Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Abigail Crowell, Kelsey Emard, Daniel Faltesek, Matthew Kennedy, Lori McGraw, Rene Reitsma, Randy Rosenberger, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Thomas Shelly, Paula Weiss
Voting members absent: Geoffrey Barstow, Colin Johnson
Ex-officio members present: Academic Affairs – Heath Henry; Difference, Power & Oppression – Natchee Barnd; Ecampus – Katherine McAlvage (v. Watte); WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: Patrick Ball, Kristin Benson, Stephanie Baugh, John Edwards, McKenzie Huber, Caryn Stoess

Signature Core Transferability (cont’d.) – Kristin Benson

• Transitions cannot be transferred in because of the nature of the course content and learning outcomes. Some of the signature courses can be transferred in potentially but only in unique circumstances.
  • Broad agreement that there is not a regulatory structure to block all transfers, normatively also not a good idea.
• Discussion about Difference, Power, and Oppression (DPO) courses and their content, complexity.
  • There is a need for DPO training for community college faculty.
  • The foundation DPO course is more likely to be transferred in but the advanced course is related to the major discipline and it is unlikely that it will transfer in based on content and complexity.
  • A participant in the discussion who worked with the DPO Learning Outcomes, Criteria and Rationale (LOCR) workgroups and knows the rules of Seeking Solutions:
    • Transitions was purposeful not to transfer in.
    • DPO and Seeking Solutions were also purposeful in not transferring in
      • It would be very hard for a course not created for these specific categories based on the nuanced learning outcomes to transfer in.
      • They also believe the lower division will be difficult to transfer in – one of the Learning Outcomes (LOs) in DPO emphasizes content around race and is taught in a significant way.
• Comments from Kristin Benson: What has been said aligns with what the committee has been talking about. Kristin has had some conversations between meetings and reviewed Senate approved documents. OSU does not have residency requirements built into Core Education. The Office of the Registrar (OtR) is still upholding the spirit that the Signature Core is an OSU stamp – designed to be future thinking, OSU ethos values, defacto majority of students only take the courses at OSU because they are unique. Down the road other institutions will think OSU is unique and develop courses like ours. Does not think Community Colleges will be creating these courses because their courses are not meant to get into this detail.
  • Co-chairs noted that a residency requirement is beyond the Baccalaureate Core Committee’s (BCC) jurisdiction. The committee agreed.
• Comments from Kristin Benson (cont’d): If there is a student that asks OtR to take a second look at reviewing a course they believe is Seeking Solutions – it is good for the university to go back to the student/their families and say the course doesn’t meet the LOs rather than just saying OSU does not accept transfer courses in this category. There may also be other financial aid issues if we just say no. Kristin appreciates what has been said and ensures transparency in the process to OSU and transfer students. The university doesn’t want to perpetuate what transfer students have felt about 4-year universities.
  • Question regarding the requirement for training and certification to teach DPO courses – the DPO office wants to be open to transferring in courses but it poses challenge. They are asking for guidance on how to navigate. Trainings are built in for Linn-Benton Community College (LBCC) but not all community colleges and out of state students will have that opportunity.
    • It gets tricky to say a transfer course can’t get an articulation because of lack of training at external institutions.
    • It was clarified that DPO hasn’t had representation on this committee or around transferability until this year.
  • Major requirements and double dipping – the committee hasn’t yet talked about writing elevation but many will be prescribed and regardless if a transfer course has an articulation the students might still need it.
  • It was asked about how the community colleges are responding to the changes in Core Education.
    • The reason for the earlier catalog deadline is to help community colleges. Also discussed how the foundational core embeds the Core Transfer Map (CTM) – Registrar regional conference, present to the community colleges to help them leverage the CTM at their institutions.
      • Are the community colleges leveraging the CTM?
        • Kristin is going to wait and see how the roundtable goes and emails out to the community colleges. She will report back after presenting at the conference with Erin – Community Colleges need to know that it is doable to remove the technical barriers to make the CTM work.
    • The committee knows they are investing in adding people in to articulate and the BCC has policies in place. The committee wants to know how it will work for requests for courses to be reviewed – how are faculty involved in the transfer decision making?
      • Admissions has agreements with certain departments that they can make those articulation decisions. Kristin wants to make sure OtR checks in on those decision-making capabilities – they don’t want the course to be reevaluated after the fact of the course being given lower division transfer credits, more efficient and equitable to do the articulation up front.
      • Send over a proposed articulation to a unit with rationale and ask for sign off.
      • Over time the hope is trust has been built with academic units over the years that the units will allow OtR to make the decisions.
      • Heuristics used to determine – basic stuff on a transcript, course number and level, blooms taxonomy and action words in outcomes, how it translates with higher level words in higher level courses, course description, syllabi (what syllabus requirements are- assignments, readings, what are students supposed to be doing in and out of class).
      • Other things they look at – key words – is the course required in a major, is it part of gen ed at the other inst. Is the course collegiate or technical/vocational, is course is in sequence and where it sits within sequence? Does transfer course have course learning outcomes? 
        • It was pointed out that the College of Education advisors do not make articulation decisions. They send the information to faculty to decide if a course meets the LOs.
        • Kristin and Thomas had a lot of conversations about the petition process.
      • Question from chat: This articulation process info is helpful! Am I hearing from this discussion that DPO will be treated the same way as Seeking Solutions? Basically, the expectation is few courses will meet the learning outcomes, but we're open to courses transferring in?
      • Question from chat: if we have a DPO potential course – can we send to the DPO Director and Faculty?
        • Response: all DPO will come to director for equivalency approvals - foundations DPO has been narrowed in LOs, so less transferability in general.

Core Education Assessment of Learning (cont’d.)

• Postponed assessment conversation until next meeting.

Adjourned at 10:50 AM