Baccalaureate Core Committee

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

• Category II Reviews
  • HST 470/570
    • The syllabus is missing the student conduct link.
    • Reviewer not present to discuss further.
      • Add to next meeting’s agenda.
  • PAC 332
    • There is no explanation on how the Baccalaureate Core (BC) outcome is assessed.
      • Return with request to submitter to go into more detail on outcome assessment.
  • PAC 323
    • There is no explanation on how the BC outcome is assessed.
    • The course lists a pre-requisite, that is also a BC course.
      • If students have already taken the pre-requisite and have their BC credit, why would they take the next course?
      • The pre-requisite can also be met through ‘equivalent experience’ so students can test into it.
      • Return with request to submitter to go into more detail on outcome assessment.
  • TRAL 357
    • The course already exists in the catalog, but the submitter would like to add it as a BC course in the Contemporary Global Issues (CGI) category.
    • The course currently focuses on parks and protected areas in the US but the instructor has attempted to expand the course to cover how the US policies affect or inspire other countries’ park programs and how they compare and contrast to each other once policies have been implemented.
    • The reviewer noted that the global aspect felt notably sparse and felt that it may not meet the CGI requirements.
      • One committee member suggested it might be better suited to the Social Processes and Institutions category (SPI) but SPI focuses more on lower division courses and has more specific requirements.
    • The reading assessments seem to focus more on US centered parks and protected area policies and the ‘Choose your own Adventure’ format could lead to students not assessing any of the international options.
      • The submitter states that 70% of the course focuses on global matters and upon further inspection, there does seem to be more to it than initially observed.
        • The syllabus is 18 pages, making it difficult to find specific information.
        • Supplemental documents do make the connection to global issues more clear but it needs to be clear in the syllabus.
        • The final project is a webpage that explores and analyzes an international park or protected area.
          • The writing component is a paper that critically analyzes the management approaches in international parks and protected areas and how they compare to US sites.
    • The committee agrees that the syllabus needs some restructuring.
      • It is too long and finding relevant information is difficult.
      • Some of the example questions need rewording so that is clear how the course meets the CGI requirements. The compare and contrasting aspect needs to be made clear on the final paper instructions.
      • It is not clear how the learning outcomes are being met.
      • A narrative in the supplemental documents provides better detail and makes it clearer how outcomes are met. However, it is easy to miss.
• Discussion
  • Upcoming category reviews
    • Three additional category II reviews have come in and will be discussed next meeting.
    • HST 470/570 will be addressed next meeting.

Minutes prepared by Caitlin Calascibetta