ASCRC Minutes 10/9/07

Members Present: J. Burfeind, J. Cox, I. Crummy, L. Economides, J. Graham, E. Henderson, S. Lodmell, P. Muench, M. Nielsen, H. Thompson, P. Silverman, L. Tangedahl, G. Weix

Members Absent/Excused: S. Gauthier, T. Hunter, J. Luckowski, K. Nalty, A. Walker-Andrews

Ex-Officio Present: M. Hoell, D. Micus,

Guest: Terry Berkhouse- Internship Services Director, James McCusick – Davidson Honors College Dean, Andrea Vernon- Office for Civic Engagement Director

Chair Thompson called the meeting to order at 2:15 p.m.

The minutes from 10/2/07 were approved.

Communications:

Article in the Kaimin regarding student supervised internships

Director Berkhouse addressed the article in the Kaimin. The student reporter misunderstood the situation. Academic departments assign the grades for interns. He will consider drafting an article to correct the misinformation.

Proposed Service Learning Course Designation
Director Berkhouse indicated that a service learning course designation would make coordination easier between Internship Services and the Office of Civic Engagement. He is supportive of the proposal.

Dean McCusick summarized the proposal. It would add “…/Service Learning” to the title of courses approved for the designation according to national standards. This will allow for transparency in the courses and recognition of the faculty

Registrar Micus recommended making use of an attribute in Banner for tracking purposes.

A minimum of fifteen hours of volunteer work is required for the course to be identified as service learning. Some involve 60-90 hours of work. The courses include assignments that are built around the service hours. Students are often required to journal and complete research assignments. The courses are more demanding of students’ time. The designation would inform students of the expected time commitment.

Internships are quite different than service learning courses. Each credit requires 40-60 hours of work and is not tied to an academic course.

ASCRC will need to establish a new subcommittee to review the courses. The proposal was approved with one abstention (member came in late). Chair Thompson will request the Service Learning Advisory Board to draft catalog language describing the designation and its purpose.

Repeat Fee

Chair Thompson provided an update regarding the repeat fee issue. ECOS met with Associate Vice President- Administration and Finance, Rosi Keller and Registrar Micus to get more information. Last year the fee generated over $130,000 in revenue that is added to the general fund. If the fee is eliminated the money will need to come from some where. The fee was originally put in place as a disincentive to retake courses; but, is not a true repeat fee because it is not applied to everyone who retakes a course. The fee eliminates the students’ first grade from their GPA calculation. ECOS is still deliberating over the issue.

Faculty Forum on proposed general education framework:

There were only 21 faculty that attended the open general education meeting, so there must not be too many concerns about the proposed framework. One recommendation was to remove the language referring to upper-division exceptions because it implies that general education courses be lower-division. Another suggestion was to change the title of group 10 to Indigenous North Americans and Global Perspective to assure American Indians were included.

Good & Welfare

There seems to be a number of new courses being proposed by non-tenure-track faculty and there is concern that this has unintended financial consequences. Administrators sign off on the proposals indicating there are resources to cover the additional course. However, the traditional way to create curriculum is to hire the faculty first. Courses must be offered at least once every three years. When does the existence of new courses without permanent faculty to teach them become an unfunded mandate? Who should be asking these questions?

The committee needs to review data over the past several years to determine how often this occurs. Subcommittee chairs should pay attention to the rank of faculty members proposing new courses. Camie will look at previous years over the winter break.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.