Core Committee Minutes

September 27, 2007

Lorentzen Conference Room 8:00 a.m.

Members present: D. Anderson, M. Burchill, A. Ingberg, D. Sandgren, L Sethre-Hofstad, G. Muilenburg, P. Fretham, S. Schwartz

A. The following courses for Standard Form approval for Exploration designation were considered:

1. Education 330: passed

2. Psychology 420: passed. Discussion centered on issues surrounding International/Global perspectives designation. The courses need not meet all three (International, Global, Comparative) dimensions on relevant topics. The committee proposes summer faculty development opportunities to assist faculty in proposing courses for this designation. Further discussion on this proposal centered on the written feedback students apparently provide to agency sites in this particular course. Some follow up on this issue will be taken, but it didn’t preclude passing the course.

3. Chinese 112: passed.

4. Biology 108: Returned for further information according to the standard form format.

B. Additional discussion on future direction for Core Committee

1. Issues were raised about BREW and how stringent the committee should be on passing courses. On the one hand, it is important to set a strong precedent. On the other, it was agreed that the curriculum is dynamic and changeable, and that the campus community will grow in its thinking about the new theme for our Core curriculum.

2. What should the mechanism be for future scrutiny of courses that seek core designation? How should the 7-year rotation of re-approval function? It was tentatively decided that an additional meeting to discuss this will be needed after the urgent deadlines have passed (after October 12, 2007).

3. Discussion centered on how to pass the responsibility of the new curriculum to future Core committees. It was suggested that the Core committee may want to serve a mentoring role, as leaders to assist in the process of teaching in the core, particularly to faculty new to the Core. The committee’s initial reactions to this idea were generally positive.

The next meeting will be Tuesday October 2, 2007, at 8:00 a.m.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:45.

Respectfully submitted,

Lisa Sethre-Hofstad, PhD.

Associate Professor of Psychology

Program Director for Scandinavian Studies