Curriculum Committee Meeting
April 9, 2010
9 a.m. Room C-207
In attendance: Dean Branchini, Kacey McCarthy-Zaremba, Rick Bennett, George Rezendes, Dave Ferreira, Brian Kennedy, Christine Hammond, Sheila Skahan (sitting in for Jeff Crouch), James Copeland, Ellen Freeman, Tony Benoit, Sandra Jeknavorian, Patrick Knowles, Tia D’Alessandro (recorder)
Minutes from previous meeting, K. Aubin Motion to Accept, C Hammond seconds.
K. Aubin asks for an amendment.
Motion ENV 205 eliminate “change title to Environmental Seminar..” just list as cross listed.
All in favor, Minutes passed.
Dean Branchini asks for an amendment to the agenda to address textbook issue at 10:30 a.m.
New Courses
SOC* K101 online course proposal running summer and fall 2010. All in favor. APPROVED
BMG* K210- Organizational Behavior – course will begin the process of the increasing the course offerings for the department. Course will cross list with PSY*247. R. Bennett collaborated with Pamela Carroll to make the course as beneficial as possible.
C. Hammond asks how often the course will be offered and number of sections.- Initial implementation will be one section per semester. Anticipate 2-3 sections per semester over time to accommodate student demand as transfer schools are requiring. ECSU will accept this transfer credit as a 300-level business elective. The department is researching relationship to UCONN transfer.
K. Aubin makes motion to accept, Copeland seconds. PASSED Unanimously.
Quantitative Business Analysis would require new course number. There are other schools in the system that have similar courses. Collaboration between business and math department to create a course that will prepare students for upper level courses in business while still benefiting Math focused students. This course will transfer to ECSU easily and act more in step with their offered courses. D. Ferreira motions to accept, K. Aubin accepts. All in favor. PASSED
SOC* K101 online course – all in favor. PASSED
Special topics MAT* K075 course – Betty Williamson is working on her masters and will be incorporating her experience teaching MAT* K075 and previously collected data to create a course that will be more extensive in math as well as other topics to potentially increase thesuccess rate of students after completing this course. K. Aubin mentions that the course will have to be listed as a *098 to accommodate the increase in credit hours. “Special topics in MAT075.” Course will run Fall and Spring of 10/11 academic year. Benoit adds that students that passed the special topics course will not have record of passing 075 while registering for MAT095etc. K. McCarthy-Zaremba and K. Aubin will build this accommodation in.
HIS*K121 online- PASSED
ANT* K298 – Indigenous Peoples of the World. Would like to transfer it to be a normal course.
Dean Branchini is asking about an assessment of the success of the course in order to be made into a regular course. S. Jeknavorian says the indicator of success is full enrollment. The course will take place of the Native People’s Course. Would be added to LAS/GS elective list – will serve the need as a 200-level course.
Motion to pass – ALL in favor- PASSED
What will be the schedule for offering? Start summer and then look to schedule for the fall.
Online Advertising course- fills the need for the advertising certificate. Motion to pass- Bennett – second Benoit – All in favor - PASSED
NEW DEGREE/CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS
In the business department, they have chosen to try to accommodate the current climate in the community with citizens being unemployed. The following four certificates are 15 hour required to teach skills used in the work-world. All certificates are attached to associates degree programs. Each program has one course that used as a pre-req that can be waived if necessary in reflection of previous experience.
Accounting Core, Bus Admin Core Bus Info Core, Marketing Core
Benoit mentions that in order for a program to receive financial aid that it must be 16 credits. Bennett explains that issue has been addressed and the need in the community is high enough to have the programs stand as they are.
Dean Branchini suggests looking at the programs that may have all courses online which can be advertised as an “online certificate program”.
Could increase the credit requirement by adding COM* K109.
Benoit would like to motion to accept with the addition of COM* K109 to make the 16 credit financial aid requirement. C. Hammond Seconds –All in Favor PASSED (four certificate changes)
Business Department Curriculum Changes
Accounting: Changes made will better match what ECSU is offering as programs. ACC* K112 will be removed and ACC* K111 will be a broader coverage of the accounting, and ACC* K112 will be utilized by accounting majors to get more in depth to theory. Move to approve Benoit, K. Aubin seconds – All in favor PASSED.
Programs Changes
Early Childhood Education program
After re-evaluation of the program the department made some changes to clean up the plan of study form. Fine arts elective added (will transfer well) and the added option of BBG* K115 to offer opportunity to give students ability to be successful.
Motion to pass: All in Favor – PASSED
Catalog Changes
SOC* K210, SOC* K211, SOC* K220, SOC* K230,SOC* K278, SOC* K296, – add pre-requisite “or with instructor permission” No issues – requested to bring back to J. Crouch to address the potential phone calls, etc.
Additional Items
Calendar – K. Aubin.
A date was changed to reflect a holiday issue in order to provide the appropriate contact hours.
Summer 2012 modules – looking at the modules to provide the opportunity to take 2 sessions of courses. Dean Branchini asks the group to bring back to their departments the fact that there is a higher number of Pell Grant students and within the next couple of years we will be looking at the summer session as populated as the Fall and Spring semesters. J. Copeland reflects the need to evaluate courses and whether a course can be taught in shorter modules or should stay in 12 weeks.
K. Aubin and the scheduling office need to know which the preference is from a department and when they want it to start.
Keep 1 week module, 7 week module, 8 week module.
Remove 6 week module and add a 12 week module.
Spring 2011, 2012 included Professional days. The professional days have been worked into the scheduled following a directive from President Jones in order to allow the entire college community to participate in workshops scheduled on these days.
Spring Break has been early- is there any way to reevaluate when it will be scheduled to give courses a longer stretch before and after. Generally spring break is reflective of ECSU and UCONN’s calendar as we have many students that attend the two institutions.
The calendar issues will be re-evaluated in May curriculum.
Announcements
Dean Branchini would like to announce that George Rezendes has accepted the position of Assistant to the Dean. We are very excited to welcome him to the Academic Division.
Textbooks
The system is requiring a change that will allow students to see their text books/ required materials prior to enrolling in courses. There is a calendar of deadlines that must be met by all parts of the system.
Students will have the opportunity to rent text books in order to save money. Students will be able to save 45% on prices. Students can choose to convert rental to purchase if desired. This will encourage students to continue shopping at Efollet. 20%+ textbooks in the system are on this rental database. There will be an opportunity to suggest books to be placed on the rental list. Faculty will have to contract to use the textbook over 4 semesters in order to have their title added to the list. The down side for students is if they are participating in courses that require the same textbooks used over more than one semester the student will have the rent the textbook twice.
The demand on the faculty is going to be heightened in order to provide Efollet with the textbook titles by the required deadlines. A question was raised in regards to adjunct faculty – do departments have required common textbooks for sections of the same course. C. Hammond explains that all ENG courses have required texts with the exception of ENG 101, which allows for some flexibility among 4 titles. If a course is not staffed, C. Hammond chooses the text, which is the most commonly used text for the course.
S. Jeknavorian explains that there are some common titles in the department but the as a new department they are beginning the process to get to that point.
J. Copeland explains that the science department operates under the same syllabi and hence the same titles. “In the spirit of common numbers”.
D. Ferreira would like to announce the service learning workshop happening today- in B-114. Stop on by. A file will be circulated via email of the power point and audio file of the presentation will be forwarded in the near future.
May 6th Open House ceremony 3-6 p.m. that will be advertised in the community.
June 18th – Retirement party for Dean Anderson. Would like to offer testimonials from individuals and departments to Dean Anderson. Perhaps in the form of a video which can stream all evening. Please contact Louise Summa or Dean Branchini with ideas.
Changes in the Pell Grant- will definitely impact the Academic Division during the summer. This change will benefit the students and facilitate the increased enrollment for summer courses.
Professional Day question – April 16th is a Professional Day. Please advertise any workshops so those college faculty and staff that are interested may participate.
Online evaluations ARE coming! There will be a Powerpoint presentation which will be circulated in the coming weeks to explain how students will be able to evaluate on MyCommnet. The evaluations will be complete when a student submits, or when the grades are rolled. Faculty will be able to see what the completion rate of evaluations during the 3-week evaluation period. This will allow faculty to encourage students to evaluate, but faculty will not know who has/has not participated. This WILL take the place of the initial bubble sheets.
Ellen Freeman announces that there has been a company chosen to look at standardized testing in Computer Aided Testing. There will be an orientation for faculty, system wide to explain the system and a student orientation which will be in the form of a webinar to accommodate varying schedules.
LAS/GS task force.
The task force will examine courses to make sure they are fulfilling both components of the requirement; they will cooperatively work with the Gen Ed task force. Would like to make sure that courses fulfill Gen-Ed goals.
Would like to work FYE courses into the FYE programs. The FYE courses have been assessed and improved. The task force will examine these assessments.
The FYE courses were assessed because the purpose of the course is to prepare students to be prepared to do successfully in other courses as they progress further at the college.
The task force would like to look at the transfer guides.
Kacey McCarthy-Zaremba requests that the minutes for all meetings, committee/departmental please be forwarded to Academic Division staff.
Motion to Adjourn