Baccalaureate Core Committee

Voting members present: Nancy Barbour (via phone), Kathy Becker-Blease, Natalie Dollar (via phone), Patrice Dragon, McKenzie Huber, Bob Paasch, Weihong Qiu, David Roundy, Dana Sanchez, Inara Scott, Rorie Spill Solberg, Kaplan Yalcin
Voting members absent: Pat Ball, Filix Maisch
Ex-Officio members present: Heath Henry – Academic Affairs

Introductions

• Committee members went around the table and introduced themselves followed by a moment of silence in memory of a lost colleague, Isabelle Brock.

Discussion

• Expectations of the committee
  • Quality control of Baccalaureate Core (BC) course through review.
    • This includes adds, drops and revision of any courses under the purview of the Baccalaureate Core Committee (BCC).
    • The co-chair issued a thank you to the volunteers who continued to review courses through the Summer term to minimize the backlog.
  • The BCC’s main focus is reviewing courses that come through the Curricular Proposal System (CPS) and courses that currently exist within the BC to insure they remain aligned with BC standards. The BCC is hoping to expand its focus to discuss the vision of the BCC and determine whether it is still meeting the needs of faculty and students.
    • The Faculty Senate President is working with the University President and the Provost to discuss more resources for the Office of Academic Programs and Assessment (APA) so that they can assist the BCC with the review workload and workshops for instructors who may need assistance writing their syllabi and aligning their course outcomes with BC requirements.
      • The Committee is also planning to send a group to the Cascades campus to set up a workshop for them.
• Category II Proposals vs Category Reviews
  • Category reviews are in depth reviews of programs and each course may have multiple syllabi. They occur every seven years.
  • Category II Proposals are usually to add, drop, or make significant changes to a course.
• Review Assignments
  • Co-chairs will meet on Thursday or Friday to go over the current workload and assign reviews.
  • Committee members cannot review courses for their department to insure there is no conflict of interest.
  • One of the most common issues is that the student learning outcomes, and how they align with the BC outcomes, are not always clear on the syllabus.
    • Instructors may go into more detail on how they align in their submitted paperwork, but it needs to be clear to students, as well.
  • Other common mistakes include: wrong Disability statement, wrong Student Conduct link and missing the verbatim BC statement.
• Timeline for Reviews
  • The BCC is aiming for a two-week turn around time on Cat II reviews.
  • The committee members should submit their reviews by Thursday or Friday to ensure they are placed on the agenda to be discussed at the next committee meeting.

Future Meeting Topics

• Category Review Training
  • Monday, October 17 will be a training meeting with Heath Henry. He will go over Sharepoint and the CPS and what to look for in reviews.
    • The meeting is primarily for new members, but returning members who may want a refresher are welcome to attend.
  • 16 Category II Reviews in CPS Queue
    • Information about the proposals in available in the CPS.
    • Suggested bookmarks:
      • BC Outcome Page
      • Minimum Syllabus Requirements
      • Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC) checklist
  • 2018-19 Category Reviews
    • Physical Science
    • Biological Science
    • WIC: Education & Forestry
    • 16 resubmissions from 2017-2018
      • Courses that were decertified have resubmitted