Directors Council Notes
December 16, 2014
3:30pm – 5:00 p.m., LI 329
Present: Ayers, Ettlich, Garcia-Hanson, Gayton, Humphrey, Jones, Rex, Shrewsbury, Stone, Walsh, Waters
Guests: Matt Stillman, Erin McDowell, Katrina Highland, John King
Guests were introduced: Erin McDowell is Degree Coordinator for Enrollment Services. Katrina (Simpson) Highland has been scheduling coordinator, will be associate registrar in January. John King will be new Director of Division of Education, Health, and Leadership beginning in January.
Degree Works (Erin McDowell)
McDowell gave an update on implementation for Degree Works. It allows easy access for degree requirements and information, and the format is easier for students and advisors to use. It requires all program information to be input first. We’re entering all catalog information back to 2006, using Scribe programming language. Enrollment Services will need to know who will be responsible within each program; we’ll want someone from each program to review the information for accuracy. All degree evaluation as it stands now will be eliminated. Graduate Programs will be included in the next roll-out. Training will start in one program, within Social Sciences. Will do training with everyone, then refineand simplify. Will complete scribing by end of winter term, then efine training documentation.
Plan is to begin 2015-16 scribing process in spring term. Contact Erin McDowell for questions.
Cross-listed courses(Katrina Highland)
Highland distributed a handout that listed a number of problem issues with our increasing number of cross-listed courses, but including issues to consider if we start limiting cross-listings. She asked the Directors to share with their faculty and ask for feedback. The information has been presented to Curriculum Committee. One purpose of the proposed change to cross-listed courses is to eliminate redundancies.
Highland described details of some of the problems. Sometimes a course looks like it’s closed when it’s not; there is more chance for prerequisite errors; cross-listingsincrease the number of students who submit academic appeals; different schedulers do different set-ups and set up different grading modes. Data entry of cross-listed courses in Banner catalog is duplication of work; courses also have to be entered in the catalog twice, and entered in the class schedule twice each term. Prerequisites and alternatives often aren’t entered correctly. When courses are changed in one course, it’s not always picked up in the other course. The academic appeal process is a lot of work on each end.
Oversight issues: prerequisites are not maintained across the board. There is lack of inter-program approvals for the catalog. Instructor loading is also an issue; money and SCH follow the course prefix. Cost-benefit is not there for department offering the course, or for students. We can’t use 399s and cross-list them with hard numbered courses.
Garcia-Hanson said we shouldn’t use the catalog to make procedural changes. Waters said we need to reduce the number of cross-listed courses. Ettlich noted that we solved this for University Studies by using the Strands, which pulls an aggregate of courses under a broad subject. We can do this with Degree Works too.
There are some complications with elimination of cross listings, including reduced visibility for some courses, reduced recognition of interdisciplinary nature of some courses, SCH technicalities. Jones said there is also an issue of marketing.
Possible solutions to reduction in cross-listings include: use Degree Works to increase visibility. It will list all courses that could meet a requirement; restructure the catalog to have less delineation between programs; work with IT to create a section or link to alternative courses in a particular area. Stillman said Degree Works will change the way we work with this; we can see what will work and what the options are. Once students are using it, they can see what is available to them. Would need to look at some individual cases where students need to have a certain discipline course in order to get into grad school; would look at these case by case. Instead of looking at SCH, look at the number of majors and minors produced by a program, not just the SCH generated by a course prefix. Ettlich: we could reduce the number of cross-lists when we go into working on schedules. Highland asked Directors for feedback, and to ask faculty whether certain courses still need to be cross-listed. It’s a problem when courses have differential tuition and are cross-listed. [Highland leaves]
Other
M grades (Stillman): will roll grades at midnight tonight. Appreciate your help in resolving M grades; feds are cracking down on progress toward degrees, and they don’t distinguish between an M and an F; an M is just as damaging. Stillman said he’s also seeing a lot of pass/no pass for graduate coursework. We need to discuss this with Academic Policies Committee; they are supposed to be grade only. Walsh: we can’t give p/np grade for graduate courses; Waters said Banner allows it though. Stone: this has been a problem for some time.
Some Faculty aren’t fulfilling their contracts; there are repeat offenders who don’t’ get their grades in on time. Would like your feedback on this; need this problem to end. (Should personal PDA funds be withheld?) Ayers: for E grades, we allow them to move forward because they demonstrate skills, but they haven’t completed. Waters: should term-by-term faculty have the I or E option available to them? Walsh: look at your audit reports and see where the issues are and have a conversation at the program level or individually. Some people are using an M grade for people who are late getting work in; E is only for a missing final exam. Matt will follow up with audit information, and will also produce a prerequisite checking report. [Matt and Erin leave)]
There was a discussion of university closure during the holidays. There needs to be a Chair/Director workshop in winter term; we need to think of agenda and possible dates. Athe meeting adjourned at 5:00 p.m.