Attending Voting Members: Daniel Bliss (SSCI substitute for Yuri Mansuri), Promila Dhar (BME), Jim Edwards (ROTC), David Gidalevitz (PHYS), Erin Hazard (HUM), Steve Kleps (CAEE), Eva Kultermann (ARCH), Nicole Legate (PSYC), Yuting Lin (BIOL), David Maslanka (AMAT), Erdal Oruklu (ECE), Victor Perez-Luna (CHBE), Ray Trygstad (ITM/Secretary), John Twombly (SSB), Murat Vural (MMAE), Fred Weening (Chair)

Also Attending: Roland Calia (SSB), Diane Fifles (University Accred), Joseph Gorzkowski (UGAA), Kyle Hawkins (AMP), Mary Haynes (UGAA), Jasmine Johnson (Pathways & Bridging), Melanie Jones (Armour Academy), Christopher Lee (Registrar), Melisa Lopez (Student Success & Retention), Abby McGrath (Enrollment Services), Kathleen Nagle (ARCH), Nichole Novak (Libraries), Shamiah Okhai (LCSL), Joseph Orgel (VPAA), Ayesha Qamer (Registrar), Zipporah Robinson (Academic Success ), Gabrielle Smith (AA), Fareine Suarez (Undergraduate Admission), Mary Jorgenson Sullivan (ELS), Liad Wagman (SSB/CSL), Jeff Wereszczynski (PHYS/BIOL)

1. Approval of minutes from the 10/24/2023 meeting.
   Eva Kultermann moved for approval of the minutes, Victor Perez-Luna seconded.
   The minutes were approved unanimously.

2. Updates from Academic Affairs.
   Joseph Orgel’s remarks in summary:
   A great deal of unexpected time is being put into bringing operations into compliance across the school, and that shouldn’t be the focus. The days of Illinois tech community members going it alone and not communicating with others, needs to come to at least a firm middle, if not a complete end. I’m sure a number of you saw my grading memo that went out today? It’s not in the vacuum, it is definitely to try and be helpful and to guide people to the not well known provision that a spreadsheet can be used to upload for grades. But that memo is not in a vacuum. It’s because we are aware of some activity that brings us into the grey zone with compliance related issues.

   On to the specific statements of the dual credit approval process. [We are] bringing 2 specific classes that we we plan. one and two will be BME 100 and MMAE 100. This is a proposed process based upon on our published rules for offering dual credit and the soon to be institutionalized business work flow. You might be a little cynical of the idea that CIM will be updated. But I can tell you that my first meeting for the revised process is on Thursday. I’ll tell you after that about how well that is going. We will build this process into to CIMas well. Dual credit is the instance where the same class, the same classroom experience, the same credits that are earned within the institution of higher education in the State of Illinois are also offered in a particular school for high school credit as well. So the same classroom experience, the same credits appear on 2 transcripts as the end result and record of that experience. This is a significantly regulated activity within the State of Illinois, and this is why we’ve published and outlined the process for dual credit. Whenever a class is intended to be offered as dual credit, that requires an update to that class to be put into CIM. We have to report to the Illinois Board of Higher Education in every instance that we offer your credit at this time. [Entering courses in CIM] will enable us to fulfill our obligation. The [classroom] experience needs to be equivalent, and that really is it in summary. The implementation involves some steps and is not quite as simple. Faculty members who would be involved in this should be following this process, and pre collegiate and undergraduate admissions, and my team should be involved with you. So if any of these things don’t match up, please get in touch, so we can dot all of the Is appropriately and make sure that we’re we’re following things in proper course. Illinois tech is going to be qualified through our faculty vetting process for offering the Illinois tech course, but [are] not necessarily going to be able to offer the high school course that requires regulated teaching qualifications. And so through a combination of teamwork between the high school instructor and between each Illinois Tech instructor, we believe that IBHE will be willing to accept that proposition. This is not the same as the dual credit for a teacher of a high school to be qualified to offer dual credit, so that those experiences count within the university. They need to have equivalency of the minimum faculty qualification which IBHE determines to be 18 credit hours of master’s level experience in the subject domain. So graduate studies in the near future. We will have a discussion about an opportunity within the State of Illinois to up credential teachers who might be interested in this opportunity for possible advanced standing, and to credential them in disciplines that we are interested and offering his deal credit, going forward. And Marat, that’s a perfectly good time to take a question. Thank you for the time.

   Marat Vural had a question regarding a dual enrollment course this semester actually intended to be dual credit. But now it’s dual dual enrollment, which is MMAE 100. I requested the the CV of the instructor from the a high school home, and he has a Master’s degree, but his Master’s degree in a Master of Arts in Teaching. So it doesn’t necessarily require that these 18 credit hours in the field that you will be teaching. I am curious if that person, for example. would be eligible for a dual credit course or not.

   Joseph Orgel responded that it’s crucial for us to to all engage in that. Nick and I have spent a lot of time on this, and we spent quality time with IBHE personnel on this as well. So that being said, the fact that they don’t give us a direct answer is not hugely comforting. But I will tell you what I figured out, which is no, they’re not qualified under a strict reading. They’re not unless the programme was about teaching, and then yes, they would be qualified. However, under our faculty hiring rules the exception criteria is for a limited number. So for a minority of our personnel, they may well be qualified through equivalent experience to academic credentialing. If they had, for instance, a bachelors in the topic and some industry experience, and they went back and they got their master of arts in teaching they might qualify under our faculty exception, criteria that isn’t really going to address our needs. So in terms of offering this particular class, that’s why I was talking about team teaching for dual credit, and then to the specific example of the initially intended pilot of dual credit, this semester. And then all parties realized that it was more complex than just doing that, and therefore it switched to dual enrollment in terms of the plan. We’re we’re in good territory there because we have a gap between the school experience and between the Illinois Tech experience. And what we can legitimately claim is that they are co-located is not quite right because of the time, but they’re co-instructed with overlap and similar topics that they’re covering, and their assessment is different. That grading assessment will be different if it is otherwise. Would you follow up with me off line so we can resolve that.

   Fred Weening commented that this is just informational for our committee, is that correct?

   Joseph Orgel replied that it is FYI. I want to be emphatically clear that, certainly academic affairs regards this as FYI. But if the Committee feels otherwise, and if the Council feels otherwise, this is a low pressure item to have that discussion. It can’t take forever. We do have timelines.

3. Program revision to the BS in Material Science and Engineering as presented by Murat Vural.
   Fred Weening commented that at our last meeting we had discussed the changes that we’re proposing the BS in Material Science and Engineering, and he asked for someone to call for a vote. But we got off track and we never got back to actually voting so he asked Murat to briefly remind us what the changes in this program would be.

   MMAE 470 Introduction to Polymer Science has been removed from the required courses list in the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) program and replaced with a Technical Elective requirement. Therefore, total credit hour requirement of the program remains the same at 126 credit hours. This revision is driven by the fact that “Polymers” are already covered in other required courses such as MMAE 372 Aerospace Materials Lab and MMAE 472 Advanced Aerospace Materials in the MSE program. This change will bring more flexibility for students in choosing tech electives in their area of interest. It was noted that MMAE 470 was previously offered as a technical elective in chemistry, but will no longer be available. Ray Trygstad moved to approve this revision and Eva Kultermann seconded.

   The vote was 15-0 to approve the proposed revision. It was noted that this is not a significant change.

4. Second discussion of the elimination of the Minor in Game Studies and Design, presented by Erin Elizabeth Hazard.
   It was noted that the minor replacing this is Game Design an Experiential Media. Daniel Bliss moved to approve the minor and David Maslanka seconded.

   The vote was 14-0 to approve the proposed new minor.

5. (S) Subcommittee recommendation on course SSCI (492) seeking (S) designation was presented by Fred Weening and Nichole Legate.
   It was noted that the instructor revised the syllabus to meet objectives of the (S) designation, and after a brief discussion, it was decided that the Committee will consider this in the next meeting.

6. Update on nominations for Core Curriculum Subject Subcommittee Chairs presented by Fred Weening
   There have been no nominations for the IPRO Subcommittee Chair so we need those nominations.

   Here are the current Core Curriculum Subject Subcommittee Chairs as of November 14, 2023:

   Communications (C)	Hannah Ringler
   Humanities (H)	Erin Hazard
   Social and Behavioral Science (S)	Priyanka Sharma
   Natural Science and Engineering (N)	Somdev Banerjee
   Mathematics	Fred Weening
   Computer Science (CS)	Boris Glavic (short term)
   Intro to Profession (ITP)	Brent Stephens
   Interprofessional Projects (IPRO)

7. New Business

   There was a question from Joseph Orgel as to whether the recommendation of the Undergraduate Studies Committee to revise the credit hours required to complete an undergraduate degree to 120 has been presented to the University Faculty Council. Free Weening confirmed that the UGSC report had been accepted at the October thirteenth UFC meeting. Joseph Ogel noted that the Graduate Studies Committee was recommending reduction of credit hours for a Master of Science from 32 to 30, and that there needed to be a Town Hall where both of these proposals could be discussed.

   Fred Weening invited Liad Wagman to discuss the Core Curriculum Task Force. Liad noted that we are in the process of collecting information on what peer institutions are doing, focusing specifically on technological universities, but also some other peer and aspiring peers that we have. We’re benchmarking everything those peers are doing as far as their core curricula, any co-curricular requirements, and any specific quirks that their core curriculum may have, such as study away, study abroad, how many credit hours, what their credit hour structure is, and if they have anything similar to IPRO. All sorts of things are the data gathering stage. We are also aggregating information on the constraints we may have whether it’s from the Higher Learning Commission or the Illinois Articulation initiative, so that we understand the contours we’re operating within and where we can innovate and come up with something that is distinctive and strong, and plays to our various strengths. When we get that data all collected we’ll begin having discussions on our constraints and on what we’re hoping to achieve. The charge for the Task Force is posted on the Provost’s website, so you can read the details. This is a long-term process, and we’re hoping to have something to present to the faculty in the spring as an initial draft, and then polish and implement it in the subsequent academic year. It’s an exciting endeavor, because we’re not looking to do something necessarily just incremental. We have the ability to innovate here and do something that’s going to set the university apart and on a positive path for success. We’re also seeking information from undergraduate admissions on what brings students here and what deters students from coming here, so that we can factor all of that in.

   Mary Jorgenson Sullivan expressed concern about seeing an accrediting body as a constraint. She commented that she saw it as a guarantor of standardized quality.

   Liad Wagman replied that there were concerns about faculty properly qualified from particular areas we might include such as entrepreneurship, and assessment of areas difficult to assess such as leadership. The challenge here is to deliver what we say our core curriculum will deliver.

   Mary Jorgenson Sullivan had a follow up question as to whether there is any student representation on the core curriculum task force. Liad replied that there is no direct student representation. But Joseph Orgel noted that all results of this task force will come through the Undergraduate Studies Committee which does have student representation.

   Fred Weening noted that we have quite a few academic programs that we’re supposed to be doing our annual 5 year review for. It may be too busy to get to them started by the next meeting, but early in the spring semester we can expect to start having some reports on the academic reviews that are up for this year.

As there was no further business, Daniel Bliss moved to adjourn and Eve Kultermann seconded. There being none opposed, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 1:22 pm.