UCC Meeting Minutes 8/18/10

UCC Meeting Minutes

8/18/10

Present:  Deborah Vess, Ken Farr, Barbara Funke, Caralyn Zehnder, Ryan Brown, Alex Blazer, Roxanne Farrar, Sunita Manian, Stephanie McClure, Barbara Roquemore, Cara Meade

Approval of minutes Ryan, Barbara, all voted to approve

Update from Deb and Barbara:   Area A and Area D courses were presented (handouts). 

Ryan – concern that the current math courses don’t support the technology that the board has in mind. He has consulted area D faculty and there are concerns.

Discussion of Area D - Deborah believes that current math course outcomes (as already written) as found in university profile system do indicate technology so these courses are, indeed, meeting the new technology requirement.   No science courses seem to support the tech outcome as far as Deborah found.  Not all of the sciences have been looked at yet.

Another issue – A lot of these courses would directly support outcome if verbs were ‘tweaked’.   For example, ‘describe’ does not necessary support an outcome asking students to ‘evaluate’. ‘Model’ vs. ‘predict’.

Sunita will contact chairs to see if they would align current course outcomes as presented here. This could be by ‘tweaking’ the current outcomes here (as found in the university profile system) or to go to the current syllabi for these courses in which outcomes may have been updated since turned in for SACS so the current syllabi may reflect more alignment. 

Agreement amongst group that these courses are close enough to aligning to new core that these courses should not have to go through a formal proposal process.

Discussion of Area A courses - 

A1 - Question from the group regarding the wording of the first outcome, specifically the wording ‘standards of correctness’. Sunita explained the thought process behind how the outcome came to be worded. This (standards of correctness) can be interpreted in different ways. This may need more explanation to the departments in relation to their outcomes. Outcomes in English, if they currently exist, as Alex believes, need to be updated in the UPS. These current outcomes may now better align with the new outcome.  Ryan suggested the ‘tweak’ of adding the wording from the outcome directly into the current outcomes in the courses. This may be a simple fix.  Oral outcomes are not addressed anywhere yet.

A2-  Math 1101, 1113, 1114 and 1261 align pretty well as is but again, can move right over with some simple tweaking of verbs.  Math 1115 is being dropped from new core.

Discussion of Area C- Not much ‘fit’ with courses presented as currently written.

Question from group regarding Ethics requirement.  The thought is that the ethics outcomes will apply to the humanities but will not necessarily have to be met in the fine arts.

Discussion of Area E -  Again in most cases in the courses presented, current outcomes (verbs) can be tweaked to meet currently proposed (new) outcome.  Discussion ensued regarding the outcome.  There are some concerns that the outcome is perhaps vague or too simple in that this is what occurs in every course in this area each semester anyway. Is the outcome ‘strong’ enough?

Question – Does every course have to meet every outcome in an area?

A – No, especially when areas are broken out into sub areas.

Concern regarding students not being able to repeat a prefix but this has been dropped. Discussion regarding taking history test vs. course surfaced again. Perhaps this should be on the order of business for CAPC to propose to the senate.

Action Plan – Sunita will send this to chairs in the respective areas and will copy Funke. Chairs, Deb, Sunita, Funke will work with chairs to reword outcomes to align well to proposed outcomes and will, ultimately, get all of these updated in the university profile system.

Other agenda items- If someone can not make a meeting they perhaps can vote in advance if there is an item up for consideration.

New course proposal process – C&I committees should go first in the proposal process and proposals should then come to this committee.  Again, old courses will not have to go through such process. This is for new courses only. 

Routing suggestion: department, UCC, department, C&I and then to Senate.  Table this for next meeting. This will be the first agenda item for next Wednesday.

Next meeting:  Wednesday the 25^th 11:30, Terrell.