Educational Policies Committee

Minutes of Oct. 5

Members Present: Ragene Gwin, Mara Adams, Kim Bennett, Kari Rogers, Bill Hixon, Lori Rodrigues-Fisher, Bill McAleer, Martin Hansen, Barb Wiese, Tom Hill, Corinne Winter

Excused: David O’Connell

I. Approval of minutes of past meetings

Minutes of April 27, 2004 Motion to approve –Barb Wiese, Second – Martin Hansen. Approved

Minutes of Sept. 7, 2004 Motion to approve – Tom Hill, Second – Ragene Gwin. Approved.

II. New Course Proposal, ECE 380 Administration of Early Childhood Programs with

Emphasis Upon Child Nutrition

Motion to approve – Ragene Gwin, Second – Tom Hill

The course was perceived by members of the committee to be well conceived and well outlined. Ragene Gwin was familiar with the suggested text and noted that the material was well covered in the syllabus.

There should be one addition to the Course Fact Sheet – that no further resources will be needed for this course

Motion passed

III. Requests for extensions on program review. The following requests have been received.

Art Department

Les Bell will be on sabbatical spring 2005 & they have a brand new faculty member who was hired to help them develop new offerings combining graphics and fine arts. Also, they just received the Book-arts studio equipment and need to carefully consider what this will do for their curriculum. May be ready at the end of next fall.

Criminal Justice

Because one of their instructors, Chris Sharp, is on military leave for the fall semester, they are requesting a one year deferral for the CJ Department Review. However, they also may be ready next fall.

Education

Various programs have had different review dates, which causes some confusion. If all the programs are reviewed at the same time, this will greatly assist the departments as they prepare for their state and future national accreditation reviews. Education's state review is spring of 06, at that same time they plan to also be reviewed at the national level. The ability to develop one self-study for all reviews would be an excellent use of time and resources.

MBA/MBA in Healthcare

There may be significant changes in the curriculum of both programs this coming spring so they would prefer to delay the review until those decisions are made.

Motion to approve requests – Barb Wiese, Second – Tom Hill

Discussion: Two of the four programs indicate that the review could be ready in the Fall. With the exception of Education, it was proposed that extensions at this time be until the Fall, 2005 in order to prevent a backlog of reviews in the Spring. A request for additional time could be made at that time.

Education has requested that all programs be scheduled for Spring of 2006 to coincide with their state review. The idea of allowing programs to schedule program reviews to coincide with other accreditation reports was agreed by EPC last year.

Motion passed to approve extension of MBA, MBA healthcare, Art, and CRJU until Fall, 2005, and Education until Spring, 2006.

IV. Update on program reviews schedule for the current academic year.

Psychology will present on Nov. 16 and Math on Nov. 30

Materials for program review are due two weeks before they are scheduled to be considered by EPC.

Others will be presented in the Spring Semester.

Catholic Studies and Justice and Peace Minors are under discussion and further updates will be forthcoming.

V. Discussion raised by an email from the Art department requesting guidelines for presenting a new minor in Art History.

No Guidelines for minors within a department are currently published. Bill Hixon suggested that any documentation submitted should address the following questions:

What is the purpose for the minor? In essence, you need to justify the existence of the minor.

What are the requirements for the minor? This refers to the obvious such as the courses required for the minor as well as any additional requirements (e.g., the student is required to put together a portfolio, show their work, etc.)

Does the minor require any new courses? Each new course will have to be described in a Course Fact Sheet

How do the requirements contribute to the goals of the minor? For example, provide a brief description of each course and how it fits into the minor. It follows that there should be some stated goals for the minor that, in turn, relate to the departmental major goals.

How will the department assess the minor? How will the department know if the minor is meeting the demonstrated needs and the stated goals?

Are the necessary resources (including staff) available for the minor? What additional resources would be needed.

Documentation should also include a letter from the Dean of A&S supporting the proposed minor

The proposal generated considerable discussion of minors.

Minors vary widely from department to department as to number of credits.

Students also vary as to the reasons for adding a minor. Some do so for reasons of personal interest. Others have more pragmatic reasons such as teaching accreditations or enhancement of skills valued for their professional goals.

If EPC sets policies for minors, it would follow that future program reviews must address those guidelines for minors within their departments. Departments will need to articulate goals for the minor and means for assessment. Assessment might be difficult since students may add a minor as late as their second semester, senior year. On the other hand, the assessment process might encourage departments to become pro-active in encouraging minors to identify themselves. Alumni surveys could also provide some assessment even where minors were not declared early. Further, data collected by means of alumni surveys can become a marketing tool for a department.

Any guidelines that are established should be sufficiently flexible to allow students to take minors for their own reasons.

A question arose whether the Education Dept would need to assess every endorsement that is offered. But those are not minors.

Ragene Gwin will survey the minors currently listed in the catalogue and present a chart showing numbers of credits and how many minors require courses outside the department listing the minor. Brenda Peters will look at the latter group to see whether any of those might fall under the heading of interdisciplinary minors. When those reports are ready, the committee will revisit the topic of guidelines.

Nest meeting is Oct. 12.

Motion to adjourn – Tom Hill Second – Ragene Gwin Adjourned 4:00 p.m.

Submitted by Corinne Winter