Policies and Procedures, Page 2
May 19, 2009

Semester Conversion Policy and Procedures Sub-Committee

May 19, 2009

  1. Welcome and Introductions
  2. Called to order at 8:32 AM
  3. Present: Adrianne Lane, Wendy Lambing, Mark Bowers, Jill Collet, Cecily Goode, Cindy Hedrick, Krista Maddox, Fran Meyer, Rich Robles, Charlie Scruggs, Sonia Slomba, Tina Whalen
  4. New to the sub-committee: Michael Southern, Jean Griffin
  5. Minutes and Clarification
  6. Adrianne and Wendy offered clarification on the sub-committee’s charge and the approval process. The charge of the sub-committee is to review policies, identify the home department of the policy that needs revising and facilitate the approval process of the revision. Ultimate approval will be forwarded to the Steering Committee.
  7. The 14-week calendar and design principles were reviewed. It is worth noting that UC is going from one of the latest to one of the earliest commencement ceremonies. The Steering Committee fielded many faculty concerns as it related to the calendar, which led to the added calendar design principles. There was discussion on how the summer semester will be structured. It will be similar to what is already in place, except for the various lengths, as mentioned in the design principles.
  8. Update from the Steering Committee and Connected Sub Committees
  9. Infrastructure and Faculty Development sub-committees have yet to meet; IT and System Repopulation is progressing.
  10. Communication. The sub-committee is moving forward in getting the word out to the University’s various constituency groups (i.e., students, parents, faculty, staff, and community partners) and setting the tone in distributing information. The priority at the moment is to inform the students and parents going through Bearcat Bound Orientation this summer. A fact sheet and pledge to students will be inserted in every orientation binder.
    The sub-committee is also focused on designing the web site to provide information to the various constituency groups. In the future, if a student has questions about their progress to degree completion, they can refer to this web site. This sub-committee will be important later in the web site’s content population process, especially the “Frequently Asked Questions” pages.
    The web site should serve as the primary source for information and resources on the semester conversion process. Conceptually, departments offering information on their web site should be able to access information via an RSS feed. [As an aside, there was question on the University’s process to identify a new content management system. The selection is still in progress. Information will be dispersed via Governmental Relations as soon as a vendor is confirmed and a process for conversion has been outlined]
  11. Course & Curriculum Development. Current conversations focus on information management, including course numbering, course objective, and course review.
  12. To differentiate course numbering between quarter and semester classes, the proposed numbering structure will drop the college number prefix (20 for Engineering, 23 for DAAP, 15 for A&S, etc.). The discipline will remain the same, but the course number will feature a 4-digit number where the second digit is zero. For example, English 101 will go from being coded as 15ENGL101 to ENGL1001. The numbers will intentionally identify whether a course is developmental (<1000), a first-year course (1000-1099), sophomore level course (2000-2099), and so on. The new course numbering system will be helpful to communicate to transcript readers at the University (or elsewhere) when UC converts to semesters.
    Additionally, there will policy laid out to identify courses with unique teaching modalities (i.e., service-learning, honors, and labs). The letters will appear as a suffix after the course number. This is similar to what is already in place, but with more clarification.
  13. To build new courses, there will be an on-line database system in place where one would have to input characteristics on the course from objectives, whether it meets specific general education, if it has a specific modality (honors, service-learning, lab), etc.
  14. To review the courses, 64 cross-college teams have been established to review specific disciplines and identify common primary course attributes for automatic numbering (by December 2009). Supporting courses will be reviewed next by summer 2010. This process will assist in populating the student information system, program construction, and degree audit. CET&L will be offering workshops on how to build courses in the new system.
  15. Advising. The sub-committee met a few times already at a frequency of every other week. One issue under consideration is identifying exceptions to the degree progress audits and making sure there is consistency.
    To help facilitate the advising process, the sub-committee is considering resource software like UAchieve (Miami University’s DARWIN system, now called Red Lantern) and UDirect to review student progress towards degree completion. The software is projected to serve as a way to help students project course completion and the institution to improve forecasting course offerings and availability. The goal is to have the software in place by the end of the calendar year at a cost savings.
    In the future, we will have the sub-committee on the permanent agenda.
  16. Review Policy and Procedure Report from Spring 2009
    Semester Conversion Final Report May 21, 2008, Section 6.6 http://www.uc.edu/conversion/documents/SemesterConversion_Taskforce_Final_ ReportMay08.pdf
    We began reviewing the list of policies and issues Fran and Wendy put together based on the previous sub-committee’s work and the task force report. Unfortunately, time expired for us to have adequate conversations.
    A possible strategy for the sub-committee would be do identify one or two sub-committee members to serve as the point-of-contact between the sub-committee and University department.
  17. Other Business
  18. Future Meetings. It was decided to hold more frequent and longer meetings. Much of the meeting was focused on updating everyone, but not much time was reserved to actually reviewing the policies and outlining a strategy to address it with the University department. Meetings will be 1.5 hours and will meet every two weeks after the June 10 meeting. Adrianne will put out a Doodle poll for feedback on the three extra meetings.
    Sub-committee liaisons should forward minutes and notes from their respective meetings so that the sub-committee is informed ahead of time.
  19. Meeting adjourned at 10:00 AM