Additional Humanities GER List. Motion was made to approve this course.
- Discussion of whether the College/Department has talked about whether the college/dept wants to move this course onto the new GEP Humanities list. The College/Department can ask to have this course rolled into the new GEP Humanities list.
- Approved unanimously for the GER Additional Humanities list.
Chair Matthews introduced Jon Rust to discuss some concerns and correspondence from over the summer.
- Rust explained that some Engineering Curriculum has expressed concern for the Additional Breadth list - in particular a course, GC 120 and how it relates to the requirements for their students. GC 120 is on the VPA list which is part of the Additional Breadth category. The dilemma is that there is currently wording on the GEP that prevents a curricula requiring a course that can fulfill the additional breadth category as well as a Major requirement. It has been expressed that the college really values this course as adding to the value of the curricula and if cannot be counted in the additional breadth category then the curriculum total hours will exceed the limit of 128 credit hours.
- Another issue brought up over the summer is on the other end of the spectrum with curricula that run at 120 hours. The concern has been raised over the Interdisciplinary Perspectives category being 5-6 credit hours, as there are not currently 2-credit hour courses on the IP list. The 5-6 credit hour requirement is a remainder from the GER Taskforce recommendation. Concern that some students if they took a 2-credit course would come up with 119 hours and would have to add credit hours to the free electives in order to meet the 120 minimum. Members questioned why it couldn’t be straight 6 credit hours.
- With regards to the IP category, there were several communications over the summer with concern over the rationale that was passed in May and the recommendation from the Taskforce in that the TF previously stated one course in this category should come from the STEM side and one course from the HSS side. The CUE approved rationale took out the specific nature of the joint aspect of this rationale. David Auerbach and Cynthia Levine, who worked on the subcommittee that drew up the rationale and objectives for the IP category, addressed the members. The subcommittee really looked at the way multiple disciplines can discuss a topic and the difficulty in measuring how close disciplines were related. Since interdisciplinarity was “hard to measure,” the subcommittee reworked the rational and objectives to make them more broad.
- Another communication over the summer came from PAMS expressing concern regarding whether a course could populate, for example, the IP list and the Natural Sciences list, not as double counting courses just that it be populated on both lists and could be counted either way.
- Another concern from summer correspondence was whether there should be a minimum credit hour requirement on the co-requisite course lists for Global Knowledge and U.S. Diversity?
Discussions on these issues will continue in future meetings.
Motion made to extend the meeting 5 minutes. Seconded. Approved Unanimously.
Review of course List:
As part of the Taskforce recommendation that courses transferred to the GEP course list be reviewed within 3 years, suggestions for how to proceed with setting up a review process was requested from the committee. For newly developed categories in the GEP, there was a recommendation that courses on lists for these categories be reviewed first and include the:
- IP List
- GK List
- US Diversity List
Committee members discussed how best to approach this type of review.
- Breaking out into groups for reviewing a large volume of actions.
- Should the courses within a list be prioritized as to which courses should be reviewed first?
- Gathering appropriate level descriptions for courses.
- Requesting from departments general descriptions of the courses they teach.
- Requesting one representative syllabus for each course on the category list from departments.
- Request syllabi to be submitted to CUE within 3 weeks.
Freeman will coordinate the request for course descriptions and a representative syllabus for courses that will be part of the first review.
There will be Course Actions on the agenda for next meeting.
Adjourned at 3:15 p.m.