2006-2007 UCC year-end report

 

Committee Membership: Carol Angell, Jeff Baggett (chair), Dick Sullivan, Steve McDougal, Kristofer Rolfhus, Don Socha, Marci Wycoff-Horn, Mao Zheng, and Erik Kahl (student rep.)

 

We began the year with the following charge from faculty senate:

Respond to the recommendation from the General Education Committee about university wide requirements for the B.S. and B.A. degrees.  Please consult with the General Education Committee for their specific recommendation. 

 

Response to charge:

This should first be considered by the colleges.  In particular, CBA felt that this proposal “came out of the blue”.  CBA also strongly objected to the notion that their majors would be required to take an additional science class (part of the proposal) to be able to earn a B.S.   Some members of UCC supported the Gen Ed recommendation and others opposed it, but no formal vote was taken.  Instead it is thought that the Departments and Colleges need to weigh in on the proposal before further consideration.

 

In addition to the usual business of UCC (hearing and approving curricular changes) two issues came up repeatedly and are in need of further study:

 

  1. A policy for the uniform reporting of required courses and credits should, perhaps, be required.   For instance, some majors do not include all of the prerequisite courses in the credit count.  This makes the major look smaller, but is not honest.  For instance, the math department requires CS120 but does not count it in the major credit count, while Chemistry requires MTH309 but does not include the prerequisite courses of MTH207 and MTH208 in the list or credit count.  To make it easier for students to compare majors (the student rep. to UCC reported that this was most desirable) and to make it simpler for UCC to weigh curricular changes that sometimes increase credit counts above 40 credits, there should be a mechanism for uniform reporting of major requirements – perhaps through modified LX forms.  It would seem appropriate for the senate executive committee to charge UCC with the development of a policy regarding the listing of courses/counting of credits.  UCC will not be surprised by this charge.  (A version of a proposed LX138P form is attached, as well as sample versions of the form for accountancy and modern languages.)

 

  1. Should departments be allowed to require coursework in the summertime?  Many professional programs require summer coursework, but until now students in all other majors have been able to matriculate without taking summer courses.  ESS has moved forward with a program (for one optional specialty only) that requires students to take classes as cohorts including one or two courses in the summertime.  Two students who had been admitted to this specialty had to drop out because they were unable to take summer courses.  There are many issues surrounding summer course requirements that should be studied (does UWL have the infrastructure for this, how do we keep depatments from abusing this, etc.).  UCC suggests a moratorium on requiring summer coursework until the issue has studied. (Diane Schumacher has always told people they could not offer courses in the summer that were not offered during the year, but this turns out to not be written down anywhere).