Baccalaureate Core Committee

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

General Education Professional Development – Regan Gurung

• One committee member surveyed 8 senior-level instructional faculty in Public Health & Human Sciences. These faculty have extensive experience teaching undergraduate students, including in the Baccalaureate Core.
  • Should this be required?
    • It is not typically the OSU tradition to require. Instead, we nudge. So, if we require something, it must be a very good product that works well for almost everyone.
    • Training should be compensated.
    • If we want transformation, then paid support for faculty is a must. Some folks noted that it is likely a legal requirement to set aside FTE for training. Happy instructors = Happy students. One person suggested 1 credit of FTE for training. Something like that.
  • How much time would this involve?
    • No more than 3 hours, depending on the situation. An initial online unit was supported, for a limited time (between 2 to 3 hours). There was an openness to ongoing learning communities of limited commitment too.
    • There was high praise for the way WIC and DPO are managed.
  • If we have a system that works, we should not mess with it. This is particularly true for the fact that we are engaged in a transformative DPO curriculum. One particularly experienced educator noted that if she participated in the same high-quality training that she experienced with WIC (online) and DPO (in person), she would be happy to participate. She walked away from those trainings with actions/activities/skills that she could immediately apply in her classroom. We need a mix of learning and application. She does not want to feel like she is just “checking a box.” She took these trainings with a reduced load for teaching AND both trainings were paid.
  • We should be clear about what gaps exist and how the trainings will fill these gaps.
  • There is a logistical concern.
  • There are a wide range of faculty and GTAs who serve as Instructors of Record for the Bacc Core—online, on the Corvallis Campus, and on the Cascades Campus. People are hired under a variety of circumstances to teach these courses too. So, a strict interpretation of any requirement will be untenable.
  • There is concern that topics such as Seeking Solutions will not be properly addressed too. Training, for example, needs to occur before courses are developed.
• Transitions, Seeking Solutions, DPO, WIC will have specific trainings, from what has been proposed
• Is there a concern that faculty will be working on designing their courses this summer prior to proposing them to the bacc core committee for approval? Or are we assuming that courses that are taken through a CADI will become a part of the new core?
  • The committee will not be reviewing course proposals until Fall term as the Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC) is a nine-month committee and does not meet during Summer term.
• Can training be offered asynchronously?
• The current draft includes some synchronous time, but it could also be attended remotely so faculty at Cascades and other OSU campuses can all attend.
• How often will training institutes be offered?
  • The plan is to offer these courses starting September 2023, and will then be offered every quarter.
  • It is not set that WIC or DPO will be included in the CADI.

General Education Policy

• Course 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 eq? 
    • 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.
• Professional Development
  • Pros
    • 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
  • This will be discussed more and voted on next week.

Course Review

• FR 439 – French – Advanced Composition
  • This will be discussed during the March 8 meeting.

General Education Core Installation Procedure

• Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC) sets its own docket and agenda, unlike Curriculum Council. 
• Terrain already covered: major courses, low enrollments, inappropriate classes, non-curricular uses of the catalog...
• Factors:
  • Uncertainty reduction 
    • We need a structured framework
    • Practicality – can't build on the fly
• Collaborations/deliberations
• Macro process realignment 
• Diverse org structures – from College of Earth, Ocean, & Atmospheric Sciences to College of Liberal Arts
• Bigger metaphorical debates:
• Is GenEd a distinct domain of practice? 
• What do faculty do on a macro-level when groups of faculty members abdicate their roles?
• Neoliberal 
  •  Pros
  • the faculty never have hard conversations  
  • intermediate reviews by schools, liaisons, colleges, should be removed to increase speed of market formation 
  • no change needed from any existing management practices 
  • very rapid installation of full new core possible 
  • liquidates intercollege space, colleges should hire their own specialists for DPO2 and SeSo (boom bust cycles for faculty are good) 
• Cons 
  • the budget model remains unchanged 
  • the faculty never have hard conversations 
  • faculty lack situational awareness, may not understand that they are routinely bailed out 
  • poor stewardship of resources, endgames: inequity OR loss of control  
  • old core sunset compromised 
  • never actually exists, “consumer” units will set the core to be taken if they don’t trust the “producer” units. The market fails so spectacularly that it never comes into existence.   
• Managed Install 
  • Pros 
    • stewardship of resources 
    • faculty groups empowered to make decisions 
    • smooths transition period 
    • drives deliberation in the inter-college space 
    • Soft solicitation by BCC (nudge) 
  • Cons
    • requires org change/existing narratives about FTE and budget fall apart 
    • faculty might make the wrong choices, there may be disagreements among faculty, we might choose the wrong level for the decision to be made (college vs unit) 
    • depends on inter-college utilization, maybe that is bad (maximizing total head count should be the priority) or risky 
•  Command Economy 
  • Pros
    • very efficient, windfalls enable the creation of new programs, student opportunities, research  
    • high quality - BCC exclusively solicits means that courses fit categories, assessment is easy, further professional development 
    • rapid organizational change  
    • dramatic uncertainty reduction, inter-college space controlled by dean-to-dean agreements  
    • entirely new budget model 
  •  Cons
    • BCC could make bad choices  
    • This model relies on the idea that much of shared governance moves to the PCOD level 
    • faculty should make choices, even if we don’t think each faculty member is a faculty unto themselves 
• Co-chairs loosely follow submission order, they tend to put first hearings first, subsequent hearings may be delayed in non-emergent circumstances
  • To manage multiple administrative proprieties, facilitate faculty development, and encourage thoughtful reflection: The GenEd committee will begin review of courses with the start of Fall 2023 term. 
  • During the 23-24 academic year, the GenEd committee will evaluate course proposals in order of the following institutional priorities.  
    • Courses with mandatory state changes (CCN or so called ‘Z courses’) 
    • Courses with a history, or a reasonable assumption of heavy rotation (offered every quarter, such as GenEd Psych), especially those serving the Cascades Campus. 
    • Courses that involve collaboration between colleges. 
    • First submissions by units (as noted by their designator) 
    • Courses which do not require Ecampus redevelopment 
    • All other courses as per 3 
      • (Keep in mind that these are assignment priorities. The actual speed with which the GenEd committee completes its reviews may vary. If a review requires multiple rounds of revision, it is not unusual for the committee to defer discussion of those revisions in favor of first-hearings for others. If revisions are needed, it is good practice to take a breath and consult with Academic Affairs or the co-chairs before resubmitting.)  
  • To conserve scarce resources, we will only consider Z and Series courses plus up to two (2) additional courses per unit (as noted by their designator) during the 23-24 academic year. 
    • DPO2 courses with an established MOU will always be considered. 
    • Each number under which a course is listed would count. Each listing under a designator would be counted, cross-listing strategies should be carefully evaluated.  
    • At some point, such as the beginning of the 24-25 academic year (to be announced by co-chairs), this limit would rise to +five (5). At least one year after full installation and once assessment workflows are set to resume, the committee should consider removing the limit, if appropriate. The earliest appropriate time for this would be Fall 2026.  
    • It is understood that designators do not always map cleanly onto academic units (there are designators without units, units with multiple designators, non-operative designators, etc.). While there is some risk of inequity, we believe that this is a reasonable method.  
  • Unit faculty should carefully and collectively decide which proposals will move forward. This may require a culture change in some schools or colleges.
  • This model is intended to reduce uncertainty and allow reasonable unit and faculty access to the GenEd program from across campus. It is the intent of the designers of this procedure to discourage strategic action to hoard resources or overwhelm processes.