ILLINOIS TECH UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES COMMITTEE

Meeting Minutes

Tuesday February 10, 2026

12:45pm

Online via Zoom

(pdf version available here)

Attending Voting Members: Victor Perez-Luna (CHBE), Promila Dhar (BME), Fred Weening (AMAT), Emily Leiner (PHYS), Braja Mandal (CHEM), Murat Vural (MMAE), Jade Hutchinson (SGA), Erdal Oruklu (ECE), Erin Hazard (HASS), John Twombly (SSB), Nicole Legate (PSYC), Kindon Mills (ARCH), Matthew Bauer (CS), Andy Howard (BIOL), Stephen Kleps (CAEE)

Chairing Meeting: Kathir Krishnamurthy

Also Attending: Nicole Beebe (Dean COC), Ishaan Goel (Student), Kiah Ong (AMAT), Daniel Bliss (HASS), Cynthia Torres (Acad Affairs), Pam Houser (INTM), Nicole Novak (Libraries), Abby McGrath (Enrollment Services), Jeff Wereszczynski (VP Acad Affairs), Joe Gorzkowski (UGAA), Michael Arnaudo (Armour Acad Advisor), Kevin Cassel (VP Acad Transformation), Jennifer deWinter (Dean LCS), Ayesha Qamer (Registrar), Katie Spink (Pre-Med), Gabriel Martinez (Armour), Kyle Hawkins (AMP), Taylor Rojas (UGAA), Rich Klein (SSB), Katherine Quiroa (UGAA), Xiaofan Li (COC),  Melisa Lopez (Student Success & Retention), Yasmin Rodriguez-Escutia (Armour Acad Advisor), Gabrielle Smith (UGAA), Nick Menhart (VP Assessment and Accreditation), Melanie Jones (Armour Acad Advisor), Mary Jorgenson Sullivan (ELS), Keith Alexander (UGAA), Ankit Srivastava (UFC), Brian Casario (ELS), Kathy Nagle (ARCH), Diane Fifles (Univ Accred)

Quorum was reached and the meeting was started at 12:47pm

  1. Approval of the proposed meeting agenda. Kathir Krishnamurthy shared the proposed agenda which had been previously distributed. Matt Bauer moved to accept the agenda and John Twombly seconded the motion. Kathir asked if there anyone wanted to propose additions or changes to the agenda; none were proposed. The motion to accept the agenda as presented passed without objection or abstention.

  1. Approval of Meeting minutes. The minutes for the UGSC meeting on January 27, 2026  had previously been made available on the UGSC website. Kindon Mills moved to accept the minutes and this was seconded by Matt Bauer. The motion passed without objection or abstention.

  1. The next item concerned deadlines for getting information into the next AY bulletin. Ankit Srivastava, UFC chair, made the presentation.  He began the discussion by indicating that it is important for items not to be brought to UGSC for a vote until they have worked their way through CIM to the level of UGSC approval. When items in CIM are voted on at UGSC (or GSC) before they’ve officially reached UGSC in CIM it leads to confusion at UFC.

Ankit shared his screen which had a timeline that indicated that the last day to present any major changes at a UGSC meeting is the March 10 meeting, while the last day to present minor changes is the March 24 meeting.

Kindon Mills asked for clarification on what happens after a proposal is passed at UGSC. Specifically, she asked, does the proposer need to make a presentation at UFC? Kathir responded that as chair of UGSC he makes a report to UFC which indicates all items that have been approved at UGSC. So, there is no need for the proposers to make any presentation at UFC.

  1. The next item was a proposal to hold a special UGSC meeting on Tuesday February 17. Kathir explained that the motivation for this meeting is that there are too many items that have been submitted to UGSC recently to get them all onto the regular meeting agendas in time for changes to be made in the next bulletin.

Matt Bauer moved to have a special UGSC meeting on Feb 17 and this was seconded by Jeremy Hajek.

Murat Vural indicated that there is a scheduled meeting of the ACE leadership in his college which will mean that the representatives from Armour College won’t be able to attend the UGSC meeting on Feb 17; he asked if possibly meeting on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday is possible. Jeff Wereszczynski mentioned that GSC meets on Thursdays so maybe meeting on a Wednesday would be better. Stephen Kleps indicated that he is someone in the ACE leadership meeting and felt that it would be easier to reschedule that meeting than find an alternate time for the UGSC special meeting. Erdal Oruklu agreed with Stephen's suggestion.

After a bit more discussion, Kathir asked if there was anyone opposed to holding a special meeting on Feb 17. There was no opposition nor abstention, so a Feb 17 special meeting will be scheduled. Kathir said he would double check with the presenters scheduled currently on Feb 24 to make sure that they can present at the Feb 17 meeting instead.

  1. The next agenda item concerned updating some minors in the Stuart School of Business as well as proposing some new minors. John Twombly made the presentation.

John had Kathir display the summary of the proposal that is in CIM and explained the rationale behind the updates: new economics courses were created a few years ago for the Financial Economics Degree program and they’d like to include these courses as options or requirements in the Economics minor. There are also some smaller changes being proposed to the Minor in Business and Minor in Finance related to the courses that the department is planning on offering in the future.

The second page of the summary showed the proposal of two new minors: a minor in Marketing Analytics and a minor in Business Analytics. He indicated that several students have expressed interest in such minors, and the creation of these minors does not require any additional courses for the department to create or teach. There would be no additional cost to offer these minors.

Rich Klein added to John’s presentation that making some of the courses in these minors accessible to online students was a request from both the Dean of the College of Computing and Dean of Lewis College.

There was no further discussion. Andy Howard moved to approve the proposals and this was seconded by John Twombly. The motion passed without objection or abstention.

  1. The next item was a proposal from the MMAE department to replace the requirement of CHEM 124 (a 3 credit lecture combined with a 1 credit lab) with CHEM 122 (just the 3 credit lecture portion of CHEM 124. This proposal is being made in both the BS-ME and the BS-AE programs. This will reduce the number of required credits in both of these programs from 127 to 126.

Murat Vural made the presentation. He explained that originally CHEM 124 had been required largely because of the Material Science undergraduate program, but this program was eliminated a few years ago. The other motivation for making this change is to align the programs at Illinois Tech with a program that is being offered in partnership with BISTU (Beijing Information Science and Technology University).

Fred Weening moved to accept this proposal and Kindon Mills seconded the motion. The motion passed without objection or abstention.

  1. The next agenda item was a continuation of a discussion on a proposal to separate the lab and lecture portions of several chemistry courses. Braja Mandal made the presentation.

Kathir shared the document summarizing the proposal while Braja explained the contents. He indicated several benefits for separating the lab and lecture courses outlined in the document including ease of scheduling which should lead to higher enrollments per section and grading fairness.

Braja said that he was aware that many departments require the currently combined lecture / lab courses and that this change will have to be incorporated  in all of those programs. The registrar’s office has indicated that it will be able to make these changes to these programs without the departments needing to go through the CIM and approval process.

Jeff Wereszczynski asked Ayesha Qaner to confirm that Chem 124 requirements will be replaced with Chem 122 and Chem 123 in next year’s bulletin. Ayesha gave this confirmation. Jeff pointed out that by passing this proposal, UGSC is implicitly also approving the change of the Chem 124 requirement to Chem 122 and Chem 123 in all programs that currently require Chem 124.

Murat Vural pointed out that another change that will need to be made is that any course for which Chem 124 is currently a prerequisite will now need to list Chem 122 and Chem 123 instead (or at least Chem 122). He wondered if that also could be automated. There was some discussion as to whether the default would be to require Chem 122 plus Chem 123 instead of the Chem 124 prereq or just Chem 122. The consensus ultimately was to require both Chem 122 and Chem 123, and programs which only wanted to require Chem 122 could make the change through CIM.

Andy Howard moved to accept the proposal and this was seconded by Murat Vural. The motion passed without objection or abstention.

  1. The next item was a follow-up to the tabling of an item at the last meeting. Specifically the proposal to eliminate the Policy and Ethics minor.

Erin Hazard indicated that she took the concerns expressed at the last UGSC meeting to the HASS department. The HASS department still wants to move forward with the elimination of this minor, however there is interest in constructing a new minor in just Ethics. This will compliment the existing minor in Public Policy (rather than having a combined minor in Policy and Ethics)

Matt Bauer moved to accept the motion to eliminate the Policy and Ethics minor, this was seconded by John Twombly. The motion passed with no objections, but there was one abstention from Kindon Mills.  

  1. The next three agenda items were all from the College of Computing and the presentations were made by the Dean of COC, Nicole Beebe.

  1. Proposed Undergraduate Certificate Modules in Artificial Intelligence

Nicole explained that the long-term goal is to have AI integrated into many courses and in the core curriculum. This proposal is an interim solution as we move toward the long-term goal.

This proposal would lead to awarding students an AI certificate which will appear on their transcript. The hope is that the university can also market this to try to increase enrollment. There is also a hope to build off of the certificate, using the incubator policy, to offer degrees of the form X-plus AI; e.g. Physics-plus AI.

The directive from the Provost was to create the certificate curriculum such that

The proposal in front of us today is to create two certificates; one called AI Fluency and the other AI Management. Each certificate would involve a student taking three courses (one course in each of three knowledge domains) Some of these course offerings already exist, while others are being developed currently to be offered in AY 26.The plan is that more courses will be added to the options for students as time goes forward. The certificates will be housed in the College of Computing, there will also be an interdisciplinary steering committee. The proposal also lists learning objectives for each knowledge domain.

Murat Vural asked if students would need to pay an additional fee to obtain a certificate. The answer was no, students can take these courses as part of their free electives (some classes will also count as part of the core curriculum). These are just regular 3-credit courses.

Kathy Nagle asked how these certificates compare with the already existing AI minor. Nicole said that the AI minor, the AI specialization are all geared to “AI-builders” while the certificates are geared towards “AI-users”.

Nick Menhart suggested that the names of these certificates should convey the idea of AI-user (as opposed to AI-builder). It is important both to the student and to the employer to clearly communicate what these certificates are about.

Fred Weening mentioned that as per the Standard Operating Procedures for UGSC, the proposal of these certificates should be voted on. Kindon Mills moved to approve the certificate proposals and this was seconded by Murat Vural. The motion passed without objection, but with one abstention by Andy Howard.

  1. AY26 Recommended Catalog Changes: Dual/Joint Degrees

Nicole explained that the proposed changes to the catalog are to better facilitate Joint and Dual Degrees with external partners. Currently the language in the catalog is mainly, with some exceptions, written for internal dual or joint degrees. The university wants to be able to have dual and joint degrees with external partners especially in light of online education opportunities.

To begin, the proposal gives precise definitions of the terminology to be used at Illinois Tech as there are some inconsistencies and confusion in the meaning of these terms at different institutions.

The main change for the undergraduate student’s perspective is that the so-called residency requirement which says the last 45 credit hours are obtained at Illinois Tech would be replaced with saying that at least 45 credit hours are obtained at Illinois Tech.

 

  1. AY26 Recommended Catalog Changes: Co-terminal/AMP/”Plus One” 

Nicole indicated that part of the motivation for the proposed changes to the catalog is to increase our graduate enrollment. She explained that the current co-terminal program has several aspects which are problematic:

So, the proposal is to get rid of the co-terminal program, students currently in the program would be allowed to finish the program. Moving forward students will be offered incentives to enter the Accelerated Master’s Program as part of what will be called a “plus one” program. There are financial discussions at the leadership level of the university to create scholarships to help students in financial need to enter into a plus one program.  

There were some questions and discussion about double counting 400 and 500 level courses at either the graduate or undergraduate level. Nicole indicated that this proposal is essentially de-coupled from those concerns.

  1. The next item concerned the proposal introduced at the Jan 13 UGSC meeting to reduce the credit hour requirements of the Bachelor of Science in Applied Cybersecurity and IT. At that previous meeting  it was pointed out that the argument for calling this a BS program had originally been predicated on the mathematics requirements involving the Calculus sequence. The suggestion had been made that if the Calculus classes are removed, then the program should no longer be a BS program. Jeremy Hajek took the committee’s suggestion back to his department, but the ITM department does not want to change the name of the degree.

Erdal Oruklu mentioned these concerns again at this meeting which Jeremy said he understood. Jeff Wereszczynski pointed out that there are a number of other BS programs on campus that do not require any Calculus courses, and he encouraged the committee to not hold this program to a higher standard than other programs.

Gabe Smith noted that there is a lot of overlap between this degree program and the ITM degree and wondered if students would be encouraged to get a dual degree in these two programs. Jeremy said that he thought they are two similar for students to get a dual degree in those two programs. It would be better for students to do some sort of coterminal program with a master’s degree program. Gabe suggested that it would be helpful to have this (that a dual degree with ITM is not allowed) written in the bulletin since she expects that students will want to try to do this and then the registrar’s office and UGAA will have to try to explain to them why this isn’t allowed.,

Nicole Beebe returned to the question conditions for a BS degree and indicated that to her knowledge there are no accreditation rules requiring any Calculus for a BS degree. (Nick confirmed this) Given the state of preparedness of students in math these days, if we were to require Calculus for all BS programs it would likely come at the cost of lower enrollments.

At this point Kathir asked for a motion to accept this proposal, but upon checking it was determined that there was no longer a quorum of voting members present at the meeting. The vote will either be taken electronically or at the next UGSC meeting.

  1. The final agenda item for the meeting was a quick update on the course numbering policy that Daniel Bliss has initially proposed and whose revision has been worked on at UGAA and other administrative offices.

Jeff Wereszczynski indicated that a final draft of a revised proposal has just been completed today and it would be better to table this item until the next meeting. Kathir indicated that it might have to wait until the Feb 24 meeting, as the Feb 17 agenda was already very full. Daniel Bliss mentioned that if it does have to wait until the Feb 24 meeting he would ask that departments look carefully at the proposal in the meantime so that any final concerns can be addressed at that meeting.

Kindon Mills asked when we would be able to see the proposal. Jeff Wereszczynski said he had just sent it out to GSC members and would make sure that UGSC members got the proposal soon as well.

A motion to adjourn the meeting was made and seconded. There were no objections or abstentions.

The meeting adjourned at 2:13 pm.