Core Education Committee

Voting members present: Andrea Allan, Vipin Arora, Aidas Banaitis, Liz Delf, Kelsey Emard, Daniel Faltesek, Matthew Kennedy, Lori McGraw, Brian Mills, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Dave Stemper, Paula Weiss
Voting members absent: Abigail Crowell, Holly Mitchell
Ex-officio members present: Core Education – McKenzie Huber; Curriculum Management – Stephanie Baugh; Ecampus – Karen Watte; General Education Assessment – Heath Henry
Guests: Michael Jefferis, Kristin Nagy Katz, Caryn Stoess, Andrew Valls

 

Course Reviews

• NR 201 Managing Natural Resources for the Future (second review) – Beyond I
  • Sent back for aligning assignments in the table.
  • All issues were addressed
  • Recommend approval.

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

• TA 247 Stage Makeup – Beyond I
  • Focusing on National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) concepts
  • Students being asked to think logically and practically about their career trajectories.
  • Connecting career goals to position of responsibility.
    • Worth 15 points and due early in the course.
    • Assignments are added with an intentionality and the assessment office believes it is a course for the category.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passed with 8 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• MAST 201 Humans and the Ocean – Beyond I
  • Final assignment is a toolbox; revision of personal statement and they will work with the College of Liberal Arts office to draft a resume.
    • They don’t identify the resume as the essential assignment, so it is unclear if the resume is included in the toolbox.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• CH 420 Transferable Professional and Scientific Skills (second review) – Beyond II
  • Changes did not make their way into the assessment process.
    • CIM was updated but changes were not reflected or articulated in the syllabus.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• CS 463 Senior Software Engineer Project III – Beyond II
  • It is supposed to be a hybrid course, but the Cascades syllabus says it is online only.
    • May be an issue with copy/pasting.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve after receiving new Cascades syllabus with the updated description from the Corvallis one; seconded. The motion passed with 9 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• ECE 342 Junior Design II – Beyond II
  • Minor concerns about language in the syllabus and the format of the essential assignment.
    • Language is too informal; easy fix.
  • Essential assignment is described as a collection
    • Resume in week 1
    • Second resume at the end of the term with a simple modification being that they’re going to attend a career related event.
      • How does that experience manifest itself?
      • How is it assessed?
  • One of the options for a career related event is a student clubs meeting – how is this a career related event? Recommend omission of this option.
    • Some student clubs can be quite career oriented, but participation needs to be consistent, or students are in leadership positions.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve after receiving revised syllabi that includes the detail from the CIM proposal, and formalize the language in the Learning Outcome table, and recommend removing the student club option from the list of career relevant experiences unless you can ensure it is a career related experience; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• BEE 415 Professional Development – Beyond II
  • Well done course.
  • Make sure reflection connects career event to Nace competencies

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• SPAN 319 Spanish for Professional Practice – Beyond I & II
  • Well done course, no issues.
  • Missing the Ecampus redevelopment plan.

Action: Motion to conditionally approve pending Ecampus redevelopment plan; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• PSY 411 Psychology Capstone – Beyond I & II
  • Well done course.
  • Reasonable number of pre-requisites for the level.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 1 abstention.

• SCI 100 Transitions – Transitions
  • Most of the course highly integrated with Course Learning Outcome (CLO) 1.
  • CLO 2 and CLO 3 could have been better integrated.
  • Very similar to CORE 100.

Action: Motion to approve both SCI 100 and SCI 300; seconded. The motion passed with 8 votes in favor, 2 votes in opposition and 1 abstention.

• SCI 300 Transitions – Transitions
• ANS 315 Contentious Social Issues in Animal Science (third review) – Seeking Solutions
  • Revisions look great.

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

• FW 325 Seeking Solutions to Global Crises in Resource Ecology (second review) – Seeking Solutions
  • Some changes were made in CIM, but not in the syllabus.
  • Assessment of student participation in group assignments has not been addressed.

Action: Motion to conditionally approval after receiving revised syllabi with group sizes of 4-7 students and moving paragraph about LO1 earlier in the table; seconded. The motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ANTH 101 Introduction to Anthropology (second review) – Social Science
  • Institutions were named.
  • Other issues were largely addressed but it was not always expressed how they were being addressed.
  • Course is satisfactory.
  • Textbook is expensive.
  • Can we request a concrete example of what assignments are being used or what they are asking to meet LOs?

Action: Motion to approve with note that they may want to meet with assessment to ensure that that they are meeting assessment goals; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• GEOG 240 Human Dimensions of Climate Change – Social Science
  • Is it appropriate for Social Science? What is the subfield?
  • Unclear if they assess all of LO 1 and LO 2.
  • All of the essential assignments kind of get to the LOs, but not quite.
  • Social Science courses need to be introductory courses to a social sciences field.

Action: Motion to rollback to change the essential assignment to address LO3; also clarify how it meets the LOCR criterion that courses in this category must be introductions to social science fields; seconded. The motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• PPOL 422 Policy Analysis (second review) – Writing Intensive Curriculum
  • First two requested changes were addressed well.
  • Last two requested changes were adequately addressed

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

• ST 243Z Elementary Statistics I (second review) – Quantitative Literacy
  • Previously sent back for more info for how the assessments are connected to the LOs
  • Issues well addressed.

Action: Motion to approved; seconded. The motion passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

• ST 244 Elementary Statistics II (second review) – Quantitative Literacy
  • Had same issues as 243Z.
  • Issues well addressed.
  • Credible reason for why both courses would be in the category.

Action: Motion to approved; seconded. The motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Policies

• Grade minimum standard for Transitions courses
  • Students should only be taking one but there are pre-requisites in Beyond courses that stipulate a C- in Transitions. This means that students may have to take more than one.
    • Can a course requirement override a central transitions matrix?
  • Suggested policy: Any non-failing completed grade in any transitions course satisfies the transitions requirement. Any completed transitions requirement satisfies any Beyond OSU Transitions pre-requisite.
    • Do program accreditation grades require these programs to use C- on their major requirements' pre-requisites?
    • The committee will discuss this potential policy more next week after checking with deans, accreditors and proposers about the intentionality of their pre-requisites.
      • For those Transitions course that have been approved with the C- minimum, can they be fixed without going through the workflow? Unclear, it will need to be fixed but can likely be done administratively.