November 13, 2007

Curriculum Committee Minutes

Members present: Susan Cordes-Green, Mark Gealy, Stephen Grollman, Michelle Lelwica, Mary Rice, Jonathan Steinwand (chair), Samantha Schmidt

Minutes for October 30, 2007 meeting were approved.

The first item of business involved the previously postponed action on a course proposal for Biology 316: Conservation Biology. The discussion began with a point of information from the biology department. The biology department responded to a question we had posed at our  on 10/9/2007. The Curriculum Committee had voted to postpone consideration of Biology 316 pending feedback from the Biology department regarding load implications for this arranged lab. Specifically, the
committee wanted to learn from the tenured Biology faculty how the department feels about the lab being arranged and apparently unsupervised time if the course will count as 1.5 courses in the instructor's load. The committee also asked whether the course count only as 1.0 courses in the instructor's load and if the department has a policy or current practice about scheduled and supervised lab time. The verbatim response from Gerry Van Amburg came as follows:

"The department has discussed this question in some detail.  This has never really been a question in the past because we have always scheduled labs.  Labs are usually 3 to 4 hours long, and either in one long lab period or divided into two days during the week.  In any case the department believes that it is best to have a regulated time slot for the laboratory.  Not having a standard lab time makes it more difficult, if not impossible, for the professor to get students together to discuss procedures, or carry out a particularly experiment, study, etc.  Something I want to stress is that we certainly do not want, and will not have, unsupervised labs.  We point to laboratories as being one of our hallmarks of excellence.  So, in this case, we will insist on having a set, structured lab time.  We do receive a 1/2 course load credit for teaching labs.  And I am sure if you ask any one of us you would hear that often more effort if put into laboratory instruction than lecture.  It is a time consuming, though rewarding teaching experience.  We want to do nothing to endanger its value."
 

Based on this feedback, the committee chose not to approve Biology 316 at this time.

The second item of business was a new course proposal: Music 174: Concordia Männerchor. This course was approved with the following feedback: We asked the music department to observe deadlines in future and complete all questions posed in the form; to clear up catalogue discrepancies between the “Music Organization” section in Expanded Academic Opportunities (p. 27) and “Ensemble Courses” in the Music Program section (p. 124). We also expressed the assumption that  the department would providing a translation for the title of the course in parenthesis and that it would be made clear that enrollment would be restricted to men.

The next point was a discussion item from the graduate programs committee: A question has arisen in regard to the approval of new programs and how courses are approved in that process.  Last year we approved a new program and also approved the courses therein, with the request that once these courses had been taught and syllabi from actual courses were available, that we could see these and monitor the program.  But some have claimed that only preliminary approval is given to the courses, and a final approval is necessary once the courses have been taught. They wanted to know how the curriculum committee deals with new courses in new programs? It was clarified that new programs and courses within those programs all have to be approved by the curriculum committee before moving on to faculty senate for approval.

The next item was a preliminary discussion of new core courses PE 110—Holistic Health (former PE 111—Wellness) and Health 101—Alcohol and College Life (replaces PE 112—Activity Course). There was a wide-ranging discussion of pros and cons. Next week, we will hear from representatives from the department of P.E./Health.

We ended the meeting by discussing our meeting schedule for spring. We decided to have our regular weekly meeting at 1:20 p.m. Wednesdays

The meeting ended at 5:20

Respectfully Submitted,

Stephen Grollman