Minutes 11-3-2004
Degrees and Certificates Committee
Minutes
November 3, 2004
Sylvania Campus, 3:30-5:00 pm
TLC Conference Room
Present: Lucinda Eshleman, Amy Alday-Murray, Tony Zable, Susanne Christopher, Mark Hagen, Dave Stout, David Goldberg, Karen Jolly, Jennifer Bowers, Linda Gettman, Peggy Sherer, Loretta Goldy
Susanne opened the meeting by sharing the chart showing a comparison between current requirements for degrees and certificates and our best guess of what those requirements would look like after a conversion from three to four credits.
Jennifer Bowers expressed concern that our AS degree had been reduced too far under the heading of “Distribution.” Her recommendation is that each of the three distribution areas require 12 credits, rather than the 8 credits we recommended. Linda suggested that this would mean a significant reduction in Disciplinary Focus Electives.
David Goldberg is here to bring concerns from the Health Education and PE SAC’s. The concern is that we might lose something unique in our current requirement of HPE 295 or HE 250 + 1 credit PE. Many high schools have eliminated any PE requirements. Yet these courses go to the heart of healthy living (wellness, fitness, safety). If students don’t learn these things now, when will they ever have an opportunity to learn them? Certainly, we want our programs to be efficient, but we also have an obligation to educate the whole person. We have an obligation to expose students to these important life issues, and he thinks it is not a good idea to discard this requirement. It was pointed out that none of the proposed degrees reduces the Health/PE requirement.
Peggy Sherer represents a program that is very limited by the total number of credits they can require, both in prerequisites and in required program courses.
Loretta Goldy has questions about the two-course sequence requirement. She has concerns that as they develop three-course sequences of four credits each, students will only take the first two courses if there is only an 8 hour requirement. Her recommendation is that the requirement be “one sequence, 8 – 12 hours.”
Karen Jolly explained that the EAC is eager to see from this committee an explanation of what the new degree requirements will look like. A discussion of sequences is also timely, but the changes to degree requirements are needed more urgently.
The committee then reviewed the chart comparing current degree requirements with our recommendations for degree requirements to be used while the conversion is being carried out. We reached consensus. The document will be cleaned up and sent to EAC with our recommendation that this set of requirements be adopted for the transition.
Meeting adjourned at 4:45.
Minutes submitted by Dave Stout, 11/3/04
Meeting adjourned at 5:10pm
Minutes submitted by Susanne Christopher, who is glad Dave Stout will be back to take minutes in November.