---

agenda status: approved

Agenda:

1. Approval of the Agenda
   

2. Approval of the January 28, 2010 Minutes
   

3. Comments from the Chairperson
   

4. Comments from the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
   

5. Request for Changes in Admission to the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Apparel and Textile Design.........(Attachment 1, Attachment 2)
   Sally Helvenston Gray, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History
   Janet Swenson, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters
   

6. Request for a New Disciplinary Teaching Minor in Spanish-Elementary .........(Attachment)
   Janet Swenson, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters
   

7. Request for a New Program – Bachelor of Arts Degree in Child Development .........(Attachment)
   Karen Wampler, Chairperson, Department of Family and Child Ecology
   Tom Summerhill, Associate Dean, College of Social Science
   

8. Course Repeat Policy – Action Item .........(Attachment)
   

9. Roundtable: All Other Business

---

---

minutes status: approved

approved at meeting of 02/25/2010

UCAP Minutes for meeting held on 02/11/2010

Attendees: Paul Abramson, Gillian Bice, Crystal Branta, Sekhar Chivukula, Peter Cobbett, Lisa Cook, Marty Crimp, Doug Estry, Anita Ezzo, Fred Fico, Matt McKeon, Ron Perry, John Reifenberg, Henry Reinart, Mahdi Saeed, Christopher Scales, Mike Shields, Jim Smith, Mary Kay Smith

Not Attending: Jon Beaulac, Melanie Helton, Michael Ly, Dan Tratt

The Agenda was approved.

The Minutes of the January 14, 2010 minutes were approved.

Comments from the Chairperson
Chairperson Crimp reported on the most recent ECAC meeting. The Academic Year Taskforce indicated in a preliminary report that there would likely be no changes to fall semester. It appeared there would be a proposal for a J-Term (two week term in January) starting immediately prior to spring semester. The addition of the J-Term would move start of spring semester and spring semester break back by one week.

Professor Crimp indicated he would address the topic of the new committee name (UCUS) if an opportunity arose in the future.

Comments from the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
Associate Provost Estry stated that a request for a moratorium would be on the February 25 agenda. He noted that no requests for discontinuation had been received to date. Colleges were moving forward with consultations prior to proceeding with requests for discontinuance.

Dr. Estry advised the committee that the bylaws of the committee clearly state that UCAP would consult with the Provost on establishment, disbandment, and merger of academic programs. Although there might be issues in the requests for new programs regarding grades or grade point averages and total credit requirements, many requests will come before UCAP simply because they are new programs.



Request for Changes in Admission to the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Apparel and Textile Design
Sally Helvenston Gray, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History
Janet Swenson, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters

The committee granted voice to Associate Dean Swenson and Professor Helvenston-Gray.

Dr. Helvenston-Gray announced that an undergraduate Apparel and Textile Design major recently won an international award and the department expected to receive a great deal of news coverage as a result.

Professor Helvenston-Gray explained that the proposal to make changes in the admission to the BFA degree is a step in the process of merging the apparel and textile design program in thought and philosophy with a studio art emphasis. The department is fine-tuning its BFA program to accommodate students who want design as the emphasis of their program. Students desiring a more interdisciplinary experience would move into the BA program. The department is changing its curriculum to create flexibility so students may take advantage of the opportunity to have a senior research studio experience or internship to intensify their knowledge in a particular area of apparel design. Admission before earning the 24^th credit in the Apparel and Textile Design major would allow students to achieve a good foundation in art and to have begun Apparel and Textile Design courses before applying for the BFA program. This timing is early enough to indicate whether the student should pursue the degree but not too late to determine that another major would be the correct path without affecting time to degree. There is a process in place for students to appeal these decisions.

Voice was withdrawn.

Motion to approve the request was made by Professor Chivukula.
The University Committee on Academic Policy approves the request for changes in admission to the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Apparel and Textile Design.

The committee’s subsequent discussion centered on the restating the 24 credit statement in the proposed catalog language to make it more understandable.

Motion to amend the motion with additional language about restating the 24-credit statement was made by Gillian Bice and passed unanimously.
The University Committee on Academic Policy approves the request for changes in admission to the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Apparel and Textile Design with the recommendation that the 24-credit statement be rephrased for clarity.


Request for a New Disciplinary Teaching Minor in Spanish-Elementary
Janet Swenson, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters

The committee granted voice to Associate Dean Swenson.

Associate Dean Swenson provided the College of Arts and Letters rationale for the proposed Spanish-Elementary program. In refining language education, one of SELTAs concerns was to improve elementary teacher language training. The State of Michigan mandates two credits in language for those teaching K-12 students. Training high school teachers has been the focus and relied heavily on the College of Education for preparation in teacher education methods but less attention had been paid to elementary language instruction. The new disciplinary minor in Spanish-Elementary will include new course content in LLT 307 to bridge the gap in teacher education methods at the elementary level. The College will change the name and description of the course to make it clear that the class is for training of elementary teachers.

Voice was withdrawn.

Motion by Gillian Bice passed unanimously.
The University Committee on Academic Policy approves the request for a new disciplinary teaching minor in Spanish-elementary.

Course Repeat Policy – Action Item
Associate Provost Estry recommended that the committee first consult with the Office of the Registrar and the Director of Financial Aid to determine what implications a change in the Course Repeat Policy might have on their operations and the students served prior to sending it to the Provost for review. The Provost would then forward the proposal to ECAC or return it to the Committee for further discussion.

The committee’s discussion included the following points:

• Should the Associate Deans also be consulted?
• Should the proposed policy change be sent to the Provost first or should the Office of the Registrar and the Office of Financial Aid be consulted first?
• Would it be best to forward the policy change to ECAC first?

After review of UCAP’s bylaws, the committee determined that consultation with the Offices of the Registrar, Financial Aid, the academic associate deans, and the Dean of the Graduate School would be done before forwarding any recommendations to the Provost.

The committee’s discussion of the ad hoc taskforce recommendations centered on:

• The taskforce thought there should be some restriction of the number of times a course could be repeated. The suggestion was made that, given that one additional attempt in most cases would be sufficient to improve a grade in a course, a second repeat of any course should require review and approval based on whether another repeat would be advisable.
• If the policy were changed, would there be an impact on registration priority, especially in the case of “gatekeeper” courses that have limited enrollment.
• Repeating beyond 20 credits would still require that a request for an exception be made.
• Would liberalizing the repeat policy increase the possibility of grade inflation?
• Would the proposed change favor those students with the financial ability to support multiple course repeats.
• Would there be unintended consequences, such as increased class enrollment and issues of physical capacity?

Dr. Bice stated the taskforce had not been charged to examine all possible issues but to decide whether to move forward on the issue based on the committee’s prior work.

Professor Chivukula called the question, suggesting that the proposal be forwarded for comment to the Office of the Registrar, the Office of Financial Aid, and academic associate deans before further action would be taken by the committee. The Office of the Registrar should be asked to comment specifically on whether repeating a course twice is an appropriate threshold and the feasibility and advisability of priority registration.

The committee supported the recommendation by 17 votes for moving the proposal forward for comment and 1 vote against.

Request for a New Program – Bachelor of Arts Degree in Child Development
Karen Wampler, Chairperson, Department of Family and Child Ecology
Hope. Gerde, Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Child Ecology
Karen Mills, Lead Adviser, Department of Family and Child Ecology.

The committee granted voice to the three representatives from Family and Child Ecology.

Dr. Wampler reported that the content areas of the current programs in child development and family community services would be merged into a new program in Child Development, also replacing the concentration in early childhood. This merger of content will create a core set of courses with two tracks, one for preschool teaching, and the other for those earning an elementary education degree with an endorsement in early childhood education. Both tracks will be recognized by the state of Michigan.
The elementary education track will require earning 127 credits to meet State certification requirements for graduation and certification. Dr. Wampler reported on the various tactics used to diminish the required credits to 127.
Questions from the committee were centered on:

• the move to grant a Bachelor of Arts Degree to increase students’ language arts and social science requirements.
• how the departments determined the number of credits required for the endorsement in early childhood education.

Voice was withdrawn.

Motion by Professor Perry passed unanimously.
The University Committee on Academic Policy approves the request for a new program – Bachelor of Arts degree in Child Development.

Roundtable
Ms Ezzo reported that due to budget cuts, Student Support Athletic Services would be decreasing travel budgets and other expenses peripheral to the core services provided.

Professor Chivukula reported that the SIRS/SOCT subcommittee had met and created a timeline for working on several issues related to student evaluation of instruction. The subcommittee will first work to see if improvements can be made in the online SIRS student response rate.

Professor Crimp expressed his concern about grade inflation and the interpretation of what grades mean. He suggested that the committee explore placing students’ rank in major, college, and university on transcripts. The committee’s conversation regarding the suggestion was generally in favor of exploring the possibility of placing rankings on students’ transcripts.

Motion by R. Sekhar Chivukula passed unanimously.
The University Committee on Academic Policy requests feedback from the Office of the Registrar on student ranking standards in the Big Ten and other comparable universities in the U.S. In addition, the committee asks for feedback on the feasibility of ranking students at MSU.

Meeting adjourned at 11:35 am.

Respectfully submitted by
Sandra Walther

---