Faculty Senate

General Education Committee Minutes, 10/3/08

Members present: J.Edwards, S. Hines, D. MacDonald, D. Morton, M. Ramey, K. Shanley, F. Rosenzweig D. Sloan, T. Thibeau

Members absent: D. Potts

Guest:  B. Acker, J. Lopach, J. Eglin

The meeting was called to order at 9:15 pm.  

Communications: 

• The general education forms were distributed to the subcommittee chairs.  Subcommittee chairs should check to verify that the paper copies match the summary and the forms available on the web. Below is a preliminary breakdown of proposals received. 

Forms were not submitted from Mathematics to meet the Group II requirement and Irish Studies/ Gaelic did not submit forms for the Group III requirement.  There was a comment that the deadline be enforced.  Follow-up will be necessary for Symbolic Systems and Mathematics, so it seems only fair to allow follow-up for the other groups as well.  Camie has not yet audited the forms submitted for symbolic systems with the current offerings. 

Business Items:

Subcommittee chairs should communicate with the subcommittee members and conduct the initial review over the next two weeks.   The criteria, learning outcomes and preamble should be used as a guide.  Courses must be introductory and foundational. Adequate justification should be provided on the forms especially for upper-division courses.  The framework specifies:

All General Education courses must be at least 3 credits, must be introductory and foundational, and have no more than one pre-requisite.  ASCRC may allow exceptions for upper-division courses, courses fewer than three credits, and for courses with more than one-prerequisite.

Subcommittee chairs may contact requestors for clarification or revision of forms/syllabi.  Difficulties will be discussed at the next meeting. Departments that have courses denied general education status will have the opportunity to appeal. Questions can be sent to the co-chairs or the Faculty Senate Office. 

There was a suggestion that a clear statement of introductory and foundational be provided so that subcommittees apply the requirement uniformly.  The co-chairs did not consider this necessary. For now subcommittees should start the review and see how it goes. 

The next meeting will be on Friday October 17^th at 9:10 in GBB LO4.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:45 a.m.