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agenda status: approved

Agenda:

1. Approval of the Agenda
   
   
   
2. Approval of the Minutes of the April 2, 2009 meeting
   
   
   
3. Comments from the Chair
   a. Status of proposed Religious Observance Policy Revision
   b. Status of Academic Year Review Task Force .........(Attachment)
   
   
   
4. Comments from the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
   
   
   
5. Course Repeat Policy Subcommittee Report
   Dennis Banks, Subcommittee Chairperson
   Peter Cobbett, Brad McDonald, A. Mahdi Saeed, Subcommittee Members
   
   
   
6. Roundtable

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minutes status: approved

approved at meeting of 04/30/2009

UCAP Minutes for meeting held on 04/16/2009

Attendees: Mary Jo Arndt, Dennis Banks, R. Sekhar Chivukula, Peter Cobbett, Marty Crimp, Doug Estry, Guiseppe Getto, Richard Hallgren, Caroline Hartig, Linda Jackson, Mike Lawrence, Carolyn Loeb, Brad McDonald, Malea Powell, Jerry Punch, A. Mahdi Saeed, Michael Schechter, Mike Shields, Jim Smith, Tom Volkening

Not Attending: Mary Burleson, John Gore, Mandalyn Griffin, Hovig Kouyoumdjian, Sharif Shakrani

The Agenda was approved.

The Minutes of the April 2, 2009 meeting were approved.

Comments from the Chairperson
Chairperson Chivukula provided a recap of the April 7, 2009 Executive Committee of the Academic Council (ECAC) meeting. He stated that ECAC passed a motion to refer UCAP’s proposed revision of the Religious Observance Policy to the Provost for consideration.

Dr. Chivukula reported that the Academic Year Review Task Force provided a draft report to ECAC for its review, who in turn forwarded a copy to the Provost for his comments. ECAC passed a motion to forward the status report to Faculty and Academic Councils as an information item. The Academic Year Review Task Force has proposed two possible scenarios for Spring semester changes. He indicated that questions regarding practical issues, such as affect on financial aid, faculty workloads, laboratory class meetings, would need to be answered before a full community discussion could begin.

Dr. Chivukula noted that

• ECAC referred the proposed revision to the Anti-Discrimination Policy to UCFA who will consult with legal counsel and provide a response to ECAC.
• ECAC forwarded the amendments of the Academic Governance Bylaws to the Faculty Council for review. After approval by Faculty Council, the amended Bylaws will be considered by the Academic Council.
• A revised budget update is available on the budget.msu.edu website.

Chairperson Chivukula reminded the committee that at its next meeting UCAP 2009-10 members would elect officers and representatives to other committees. He asked that those interested in an elected position contact him prior to the April 30 meeting.

Comments from the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
Associate Provost Estry encouraged all UCAP members to stop by the University Undergraduate Research Forum taking place at the MSU Union.

Course Repeat Policy Subcommittee Report
Dennis Banks, Subcommittee Chairperson
Peter Cobbett, Brad McDonald, A. Mahdi Saeed, Subcommittee Members

Chairperson Chivukula asked the committee to focus its discussion on how to setup the 2009-10 committee to deal more consistently with issues related to Course Repeat Policy and on identifying any information to be gathered in preparation for 2009-10 committee meetings

Subcommittee Chairperson Banks provided a comparison of UCAP’s treatment of two programs that had requested limited admissions, making the point that UCAP approached the two similar requests differently. The result being that one program created a rigid, GPA-driven admissions process and the other program developed a less rigid, student-friendly admissions process. He ventured the opinion that UCAP appears to be making decisions that will cause the Course Repeat Policy to become a problem.

The subcommittee presented two draft policy recommendations for committee review. After discussion, the committee agreed to provide Dr. Banks with edits and comments on the draft policies by email. The subcommittee will present the revised documents at the next committee meeting.

Committee discussion centered on the following issues:

• Should students be allowed to repeat a course because they think they are capable of doing better but scored higher than a 1.5?
• How many times should students be allowed to repeat courses? Should a limit be set?
• Is it fair for departments, aided by UCAP’s decisions, to set an admission standard that is impossible to meet if a student is not allowed to repeat a course with a score of 2.0 or more?
• Resetting the course repeat grade limit to 2.0 would not limit college/department admissions committees’ ability to create admissions standards that review many student attributes, not only GPA.
• Would delaying the course drop date serve the same purpose as changing the number of course repeats allowed?
• Isn’t the issue of GPA requirements to enter a major only relevant for limited-enrollment programs? Except in these special cases, the University sets the standard for admission to the major.
• In the case of limited-enrollment programs or those programs seeking to limit enrollment, GPA should not be the only admission criteria. Programs must be required to provide evidence that admissions criteria is clearly linked to success and have a plan to follow-up to establish predictor’s of student success and use those results to guide admissions.
• Is there really a need to revise the current Course Repeat Policy? It is likely the number of students who would repeat if the grade limit for repeats was increased or removed would be small.
• The burden of making admissions policy appears to be shifting to UCAP rather than the departments creating a set of standards for review. The committee could set out criteria that an admissions policy has to satisfy or could provide models that may be appropriate for departments to follow.
• If the committee would be able to arrive at a specific set of criteria or guidelines, it could review all the limited programs on campus.
• It could be helpful to provide UCC with questions or guidelines for programs to answer as they begin the process of requesting curriculum/admissions changes.

Chairperson Chivukula reminded the committee that its work resides in the context of influence on university policy. The majority opinion of administration and governance must be reflected in its recommendations. Any changes to the Course Repeat Policy must first be considered in light of long standing University policy and feedback gathered. If a change would be recommended, constituents must understand precisely why the policy needs to change and the resulting effect on the academic community.

Roundtable
No roundtable comments were made.

The meeting Adjourned at 12:00 pm.

Respectfully submitted by
Sandra Walther

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