Undergraduate Studies Committee
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
12:45 p.m. WH 115
Meeting Minutes
Attending Voting Members: F. Weening (AMAT), K. Spink (BIOL), P. Troyk (BME), E. Corradi (CAEE), S. Hong, R. Guan (CHEM), C. Hood (CS), E. Oruklu (ECE), E. Hazard (HUM), C. Wark (MMAE), J. Miller (PSYC), R. Trygstad (SAT), A. Madabhushi (SGA), J. Twombly (SSB), P. Ireland (SSCI)
Also attending: J. Alexis (IPRO), D. Bliss (UFC Secretary) J. Gorzkowski (UGAA), M. Lopez (Student Success and Retention), N. Novak (GL), A. Patelidas (Registrar's Office), J. Rosenberg (SSCI), G. Smith (UGAA), Rishab Tyagi (SGA)
Departments with absent voting members: ARCH
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: 12:48 pm
Adjourn at: 1:43 pm
1. Approval of the minutes for February 25, 2020.
The approval of the minutes passed unanimously.
Old Business
2. IPRO learning goals (Alexis).
J. Alexis showed the revised learning objectives for the IPRO courses. These objectives included the change suggested at the previous UGSC meeting; namely removal of the word “when” and two commas in the description of the third learning objective.
A vote was called for the acceptance of these learning objectives. There was unanimous approval.
3. Proposed change to Human Sciences Module of Core Curriculum (Miller).
J. Miller displayed the current proposal for changing the criteria listed in the Human Sciences Module of the Core Curriculum which was discussed at the previous UGSC meeting. The proposal is to remove requirement 2.(c) “students must take at least six credit hours from the same field” (of the three (S) courses at the 300-level), and then relabel requirement 2.(d) to become 2.(c).
There was some additional discussion before a vote on the proposal was taken. This included
• a debate on the motivation for this proposal
• whether the earlier motion by J. Gorkowski concerning no longer allowing SSCI courses to count as PS or as SOC courses in satisfying the current 2.(c) requirement was still going to be considered
A motion to approve the proposal was called. The vote was 14 in favor and 2 opposed.
4. Information item: Core Curriculum Assessment update (Pulliam).
G. Pulliam reported that the first artifact for the assessment is now on blackboard. The 3-person committee on assessment will be performing the assessment and this will hopefully be completed by the end of spring break. A second artifact for assessment will be submitted by the end of the semester.
New Business
5. BS-Consumer Research, Analytics & Communication to hiatus status (Himes)
J. Miller presented this item for C. Himes. She indicated that the BS-Consumer Research, Analytics & Communication program has had low enrollment for the past five to six years; currently there are two students in the program. The BS in Applied Analytics has a new specialization that contains much of the content of this program.
A vote was called for approval of placing this program on hiatus. The vote was unanimous in favor.
6. Credit for 2 upper-level humanities courses being offered to ESL students who take and pass the ACTFL exam (Pulliam / Gorzkowski)
G. Pulliam explained that although IIT does not currently offer foreign language courses, these courses have been offered in the past and the policy was that 200-level foreign language courses would count as 300-level humanities courses. In recent years some students have been awarded transfer credit for foreign language credit they were awarded at Chicago City Colleges. These transfer credits count toward fulfillment of the requirements of up to 2 upper-level humanities courses. More recently, students have instead been taking exams offered through the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) website and getting transfer credit. In particular it has come to light that some students have been getting upper level humanities credit by being awarded transfer credit from passing ACTFL language exams in their native language (the ACTFL site offers exams for a very large number of languages).
G. Pulliam initiated a discussion as to whether this should be allowed to continue. J. Gorkowski indicated that while the UGSC and others review this situation, the UGAA web-site will indicate to students that the granting of transfer credit is under review.
The discussion included the following comments and questions.
• It doesn't seem right for students to receive humanities credit via foreign language transfer credit for a language which is their native language.
• What kind of exam security does the ACTFL provide?
• It is not common practice for universities to count foreign language credit toward upper level humanities requirement.
It was agreed that UGSC members should take this item back to their departments for further input and to revisit this item at the next UGSC meeting.
7. Foreign language classes ---- SGA proposal (Madabushi).
A. Madabushi indicated that the SGA would like the university to consider offering foreign language courses and perhaps a foreign language requirement under Humanities or Social Sciences.
A discussion followed in which some of the history of having foreign language offerings at IIT was described: on several different occasions during the past 25 years IIT has tried offering foreign language courses. In each attempt, a few years after the courses were first offered, the enrollment had declined to such an extent that the courses were no longer viable offerings. Several members indicated that the difficulty stems from the fact that many programs' curriculum do not have any space for free electives. It was suggested that the I-course proposal might enable some more students to take a foreign language course than in the past.
8. Guidelines for the creation, trial and final approval of new courses-delivery methods (Pulliam).
G. Pulliam explained that the Academic Affairs Subcommittee of the UFC was tasked with addressing concerns arising from the 10-day courses offered in late December 2019 / Early January 2020. This subcommittee produced a document (available on the UGSC web-site) with guidelines for academic units to get approval to offer courses in new modalities. This document has been sent to the UGSC for discussion and feedback. UGSC members should also get feedback from their departments.
Briefly, the process is as follows. First the College Dean must give approval for a course to be offered in this modality for a trial period, then the UFC needs to get notification, after the trial period a detailed report must be made to the [UG/G]SC, the [UG/G]SC then votes on whether to approve this modality for a specified list of courses, if approved by the [UG/G]SC then the UFC and Trustee's also need to give approval.
There was some discussion of these guidelines and related matters. Topics of discussion included merits of lecture capture, on-line only offerings, requirements of equal time / content, and whether success in one course can be used to predict success in another course. Further discussion will occur at the next UGSC meeting.
9. Information item: withdrawals (Lagunas)
A. Lagunas explained that there is a new process for students to request late withdrawals. Students can withdraw from a course after the add/drop date until the withdrawal deadline (about 60% of the way through the semester) which is published in the university calendar. A student can request a late withdrawal after the withdrawal deadline. To do so, students must submit an appeal to the registrar's office by sending the appeal and documentation via email to the registrar's office. Student's will need to give documentation of a personal medical emergency to get a late withdrawal approved. The registrar's office, with possible consultation from Garry Walley (Assoc. VP for Student Health and Wellness), will decide on whether to approve the appeal or not.
New Business
10. K. Spink inquired whether we should revisit the proposal by J. Gorzkowski concerning not allowing any SSCI courses to count as a PS or SOC course for the purposes of the depth-requirement of the current Core Curriculum Human Sciences Module. J. Gorzkowski indicated that, in light of the UGSC vote today to approve removing the depth-requirement from the Module, he would prefer not to have a vote on his proposal until we get the results from the UFC on removing the depth-requirement.
The meeting adjourned at 1:43 pm.