Subcommittee on Core Curriculum Minutes 2013-11-20

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by John Swinton at 1:00 p.m. in Arts & Sciences Room 2-51.

Attendance

Voting Members Present: Scott Butler, Roberta Gorham, Mary Magoulick, Cara Meade, Yeprem Mehranian, Chavonda Mills, Amy Sumpter, John Swinton, Shaundra Walker
Non-Voting Member Present: Kay Anderson
Guest: Aran McKinnon

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the November 13th meeting were approved with one correction.

Action Items

PHIL 4660 Buddhism, Daoism, and the Myth of Meditation for the Global Overlay
The committee approved the course with a vote of 8-0-0.

Discussion Item

Mary shared some historical information about the GC2Y courses. There were three documents. The first was an outline that was prepared by the interdisciplinary studies committee prior to our most recent core revision when the Dean of Arts & Sciences asked them to rethink the old Area B courses as “gateway to the liberal arts” courses. This document became the foundation for the original proposal that was shared with the core revision committee. The other two sets of guidelines were prepared after the GC2Y course was approved on campus and sent to the system, most likely for or by the 2010-2011 University Curriculum Committee. The committee discussed how this information should be used and decided that we will use this as a guide. Mary volunteered to try to incorporate some of this information in the GC2Y submission guide.

Amy requested that the GC2Y 2000 Global Public Health course be addressed as soon as possible because the instructor is scheduled to teach the course in Spring 2015 and the department needs to plan teaching loads for the year. Aran asked why this instructor was being asked to have a conversation about the course with faculty members who are not members of the committee and why the chair refused to allow the course to come before the committee until after the instructor had a conversation with those faculty. Aran noted that the proposal has been revised by the History department and that they resubmitted the course to the SoCC chair. John stated that he did not share that proposal with the committee because the requested meeting between the instructor and committee contact Scott Butler had not taken place. Scott explained that he had contacted the instructor by email highlighting the concerns and offered times for a meeting. Scott has seen the new version, and it did not address all the concerns. Scott believes that there are still issues that the College of Health Sciences would object to the course. John explained that there were two important precedents: first, we have never had a course from one discipline that so clearly overlapped another discipline’s content, and, second, we have never had an instructor refuse to meet and collaborate about a proposal. The committee discussed whether or not it wanted to see the revision. No consensus was reached.

Next Meeting

The committee’s next meeting will be Wednesday, December 4, at 1:00 p.m. in Arts & Sciences Room 2-51. This will be the last meeting of the Fall semester.

Adjournment

The committee adjourned at 2:00 p.m.