April 29, 2011
| Members Present | Ex-Officio Present | Guests Present |
| Ruth Beattie | Bill Rayens | |
| Heather Bush | Mike Shanks | |
| Jane Jensen | Debra Sharp | |
| Derek Lane | ||
| Karen Petrone | ||
| David Royster | ||
| Ben Withers | ||
| Ernie Yanarella |
1. Approval of the minutes from April 15, 2011 had to be delayed because Rayens had not had time to distribute them.
2. Information items
a) Drs. Rayens and Yanarella updated the Committee about recent Senate Council action regarding naming the Gen Ed program
b) Drs. Rayens and Yanarella updated the Committee about Senate Council action regarding policy suggestions from IGEOC. Rayens will read into record a statement paraphrased from Richard Greissman:
At their April 25, 2011 meeting, the Senate Council voted to give IGEOC interim authority, in consultation with the APUE and Undergraduate Council, to implement policies and guidelines necessary for the roll-out of GenEd this fall (e.g., policies regarding multi-sectioned, subtitled, and special topics General Education courses; policies on enrollment restrictions in Gen Ed courses; and policies on multiple courses being used as a group to satisfy a Gen Ed Area). The
Senate Council asked Bill Rayens to brief it regularly on IGEOC's actions related to the issuance of policies and guidelines. At the end of the 2011-12 academic year, when the charge of IGEOC expires, the University Senate will take final action on a comprehensive list of recommendations from IGEOC. Although some Senate Council members wanted to impose a more bureaucratic dictate for stringent University Senate oversight across the 2011-12 academic year, the Council did not feel this extra bureaucratic oversight was necessary because IGEOC has successfully established its legitimacy with the majority of the Senate Council members and the members recognize the effectiveness of Rayens’ leadership.
c) Dr. Beattie updated the Committee with respect to workload at Undergraduate Council and reassured the group that IGEOC-forwarded course proposals received priority.
3. Ad Hoc Discussion
At this point an ad hoc discussion ensued partly about the vetting process and partly about summer work for IGEOC. Several salient points were made:
a) Request that staff within UGE monitor turnaround of courses, count what courses are out, etc. and provide regular updates to the Committee, though not everyone was in agreement with that.
b) Suggestion to use IGEOC as a testing ground for the University’s new document handling system.
c) Suggestion that this new system would only take two weeks if IT would make it a priority.
d) Request to see if Associate Provost Mullen would revisit IT to push this particular agenda.
e) Request to see if UGE could anticipate the workload for the summer wrt course vetting.
f) Strong sentiment that no summer policies or compromises be made concerning Gen Ed unless IGEOC is consulted (no administrative fiats).
g) Availability in summer:
o 4-week Drs. Withers, Bush, Royster, Lane, and Yanarella
o 8-week: Drs. Jensen, Lane, Withers, Bush, Petrone, Yanarela, Royster
o Mike Shanks volunteered to be available both sessions if needed.
4. The following courses passed through the consent agenda without objection a) EGR 240 and PHI 343 (Global)
b) MNG 592 (Arts and Creativity)
c) BAE 202 (Statistical Inferential Reasoning)
5. A lengthy discussion continued relative to the rubric for “Citizenship” and prompted in part by some email exchanges from Dr. Susan Carvalho. Recognizing the importance of the wording in that rubric the Committee elected to recommend that one or the other of the two revisions be made to the rubric before it would receive final IGEOC approval:
a) Always have the phrase “social justice” accompanied with “and/or civic responsibility” OR
b) Consider broadening the entire category so that it remains inclusive, e.g. “Impact and Influence” used instead of “social justice” and/or “civic responsibility.”
6. The meeting ended with an update from Area Experts regarding courses out for review. A short discussion was also had with respect to possible changes in vetting strategies but this topic was left for another meeting.
7. Meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.
