Undergraduate Studies Committee

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

12:45 p.m.  WH 117

Meeting Minutes

 

Attending Voting Members: F. Weening (AMAT), K. Spink (BIOL), P. Troyk (BME), E. Corradi (CAEE),  C. Hood (CS), E. Oruklu (ECE), E. Hazard (HUM), C. Wark (MMAE),  D. Gidalevitz (PHYS), C. Adams (ROTC), J. Miller (PSYC),  R. Trygstad (SAT),  S. Blanchard (SGA), J. Twombly (SSB), P. Ireland (SSCI).

Also attending:  J. Gorzkowski (UGAA), C. Himes (Lewis College), N. Novak (GL), C. Torres (CoA), T. Diel (FDSN)

Departments with absent voting members: ARCH, CHBE, CHEM

Documents for this meeting are available at: <http://www5.iit.edu/~ugsc/documents/2019-2020/>

 

Meeting chaired by Greg Pulliam

Minutes recorded by Fred Weening

Quorum declared at: 12:45 pm

Adjourn at: 1:49 pm

 

1.     Approval of the minutes for November 26, 2019.

         The approval of the minutes passed unanimously.

New Business

2.     Changes to Applied Analytics BS (Miller).

J. Miller described rationale for and summarized the proposed changes to the Applied Analytics BS program (see document on UGSC website). The changes increase the requirements for the program and also create two new specialization.  

Concern was raised regarding the requirement of an Ethics course because the designation of which courses are identified as Ethics course is likely to be changing soon. J. Miller indicated that the requirement is of the form: take one of the following specific courses, and the courses listed have been offered consistently in recent semesters.

3.     Proposed BS in Food Science and Nutrition (Diel).

T. Diel gave a summary of the proposed new BS program in Food Science and Nutrition (see UGSC website for the complete proposal). Questions , answers and discussion followed the presentation. The highlight are as follows.

 

The program will give students a more multi-disciplinary education than what is offered elsewhere. The proposed offerings are in part based on feedback from industry and will meet IFT (Institute of Food Technologists) certification. FDSN currently offers a MA, MAS, and PhD program. As the BS program grows it is anticipated that new faculty lines will be requested, however in its initial stages current staffing is sufficient in that most of the course requirements of the first two years of the program are in other departments (especially math and sciences). The program requires new lab space on main campus, with a specific configuration, to be constructed. As a fallback, FDSN has been in discussion with other local institutions that could possibly share some facilities. There may also be a need for students in the program to take some courses at Moffett campus, and transportation between main campus and Moffett campus will then need to be addressed.  The goal is to begin the program in Fall of 2020 and to have approximately 15 students in the first year of the program. Advertising of the program will begin once the program has been approved. UGSC will vote on the proposal at our next meeting in two weeks.

 

4.     Minor changes to Biology progam (Spink).

K. Spink indicated that the Biology program is going to change its requirement of PHYS 224 (General Physics III for Engineers) to a choice of PHYS 224, PHYS 223 (General Physics III), or CHEM 334 (Physical Chemistry I). Depending on the course selected, this may increase the credit hours of the student by 1.

5.     Minor Changes to Physics programs (Gidalevitz).

As indicated previously to the UGSC (see Oct 22, 2019 minutes), the Physics department has removed PHYS 348 from its requirement of the Physics major. The elimination of this course also requires its removal from the requirements of several other programs and co-terminal degrees (see document on UGSC web-site for more details). For undergraduate degrees, the requirement of PHYS 348 is being replaced by the requirement of a technical elective (defined as any 300-level Physics course or any 300-level CoS or CoE chosen with the approval of the student's adviser).

The BS Physics / MS Health Science program also requires some realignment due to the phasing out of 500-level Physics course (see the document on the UGSC web-site for details).

6.     Information Item: Memorandum of Understanding with National Louis University on IIT BS and NLU MA in teaching (Howard).

A. Howard described rationale for and some of the details of the Memorandum of Understanding with National Louis University on IIT BS and NLU MA (see UGSC web-site for the document). The agreement will allow IIT undergraduate students to pursue teaching licensure in stem disciplines. This agreement will benefit both IIT and NLU, and the partnership makes sense since for each university it fills a need. The agreement does not change any undergraduate requirements at IIT.

7.     Proposed change to the Undergraduate Residency Requirement (Argamon).

The Undergraduate Residency Requirement at IIT states that the final 45 credits of an undergraduate degree be completed at IIT. S. Argamon indicated that there are potential applicants to IIT from China (and perhaps elsewhere) who currently possess a 3-year college degree. This proposal would increase the likelihood that these students would to apply to co-terminal programs in that it would allow them to obtain both an undergraduate and master's degree from IIT in a shorter time-period than otherwise possible. Specifically, the proposal, if accepted,  would change the undergraduate residency requirement to allow credits that students earn at IIT in graduate level courses in certain co-terminal programs to count toward the 45 credit-hour requirement for an undergraduate degree in the same department as the graduate level courses.

There was considerable discussion of the ramifications of accepting such a change to the undergraduate residency requirements. In particular it was asserted that undergraduate courses are of a much broader nature than master's level courses, and acceptance of the master's level courses for the residency requirement for an undergraduate degree defeats the purpose of the residency requirement.

 

Time ran out before the discussion was completed. UGSC members were asked to get feedback from their departments on the proposal for continued discussion.

The meeting adjourned.