Home »Undergraduate Curriculum Council »2024

February 19, 2024

Date/Time
Monday, 02/19/2024
Location
Wayne A. Reaud Buidling room 202
Submitted By:
Ashwini Kucknoor, Biology

UUCC  

Committee Minutes 02-19-2024 

Wayne A. Reaud Building Room 202       

Attending: Chair, Ashwini Kucknoor, (A&S); Adam Nemmers (A&S), Sujing Wang (A&S),  Debra Greschner (Fine Arts); QingJiang Yao (Fine Arts); Jane Liu (Faculty Senate); Elizabeth Casey (CID rep); Katherine Sprott (Education),  Jessica White, Zanthia Smith, Lucy Tsado, Sanaz Alasti 

Absent: Komal Karani (Business) Ping He (Eng); John Gossage (Eng); Ken Young (Education), Penny Clark (Library), Kelvin Elgar (SGA rep) 

Via Proxy: No records 

Ex-Officio Attending: Garrick Harden (A&S),; Theresa Hefner-Babb, Exec. Dir., Elizabeth Lea (UAC), Dawn Short (UAC), David Short (Registrar), Ricardo Tovar-Silos (Business) 

Ex-Officio Absent: Samuel Jator, Associate Provost , Bryan Proksch, Julia Yoo, Venki Uddameri (Chair, Eng CC), 

Executive Associate Academic Affairs: Shelly Traxler 

Guests: N/A 

Presiding: Garrick (Brad) Harden 

Call to Order: 3:40 pm 

Approval of Minutes:  

  • Adam Nemmers motioned for the approval of minutes from past meeting, Casey Ford seconded the motion, and the motion passed unanimously.

Business:  First order of business- Brad Harden opened the meeting by allowing the new members to introduce themselves, and asked for the update from each of the sub-committees Chairs. 

Harden started with the update for the Policy and by laws sub-committee as follows; 

  • Mentioned that he would reach out to Graduate Dean Dr. Welch about the format for filling out the online course 
  • Committee had discussed to clearly define duties and expectations for college level committee, so that there will be no redundant work for the UUCC committee
  • Need to set policies for college level committee
  • At least 2 weeks should be allowed for both the college level and UUCC, before we meet to review the course change/add etc
  • New proposals should be accompanied with the degree plans as part of the paperwork to make the review process smoother
  • UUCC needs to provide increased notification and in-depth reasons for why a particular decision was taken for a given proposal (decline/tabled etc)
  • Paperwork for changes to degree plans should be included (Hefner-Babb mentioned that there is a form in place on SmartSheet, has not been used widely, and this issue would be alleviated after “CourseLeaf” will be up in running)
  • For stacked courses, both grad and undergrad proposals should be included
  • Set clear standards for accept/reject proposals
  • All proposals should be channeled through the Dept Comm-Cahir-College committee-UUCC (Sujing Wang said the meeting with dept committee before it goes to the Chair of the department needs to be enforced,  Hefner-Babb mentioned that probably a MAPP needs to be set-up with Dr. Teodore, if curriculum change needs to happen, and that Hefner-Babb needs to be included on it).
  • Bottomline is-everything needs to be up-to-date in the proposal itself, before it leaves the Department Chair’s office.
  • Katherine Sprott questioned if all the details be laid out for each college/each proposal types and said that the process needs to be standardized across all colleges. Casey stated that Course Leaf upon inception might solve this issue.

 

Elizabeth Casey updated on PROPOSAL REVIEW Committee as follows; 

 The sub-committee met, and reviewed all the files; math/ASL/CSC/Business for today’s meeting 

  • For Business; suggested a revised proposal

    -no course addition forms, needs to be on the May Board meeting, to be taught on Fall, 2024 

                  - some proposals were not returned with all required documents 

  • For Computer Science; all issues were fixed
  • For ASL; every query was clarified
  • For Math;  there is discrepancy with the course numbers, had to change all
  • (Ricardo mentioned that Certification Banking proposal was not ready to be reviewed yet. Hefner-Babb mentioned that she had contacted Kakoli/Warren to submit the course addition forms for the same)

 

Sujing Wang updated for the Core-Curriculum Sub-Committee as follows;  

  • Meetings will be held first Monday of each month
  • Elected co-chair= Sujing, and Seceretary- Jane Liu
  • Charge of the committee was discussed
  • Brad mentioned that there were no clear cut charges for this committee
  • Committee looks at courses that need to be added or removed to the core and the proper name for this committee would be “ Core-Curriculum proposal sub-committee”
  • Sujing mentione that after the proposal review sub-committee reviews the proposals, it would be then passed on to the core-curriculum proposal sub-committee

At this point, on behalf of the newly elected UUCC members, Zanthia Smith asked about the assignments for the new members, and this was the list: 

Zanthia Smith – Core-curriculum proposal sub-committee 

Lucy Tsado- Proposal sub-committee 

Alasti- Policy and Procedures sub-committee 

Proposals on today’s agenda were discussed at this point. Started with Computer science courses. 

Sujing Wand explained the details about the CPSC courses. 

COSC 1172: Math also requires this course, and just removed the co-requisites to allow for other departmental students to enroll in this course.  Casey motion for approval and Katherine seconded, and the motion passed unanimously. 

COSC 3306: Sujing explained that for this course, COSC 1337 earlier was required only based on Chair’s approval, and now a B or better grade is required. Nemmers motioned to approve, Sujing seconded, and the motion passed unanimously. 

CPSC 2350: Sujing said that she was not aware of this course proposal. Avid questioned as to where would this course fit in the degree plan. Hefner-Babb said that we need the degree plan before we can approve this. It is for a degree in Cyber Security, but not clear on the plan. Discrepancy with pre-requisites on the form and the syllabus, Brad said that it needs to be sent back to the department.  

CPSC 4364: also has same issues as CPSC 2350.  

*Brad will communicate to the college committee as to why we rejected the proposals. 

Math 1342: proposal to change numbers to match with names across schools, Sujung clarified, Brad asked to check the syllabus. Sujing motioned to approve, Casey seconded, motion passed unanimously. 

 

Math 2320: Course addition. Sujing asked how the other course can be changed with new number, and there was discussion. Brad then motioned to approve, and Katherine seconded, and the motion passed unanimously. 

 Math 2413/2414/4310/4313/4315/4380: Course Change, Nemmers motioned to approve, Zanthia seconded and the motion passed unanimously.  (At this point, Dawn Short said that Cross-checking course numbers (ACGM numbers etc) can be one of the duties for the core-curriculum sub-committee.) 

FINC 3330: Discussion began with the question why use ECON1301, as a pre-requisite, Tovas explained that Finance and Econ people teach differently, and this proposal was trying to clarify the pre-requisites. 

Sujing motioned to approve, Tovar seconded and the motion passed unanimously. 

BS Education: Casey said that this proposal is to align with state standards. Currently it is BS in Interdisciplinary Sciences and want to change it to BS in Education. 

  • Submit revised degree plan
  • Since degree name changes, then undergrad course names should also be changed
  • Brad asked if we can approve the program/degree plan without the course change forms
  • Few courses changed, bit has to be approved by the college committee and Dean first, at the moment it has not been reviewed
  • Needs to be done before May 2024
  • David needs a memo concerning this program, to add some courses that were not taught in the recent times, but can be reinstated from the university course inventory
  • Proposal was tabled until all approvals are received

Minor in Music: David mentioned that this proposal assumes that music appreciation was taken by the students 

  • No hidden pre-requisites is favored- to limit the credit hour numbers within 18-21
  • Proposal sent back to be corrected and to clarify if it is 21 hours or not.
  • Suggestion is to make it 21 hours, include the class and make it clear instead of assumptions
  • Asked Zanthia to communicate it to the COFAC

 ASL: Zanthia explained the proposal, to have three tracks instead of the current four in their program. Casey asked for clarification. Zanthia said there is an online course for communication credit. 

-Coordinating board suggests that language course credits should not be from Communications 

-BA Majors-1361 

-Course numbers is an issue in the proposal- 4000 courses in 2nd semester for the students is not appropriate and this need to be fixed 

-degree plan needs to be reworked before approval 

-Zanthia explained why the arrangement of courses is as such, to accommodate for the fourth year internship for students, but taking a 4000 level course in the first or second year on the program could be problematic 

-proposal was recommended to be sent back to be corrected and maybe look at in March. 

 

Next meeting: March 18th, 2024. 

 

Adjourn: Motion to Adjourn at 5.05 pm by Casey; Seconded by Nemmers and was unanimously approved. 

 

Respectfully submitted: 

Ashwini Kucknoor, Biology