Minutes of the Undergraduate Studies Committee
10/25/2016

Attending Voting Members: G. Pulliam (HUM/CAC), J. Twombly (SSB), A, Raina (SGA), T. Pan (CAAE), S. Hong (CHBE), C. Hood (CS), X. Guan (CHEM), N. Menhart (BIO), M. Safar (INTM), R. Steffenson (SSCI), P. Snopok (PHYS), G. Popovic (MSED), J.Hajek (ITM), J Saniie (ECE), A. Moller (PSYC), T. Brasek (NROTC), R. Ellis (AMAT), P. Troyk (BME)

Also attending: G. Smith (UGAA), N. Novak (Galvin Library J. Gorzkowski; (UGAA), V. Foster (Title IX); A. Hall (Registrar)

Departments with absent voting members: MMAE, ARCH

Quorum declared at 12:45

Adjourn at: 1:04

Documents for this meeting are available at:

http://www.iit.edu/~ugsc/documents/

Meeting chaired by Ray Trygstad.

Minutes recorded by Rebecca Steffenson.

1. Minutes of the 10/11/16 Meeting [Trygstad]

Minutes approved unanimously.

http://www.iit.edu/~ugsc/10-11-2016minutes.html

2. B.S. in Biology and B.S. in Biochemistry Co-Terminal degrees with the M.S. in Biology for the Health Professions [N. Menhart – Biology] http://www.iit.edu/~ugsc/documents/BS%20MS-HP%20coterminal%20v1.2.pdf http://www.iit.edu/~ugsc/documents/Form%20802%20sections%20BSbioMSbiohp.pdf

Credit hour mistake on form has been corrected.

Both co-terminal degrees approved unanimously.

3. New Business [Trygstad]

R. Trygstad introduced a proposal to change to criteria for graduating with Honors:

Current academic policy for receiving Honors designation at graduation states “a student must complete a minimum of 60 graded hours at IIT.”

The previous policy, when the Pass/Fail option existed in the past, stated that to be eligible for Honors designation at graduation, a student “has taken 60 of the credit hours required for a particular degree at IIT.”

Proposal: Remove the word “graded” from the current statement,

Some members asked for clarification about the criteria for graded hours. The registrar’s confirmed that courses taken for pass fail are not graded hours. There was some opposition to allowing P/F courses to count towards the Honors designation on the basis that honors students should be held to a higher standard. N. Menhart proposed an alternative policy change (sent electronically after the meeting).

Alternative Proposal:
For purposes of Honors or High Honors designation, PASS/FAIL courses are considered graded courses. However, if the student has elected PASS/FAIL grading, a lower bound on GPA will be calculated utilizing the lowest letter grade qualifying as PASS for those courses, and this lower bound on GPA will be used to determine eligibility for honors designations. If the course is only offered as PASS/FAIL (i.e. not student elected) it will not be  included in this minimum bound calculation.

Members are asked to poll their faculty on the two proposals, however a vote will not be held until November 22^nd.