Subcommittee on Core Curriculum Minutes 2016-01-15

Call to Order The Subcommittee on Core Curriculum was called to order by Mary Magoulick at 1:00 p.m. in Arts & Sciences 2-51. Attendance Voting Members Present: Jamie Addy, Nancy Beasley, Roberta Gorham, Kasey Karen, Mary Magoulick, Stephanie Opperman, Brandon Samples, Cara Smith, Jeff Turner, Dana Wood, Stephen Wills Non-Voting Member Present: Kay Anderson Absent: Doug Goings Regrets: Kristi Papailler, Noland White, Cliff Wilkenson Guests: Julia Metzker, Chavonda Mills, Eric Spears, Veronica Womack Agenda The agenda was approved with one change. Membership Update Ruth Carter is on leave for the Spring semester and will be replaced by Cliff Wilkenson. His appointment will be confirmed at an upcoming University Senate meeting. Minutes The minutes from the November 20th meeting were approved as distributed. This was the committee’s last meeting of the Fall semester. Discussion Items LARP Update. Last semester the steering committee hosted a number of discussion groups, which will move to a new format for the Spring semester. The committee held a town hall last week, at which faculty discussed results from an institutional survey and provided additional feedback for a statement on what a Georgia College graduate should be. Julia Metzker shared the early draft of that statement. She also shared some significant and signature elements of a liberal arts experience that have been gathered through this process. System Overlay Proposal. Kay Anderson shared information on a system proposal to remove the critical thinking, global, and US overlays from the system-wide core curriculum. This action is expected to be approved and finalized in the coming weeks. It would immediately eliminate all references to these overlays in the system policy manual and handbooks, and we would no longer have to require them to remain compliant with system core curriculum requirements. Georgia College will have to make an institutional decision about whether to continue to require these overlays for our students as institutional degree requirements. If we do, we will continue to have the same implementation issues we have now, including issues with dual enrollment, AP, transfer coursework, and lack of available courses in the majors to fulfill these requirements. We would not be able to require extra coursework for students who come to Georgia College without any course that fulfills these requirements, because doing so would put many of our programs over 120 hours. We also cannot have separate requirements for native and transfer students. Chavonda Mills shared information on the domestic diversity proposal that was included in the campus-wide diversity plan. She noted that the changes to the system-wide overlays might allow us the opportunity to make adjustments to our curriculum to include this overlay. Julia Metzker noted that this could also occur by combining the global and domestic diversity overlays into an intercultural overlay that allows both contexts to apply. Next Meeting The committee will meet on January 22, 2016, in A&S 2-51, at 1:00 PM. Adjournment The committee adjourned at 2:00 p.m.