Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Pat Ball (via phone), Nancy Barbour, Isabelle Brock, Natalie Dollar (via Webex), Filix Maisch, Bob Paasch, Dana Sanchez, Inara Scott (via Webex), Bill Smyth, Rorie Spill Solberg
Voting members absent: Weihong Qiu
Ex-Officio members present: Academic Affairs – Heath Henry, Ecampus – Shannon Riggs, WIC Director – Vicki Tolar Burton

Category II Reviews

• Discussion Needed
  • PHL 209
    • There is no clear distinction between the Baccalaureate Core (BC) and the course specific learning outcomes. It is also not clear how they are assessed.
    • The syllabus does not have the correct Student Conduct link.
      • Send back for revisions
  • MUS 309
    • Bacc Core learning outcomes not clearly stated and bacc core statement not verbatim
    • Assessments not linked to outcomes in syllabus, but provided materials show that they are; it needs to be made clear on the syllabus
    • Approve with syllabus changes
    • The BC learning outcomes are not clearly stated. The statement about how the course fulfills BC requirements is not verbatim
    • It’s not clear in the syllabus how students are assessed
      • Provided materials show that they are but it needs to be more clearly stated in the syllabus itself.
        • Approve with syllabus changes

Discussion Item

• Issue of Perspectives Courses being offered outside the disciplinary area
• The College of Forestry has submitted a course proposal for a Natural Resources course. They are requesting that it be a Baccalaureate Core course, under the categories of Literature and the Arts and Western Culture.
• The primary concern with this is:
  • The study of literature is a discipline. Can faculty who do not have a focus in literature, teach the course in such a way that it fulfills the requirements of the BC learning outcomes.
  • Additionally, if the current instructor does have a focus in literature, there is no guarantee the next instructor who teaches it will.
• The course is also being offered as an upper division course, meaning it is not covering the basics of literature, but going into more depth.
• Unlike other categories, which are more broad and can be taught under various disciplines, Literature and the Arts courses are housed primarily within College of Liberal Arts, typically in the School of Writing, Literature and Film, as these courses have more specific requirements in how literature is assessed.
  • This came back again to the instructor issue; can an instructor who has not studied literature at the Masters level properly teach an upper division course that heavily focuses on assessing literature.
• The question that also came up was that with the additional category of Western Culture, can instructors efficiently cover the learning outcomes for both categories, as well as any course specific learning outcomes.
• There was additional concern that the ‘Natural Resources’ portion wasn’t really being focused on and one member felt that you could remove the Nature aspect of the course and replace it with any other topic.
• It was revealed that the College of Engineering does have an Art class within the BC, but it is also cross-listed and available to other students to take, even if they are not in the College of Engineering.
  • The Natural Resources course would only be available to students within the College of Forestry.
  • There are concerns that students in the College of Forestry would not be getting the diverse experience that the BC attempts to provide.
• The discussion came down to two points:
  • Should the BC assess courses on a case by case basis when it comes to more discipline based categories like Literature and the Arts?

Or

• Should the BC put a policy in place/change the standing rules, to say that Literature and the Arts courses can only be provided by the College of Liberal Arts, due to the nature of the discipline and its specific outcomes?
• A decision was not reached and the topic will be further discussed at the next meeting.