Undergraduate Studies Committee
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
12:45 p.m. WH 115
Meeting Minutes
Attending Voting Members: F. Weening (AMAT), K. Spink (BIOL), E. Corradi (CAEE), S. Hong (CHBE), R. Guan (CHEM), C. Hood (CS), E. Oruklu (ECE), E. Hazard (HUM), C. Wark (MMAE), D. Gidalevitz (PHYS), C. Adams (ROTC), J. Miller (PSYC), R. Trygstad (SAT), A. Madabhushi (SGA), J. Twombly (SSB), P. Ireland (SSCI)
Also attending: J. Gorzkowski (UGAA), N. Novak (GL), C. Torres (CoA), G. Smith (UGAA), B. Freeman (FDSN), C. Himes (LCHS)
Departments with absent voting members: ARCH, BME
Documents for this meeting are available at: <https://www5.iit.edu/~ugsc/documents/2019-2020/>
Meeting chaired by Greg Pulliam
Minutes recorded by Fred Weening
Quorum declared at: 12:46 pm
Adjourn at: 1:40 pm
1. Approval of the minutes for January 28, 2020.
The approval of the minutes passed unanimously.
Old Business
2. Changes to Applied Analytics BS (Miller).
This was a follow-up from the last meeting. J. Miller indicated that, based on the concern from the previous discussion, she had checked and confirmed that the Ethics requirement was of the form: choose one of the following classes (which was what she indicated in the previous meeting). Question: Will you be open to additional specializations requested by other departments. Answer: Yes, the requests will go through the department committee.
A motion to approve the changes was passed unanimously.
3. Proposed BS in Food Science and Nutrition (Burton-Freeman, Diel).
This was also a follow-up from the last meeting. B. Freeman asked for additional questions or comments; there were none.
A motion to approve the proposal was passed unanimously.
4. Proposed change of the Undergraduate Residency Requirement (Argamon).
S. Argamon and C. Hood indicated that they took the feedback from the discussion at the previous meeting back to the CS department and have modified the proposed changes to reflect the concerns of the committee. The amended proposal is to create a two-year pilot program which only applies to students applying to earn a CS or ITM BS/BAC degree co-terminal with the professional Master of Computer Science degree. Additionally, the amended proposal only allows 15 (instead of all 45) graduate credits to be applied toward the Undergraduate Residency Requirement. Further details regarding requirements for the remaining minimum of 30 credits of undergraduate courses can be found in the proposal on the UGSC web-site. Students will need to meet all requirements for obtaining BS/BAC degree by transfer credit and by taking iit-courses.
The question of how the pilot program will be assessed was raised. The answer was that the primary measures will be to look at students' grades and time of progression in the program. Secondly, the number of applicants will indicate how attractive the program is to perspective students. A concern was raised that since this program is primarily targeted at a cohort of students in China, the coronavirus response may limit the number students being able to start the program this Fall. S. Argamon indicated that most of the courses in the program will be offered on-line (students may only need to spend one semester on campus).
A motion to pass the amended proposal was called for a vote. The motion passed by the vote 11 in favor and 2 opposed.
New Business
5. Change in Core Curriculum Social Sciences policy (Gorzkowski).
J. Gorzkowski explained that the current policy concerning how Social Sciences (SSCI) courses can be used to fulfill the Human Sciences Module of the Core Curriculum has been causing a lot of confusion both for students and advisers. The issue concerns the requirement that two of the three required S-courses be in the same field, and that some SSCI courses can be counted as Political Science (PS) and some as Sociology (SOC). The proposed change is to no longer allow SSCI courses to count as PS or SOC courses.
A concern was raised in that although the proposed new policy is clear, it also limits what students can take. It was suggested that cross-listing courses might remove the confusion without limiting students' choices. However, J. Gorzkowski pointed out that the SSCI designation was created because there was so much cross-listing of courses previously.
A question was raised as to why the requirement of two courses in the same field exists; it is possible to take two courses from the same department that have very little in common. There is also a requirement that the three S-courses cannot all be from the same department; this policy would seem to inhibit students from pursuing minors. A suggestion was made to remove both of these requirements, i.e., let students take any three S-courses (with the requirement that at least two of the three courses be at the 300-level retained).
The committee asked that SSCI gives input on these comments and suggestions at the next UGSC meeting.
6. Discussion: Withdrawal date issues (Spink).
K. Spink indicated that the details of the Withdrawal date deadlines are not clear. Since no one from the Registrar's office was at the meeting, this discussion was postponed to a later meeting.
7. Information Item: CAC to review Social Sciences C-courses this term (Pulliam).
G. Pulliam announced that the Communication Across the Curriculum program will be reviewing Social Sciences C-courses this term.
8. Information Item: Update on Core Curriculum assessment process (Pulliam).
G. Pulliam indicated the progress of Core Curriculum assessment so far this term. A sub-committee to conduct the assessment has been formed. The subcommittee members are G. Pulliam, S. Laurent-Muehleisen, and Y. Mansury Two courses: PS 373 (East Asian Political Economy) and PHIL 370 (Engineering Ethics) have been selected for the assessment. The projects which will serve as the artifacts for the assessment have been determined and blackboard is in the process of being set up to receive the student work and give access to the sub-committee members for review.
A question was asked as to whether these two courses would provide a suffiicent amount of data. The answer was yes, this meets the requirements put forth by the Higher Learning Commission. C. Emmons has been in contact with the HLC to make sure that they approve of the process.
9. Update: 10-day, LCHS intensive online course (Himes).
C. Himes presented results of a survey of the students who took either of the two 10-day courses offered in late December / early January. There were 24 respondents, which was about 50% of the total number of students in the classes. A detailed summary of the responses can be found on the UGSC website.
Generally, students were pleased with the courses. The registration process caused some difficulties and would be simplified if a separate term was created for these courses. The grade outcomes were very comparable to those when the courses were offered in 15-week semesters.
There was some concern as to how much time students were actually spending on the courses. C. Himes explained that the lectures were given as the complete videos from a 15-week semester offering of the course, so the contact hours in the 10-day offering was the same as in a regular semester. The instructors were also available to answer questions from the students. The reading and writing projects and tests were the same as in a regular semester version of the course.
A question was raised as to whether offering these courses over 20 days instead of 10 might work better, especially with respect to having adequate time for feedback to be provided to students.
Currently students must get adviser approval to take these classes since they are on-line. It was suggested that adviser approval should be required of these courses even if adviser approval for on-line classes is not required sometime in the future.
10. Information Item: Applied Economics Specialization (Twombly).
J. Twombly described a new Applied Economics Specialization. This specialization will expand student options within the Stuart School (which currently has specializations in Finance and Market Analytics) and hopefully attract more students to the program. More details of the specialization can be found on the UGSC web-site.
The meeting adjourned at 1:40.