Undergraduate Studies Committee

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

12:45 p.m.  WH 117

Meeting Minutes

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

Also attending:  M. Mayfield (ID), B. Freeman (FDSN), J. Alexis (IPRO), J. Gorzkowski (UGAA), C. Hines (Lewis College), M. Lopez (Academic Affairs), N. Novak (GL), C. Torres (CoA), C. Emmons (Assessment)

Departments with absent voting members: ARCH, ROTC

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

 

Meeting chaired by Greg Pulliam

Minutes recorded by Fred Weening

Quorum declared at: 12:45 pm

Adjourn at: 1:44 pm

 

1.    Approval of the minutes for November 12, 2019.

The approval of the minutes passed unanimously.

Old Business

2.    CAC Report: Review of SSB and ROTC C-courses (Pulliam).

G. Pulliam summarized the reports reviewing the C-courses for the SSB and ROTC departments. The reports were accepted with a unanimous vote.

3.    Core curriculum assessment plan (Pulliam, Emmons).

G. Pulliam and C. Emmons answered questions and took comments concerning the core curriculum assessment plan that was presented at the last UGSC meeting. Questions / answers and comments included the following.

 

Is this plan in alignment with the HLC? (Yes; the HLC did not like previous proposal of using IPRO projects for assessment of the Core curriculum goals. This plan was constructed with feedback from the HLC on two previous plans)

Do additional assignments need to be added to courses being sampled for data? (No; not as long as existing assignments in a course can be used to assess how well the goals under consideration are being met).

Do all assessments need to be based on materials that can be uploaded to blackboard? (Yes, as currently planned; the HLC wants the actual student artifacts on which the assessments are based).

 

A motion to approval the proposed plan passed by a voted of 12-0.

4.    Resolution proposal on teaching and research faculty rentention and promotion issue (Spink, Trygstad, Pulliam).

The wording for the proposed resolution (see UGSC website) was presented and discussion ensued.

P. Troyk objected to the proposal in that he did not believe that UGSC was the correct body to make such a resolution. After further discussion it was agreed by the authors' of the current resolution that it would be more appropriate to re-word the resolution by tying the opinions currently stated to the promotion of effective teaching and quality of education. A revised resolution will be presented in a future UGSC meeting.

5.    CAE 470 as I-Course (Stephens).

A continuation of the discussion, started in the last meeting of the UGSC, concerning a request to give students in this semester's CAE 470 course I-course credit in light of the fact that the course has been approved as an I-course for Spring 2020.  J. Alexis, director of IPRO, indicated that he was not in favor of giving I-course credit in a retroactive manner and that doing so would set a bad precedent.

An alternative proposal was made to allow UGAA to approve petitions from students in the current CAE 470 course requesting to be given I-designation credit for their CAE 470 course.

This proposal was voted on;  the results were 4 in favor and 8 against. 

6.    Further discussion: 10-day, 3-hour-credit courses offered by Humanities department (Ireland)

Discussion focused on the fact that currently the UGSC doesn't have a role in the approval of such inter-term offerings. Questions raised included:

Should UGSC have some oversight role?

Should UGSC remove the automatic attribution of core courses designator to such offerings of these courses in the future?

Is there something peculiar to the specific courses offered this inter-term that makes them appropriate for 10-day delivery?

In the interest of getting to other agenda items, the discussion was tabled until a future UGSC meeting.

New Business

7.    Information item: ID proposal for minor in Human-Centered Design (Mayfield).

M. Mayfield, Associate Dean of the Institute of Design, presented a proposal for an undergraduate minor in Human-Centered Design. A discussion followed concerning which courses from outside departments would be appropriate (or not appropriate) to be included in the courses allowed to satisfy the minor.

8.    Information item: Biology co-terminals to be placed on hiatus (Spink).

In Spring 2019, the Biology department voted to place biology co-terminal programs on hiatus. This information item is to indicate that this is now occurring.

9.    Information item: Revised SSCI 385 Computational Social Science (S) course (Ireland).

The revised course syllabus can be viewed on the UGSC website.

10.Discussion: Last minute holds and lack of midterm evaluations (Blanchard).

S. Blanchard, from SGA, indicated that this semester midterm evaluation of courses by students did not occur; evaluation forms were not sent out to students.

The evaluation process did occur in a previous semester, but the process had significant issues.

It was noted that there is a broader discussion currently happening across campus on how to improve teacher evaluation.

Adjourn.