General Education Policy Review Committee
June 9, 2009 Minutes
NFAC 164
Present: Don Guay, Greg Summers, Justin Glodowski, John Houghton, Gary Olsen, Randy Olson, Julie Schneider, Shari Summers, Mary Holland.
Guest: Eric Yonke.
1. The meeting was called to order at 9:00am.
2. The minutes of May 14 and May 21 were approved.
3. Announcement: Greg Summers, who is co-chair of this committee representing the College of Letters and Science, has accepted the position of Associate Vice Chancellor for Teaching, Learning & Academic Programs.
a. It was agreed that the committee must find a replacement representative for Letters & Science at the beginning of the fall semester. The same process that was used previously to select members of GEPRC might be used to identify a new representative for Letters and Science. One strategy would be to compile a list of people who regularly contribute to the committee and suggest they consider volunteering their names to the Academic Affairs as potential replacements.
b. Discussion ensued regarding whether Greg might remain on the committee as either a voting or non-voting member. It was agreed that Greg should stay on the committee; as a voting member.
c. Don Guay volunteered to draft a resolution; the committee will vote to approve it, then send it to the Academic Affairs Committee.
3. Reminder: If anyone needs to come off the committee we need to know before Fall 2009.
4 New Business: Discuss Department/Discipline feedback received in the past two weeks on Step 4.
a. Gary Olsen met with the Departments of Communication and Music. The response was positive but the department was not willing to commit support until the details are known. They were unclear about Themes. Writing in Major and Capstone is not appropriate as part of all departments. General Education should be separate from all other departments. Disagreed with Foreign Language as a requirement.
b. Randy Olson received information from Cathy Glennon regarding Foreign Language requirements at UW-EC and UW-Madison. Foreign Language requirement might be superfluous to students learning a better command of English.
c. It was agreed that Shari Summers and Julie Schneider would get feedback from the Library.
5 The committee discussed if students are increasingly concerned with financial issues and if some type of related course should be added to the curriculum model. It is maybe a responsibility of General Education not Student Affairs; or perhaps there are learning responsibilities within all departments to deal with this subject. It was discussed if we should request Student Affairs take this up.
6 New Business: What to do in the next couple of weeks? It was agreed the committee should work on Learning Outcomes, dividing the responsibility. With more feedback from the different departments we can review them to see how they will fit in the model.
Q: Do we need a rationale for each Learning Outcome?
A: Add Learning Outcomes after the justification.
Work will be divided as follows:
a. Don Guay on Writing in the Major and Quantitative Literacy.
b. Shari Summers on First Year Experience
c. Julie Schneider on Foreign Language
d. Nisha Fernando and Julie Schneider on Inclusive Excellence.
e. Justin Glodowski on Social and Behavioral Science
f. Gary Olsen on the Arts and Humanities and on Writing-Speaking.
g. Greg Summers on History.
h. John Houghton on Environmental Responsibility.
i. Randy Olson on Natural Science.
7 The meeting was adjourned at 10:12am.
Respectfully submitted by Mary Holland