February 10, 2012
| Members Present | Ex-Officio Present | Guests Present |
| Jonathan Allison | Bill Rayens | Kathy Crouch |
| Ruth Beattie | Mike Shanks | Leah Simpson |
| Heather Bush | Debra Sharp | Chris Thuringer |
| Juliana McDonald | ||
| Ben Withers |
1. The minutes for January 27th were approved
2. Kathy Crouch gave a brief demonstration of the new document handling system (DHS) and entertained questions and suggestions for improvement from the audience. Currently only Arts and Sciences is doing course approvals with the DHS so IGEOC decided to wait until the entire campus was doing approvals this way before handling Core submissions in the new system. It is expected that the course tracking part of the system will be ready next week and the entire system could go campus-wide in as early as 2-3 weeks. IGEOC was generally very impressed with the potential.
3. Rayens updated the Committee on member recruitment, noting that Professor Susan Larson, was the new Area Expert in U.S. Citizenship; and that the open spots in Social Science and C&CI would likely be filled by the end of the day.
4. The Committee briefly discussed the syllabus memo from Senate Council Chair Hollie Swanson.
Although no formal vote was taken and nor official statement drafted, the general consensus of the Committee was that the University needed more than the minimal requirements communicated in that memo, and the Committee welcomed the possibility communicated in that same memo to participate in this discussion on the larger campus.
5. ABT 120 (Inquiry in Natural, Physical and Mathematical Sciences), and ME 411 (Inquiry in Arts and Creativity) were both on the Consent Agenda. ABT 120 was briefly removed from Consent and Rayens was instructed to alert the author that although the course was approved at the IGEOC level, it would likely stall at the Undergraduate Council level unless there is clarity over the reference to ABT 120 becoming a major requirement. Rayens will ask Joanie Ett, in the acceptance letter, to communicate the following:
In the course proposal, it is mentioned that the ABT faculty would like this ABT 120 to be a major requirement for their program. If that is the case then a program change must accompany this course proposal. While this was not an issue at the IGEOC level, it will be an issue with Undergraduate Council. There are two ways to resolve this issue:
a) remove the reference regarding the course being a major requirement, or b) submit an ABT program change with this proposal.
However, both ABT 120 and ME 411 were passed and will now move on to Undergraduate Council.
6. The Committee discussed PSY 215/216 and the issue of artifact submission. At present, artifacts are being submitted from both courses. At issue was the fact that 215/216 was approved as a pair for the Core and the Committee wanted to debate whether it made sense to have artifact submissions from either or both. After much discussion the Committee approved artifact submission from either or both. It was decided that this model was not dissimilar from other single-course Core courses wherein the artifact might be submitted at any time during the course. Rayens was instructed to communicate this opinion to the Psychology Department.
7. The Committee also briefly entertained a suggestion from Rayens to allow Study Abroad students a wider berth with respect to courses that transfer as Core courses. That is, in those cases when a course would not technically qualify as a Core course, should it be allowed to transfer as one, as an incentive to encourage study abroad? It was noted that the downside is that the integrity of the transfer process would be violated and it would become difficult to control the logical implications of such exceptions. The Committee decided the cons outweighed the pros and decided not to support any special deals or incentives for study abroad students.
8. Although not an original Agenda item, the Committee discussed removing “Arts” from “Inquiry in the Arts and Creativity” leaving just “Inquiry in Creativity.” Dr. Withers, Area Expert for this Area presented a case for removing “Arts” and the Committee agreed it was a good idea. Rayens was asked to communicate this to Associate Provost Mike Mullen, and Senate Council Chair Hollie Swanson.
9. Meeting adjourned at 12:10
