Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Nancy Barbour (remote), Kathy Becker-Blease, Natalie Dollar (remote), Filix Maisch, Bob Paasch, David Roundy, Inara Scott, Rorie Spill Solberg
Voting members absent: Pat Ball, Patrice Dragon, McKenzie Huber, Weihong Qiu, Dana Sanchez, Kaplan Yalcin
Ex-Officio members present: Faculty Affairs – Heath Henry, WIC Director – Vicki Tolar Burton (remote)

• Category II Reviews
  • ANTH 484/584
    • The On-campus and Ecampus syllabi have different course descriptions.
    • The on-campus syllabus needs to update its credit hours from three to four.
    • No course specific learning outcomes (SLOs) are listed. They only list the Contemporary Global Issues (CGI) outcomes.
    • The Ecampus syllabus has both sets of outcomes but it is not clear how either of them are assessed.
    • The SLOs are discussed in the proposal form but the CGI outcomes are not.
      • After checking the curricular proposal system, the reviewer realized that they had mistakenly viewed an earlier draft of the syllabus.
        • The newest version does have the updated and correct information
        • There was initial concern that the minimum word-count of 1,250 words was not being met. However, there is an assignment that may have a typo:
          • The syllabus states the assignment is only 200 words, but the amount of research and work that goes with the assignment leads the committee to believe that they instructor may intend this to be a 2,000 word-count, which meets the requirements.
            • Approve, issues are minor and most were corrected in the updated draft. Recommend that the instructor address the possible typo in the assignment word count.
  • BIBB 317
    • The course was recently reviewed for the WIC category.
      • The Baccalaureate Core (BC) related questions were not answered on the review form.
    • It is missing several of the minimum syllabus requirements.
    • New phrases have been added to the WIC learning outcomes, which means they are no longer verbatim.
    • That individual writing equals 25% of the student grade needs to be made explicit on the syllabus.
    • The course has no schedule listed.
      • Send back for major revisions.
• Discussion
  • Upcoming Category Reviews
    • BOT 101
      • The BC statement is not verbatim.
      • How the BC learning outcomes are assessed is not clear in the syllabus.
        • The syllabus appears to be missing the course specific outcomes.
          • Decertify, send back for revisions.
    • BI 211/211H
      • There are some pre-requisites for this course and one of the syllabi explicitly states that students in two colleges cannot enroll
        • The course appears to be major specific, so is not recommended for students who just need the BC credit.
        • There are other bio courses that students can take.
      • There is no link between the SLOs and the BC outcomes.
      • How student assignments are assessed is unclear in the syllabus.
        • The course form does go into greater detail about how the students are assessed and how the assignments relate to the outcomes.
        • There is an ‘assessment grading’ matrix, but it is vague and refers to the learning outcomes with numbers. It makes no further connections.
          • This course has multiple syllabi and not all of them have this matrix.
      • The course form has a reference to the Cascades campus, but it ends abruptly, without going into detail on how the course might differ between campuses.
      • There is no discussion on how the critical thinking outcomes are met.
        • Recertify, connections between outcomes and assessment need to be made clear in every syllabus.
    • BI 212/212H
      • The provided syllabi all look good with some notes from the reviewer.
      • The reviewer found it difficult to judge from the syllabi the extent to which the course illustrates connections with other subject areas, how it examines the historical context in which scientific understanding has developed, or illustrates the influence of science on society. The syllabi could be improved by adding an explanation of how the course does these things.
        • Recertify. Send a note back to the originator with suggestions for some changes.
  • It has come to the committee chairs that a student is appealing to have a course they at Central Oregon Community College fill their BC requirement in Literature & the Arts.
    • Is there a parallel course that it can be compared to?
      • A co-chair tried to find a comparable course, but was not able to locate one.
        • The committee suggests sending it to someone who can compare the courses and see if it meets the BC requirements and SLOs.

Minutes prepared by Caitlin Calascibetta