Baccalaureate Core Committee

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

Course Reviews

• ENT/HORT 331 – Pollinators in Peril
  • How do we handle variance requests – i.e., Synthesis courses requesting larger course caps.
  • They are looking to go 2x over the current cap of 70.
  • They claim they can cover the additional students using GTAs.
    • What is the given support needed?
    • More FTE would be needed for the enrollment they’re seeking. Adding 10 hours (.1 FTE) does not feel adequate.
    • They claim they are uniquely suited to handle the increased number of students.
    • Does the increased workload conflict with the bargaining agreement?
  • This sort of issue is likely to come up with the new GenEd program, as well.
  • If approved, it could set a precedent.
  • Motion to deny the request to increase the course cap to 135 as the resources are not sufficient; seconded. The motion passes with 8 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

GenEd Policy Discussion

• Expertise
  • There is no policy now, on occasion we have made judgements in this space, but only as a last resort. This is not a Human Resources committee, and we do not have expertise about the activity of every unit or their faculty.
    • What is expertise?
      • Faculty Senate has enshrined “expertise” as a requirement to submit a proposal (April 13, 2023)
      • New instructors (early term graduate students, MA vs PhD) – should offer them teaching, but is that something for their program to provide?
      • Related areas?
        • How do we know? Does general instructional expertise transfer across all domains?
      • Who makes an initial claim to expertise?
      • Expertise in content domain vs expertise in teaching said content
      • Tenure Track Utilization vs Non-Tenure Track utilization
  • Pros to a policy
    • avoids out of area teaching
    • expands possible units offering proposals
  • Cons to a policy
    • Smaller pool of possible instructors
    • Costs of conflict related to expertise
    • Portfolio development costs
    • Costs for faculty evaluation can be managed during hiring and review processes, transcripts should be on-hand in case of Accreditation audit
  • Is an existing policy enforced?
    • Higher Learning Commission (HLC):
      • 3.C.5. The institution has processes and resources for assuring that instructors are current in their disciplines and adept in their teaching roles; it supports their professional development.
      • HLC: Instructors (excluding for this requirement teaching assistants enrolled in a graduate program and supervised by faculty) possess an academic degree relevant to what they are teaching and at least one level above the level at which they teach.
      • HLC: domain + pedagogical skill needed: knowledge about the subject area (content knowledge), knowledge about general teaching and learning strategies (pedagogical knowledge), and knowledge about teaching and learning strategies specific to their subject area (pedagogical content knowledge). For example, if university teachers lack disciplinary knowledge, they will not be able to perform well in their teaching tasks. However, we choose to use teacher expertise as a conceptual perspective for this paper and as a result focus on teacher tasks, because it is focused on what teachers do in practice rather than focused on what they know, value or are. Teacher tasks are easier to recognize in practice, and thus are highly relevant for teaching practice (McDonald et al., 2013)
  • As Compliance. Legal construct of expertise, which is a compliance matter, which does not define discipline or domain. Highest level standard: An MA/MS/JD/MBA at least in the area of Gen Ed taught + pedagogical development. Mid-level: 18 grad credit hours in domain + substantial record. Low-level: audit risk.
  • Domain and disciplinary linkage are not defined by HLC, but are required. Faculty Senate (FS) formally does not recognize an articulation between domains and units. Per HLC this is generally done with a credential. FS took the easy answer off the table here. Even the easy answer needs an audit.
  • Ontologically, is expertise in people or curricula? Is expertise intrinsic to the curriculum? Does this beg the question of college governance? How do we understand the relationship between the curriculum and the instructor who is asked to implement that curriculum? Especially in the context of ecampus.
    • It’s up to the unit to make sure the teachers are qualified to teach their courses.
    • How many grad students are teaching courses? Is it within the purview of the committee to dictate whether or not a grad student can teach a gen ed course? Wouldn't a policy about grad students teaching courses also need to be reviewed by the Curriculum Council?
    • At minimum, Grad students would need to go through the CADI training.
      • Note: CADI will not create expertise in a field. It will help a person with that expertise prepare to put in a course proposal that fits GenEd.
    • The Baccalaureate Core Committee’s (BCC) role is evaluating for GenEd. Can note to proposers that the BCC considers the comments and concerns raised by liaisons.
      • Could do conditional approvals - approved for Gen Ed - but we note that there are unresolved issues elsewhere in the CIM process.
  • Logistical challenges. When does a college check? Who initiates a challenge? Is a continuous process better than a challenge model? The relationship between expertise loss and course drift (alternate hypothesis: overworked individuals are fatigued).
  • Where does presumption lie? With the proposer unless indicated otherwise? Colleges will make convenience-based choices. Zones of scrutiny? (not precluded by FS).
  •  Notes: 
    • If accepted practices in HR, curricular workflow, and graduate professional development are maintained by demonstrating reasonable governance, the use of normal means should be enough to see that expertise is provisioned. 
    • Units concerned with a lack of expertise should use the liaisons process to contest proposals deemed unfit. 
    • We have dispensed with the claim that expertise exists in documents.
    • Can we have an expertise policy in place for the Transitions category, at least – it would not be appropriate to have people new to/unfamiliar with OSU teaching courses about transitioning to life at OSU.
      • Transitions is likely to be a very complex category that will have a lot of working parts and will take some time and effort to work out.
• Learning Outcome (LO) Assessment
  • We currently fuse assessment and compliance. 
  • Compliance is a prior question to assessment, and that question has an answer. If you enjoy working at an accredited university, you need to do this.
  • Pros
    • Required by assessor 
    • Understand nature of student learning 
    • Communicates level of commitment to units before they apply.  
    • Good science  
    • Many areas have an LO that mandates the creation of such an item (Social Science may be the exception) 
  • Cons
    • Takes a lot of work  
    • Reduces flexibility to find assessable items on the fly 
    • Objections to assessment generally  
  • Policy needs to scope what assessment is, who does it, and what that means. 
  • This is an entirely new domain as we have not meaningfully assessed before.  
  • We could specify our right to call for a sample of all products from the “production” LO of each category.  
  • We need to harmonize, but not fuse, assessment and compliance.
    • Assessment and Accreditation will be developing assessment rubrics for each category over the summer
  • Proposed policy: All courses participating in general education must, upon proposal, identify their signature assignment which may be used for comprehensive assessment of student outcomes in any given category.  

 Mechanisms: 

1. Baccalaureate Core Committee reviews 2% of signature assessments in two categories each year  
2. We solicit faculty from each category to participate and perhaps review more. 
3. We require faculty to participate or be ejected from the Gen Ed.