Undergraduate Curriculum Forum
Minutes
Adanti Student Center, Room 301
Thursday
March 15, 2007
Present:
J. Fields Chair, M. Camron, N. Chrissidis, K. Cummings, D. Flynn, J. Goralski, S. Grubacic, M. Heidmann, R. Hunter, G. Kowalczyk, T. Lin, N. Marano, J. Mielczarski, R. Mugno, M. Narumanchi, J. Oppedisano, D. Pettigrew, H. Podna, K. Rondinone, E. Schmitt, C. Weed, D. Weiss, and E. West.
I. Call to order 9:35 a.m.
II. Announcements
· J. Oppedisano announced that P. Oley is in a Hospice facility. Our prayers are with her.
· D. Pettigrew announced that the 9th annual Faculty Research Conference will be April 21st.
· C. Weed announced that D. Pettigrew’s book is being published and events are being held at Liel, France.
· Members from the Strategic Planning Committee in attendance: M. Diamantis, R. Herron, and C. Thompson.
III. Approval of minutes of 3/01/2007. Minutes missing attendance, will be approved at the next meeting.
IV. Acceptance of standing committee minutes of 3/08/2007.
· WACC – accepted 1/25 & 2/8. The following motions were voted on:
Motion: Henceforth, committee minutes will be approved by the WACC prior to submission to UCF.
All approved with 3 abstentions.
Motion: The WACC Writing Contest will be suspended this year.
Motion approved, with one opposition, and 3 abstentions.
Motion: For UCF to approve all of the W courses approved by WACC during the last few months (Complete list available from WACC).
All approved with 2 abstentions.
· PRAC – accepted 3/8 minutes
Motion: PRAC by-laws be approved by UCF.
Discussion ensued over whether or not to accept by-laws when not all by-laws have been accepted and are not uniform. Vote did not occur.
· UWIC – accepted 3/8 minutes. Several motions were brought to UCF.
Motions:
1. The permanent FYE committee is composed of 16 members, with 6 from the School of Arts and Sciences; 2 from the School of Communication, Information, and Library Science; and, 1 each from the School of Business, School of Education, School of Health and Human Services, the Academic Advising Center, the Office of Assessment, the Office of Faculty Development, the Office of Student Affairs, and Student Supportive Services.
2. All members of the permanent FYE Committee have voting rights.
3. The permanent FYE committee's proposal for a permanent FYE program is not binding until it is approved by a university-wide faculty referendum.
A lively discussion ensued about the role of UCF, the role of non-academic members of FYE, and voting rights for all members or only academic members. Due to time conflicts (steering committee attendance) a new motion was made:
Motion: The motions on FYE will be tabled to continue discussion.
This motion was passed with a vote of 21-1-1 (approved-opposed-abstain).
· Suspended acceptance of other minutes to attend to agenda item VII.
· NMC
· NPIC
V. Other Reports
Ad hoc Committee on Standards
VI. Old Business
Motion to establish an ad hoc committee to review the UCF by-laws.
VII. Presentation on the Strategic Plan.
Discussion of Strategic Plan ensued. Some ideas about academic excellence were discussed: smaller class size and more full-time faculty hires. Also discussed the focus of the university: should we shift from a comprehensive university to a more focused goal. Should we pick our goal or will our lack of choice choose the goal for us? A final draft will be available in April.
- Adjournment 10:50 a.m
Undergraduate Curriculum Forum
Minutes
Adanti Student Center, Room 301
Thursday
March 1, 2007
Present:
J. Fields Chair, A. Abugri, N. Chrissidis, C. Coron, S. DiFrancesco, M. Fede, D. Flynn, M. Geelan, S. Grubacic, M. Heidmann, R. Hunter, G. Kowalczyk, T. Lin, N. Marano, D. Marino, K. Marsland, J. Mielczarski, R. Mugno, M. Narumanchi, D. Pettigrew, H. Podnar, K. Rondinone, E. Schmitt, M. Shea, and D. Weiss.
I. Call to order 9:35 a.m.
II. Announcements
· S. Williams is present for the First-Year Experience (FYE) discussion.
· D. Pettigrew announced a University-wide lecture by Tom Parker on March 5 at noon.
· Cinema du Monde screened “White” and will be screening “Welcome to Sarajevo” Wednesday, March 14 at 7:30. Film announcements are available under SCSU events under films.
· M. Heidmann said the writing workshop is postponed until August.
· E. Schmidt announced the lecture on childhood bilingualism
· N. Henderson announced a lecture on the transition between high school and college.
· M. Shea announced his talk on writing workshops from the Faculty Development Office, Mar 4 at noon in EN B253.
· T. Lin announced the 64 Days of Violence. Next week, the lecture on Toilet-training, gender-neutral bathrooms, March 5 at 7:30 in EN C112. Check the Women’s Studies website for more details.
· J. Fields mentioned A. Schlessinger passed away. Also, a total lunar eclipse will happen Saturday around sunset and barring weather, telescopes will be set up at Southern.
· Town Hall Meeting from 1-3 (Friday) the pre-ultimate draft.
III. Approval of minutes of 2/01/2007. (Note: no Meeting 2/15/07).
· unanimous approval of minutes from 2/01/07 with one abstention.
· Due to the visit from Provost Williams, the minutes will be moved to address FYE first.
IV. Other Reports
· First Year Experience Committee
· Discussion ensued about the last FYE meeting. They discussed the four options: Honors College, LINKS, and two new versions, a common theme and a disciplined-based model. Questions arose about credit for students. S. Williams mentioned they are trying to implement faculty incentives (release time) for future semesters.
V. Acceptance of standing committee minutes of 2/08/2007 and 2/22/2007.
· NMC – minutes accepted
Motions:
- Motion to approve revised program proposal, BA-HIS, BS-HIS (with teacher certification),
- Motion to approve revised course proposal, HIS 330, Religion and Society in the Byzantine Empire, and
- Motion to approve revised course proposal, HIS 343, Modern Eastern Europe
All approved with one abstention.
· NPIC – minutes accepted
· PRAC – minutes accepted
· UWIC – minutes accepted. Several motions were brought to UCF:
Motion:
HIS 313 is removed from the list of courses satisfying the AUR in World Civilizations.
All approved with one abstention.
Motion
Revised course proposal HIS 242 is accepted.
This motion was not voted on.
· WACC – no votes made during the meeting due to lack of time.
Motion: Henceforth, committee minutes will be approved by the WACC prior to submission to UCF. The motion was passed unanimously.
Motion: The WACC Writing Contest will be suspended this year.
New Motion: The WACC requested that motions approved of during WACC sub-committee meeting be accepted without needing to be approved by UCF.
· Discussion ensued. UCF rules dictate that all sub-committee motions must go through the main UCF body.
· No vote was conducted.
- Adjournment 10:50 a.m
Minutes of the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Standards Document, February 8, 2007.
Present: Rachael Vaters-Carr (Chair), Joe Fields, Mark Heidmann, Michele Thompson.
The Ad-Hoc committee continued its examination and discussion of the forms used by UCF for various types of proposals. Although most of these forms have been sent to the various sub-committees of UCF for review, we continued to discuss the development of a Minor Program Proposal Form and the Revised Minor Program Proposal Form. Discussion included the need to clarify the titles of the forms to reflect that they refer to a minor in a program, not a minor revision of a program. It was agreed that the titles should read New Program Proposal for a Minor, Revised Program Proposal for a Minor, and so on with regard to majors also. An attempt to combine the new and revised Program forms with the minor in a program forms will be made for the next meeting.
Having put the question of nouns resembling adjectives behind us we moved on to a discussion of the information requested on the form. We briefly discussed such points as amount of room for a list of required courses and we noted that obviously there isn't as much room needed for this on a form for a proposal regarding a minor as there is for one on a form regarding a major. Someone asked what sorts of requirements are standard for a minor? It was noted that History is currently putting through a proposal the main objective of which is to ensure that no one can get a minor in History with only 100 levels courses but that she has no idea what most other departments do. Various examples were given and we returned to the catalogue for more information. From the information found in the catalogue and the examples brought up in discussion it was determined that minors vary both widely and wildly from department to department. Apparently here at SCSU minors range from the completely structured with almost every course mandated to the completely unstructured in which only a certain number of credits in the discipline is demanded for a minor. It was discussed whether minors should require at least some upper level courses. There was some discussion that as a practical matter in most departments there wouldn't be enough 100 level courses for someone to get a minor with only 100 level courses anyway. The fact was brought up that a number of years ago Troy Paddock tried to get a proposal through UCF to mandate certain things regarding minors campus-wide. While no one could recall just what the requirements Troy proposed were, it is thought they included a demand that all minors require a certain number of courses above the 100 level. It was noted that there should be information presented about UCF guidelines regarding the differences between 100, 200, 300, and 400 level courses.
The question arose as to how to make the New and Revised Minor in a Program forms reflect this wide difference in requirements for minors. It was suggested that perhaps the forms could have spaces to be regarded as sets and that for those departments that prefer the free form approach that some of these sets on the form could in fact be "empty sets." An observation suggests that simply by putting boxes on a form we were in fact setting forth a requirement of some sort and then she wondered whether such a de facto requirement should go through the full UCF. It was noted that there are probably a lot of things we are doing that will have to go through the full UCF and that Joe’s successor as Chair of UCF will inherit this document that we are creating much as Jim Tait inherited the problem of creating a constitution for UCF.
The question was raised as to whether or not there is still such a thing, at Southern, as a 'concentration' or a 'specialization' and how that is different from a formal minor? After some amount of discussion with numerous examples given from various departments it was determined that several departments do indeed have this but we were not sure whether or not they should officially be called 'concentrations' or 'specializations'. Upon consulting the catalogue, it was noted that specializations/concentrations seem to be rather important to some departments, Art being a good example. Someone noted that until very recently minors did not appear on transcripts either and it was reiterated that specializations/concentrations should appear on transcripts and on diplomas too. We were not certain whether or not Banner could, or would, do this but we all agreed that it should. As we continued to peruse the catalogue it was determined that the term that should be used is 'specialization' rather than 'concentration.' It was noted that although the term used clearly should be 'specialization' that there are some discrepancies in the catalogue and that Geology, for one, continues to refer to this as a 'concentration.'
The meeting shifted to a discussion of the last UCF meeting. It was discussed that members had gotten positive feedback from a number of people regarding our attempts to revise the forms with a view to consistency. Then the topic of Learning Objectives versus Learning Outcomes came up yet again. Rachael said that she would still like to see a forum of some sort on the philosophical differences between Learning Objectives and Learning Outcomes. Mark said that he had contacted Ken Gatske to get the document Ken wrote about this subject. The conversation shifted to the motion made at the last UCF meeting regarding the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee to review the Constitution and By-Laws. For clarity, Joe brought up the fact that the various subcommittees of UCF are going to have to come up with formal bylaws because the Faculty Senate wants them. A brief discussion of the rationale for this motion ensued and some members would like to see examples of these discrepancies, as it was determined in some instances, this is not actually a discrepancy but that some subcommittees are just not following the constitution and that that is not the same thing as a discrepancy
Discussion returned to the motion made at the last UCF meeting and the committee discussed whether or not they should be charged with this work. It was discussed that the bylaws will in some way relate to the document that we are creating and also to the forms that we are trying to bring consistency to. It was determined that by the nature of our work, we had mastered the documents more than anyone else had to date. At this point it became obvious to everyone that any committee charged with creating bylaws would have to master the forms that we have spent nearly a year wrestling with and as the implications of that sank in there was a moment of complete silence. When we recovered ourselves an animated discussion broke out concerning our timeline for not only this semester but also next fall semester since it looks like we may well still be in existence then. A number of parameters shaping this timeline were discussed. We ended the meeting by agreeing about what items are on our agenda for our next meeting and adjourned promptly at 10:50.