Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Geoffrey Barstow, Daniel Faltesek, Matthew Kennedy, Rene Reitsma, Justin St. Germain, Colin Johnson, Randy Rosenberger, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Kelsey Emard, Jack Istok, Michelle McAllaster, Lori McGraw, Ifeoma Ozoede
Ex-officio members present: Assessment & Accreditation – Heath Henry; Ecampus – Karen Watte; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: McKenzie Huber, Michael Jefferies, Caryn Stoess

Course Reviews

• AEC 250 – Introduction to Environmental Economics and Policy
  • Change in credit hours
  • Course looks good for the Social Processes & Institutions category.
  • Does the syllabus show contact hours that align with increased contact hours?
    • Yes

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 9 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ENSC 321 – Environmental Case Studies - WIC
  • No issues with the syllabus.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 8 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

GenEd Policy Discussion

• Expertise
  • There is no policy now, on occasion we have made judgements in this space, but only as a last resort. This is not a Human Resources committee, and we do not have expertise about the activity of every unit or their faculty.
    • What is expertise?
      • Faculty Senate has enshrined “expertise” as a requirement to submit a proposal (April 13, 2023)
      • New instructors (early term graduate students, MA vs PhD) – should offer them teaching, but is that something for their program to provide?
      • Related areas?
        • How do we know? Does general instructional expertise transfer across all domains?
      • Who makes an initial claim to expertise?
      • Expertise in content domain vs expertise in teaching said content
      • Tenure Track Utilization vs Non-Tenure Track utilization
  • Pros to a policy
    • avoids out of area teaching
    • expands possible units offering proposals
  • Cons to a policy
    • Smaller pool of possible instructors
    • Costs of conflict related to expertise
    • Portfolio development costs
    • Costs for faculty evaluation can be managed during hiring and review processes, transcripts should be on-hand in case of Accreditation audit
  • Is an existing policy enforced?
    • Higher Learning Commission (HLC):
      • 3.C.5. The institution has processes and resources for assuring that instructors are current in their disciplines and adept in their teaching roles; it supports their professional development.
      • HLC: Instructors (excluding for this requirement teaching assistants enrolled in a graduate program and supervised by faculty) possess an academic degree relevant to what they are teaching and at least one level above the level at which they teach.
      • HLC: domain + pedagogical skill needed: knowledge about the subject area (content knowledge), knowledge about general teaching and learning strategies (pedagogical knowledge), and knowledge about teaching and learning strategies specific to their subject area (pedagogical content knowledge). For example, if university teachers lack disciplinary knowledge, they will not be able to perform well in their teaching tasks. However, we choose to use teacher expertise as a conceptual perspective for this paper and as a result focus on teacher tasks, because it is focused on what teachers do in practice rather than focused on what they know, value or are. Teacher tasks are easier to recognize in practice, and thus are highly relevant for teaching practice (McDonald et al., 2013)
  • As Compliance. Legal construct of expertise, which is a compliance matter, which does not define discipline or domain. Highest level standard: An MA/MS/JD/MBA at least in the area of Gen Ed taught + pedagogical development. Mid-level: 18 grad credit hours in domain + substantial record. Low-level: audit risk.
  • Domain and disciplinary linkage are not defined by HLC, but are required. Faculty Senate (FS) formally does not recognize an articulation between domains and units. Per HLC this is generally done with a credential. FS took the easy answer off the table here. Even the easy answer needs an audit.
  • Ontologically, is expertise in people or curricula? Is expertise intrinsic to the curriculum? Does this beg the question of college governance? How do we understand the relationship between the curriculum and the instructor who is asked to implement that curriculum? Especially in the context of ecampus.
    • It’s up to the unit to make sure the teachers are qualified to teach their courses.
    • How many grad students are teaching courses? Is it within the purview of the committee to dictate whether or not a grad student can teach a gen ed course? Wouldn't a policy about grad students teaching courses also need to be reviewed by the Curriculum Council?
    • At minimum, Grad students would need to go through the CADI training.
      • Note: CADI will not create expertise in a field. It will help a person with that expertise prepare to put in a course proposal that fits GenEd.
    • The Baccalaureate Core Committee’s (BCC) role is evaluating for GenEd. Can note to proposers that the BCC considers the comments and concerns raised by liaisons.
      • Could do conditional approvals - approved for Gen Ed - but we note that there are unresolved issues elsewhere in the CIM process.
  • Logistical challenges. When does a college check? Who initiates a challenge? Is a continuous process better than a challenge model? The relationship between expertise loss and course drift (alternate hypothesis: overworked individuals are fatigued).
  • Where does presumption lie? With the proposer unless indicated otherwise? Colleges will make convenience-based choices. Zones of scrutiny? (not precluded by FS).