Attending Voting Members: Gruia Calinescu (CS), Promila Dhar (BME), Erin Hazard (HUM), Steve Kleps (CAEE), Kathiravan Krishnamurthy (FDSN), Eva Kultermann (ARCH), Nicole Legate (PSYC), Yutang Lin (BIOL), 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 tending: Anri Brod (Libraries), Veronica Dillard (UGAA), 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), Gabriel Martinez (Armour Academy), Abby McGrath (Enrollment Services), Nick Menhart (DVP Accreditation), Jamshid Mohammadi (GSC), Nicholle Novak (Libraries), Joseph Orgel (VPAA), Ayesha Qamer (Registrar), Hannah Ringler (CAC), Zipporah Robinson (Academic Success), Gabrielle Smith (AA), Katie Spink (BIOL), Mary Jorgenson Sullivan (ELS), Liad Wagman (SSB/CSL), Jeff Wereszczynski (UFC)

1. Approval of minutes from 2/27/2024 meeting.

   The motion by Kathiravan Krishnamurthy to approve the 2/27/2024 minutes was seconded by Eva Kultermann and was passed by unanimous consent.

2. Updates from Academic Affairs.
   Joseph Orgel’s remarks in summary:
   Joseph asked if any members of his team had any updates. Joe Gorzkowski reminded everyone of the Adviser's Meeting on Thursday, March 29 at 12:45 and briefly discussed what would be covered in that meeting. Joseph then relinquished his time.

3. The proposal to place the B.S. in Digital Humanities on hiatus was discussed by Erin Hazard
   If students were looking for a major to transfer into, the traditional humanities major would be a great option for them. As a department, Humanities is moving away from thinking of digital humanities as a separate discipline, because really, in 2024, all humanities incorporates some aspect of the digital world, whether working with digital sources or producing work that's digitally accessible, etc. Recent hires reflect this as well. As has been said all along, the Humanities Department does not have the resources to support this program. So there were questions about how many courses could not be supported. This is a little bit of an intricate and confusing question, because this major has four different paths of specialization; each of those specialization paths has categories of classes that students can choose from, and they are interdisciplinary as well. But there are six courses required of all digital humanities majors and four of those are no longer supported by the current faculty. Many of the specializations present challenges given current resources. For example, the policy and ethics specialization includes twelve possible classes and Humanities has not been able to offer any of these twelve classes in the last two years. So as a department, it is not in the best interests of our students to continue enrolling them in a program can no longer be supported. Students currently interested in digital humanities would be very well served by our current Humanities major. if there are Digital Humanities students who are prospectively interested in game studies and design, which was one of the specializations in the Digital Humanities major, they can now enroll in the Game Studies and Experiential Media major, which was not available at the time the Digital Humanities major was introduced. There are currently twelve students enrolled in Digital Humanities. The last is slated to graduate in 2027. The Humanities Department is fully committed to supporting the current Digital Humanities students, and all advisors have been finding substitutes for classes and petitioning UGA as needed to help them complete their programs of study.

   Joseph Orgel noted that this seems clear. It doesn't matter if it's the first, second, or third reading. It's a reading that presents clarity if we're to be audited, and to be able to show the rationality behind program decisions. We've only had a couple of days to be able to look at this, but on on a superficial reading it really does seem to be substantive. He thanked Humanities for that.

   A motion to place the Bachelor of Science in Digital Humanities degree program on hiatus was made by Kathiravan Krishnamurthy and was seconded by Yuri Mansury. The motion passed on a vote of 16 - 0.

4. A discussion of the process for moving degree programs from 126 to 120 credit hours was presented by University Faculty Council Chair Jeff Wereszczynski.
   The movement to reduce the minimum number of credit hours from a bachelor's degree requires from 126 to 120 is now official IIT policy. Stuart will have some proposals later that will modify their programs to reduce their credit hours. All representives that are here are encouraged to go back to your units, and especially if there are free electives to strongly consider reducing those free electives, to get degree hours down to 120. Tthis has been discussed a lot, but we don't necessarily want to be in a position where some students are feeling like they're being forced to take extra credits of just free electives, just because a program has not been updated. Everyone is encouraged to go back and do that. As to how this must be done, Jeff asked Joseph Orgel and Nick Menhart to comment.

   Joseph Orgel made it clear that this must be done at a departmental level because only academic units have the necessary expertise to appropriately modify their programs, and that the changes needed to be entered in CIM, and did not constitute significant changes to degree programs. Despite concerns expressed by Nick Menhart that the expected large volume of requests might become bogged down in CIM. Joseph replied that CIM was under new management and is moving a lot better than before. He expressed confidence that this was the correct process and would be workable.

   Ray Trygstad pointed out that since the reduction of credit hours is not a significant change, and it's not been a requirement that there be two readings of a program change if it is judged to not be a significant change, we should be able to approve these the first time they are presented. Fred Weening and Joseph Orgel concurred. Abby McGrath stated that she would be working directly with Ayesha Qamer on this and was confident that it could be done very quickly and efficiently.

   Solomon Kang pointed out that when he tried to make this change in CIM it would not allow it becase CIM rules require undergraduate degrees to be 126 hours. Joseph Orgel stated that the rule in CIM would be changed. Jeff Wereszczynski closed the discussion by urging each UGSC member to return to their academic units and urge them to move forward on the reduction of degree hours to 120.

5. A proposal to reduce the required credit hours for the all undergraduate degrees in Business to 120 credit hours was presented by John Twombly
   This was approved at the last Business faculty meeting. Solomon Kang attempted to enter the changes so they'd be in CIM by this this meeting, but wasn't able to do so because of the limitation. For the 4 major degrees, Business Administration, Finance, Financial Economics, and Marketing Analytics, Business 361 Entrepreneurship will no longer be required, because a lot of entrepreneurial content is covered in the classroom anyway, plus students will be able to take IPROs that can be entrepreneurial. So this course will be deleted from undergraduate business requirements. In addition the BSBA had a free elective to be removed. As for electives of students in combined degrees, most of the combined degrees have two required business electives, so those business electives were eliminated leaving the courses from the other disciplines the same. Required business courses will be the same and if students want to have business courses as electives, they can be free electives. Free electives were not reduced because students who transfer into the business program sometimes come from another area, and some of their courses may be used as free electives in business programs. This leaves that avenue open for students transferring into business after one or two semesters someplace else. The business aspect of the combined degrees was reduced so that it wouldn't have come from elsewhere. If ITM would prefer that a couple of of business courses were put back in place of ITM classes that would be fine but this seemed to be the cleanest way and and neatest way to do it.

   Joseph Orgel requested that Ray Trygstad from ITM close the loop on changes to the combined programs (B.S. in Business and Information Technology and B.S. in Economics and Cybersecurity) and Ray replied that ITM courses offered in the these degrees had already been pared down to a minimum, so it was not possible to pare them down or switch any of them to business electives. And, as John pointed out, free electives could be taken as business electives. An inquiry was made as to existing students in 126 hour programs: could they elect to enter the 120 hour program? Ray trygstad replied that they just needed to change their Bulletin year with Undergraduate Academic Affairs, and asked if there was a formal process for that. Joe Gorzkowski replied that when architecture switched from 169 to 160 hours, within the last year all the student were automatically switched to the new program because any student would obviously want to switch to a program that has less hours instead of taking more hours.

   A motion to approve these reductions in required credit hours in undergraduate Business degrees was made by Eva Kultermann and was seconded by Ray Trygstad. The motion passed on a vote of 16 - 0.

6. A proposal to reduce the hours in Biology undergraduate degrees to 120 credit hours was discussed by Katie Spink.
   Biology been positioning themselves to move to the 120. In order to do that, it was desireable to keep some flexibility within the biology degree program. This proposal moves analytical chemistry and general physics out of the program of required courses. Right now they're in CIM moving to free electives because CIM won't allow reduction to 120 and removal of Biology 430 from the list of required courses to a free elective. In moving to 120, this keeps 2 free electives, so it actually increases the number of free electives and keeps everything the same. This affects the dual degree program in Biology and Psychological Science and basically removes the requirements of analytical chemistry and general physics III from the list of required courses to possible free electives. Biology 430 will be moved to a biology elective list of 4, because this represents an integration point between the two programs. It does not affect any of the requirements of the in the Psychology portion of the dual degree, but will reduce the overall credit hours by six. That one is not in CIM yet. And finally, Nick (Menhart) always asks about a current assessment plan, and a new Assessment Plan has been filed, using the new fancy form as requested.

   A motion to approve these reductions in required credit hours in undergraduate Biology degrees was made by Ray Trygstad and was seconded by John Twombly. The motion passed on a vote of 17 - 0.

7. The new Program Outcomes and Assessment Process section of the CIM New Program Proposal form was introduced and discussed by Nick Menhart and Ayesha Qamer.
   The new Program Outcomes and Assessment Process section of the CIM New Program Proposal form was described and shared with the committee. The link for CIM Program Management is found in the Teaching tab of MyIIT in the same box as the DegreeWorks link. The new Program Outcomes and Assessment Process is the section of the form at the very bottom of the form and includes a link to the Program Assessment Plan Template which must be completed and submitted with the New Program Proposal.

   Nick Menhart also described the process that would be used in the future for teach-out when a program is placed on hiatus or is shut down. Because the Higher Learning Commission has some very specific processes that must be observed, a new form with 10 questions will be created to collect the necessary information for a program closure. Eventually this will be part of CIM but until then we will have this form. The nature and scope if the required information was discussed and it was pointed out that regulatory agencies are very sensitive to student complaints, and we need to ensure that if something like this happens, there is at least a list of actions taken and the people involved in them.

8. The C-designation Learning Outcomes Proposal & Report was presented by Hannah Ringler.
   The focus was mostly on this first page of the proposal. It's a long document. The goal was to assemble optimal C (communications-intensive) course learning outcomes. We have these for a lot of the other designations, or recently approved them for a lot of the other designations, the H and an S. These were developed by a committee which workshopped them with focus groups and with assessment. And now they are presented in their final form for for approval here. There is a brief introduction and justification, followed by the list of learning outcomes. The key consideratin was what kind of learning outcomes do we want for our C courses? The current core requires students to take a lot of C courses, 36 hours with 12 in major, and 12 at least out of major. This expectation is is very much out of date with current research and best practices by a long shot. Most of the current research in this area suggests, instead, a really kind of rigorous focused teaching of communication skills both in and out of major. Perhaps one or two classes in their major, and one or two classes out of their major that really focus on teaching communication skills intensely rather than getting kind of haphazard bits here and there throughout a variety of courses. This is the goal and what we're moving towards in that in the plan as well. The research tends to show that to reduce those number of courses and instead have more kind of focused communication courses is better for learning, and especially for underprivileged students. That's a big aspirational change. It's a big change from our current setup, and we know we're not there yet; it will take a little while to get there, as well as a lot of collaboration and support. The desire was to create learning outcomes that would support a future plan like that, but will also work within our current core to help us get there.We must have learning outcomes that address the concerns from Illinois Tech faculty, align with current research and best practices, make explicit the types of skills, and to learn to differentiate skills in a useful way. The outomes listed in the report are where we want our communication courses to be, working towards a smaller number of outcomes and courses that are focused and rigorous. To meet these 5 outcomes so that students can demonstrate understanding and analyze text in order to develop their own claims and writing. And text is meant really broadly here, from an academic article to a news article to a data set as a type of text, that students can analyze and use in their writing. Students can craft the text with attention to audience, purpose, context, and conventions. Students can effectively revise their text or argument based upon detailed feedback. Students get presented effective evidence based argument in an appropriate medium of communication, recognizing that communication can look like a lot of different things, written, visual, or so forth. That students can communicate specialized knowledge appropriately for a defined audience. That especially is moving into communicating about specific knowledge as they develop in their fields and learning how to do that. This is what we want our classes to look like. We fully expect that most of our classes are not accomplishing this right now, and that's okay. That's totally fine. We want to put these outcomes in place to say, Hey this is our target. This is where we want to be and then work over the next year through assessment, especially with the kind of university wide assessment to say, Okay, where are we? What are our classes doing? And how are these looking in terms of our goals. We expect that it will show a lot of places where things need to be fixed. And that's okay. But it will give us an honest sense of where we are based on where we should be. And then we can use that data to say, Okay, what kind of revisions need to happen going forward and and start moving moving from there. We want to put these outcomes in place so that we can get that honest look about where we are, and put that aspirational target there. In the rest of this document, there is a lot of information about various aspects of what has been developed here. There's a section about the research on teaching communication and composition skills so we can see how those outcomes are shaped out of current research. We ran some focus groups. in Section 2, and we're really trying to make sure that we understood what does communication teaching look like at Illinois Tech? What do faculty struggle with? What does that look like in their classes? One of the main things that we learned from that was the concerns that Illinois Tech faculty have about teaching communication are not that unique—they're what most people struggle with in terms of faculty struggles, teaching communications, especially in tech fields.This really bolstered our confidence in basing these learning outcomes on the research and best practices from the field. You can see the findings from there. Then in Section 3 we have future plans and assessment. What do we want to do going forward? That's broken into a couple of different categories. But you'll see over the next couple of semesters what that assessment process is going to start looking like, so that we can understand what's going on. So it's a lot of information here. Through all of the report aspect of this we wanted to provide that information as context in case you wanted it. These are okayed by the Communication Accross the Curriculum Program, the Humanities Department, Lewis College, as well as Assessment and Accreditation. We've collaborated with quite a few people on getting these in agood shape.

   Joseph Orgel requested some insight into the composition of the focus groups. Hannah responded that the the focus groups were run by Lewis College, or kind of in collaboration with them. So there were 2 different focus groups, each of 12 to 15 people, pulled from all across campus, from all different academic units. The goal was to have a representative from each kind of major department across campus to get a sense of what things look like there. So that wound up maybe 20 to 25 people that discussed what that looks like in their field. It was not limited by any means to Lewis College, because these are learning outcomes for all C designated classes, and that goes well outside of Lewis College. The questions that were asked of them are are listed there in the bottom of the report. What kind of things you try to teach your students? What kind of communication skills you try to teach them? What is your understanding about the C designation and how that works? How do you go about teaching communication skills in your classroom right now? What kinds of support do you need to do that? This was to ensure we had a sense of you know. Are there unique struggles that Illinois Tech faculty are facing in communication teaching, for example, because we can look at the research and best practice and say, Hey, these look like the normal struggles that faculty have and the normal ways that those are approached. But if Illinois tech faculty has something weird, that like seems to be a unique problem from Illinois Tech faculty, we wanted to know that. Our sense was that it doesn't seem like there's anything crazy going on at Illinois Tech in terms of communication skills struggles that students have and so so we felt pretty good about about basing those on the research there.

   Erdal Oruklu asked if this proposal goes through for the learning outcomes, if lab courses in the ECE Depatment that are C designated will have to adopt these learning outcomes; is that correct? Hannah Ringler replied that that is the goal, that those courses should adopt these learning outcomes. But these are aspirational targets. What we're hoping to, as we move forward in the future, is to lower the number of classes that need to meet these. So that not every lab class has to meet them, for example. So at least the short term this is what those classes would be asked to do. Erdal followed up with the question, do you have rubrics also for these learning outcomes? Is that part of the plan? Hannah replies that the plan will be to have rubrics, especially for the purpose of university wide assessment. Mary Jorgenson Sullivan added that Hannah's done a lot of work in collaboration with the Core Curriculum Assessment Committeeto identify a workable process for assessment of the C courses, which is going to be complex. But also a lot of information has been aggregated from units across the university, and it is a process and is actively being worked out. Nick Menhart noted that COmmunicaitn would be assessed in the Spring of 2025 which gives us time to work things out.

   A motion to accept the proposed C-Designation Learning Outcomes was made by Enrin Hazard and we seconded by Kathiravan Krishnamurthy. The motion passed on a vote of 15 - 0. .

The Chair noted that important matters still remained but we were out of time and asked if the Committee would be amenable to a special meeting on Tuesday April 2. The consensus was yes so he agreed to schedule that meeting. He also reminded the Committee that a new Undergraduate Studies Committee Chair and a new Secretary must be selected before the end of the year and although UGSC votes on a Chair, that the actual appointment must be made by the University Faculty Council. As no more time was available, the Chair then adjourned the meeting at 1:46 pm.