Core Education Committee

Oregon State University Faculty Senate

Meeting of the Core Education Committee
April 9, 2025
10:00-11:45 A.m.
Zoom

MINUTES

 

Committee members present: Kelsey Emard (Co-chair), Daniel Faltesek (Co-chair), Andrea Allan, Aidas Banaitis, Abigail Crowell, Liz Delf, Matthew Kennedy, Lori McGraw, Brian Mills, Holly Mitchell, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Dave Stemper, Paula Weiss
Committee members absent: Vipin Arora
Ex-officio members present: Stephanie Baugh (Curriculum Management), Heath Henry (General Education Assessment), McKenzie Huber (Core Education Director), Kali Furman (Difference, Power & Oppression Director), Karen Watte (Ecampus)
Visitors and staff present: Caitlin Calascibetta (Faculty Senate Office), Andrew Valls (Faculty Senate President), Troy Hall, Michael Jefferis, Kristin Nagy Katz, Caryn Stoess

 

New Business & Information Items

• Core Ed Assessment Schedule and Policy Change
  • Communications has been moved from year 0 of assessment and data collection and Beyond OSU has moved to year 3 with WIC. Difference, Power & Oppression (DPO) also got moved up a year. There is some concern that there will not be assessment available on DPO-Advanced (A) due to it being upper division. One member pointed out that transfer students needing upper division credits could need those credits so assessment would just be less robust for DPO-A in the first round of assessment. There is some considerations of technical and logistical issues around other types of courses that Accreditation and Assessment are aware of so there is no concern around assessing DPO-A from the office.

Action: Motion to accept the assessment schedule and policy change; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Course Reviews

The committee reviewed and discussed the following Core Education proposals.

• SUS 350 Sustainable Communities
  • Minor issues, but nothing substantial that would prevent it from going ahead. Cascades syllabus could use a little additional clarification in the third column about learning outcomes. Additional information on how teamwork skills are evaluated would be helpful. Consider other modalities, spend more time on diverse values and perspectives. Cascades emailed to request an addition of recitation for their course. More collaboration between Corvallis and Cascades may be needed. It will need to be sent back to add a recitation.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve: 1) add recitation option; 2) updated Cascades syllabus with more detail in column 3 of Learning Outcome (LO) table and recitations; and 3) recommendation to include the content title of diverse perspectives in the course content in all syllabi (like what is in Cascades); seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ENT 300 Pests, Plagues, and Politics
  • Significant global issue and proposes a plan for teaching and mentoring collaborative group skills. Seems open to a lot of different interpretations. In line with previous Science, Technology and Society category and great fit for Seeking Solutions. Originator is willing to ensure diversity in enrollment and make sure the groups will have diverse representation. Some confusion around the wording of how LO 1 and 2 is written but the Accreditation and Assessment Office had no issue with the way it was written.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ANTH 210 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (3^rd review)
  • The course needed more focus on other cultures and countries. They have addressed a lot of the concerns the course was sent back for, but there are still issues in how they have addressed LO 1. They continue to use the term ‘non-western’ rather than ‘global’.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 11 votes in favor, 2 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ANS 420 Ethical Issues of Animals and Society
  • It needs quite a bit of work before it is ready to be approved. The syllabi have a different number of LOs and the wording is different between syllabi. The word count is unclear for the writing assignment; that needs to be clarified so it meets the WIC criteria. Both syllabi also need some general cleaning up. There is no information for students on how they’re going to receive feedback, and it could use more detail on how it will teach students about assessing the discipline specific audience genres and conventions.

Action: Motion to roll back to 1) clean up and update the course syllabi to meet WIC requirements including how/when instructor feedback is provided and word count of informal and formal writing; 2) provide more information about how students writing is assessed on all LOs; 3) clarifying how the writing assignments reflect the discipline's audience expectations, genres, and conventions, per LO2; and 4) make sure course-specific LOs match between both syllabi; seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• COMM 300 Writing for Communication Studies
  • It wasn’t clear in the assignment instructions that they didn’t require more than one outside source. That appeared to be the only issue; otherwise, the course is a great fit for the category.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• NSE 472 Nuclear Project Management and Professional Communication
  • It was unclear when peer reviews are happening but otherwise meets the requirements for a WIC course.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• WSE 111 Wood Innovations for Sustainability (2nd review)
  • They have added a reflection but the response to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) competencies is still somewhat general.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ES 270 Making Alliances and Solidarities (2nd review)
  • The essential assignment is identifiable and is now worth points, but the course still has some issues. Resumes and interviews are mentioned in CIM but there is no mention of them in the syllabus. Assessment & Accreditation confirmed the activist profile will include a resume and cover letter, but it is unclear how the visit to the Career Center affects the assignment.

Action: Motion to rollback: the course meets Beyond OSU I but does not yet meet Beyond OSU II - if the visit to the Career Center is the career activity, how is it connected into an assignment for assessment?; seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• HORT 412 Career Exploration: Internships and Research Projects
  • No issues.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ENGR 330 V.2. Inclusive and Equitable Engineering
  • Excellent and detailed proposal.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• AMT 461 Designing Futurisms (2nd review)
  • Much better but there is an issue with the course description. For number one and three The course-specific LO was addressed very clearly. Every sentence must begin with an active verb. The open educational resource (OER) is a challenge because they say that it's OER But then it looks like they must purchase videos and some of the items.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve with Heath reviewing: 1) provide an example of how the essential assignment meets each LO, especially how the assignment requires students to situate themselves in relation to systems of power/oppression for LO1; and 2) fix course description according to OSU required formatting (all sentences starting with an active verb); seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• ED 455 Disability at the Intersections: Educational Systems and Marginalized Identities (2nd review)
  • They made all the requested revisions and the course is ready to be approved.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• TA 460 Creating Social Change in the Theatre Industry (3^rd review)
  • Meets the minimum requirements for the category.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 2 abstentions.

• ART 209 Global Architectures
  • Exemplary.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• COUN 212 Global History of Mental Health
  • Moved to next week’s agenda.
• BI 204 Introductory Biology I (2nd review)
  • From notes regarding all BI 20X series: For Bi20x, many medical schools do not accept online labs and, in some cases, online courses at all.  This has shifted some since COVID but still remains largely true.  When we built Bi20x, in order to make sure that we did not jeopardize our pre-professional (includes medical) students, we opted to create clarity by developing an online series separately that was specifically built for our online student population.  Since we created a separate series, we tuned it slightly differently (examples and labs are more aligned to majors offered online) and we also rearranged the courses and content slightly. So right now, we could not simply say BI204 = BI223Z.  We would have to completely redevelop the BI20x series to do that which would literally take years and potentially create issues for pre-professional students as well. Having the two series creates clarity while also allowing us to develop award winning Ecampus programming and support our very successful pre-professional student population. They are fine with pulling BI 205 and BI 206 from the Core Ed but would like to keep BI 204 in the Core Ed.

Action: Motion to rollback with the note: if you want BI 204 in Core Ed it needs to be 4 credits. BI 205 and 206 will move forward not as Core Ed; The motion passes with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• BI 205 Introductory Biology II (2nd review)
  • Moved to next week’s agenda.
• BI 206 Introductory Biology III (2nd review)
  • Moved to next week’s agenda.
• ANTH 218 Peoples and Cultures of China
  • Moved to next week’s agenda.
• ES 260 Intro to Pacific Islands Studies
  • No issues. Needs an Ecampus redevelopment proposal.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve pending Ecampus redevelopment proposal; seconded. The motion passes with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Adjournment

With no further discussion or business before the committee, the co-chairs adjourned the meeting.