Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Geoffrey Barstow, Daniel Faltesek, Kelsey Emard, Colin Johnson, Matthew Kennedy, Lori McGraw, Rene Reitsma, Justin St. Germain, Kari-Lyn Sakuma
Voting members absent: Jack Istok, Michelle McAllaster, Randy Rosenberger, Kaplan Yalcin
Ex-officio members present: Ecampus – Karen Watte; Academic Affairs – Heath Henry; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: John Edwards, Regan Gurung, McKenzie Huber, Shain Panzeri

General Education Policy

• General Education Faculty Development – Regan Gurung
  • Pros
    • Gen Ed (GE) is a distinct curriculum, with distinct needs 
    • ensure awareness of GE, downstream enhancements in assessment and compliance 
    • teach graduate students how to teach – professional development 
  • Cons
    • bottle necks
  • Due to the positive impact of professional development on quality of teaching and student satisfaction, all General Education instructors should enroll in professional development, to be renewed on a periodic basis.
  • Some categories may require additional, and ongoing, professional development as is described in the category criteria and/or other General Education policies.
  • General Education professional development will be provided on an institutional (OSU-wide) basis and will be provisioned to meet campus demand.
  • Professional development takes on two forms, which are designed to accommodate differences in the complexity and novelty of courses, types, outcomes, expertise, and experience.
    • To develop a General Education course, the developer(s) will complete the Course Adaptation Design Institute (CADI) experience, for which compensation may be available for developers.
    • To teach an approved General Education course, an instructor will complete OSU's General Education Pedagogical Support and Development program.
  • In the event that professional development is inadequately provisioned, with the awareness of Academic Affairs, temporary waivers may be granted.
  • Emergency circumstances which require a temporary waiver may exist, but are exceedingly rare (such as the sudden unavailability of an instructor) (Failure to hire faculty or loss of situational awareness by a unit are not included in these).
  • In these circumstances, the Director of General Education (the responsible party for the waiver) and the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning will actively work with faculty across units to find a solution, which may include a temporary waiver, an MOU for support from a different unit, or some other solution.
• The goal of professional development is to provide faculty in gen ed with the support and mental space for effective course development and delivery via access to:
  • Up to date evidence-informed practices
  • Exemplars of LOCR-based assessments, assignments and instructional methods
  • Pedagogical specialists
  • A faculty community
• D.A.M.I.T. – Course Design, Assessment, Instructional Methods, Inclusive Teaching, Technology
• Once trained, faculty will not need to redo the course often. Recertification at around 3-5 years.
• Some members of the committee feel that the implementation group really needs to argue for financial incentives for this plan.
  • The Bacc Core Committee doesn’t have authority to award funds but the steering committee will have a conversation about it this week

Course Review

• SPAN 336 - Textos y Narrativas del Mundo Hispanohablante: Texts and Narratives of the Spanish-Speaking World
  • Course could continue with its current course number but is undergoing large changes.
  • Excessive and enforced pre-requisites, restricted to juniors and seniors – it means the course is not accessible to all students.
  • Is removing mentions of history to replace with language.
  • High DFW rate among students in the course for Bacc Core credit.
  • Changing the focus of the class which affects the category. May be a better fit for Literature and the Arts, but it is overall, not a good fit for the Bacc Core.

Action: Motion not to approve with notes explaining the committees reasoning and recommendations; seconded. The motion passes with 9 votes in favor, 0 votes against and 0 votes abstaining.

General Education Policy

• Course Credit Transfers
  • Create framework for transfer of credits under shared governance.
  • Pros
    • Establishes direct equivalency
    • Respects OSU decisions about core curriculum (2) 
    • Does not award credit if neither institution sees a course as GE; we don’t invent GE credit where it was never assumed.  
  •  Cons
    • General Education here but not there, why? Is it actually direct equivalency?  
    • How often do we check the direct equivalency table?
  • As long as the outside course meets about 75% of the OSU outcomes, the committee may consider it as meeting the requirement for transfer students. 
  • Make sure the articulation teams have the skills and bandwidth to do what is being asked.