Attending Voting Members: Gruia Calinescu (CS), Promila Dhar (BME), Jim Edwards (ROTC), David Gidalevitz (PHYS), Erin Hazard (HUM), Steve Kleps (CAEE), Kathiravan Krishnamurthy (FDSN), Eva Kultermann (ARCH), Nicole Legate (PSYC), Yuri Mansury (SSCI), David Maslanka (AMAT), Erdal Oruklu (ECE), Victor Perez-Luna (CHBE), Ray Trygstad (ITM/Secretary), John Twombly (SSB), Murat Vural (MMAE), Ben Zion (CHEM), Fred Weening (Chair)

Also Attending: Anri Brod (Libraries), BJ Engelhardt (Career Services), Diane Fifles (University Accred), Joseph Gorzkowski (AA), Kyle Hawkins (AMP), Mary Haynes (UGAA), Pam Houser (INTM), Jasmine Johnson (Pathways & Bridging), Melanie Jones (Armour Academy), Sang Baum Kang (SSB), Christopher Lee (Registrar), Melisa Lopez (Student Success & Retention), Gabriel Martinez (Armour Academy), Tracey McGee (ELS), Abby McGrath (Enrollment Services), Nick Menhart (DVP Accreditation), Jamshid Mohammadi (GSC), Kathleen Nagle (ARCH), Shamiah Okhai (LCSL), Joseph Orgel (VPAA), Georgia Papavasiliou (Armour), Ayesha Qamer (Registrar), Hannah Ringler (CAC), Zipporah Robinson (Academic Success), Norma Scagnoli (CLI), Gabrielle Smith (AA), Mary Jorgenson Sullivan (ELS), Liad Wagman (SSB/CSL), Jeff Wereszczynski (PHYS/BIOL)

1. Approval of minutes from 2/13/2024 meeting.

   The motion by Eva Kultermann to approve the 2/13/2024 minutes was seconded by Gruia Calinescu and was passed by unanimous consent.

2. Updates from Academic Affairs.
   Joseph Orgel’s remarks in summary:
   I have three hopefully brief items in mind. One. You'll be aware of the continued endeavors by the University to improve our technological support. In all things, we in the the Central University Administration and Support services are doing our best to to represent your interests. I'm not sure what the experience is going to be like in the deployment of some of the tools. There's going to be an advising and scheduling tool and communication subset. And of course you know about Canvas has already been announced as well that are coming in the future. I'm aware that a number of you are testing these these deployments at this time, and it's probably worth it and some feedback about the testing of each of these technological deployments. Making your views, your thoughts, your suggestions for improvements known at this stage is probably going to be of the best long term benefit. I'm not saying jump on my line item in the agenda right now. But I am saying, please think about it, and think about the feedback that you would like to go on record.

   My next item of consideration is a information point. Notice, point my my feeling on on governance is that it's really hard for governance to be effective if governance is ignorant of things. So I prefer to try and be clear and inform on things I think you might be interested in. So, for instance, the transfer articulation and transfer credit for industry certificates. Some of you will be aware that the business school formally put items through Graduate Studies Committees for their MBA for coursera certificates and industry certificates on the graduate side and similarly so on the undergraduate side of ITM. Clarifying details about how they intend to apply for industry certification, to apply in relation to Coursera to save a lot of of hashing. At this introductory moment an update in this meeting, to my understanding, one of the biggest operative considerations is how to account for an articulation that doesn't have a transcript. So there are no credit hours to balance and we have a Department of Education requirement to clearly make a record of the number of credit hours that we are awarding the equivalence to so not just the learning objectives, not just the content, not just the learning, but also the Federal Government has a pretty clear view on what credit hours are. That is being addressed at this time, via credit by proficiency, or, in other words, an examination to ensure that the students would be able to pass the post learning assessment in our academy. And thus we've got a way of aligning between the certificate being accepted as transfer accredit and making sure that we're aligned with our regulatory considerations. I think that information should be passed for governance, so that you know what it is. I don't think that packet of information is ready right now. But Ray is on the line. Joe is on the line if he wanted to add anything else to to my comment. Right here, and that's probably a good point to pass before I get to my third item. Joe Ray, do you want to add anything? [Neither Ray Trygstad nor Joe Gorzkowski had anything additional to add.] That sounds good, thank you. And to be clear and to remind everyone, if if you're a little bit rusty on how this normally works. Quite often it is required for transfer articulation to be requested in in the graduate side of our operation. That's pretty normal, and the undergraduate side things have been a little bit different. And so ultimately it is possible for an academic unit to process with the consent of Academic Affairs and any other regulatory department that may be concerned, and Academic Affairs usually takes care of that for you. So we talk with the Registrar, we talk with Financial Aid, and so on, to be of service in making that a smoother experience for you than it might be otherwise.

   Then the the third item is in the information packet for this meeting from the last meeting and discussion of putting a number of programs on a hiatus it is normally within our experience. When a degree program is put on hiatus, that there are no no students in the program, or the last number of students in a program are finishing up which makes the the close-out of the program rather clear and direct about how that is done. We don't normally put a program that is active and has a number of students in it on hiatus. So in the in the the last meeting, we had a discussion about the number of students in each of the programs. And that's for item four, sorry I should have said that up front. So the administrative department, Academic Affairs, and partners pull data from our databases and supplied that information to Fred to be able to share with the rest of the committee, so you can have a full discussion on that presently. So thank you.

3. A proposal to eliminate the BS-MSE Program was presented by Murat Vural
   The MMAE Department voted 17 to 0 with one abstention to eliminate the Bachelor of Science in Material Science and Engineering (BS-MSE). Seven of the nine existing undergraduate materials science courses will be eliminated. There are only two students are in MSE minor who have completed 80% of the requirements of that minor and will be allowed to finish. The department is undecided as to retaining that minor but they are exploring options. Fifteen students are currently enrolled in the in BS-MSE, and eleven of them are seniors. The department will offer the four first- and second-year year students an opportunity to change majors, but if they choose not to, will offer the major courses until all enrolled students graduate. They are contacting admitted students to change majors and are not admitting any further students to this program. Joseph Orgel asked about the possibility of a hiatus rather than elimination, but Murat replied that concerns about the next ABET Program Evaluation led the department to conclude that termination of the program is the best option. Both agreed that a formal teach-out plan is essential and should be included as a part of this process.

   A motion to approve the elimination of the Bachelor of Science in Material Science and Engineering degree program was made by Ray Trygstad and was seconded by Eva Kultermann. The motion passed on a vote of 16 - 0.

4. A follow-up on Humanities programs being put on hiatus was discussed by Erin Hazard and Joseph Gorzkowski.
   Erin Hazard shared enrollment numbers for the degrees requested to be put on hiatus, which include these programs:

   • Bachelor of Science in Communication: Journalism of Science
   • Bachelor of Science in Communication: Journalism of Technology and Business
   • Bachelor of Science in Communication: Professional and Technical Communication
   • Bachelor of Science in Digital Humanities
   Also included was a request to place the following minors on hiatus:
   • English Language and Literature
   • History
   • Information Architecture
   • Linguistics
   • Literature
   • Philosophy
   • Policy and Ethics
   • Professional and Technical Communication
   • Science and Technology Studies
   • Urban Studies
   She noted that there are four students enrolled in the B.S. in Communications with two of them in Journalism of Technology and Business, and twelve in Digital Humanities. She emphasized that the department was committed to teaching out these majors with appropriate course substitutions if students did not elect to change to the existing Humanities major or to new curricula such as the B.S. in Data Visualization being proposed by the department. She noted that the majors listed are now unsustainable because many of the courses that are required are no longer available as the faculty who taught those courses have retired or have moved on. The goal is to put these programs on hiatus and restructure the Humanities curriculum to provide degrees that the department can really support and that are marketable.

   Joseph Gorzkowski presented current and historical enrollment numbers for the degrees to be placed on hiatus. Resulting discussion expressed concerns about the elimination of a program with twelve students enrolled and the need for a written justification for that to ensure that we can justify this action to regulators and accreditors. Erin Hazard agreed to provide this. Liad Wagman also expressed a concern about the proposed use of the term data visualization in a planned Humanities degree program, as this term is the focus of multiple programs within the Stuart School of Business.

   A motion to approve to place all of the proposed degrees except the B.S. in Digital Humanities, and all of the proposed minors on hiatus made by Yuri Mansury and was seconded by Ray Trygstad. The motion passed on a vote of 16 - 0.

5. Proposed changes to specializations in the Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and the Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering degrees was presented by Stephen Kleps.
   For the BS-CS this would add ENVE 422 & ENVE 423 to the ENVE specialization, and ENVE 423 & ENVE 444 to the GEO specialization, and remove CAE 435 from the Structures specialization. For the BS-ARCE this would add CAE 462 to the Building Systems Engineering specialization, and CAE 436 to the Structures specialization. Finally, the Fire Protection and Life Safety specialization would be removed from the BS-ARCE because there has been no demand for it in many years and courses in the specialization are rarely taught. In discussion, it was noted that these are simply options for electives to take as part of one of these specializations and as such do not constitute a significant change to these degrees. Nick Menhart requested that assessment plans be submitted for these courses and noted that while assessment is not currently required for elective courses, required assessment of courses included in a specialization can be expected in the future, because specializations appear on transcripts.

   A motion to approve these changes to specializations in the Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and the Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering degrees was made by Eva Kultermann and was seconded by David Maslanka. The motion passed on a vote of 17 - 0.

6. A proposal to create a Pass/Fail Internship course was proposed by BJ Engelhardt of Career Services.
   Career Services currently offers a 0 credit internship for for students who register their experience with Career Services. This is primarily used currently for international students who are required to register their experiences for CPT (Curricular Practical Training) authorization. The pass/fail courseis being proposed to make this this a more robust experience for our students, and also to get more domestic students to to register their experiences. It would benefit the university to have have good data on not only our international student internship and co-op experiences, but also our domestic students. Career Services would like to be in a situation where we have better data on the experiences those students are having, in terms of self assessments and employer evaluations. That would also help with quality control of these experiences. Career Services really does not have a mechanism to require these types of types of documents, the self assessment and the evaluations. By creating a pass/fail course, an incentive would be built in for students to to provide feedback with these experiences. There is also a desire on the part of the university to have more robust tracking and understanding of of experiential learning of our students.

   In discussion Joseph Orgel pointed out that these types of courses are normally housed within a department, and Nick Menhart pointed out that even a pass/fail grade requires grading criteria, and must have learning objectives and pass-fail grading done by qualified faculty. Further discussion was deferred to move on to the final agenda items.

7. A New Program Proposal for the Bachelor of Science in Data Visualization, Information, & Communication was presented by Hannah Ringler.
   The Humanities Department believes it is important to offer a communication degree program for our students. But it must be a program that the department can support that is robust, and that will be interesting and attractive to our students. So this is a revised new kind of communication program that would replace the ones that are currently on the books. You can think of this program as an updated version of a technical and professional communication type program. It includes foundational courses in in technical and general communication, training communication, and media studies. It includes some statistics and a variety of technical electives, and finally a capstone or thesis project. There is an assessment plan in the works, and as to concern about the program title, the department is willing to work through that, and is flexible on the title and framing of this to make sure that there's not confusion with what the business school is doing.

   Liad Wagman noted that there is not a single business communication intensive course in here and there, nor has there been any discussion with business faculty on what might be a useful course to have in the program from the business side. And the naming issue is an issue that will need to be figured out, because it is a main value proposition for many of the existing business programs, and it would be misleading to prospective students. Hannah Ringler replied that they would discuss this further offline. This was the first reading of this request so no vote was taken..

8. (H) and (C) subcommittee-approval recommendations were presented by Hannah Ringler and Erin Hazard.
   Reports were presented on the new ESL courses for credit for designation as (C) communications and (H) humanities courses. It was noted that COM 111 already holds both of these designations but they were reviewed for this revised offering of the course.

   • C designation report for COM 111
   • C designation report for COM 112
   • C designation report for COM 212

   It was noted that all compliance for the (H) designations is included in the learning outcomes in the course syllabi (linked from the course numbers in the list above). Because these reports came from committee no motion was required. The vote to assign (H) and (C) designations to COM 112 and COM 212 passed on a vote of 11 - 0.

As there was no further time, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 1:46 pm.