Baccalaureate Core Committee

All participants attended remotely

Voting members present: Heather Arbuckle, Aidas Banaitis, Kathryn Becker Blease, Daniel Faltesek, Andrew Harker, McKenzie Huber, Matthew Kennedy, Filix Maisch, Lori McGraw, Steven Morris, Rene Reitsma, David Roundy, Rorie Solberg, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Bob Paasch
Ex-Officio members present: Faculty Affairs – Heath Henry; Difference, Power & Discrimination – Nana Osei-Kofi; Ecampus – Karen Watte; WIC Director – Anita Helle
Guests present: Tam Belknap

Category Review Annual Timeline

• Review proposed timeline
  • The proposed timeline solidifies when reminders and letters are sent out to college designees, who serve as a point of contact for the Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC).
    • Are the college designees assigning dual-listed courses to the appropriate faculty or are they to inform the APA which faculty have dual-listed courses?
      1. Designees must send courses to the appropriate faculty.
    • Assigning a designee puts more accountability on the college.
  • The timeline can be posted online for faculty to review as needed.
  • The Science, Technology and Society reviews will be sent out in February 2021.
• Adopt new timeline – vote required, then send to Executive Committee for approval
  • Motion to approve; seconded: approved 13 in favor, none against, none abstaining.

2020-2021 Category Review Timeline Extension

• Request to extend July due date
  • Motion to make October 15 the due date; seconded: approved 13 in favor, none against, none abstaining.

Issues with the Schedule Desk

• SAPRs added to courses
  • Restrictions – level, college, pre-requisites, SAPRS
    • College restrictions go against the spirit of the Baccalaureate Core (BC). How are they being implemented?
      1. There are no written policies in place to prevent this type of special approval being added between review periods.
• WIC courses above 25
  • The cap is 20 for on-campus and 25 for online courses.
  • Between review periods, the enrollment cap tends to go over without WIC approval.
    • How are these getting around approval?
    • From an instructor point of view, the caps are important as the courses are teaching intensive. Opposing, the amount of students to the number of faculty available to teach the course means that caps are sneaking up.
    • The policy is in writing on the WIC webpage for the BC.
    • Some courses split enrollment of a course between two Teaching Assistants (TA). Is this a work around to the cap?
    • Vicki Tolar Burton sent out a newsletter approving 25 students in a WIC course.
    • From a budgetary perspective, there is a WIC course in CEOAS is heavily attended by students outside the major. The course is offered at a loss to the college.
      1. The level of TA support affects the budget.
  • Synthesis courses are capped at 70 and they also break the cap between review periods
• The APA suggests if the unit wants to add a restriction, it would first have to go through the committee. Not as intensive as a category review, but it would give the committee a chance to review the course and determine if the restriction or increased cap is appropriate.
  • Workflow – It would be added as a CIM proposal. They could potentially add their justification there. APA will confirm.
  • Does the BCC want to work with the Schedule Desk to develop a process for approving/denying restrictions?
  • Is the newsletter sent by Vickie enough to change the Faculty Senate policies? Did the Faculty Senate vote on a change to policies?
  • The BCC will work to develop some clear, written policy for the Schedule Desk.
  • The committee discussed adding a place to put the enrollment cap for a course in CIM. This change would take some time.
  • Co-chairs will reach out to the Registrar’s office to start the conversation.

Course Reviews

• No Discussion Needed
  • GEOG 241 – Difference, Power and Discrimination
    • Approved with no discussion needed
• Due
  • GEOG 330 – Writing Intensive Course
    • The course is dual-listed with Contemporary Global Issues (CGI) but there is no mention of it in the most recent version of the syllabus.
    • It is in CPS for a pre-requisite change, which looks fine. They discussed dropping the CGI category when working with the WIC office, but it is not on the proposal.
    • The designee has spoken with the professor and confirmed that the instructor is looking to drop the CGI category. The designee feels it would do better in the CGI category and will discuss dropping the WIC, instead, with the instructor.
    • Since the proposal makes no mention of dropping a category, they will need to add the CGI information back to the syllabus.
      1. Was recertified in CGI during the last review period so they just need to add that information back.
         • The BCC will request that the instructor email Janice Nave-Abele and CC the co-chairs to remove the CGI category.
      2. Motion to approve for the WIC category, seconded; approved with 13 in favor, none opposed, none abstaining.

Category Reviews – Contemporary Global Issues

• No Discussion Needed
  • PHL/REL 443-443H
    • Recertified with no discussion needed
• Discussion Needed
  • SUS 350
    • The writing assignment in three of the syllabi do not meet the word count requirements.
      1. Motion to decertify, seconded; approved with 13 in favor, none opposed, none abstaining.
  • DSGN 475
    • The syllabus makes no mention of the BC.
    • It is unclear if the writing assignment meets the word count requirements.
    • The form had almost no information on it regarding the course, content, links between outcomes and assessment.
      1. The original instructor for this course retired before it could be submitted. The course was passed over to another instructor who does not teach the course.
      2. The instructor tasked with submitting materials did not reach out for any assistance with the course.  The APA noted it was incredibly difficult to even locate a point of contact for the course.
         • Motion to decertify; seconded; 13 approved; none against; none abstaining
  • WGSS 350
    • All A’s, one incomplete, no withdrawals. The high A-rate makes the reviewer uncertain on what’s being assessed and how.
    • There is no explanation on why the course is a CGI course.
    • It’s unclear if any of the assignments meet the word count requirements.
    • The three biggest issues are:
      1. The writing assignments need to be clarified and the word count made clear on the syllabus.
      2. Syllabus links between category and course content and connections between assessment and class activities needs to be made clear. The information in the matrix can be added to the syllabus to fix this.
      3. An explanation on what is being assessed that all students receive an A.
         • Is there a written policy that states explicitly that all students can’t get an A?
         • Suggested some verbiage recommends that the submitter evaluate why all their students are receiving A’s.
           • Motion to decertify with a chance to resubmit, seconded; 11 approved; none against; no abstentions
           • Recommended verbiage to send to the instructor: We saw serious issues with the design of the assignment as well as the alignment of elements of the course (including assessment) to the learning outcomes (which is not syllabus visible). Evidence of this was seen both in the course syllabus itself as well as the distribution of grades.

Assign Remaining Courses in CIM/CPS

• There are seven courses that need reviews in CIM and CPS. Some of the courses are WICs. The BCC makes no guarantees that these courses will be approved by May 1.
  • Some members volunteered to do additional reviews.