Recorded by: Cheryl Middleton
Members present: John Bailey, Margie Haak, Cheryl Middleton, Jay Noller, Susan Shaw (ex- officio) and Vicki Tolar Burton (ex-officio),
Members absent: David Bernell, George Caldwell and Denise Lach
New Business:
Introductions
This was the first meeting of the BCC in the 2007/2008 academic year. Attending members were presented with committee standing rules and a draft of the Baccalaureate Core Committee 2006-2007 Annual report. There were no new members present. John Bailey noted that with Pat Muir rotating off the committee there were no longer 2 members from the College of Science on the committee as per our standing rules.
Action Item: Jay Noller will check with Vickie Nunnemaker to determine if we need an additional committee member to be in alignment with our standing rules.
Proposal Review Protocol
The committee reviewed the protocol letter dated January 15, 2007 that was prepared for the STS category review that was postponed. We agreed to update the letter with current dates with the final date for material to be submitted for review on December 15, 2007. The bulk of the work done by the committee will be done winter term.
Action item: Jay Noller will talk with Vickie Nunnemaker to have the changes made to the letter.
Category Review – Science, Technology and Society
Committee members who were present received an updated spreadsheet of the STS courses assigned to each individual. There are several courses that have more than one section and they are noted by an H after the course number. Two of note are GEO 300, ANTH 330, Cheryl & Jay will be reviewing these items. If there are additional courses that come in they will be distributed.
Regarding the review process itself, we’ll need to do an informational session because last years category was postponed. We have several new members on the committee who need to become familiar with the process. Those members of the committee who have been through the process before will be asked to model the process for our newer members and we will make sure that everyone has all the documentation and information needed to streamline the review process.
General Reviews and New BCC Course Proposals
General reviews and new course proposals will be received by Cheryl who will do a review and make a recommendation. The review or new course proposal will then be sent to BCC committee members by e-mail for a discussion regarding any questions about the proposal. The intent is to be better prepared in the committee meeting to make a good decision.
English Department
Vicki Tolar-Burton shared with the committee the information that the English Department was getting ready to begin converting their 3 credit courses to 4 credit courses. After a brief discussion of the best way for the BCC committee to handle the influx of courses, the committee recommended that each course go through the review process in the same way all Baccore courses do and that we’ll divide the courses up for review amongst ourselves in the same way that we do the category reviews.
Action item: Cheryl will contact the Curricular Council to find out if they have been approached by the English Department and get their input.
Carry Over from Last Year
H312 per the BCC 2006-2007 Annual Report the course will be reviewed again by the BCC in winter of 2008 to determine if BCC committee concerns have been met.
DPD and transfer courses:
We need to revisit this agenda item. Below is the excerpt from the May 18, 2007 meeting minutes.
Susan Shaw, DPD Director, presented her concern that many transfer courses currently used to fulfill the DPD requirement do not actually meet the criteria for DPD courses. She indicated that she will bring a written proposal to us regarding use of transfer courses as DPD for us to discuss at the June 1, 2007 meeting. The hope is that we can vote on the proposal (or a modified version of it) and that, if the vote is affirmative, she can then carry it forward to the EC and onward.
International components of the Bacc Core:
(Excerpt from May 18, 2007 meeting minutes)
We discussed a proposal sent to the BCC by Jim Johnson (College of Forestry) on behalf of the International Council, which urges that a mechanism be established that would make it easier for students to receive Bacc Core credit for education abroad experiences. Susan Shaw had previously discussed with them her concerns about use of international experiences to fulfill DPD requirements. While the BCC supports the general concept that courses (or other experiences) taken outside the US should certainly be useable for appropriate Bacc Core categories, we were unclear about the mechanism being proposed by the International Council.
Action item: We will invite Jim Johnson and Joe Hoff to our next scheduled BCC meeting to discuss this proposal in more detail.
Next meeting: TBA
