October 8, 2010
| Members Present | Ex-Officio Present | Guests Present |
| Ruth Beattie | ||
| Richard Greissman | ||
| Derek Lane | ||
| Jane Jensen | ||
| Nikki Knutson | ||
| Roxanne Mountford | ||
| Bill Rayens | ||
| David Royster |
• Drs. Mountford and Lane volunteered to help with other vetting duties since there is not a lot of Comp and Comm I and II activity at the moment. General feeling is that many of the ten Area Experts are feeling overwhelmed with the workload.
• A request was made and widely seconded that all Area Experts should have Adobe Professional available. Rayens agreed to ask Dr. Mullen about the feasibility of this.
• There still seem to be some problems with the Course Approval forms. There is isolated, but very reliable evidence that partially completed forms can be sometimes be saved, even with the full Adobe Professional suite, and changes be lost. Limited evidence seems to suggest problem crosses Mac and PC platforms. Dr. Lane suggested we talk to J.R. Jenkins about this issue. Dr. Lane also agreed to help trouble shoot until we can confirm there is a problem and can understand it better. Rayens agreed to contact Jenkins.
• IGEOC suggested sending messages directly to the DUS’s as a way to encourage faculty to carry through on promised course proposals. Members of the committee suggested sending emails directly to the DUS’s asking for a more detail accounting for their units, so that faculty who are asking questions about seats available and courses planned can be given an informed answer. It was also suggested that either Dr. Mullen or Dr. Rayens try to attend the DUS meeting in the College of Arts and Sciences on October 12th.
• GWS 200, ENT 110, PHY 120 were on the consent agenda and there was no request to have them removed. So all three were sent forward to the Undergraduate Council for consideration.
• Policy language drafted in the last meeting was revisited and changes were suggested. Proposed language now reads as follows:
1. Policy Language
a. K‐course sequence – When more than one course is submitted with the intention that a certain General Education area be satisfied by the group, the Interim General Education Oversight Committee recommended that:
i. Departments be required, when submitting such a request, to construct a complete and concise curricular map detailing how the outcomes of those k courses map to the Area Outcomes of the respective template.
ii. Department (perhaps through their DUS, if applicable) be responsible for monitoring the continued appropriateness of this sequence for the General Education program and for insuring the integrity of the mapping referred to above.
iii. Departments be required to offer evidence every four years that this integrity is being maintained. (Committee members were slightly concerned that a course sequence fully within a major would be more susceptible to drift if unmonitored.)
iv. To recommend acceptance of k‐course sequences provided the sequence met the appropriate Area template requirements as a group and provided the quality control suggested in parts ii. and iii., above, are in place.
b. Topics courses and courses requiring subtitles – The Interim General Education Oversight Committee recommended:
i. Departments should submit a single syllabus for each topics course, or course
requiring a subtitle. This syllabus should make the case for how subtitled courses that are offered consistent with the overall organizing principle for that course category address the same set of learning outcomes, which can in turn be mapped to the Area outcomes.
ii. Once the overarching generic syllabus has been approved for Gen Ed, courses with different subtitles can be offered as Gen Ed within that category for a period of four years without separate syllabi having to be submitted.
iii. That it become the responsibility of the submitting department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies to monitor the learning outcomes for courses with varying subtitles, as they arise, to make sure those courses can be mapped to the outcomes on the approved syllabus which was, in turn, mapped to the Area outcomes.
iv. Every four years such departments submit to the Office of Undergraduate Education an accounting of actual courses offered as subtitles or topical courses under the approved, generic syllabus, with a summary of the justifications for how each mapped to the approved syllabus outcomes. Upon successful review in UE the approved syllabus would become Gen Ed approved for another four years. An unsuccessful review would lead to temporary suspension of the approval of the course (and all subtitles and topics) for General Education credit.
c. Enrollment restrictions – This was especially controversial for some members of IGEOC and a lengthy discussion ensued. In the end, the Interim General Education Oversight Committee recommended:
i. That courses could be restricted as a department’s sees fit (say to majors) provided there was a letter from the Dean of that department’s college supporting and justifying that request.
ii. That no additional resources be made available to deliver such courses if they were part of the major .
iii. That periodic reviews of the such courses be mandatory in order to insure that courses that may have been restricted to majors still maintain maximum fidelity to the General Education program outcomes and are still appropriate for the proposed template area.
• Finally the development of FAQ list was discussed and a request was made for additions. It was recommended that the directive “Artifacts submitted for assessment purposes must be assigned within the class for credit.”
• All meetings for fall 2010 will be 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Lucille Little Library (LCLI) 312. Fall meeting dates are shown below. Next meeting is October 22nd.
October 8
October 22
November 5
November 19
December 3
December 10
