Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Geoffrey Barstow, Daniel Faltesek, Colin Johnson, Matthew Kennedy, Rene Reitsma, Randy Rosenberger, Justin St. Germain, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Thomas Shelly, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Kelsey Emard, Jack Istok, Lori McGraw, Ifeoma Ozoede
Ex-officio members present: Assessment & Accreditation – Heath Henry; Ecampus – Karen Watte; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: John Edwards, Meili Gunawan, McKenzie Huber, Michael Jefferies, Caryn Stoess

Guidance About Syllabi

• Policy: written in plain, accessible language. Technical terms should be defined in a way that is clear and easy to understand and formatting should allow for easy reading.
  • Disability access, i.e. machine readability; requiring Canvas.
  • Could this be added as a minimum syllabus requirement?
    • A change to the minimum syllabus requirements would need to be discussed with the Curriculum Council, as well.
• As new courses are being developed for the Core Education, can some guidance be developed so that courses can move easily through the CIM system.
• Cascades & Ecampus syllabi should have contact times listed consistently with the Registrar guidelines.

Core Education Policy

• Cross-listing Policies
  • Six language departments are considering using a shared designator for all their courses. They currently already use a shared designator in the Baccalaureate Core.
    • Others have heard that they are wanting to split designators so there seems to be some confusion over what it is they would like to do.
  • Each designator can put in up to two courses per category. Cross-listed courses would count against that for both categories.
    • This current policy leaves Religious Studies without any courses as all of their courses are cross-listed with History or Philosophy. Without an exception, they would not be able to put through any courses.
    • Cross-listing is what revived the program so it is why they have not uncoupled the cross-listing arrangements.
      • Can students be allowed to take courses in another program? Is it necessary for the courses to remain cross-listed?
      • If it is an existing cross-listing course, can the units make the decision which unit it would affect? New cross-listed courses would count against both units.

Action: Motion to accept the proposed policy: ‘For the purposes of course cap policies, all seats provisioned by any particular instructor, regardless of designator or number, are considered as a single unit. For the purposes of course cap policies, the course cap is the combined cross-listed maximum.’; seconded. Motion passes with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

WIC Variance Approval Transfer to Baccalaureate Core Committee

• Up until two years ago, course caps were not really being reinforced. There was no way to really do it. As a result, a number of WIC courses drifted. The Registrar’s office adopted CLSS – allows a class to not move forward for registration if it hits the course cap. Many WIC courses popped up with trying to set their caps well over the maximum of 25 (one going up to 200+ students). Exceptions were looked into to see if they were any reasonable exceptions. Some were found, many were brought back within compliance. The WIC office is now receiving course cap overrides for Winter term. What would a policy look like in this space?
  • Potential verbiage for a policy: Approvals for variances will be made by the Director of Core Education in accordance with the directives of the committee or in consultation with the co-chairs given the nature of the request and in the interest of maintaining timely operations.
• The potential policy will be discussed further next week.