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WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC COORDINATING COMMISSION MINUTES

Regular Meeting  --  April 25, 2006

Chair Tom Downing called the meeting of the Academic Coordinating Commission to order on April 25, 2006 in OM340 at 4:04 p.m.  There were eleven (11) members present, twelve (12) guests, one (1) registrar, one (1) recorder, and two (2) ex officio, for a total of  twenty-seven (27). (See attached roster). 

Approval of ACC minutes

Commissioners approved the minutes of April 11 as written. 

Announcements and Reports:

Chair Downing welcomed guests to this meeting of the Academic Coordinating Commission. The main purpose of the meeting is to get together with the various curricular committee Chairs and their support staff so that we can apprise them of what the ACC has been up to and respond to any questions or concerns they might have regarding ACC actions and the relations between the ACC and the curricular committees which report to it.

AGENDA ITEMS

READING of Curricular Minutes – Exhibit B:

The following minutes were accepted by the Commission:

Downing reported that no catalog copy has yet been proposed by the Graduate Council for the provisions of the “Time To Degree Report”, but that students may elect to operate under the new provisions as long as those provisions go through the approval process. 

Guests’ and Commissioners’ Topics:

Alpha Suffixes

The intent of the ACC is to eliminate as much as possible the use of alpha suffixes to distinguish one course from another (that is what numbers are for) or to indicate the quarter in which a course is taught; in fact, the Commission wishes to restrict their use to the sole purpose of indicating different offerings of courses repeatable for credit. There are alternatives to achieving the purposes satisfied by some of the current uses of alpha suffixes. In many cases, rather than assigning course suffix, we can use “ATTRIBUTES”.  This is one way of distinguishing FYE courses, for example. The new policy allows exceptions for programs where the 400 numbers available for distinguishing courses are insufficient. Because of this, Fairhaven, which creates new courses frequently, can use the suffixes for now.  For the same reason, some areas of Woodring College may also fall under the exception.

Questions and Comments:

Ø      What happens if a Department runs out of numbers?  The ACC Chair said that the Registrar would prefer to tolerate a few suffixes rather than change the seven-year rule.  By exception, the Registrar might be allowed the re-use of a number less than seven years, but never less than five years.

Ø      Departments periodically have to attempt to configure numbers in a systematic way.  Numbers have been slotted into the system episodically throughout the years as curriculum has developed.  At some point the numbering has to be configured with the whole major, which may seem to create havoc. A particular problem with such wholesale revisions of numbering is that it is hard for them to avoid running afoul of the Seven Year Rule (see below).

Ø      Handbook:  Commissioners expressed a wish that the reprinted ACC handbook, scheduled for updating this summer, include the items discussed today.

Ø      Lecture and Lab:  Some lecture and lab courses in Huxley keep the lecture related to the labs; especially if they have combined credit.  Some have their own credit attached to the lab and separate credit to the lectures.  The use of alpha suffixes keeps the lab connected to the course.  In some cases students take the lab separately, in other cases they take it with the course. The Chair suggested that Huxley use different numbers for the two separate entities, and the Registrar concurred. Kathy Kitto confirmed that two different numbers are used in the sciences generally.  A “cross walk” can be provided in the catalog.

Ø      Woodring elementary and secondary:  In Woodring College, the use of the suffix is discouraged to distinguish between a class for elementary teachers and one for secondary teachers.  Use a different number.

FYE Courses

Ø      FYE offerings of regular courses is a matter of scheduling.  Colleges where the bulk of these are offered, may wish to know well in advance, since enrollment will be affected.  Nonetheless, a regular FYE offering is a scheduling matter and does not require the approval of any curricular committee. No alpha subscript is required to distinguish FYE offering of regular courses, attributes will do the job nicely.

Ø      117 is now restricted to individually designed FYE courses.  Such an FYE course is reported to the curricular committee with a recommendation as to which GUR category it will fulfill.  The course is then treated like an x97 unless it is specifically turned down. 

Ø      Students Enroll in 117 Only Once.  There used to be a rule about courses that are offered only one time could not really be GUR courses. There is nothing intrinsic to 117s that says the same 117 cannot be offered more than once, and cannot be offered as a GUR more than once. However, a student cannot enroll in 117, same or different, more than once. 

Ø      According to Troy Ragsdale of the Registrar’s office, there is currently no way of accommodating more than one 117 per quarter, at least if 117s that have different descriptions

Enforcement of the “Seven-Year Rule”

If a Department or program abandons a course number, it cannot use it again for another course for seven years.  The Registrar can be pretty sure that a student has graduated after seven years and has no chance of re-enrolling in a course that has a number that formerly belonged to another course.  If a student repeats a course whose number has changed, the system won’t be able to pick up the repeat for credit, prerequisite-checking, or degree-audit purposes.

Access for Students with individually designed majors.

The Chair noted that students with individually designed majors, such as Fairhaven students, General Studies majors, and students with student-designed majors under the aegis of the Liberal Studies Department, often have a difficult time registering for courses that are part of their major because the courses in question are restricted to majors in the sponsoring Departments. Currently, the only way these students can get access to these courses is by individual registration override. The Chair asked the many people present if they had any thoughts on the matter and in particular whether they had any ideas on how to address this problem, which is, on the face of it, very unfair to the affected students. There emerged a strong consensus that this is indeed a problem.

ü       If a student in an interdisciplinary or other major in Fairhaven requires three different courses from conventional Departments, she probably cannot get in no matter how many times she attempt to register, since the courses may be impacted, such as Psychology, or open only to majors in the Department.

ü       The problem applies as well to Self-Designed Majors, and possibly also to General Studies Majors and well as students who wish to acquire a Minor.  Typically courses in the major have a restricted access that can put off their progress forever. 

ü       A system must be established to connect with Departments early on.  Currently each Chair has to sign off, and students literally have to beg and rely on individual faculty to help them get a place in the class.

ü       Overrides must be provided by a faculty member in each Department, all the prerequisites must be checked. This requires informed advising early on, and coordination with the Departments.

ü       Currently the use of a major code is how the declared major registers.

ü       Huxley assumes that admittance to major courses presupposes admission to Huxley College.  Can Fairhaven students claim a right to get in to a major Huxley course? It is recommended that Fairhaven check early on with the sponsoring College.  Karen Perry will make sure that the catalog reflects the “Huxley core” in the prerequisites.  Perry will suggest a lengthier and clearer explanation in the catalog of this phenomenon.  The student must seek early advising from Huxley due to course restrictions.

ü       Fairhaven must develop a systematic process for notifying conventional Departments early on that certain students will require certain courses.  Ideally this is as soon as the student proposes the major, several quarters in advance of the courses in which she/he wishes to enroll.

ü       Fairhaven should check early on with the sponsoring College.  The process must be explained to the student during advising, so the student understands that she/he will still be required to obtain overrides for classes.

ü       Chairs must be alerted that they have to provide access for a certain number of individuals each quarter.  Students will continue to require overrides, and must understand they cannot expect to get in unless they have participated early on in the systematic process. 

ü       The Registrar confirmed that while it is possible to give each self-designed major [student with sufficient credits] a discrete major code, the process is extremely burdensome, would exponentially increase the number of majors, and end up being much more trouble than giving each student an override.

ü       Students should seek early advising, especially from Huxley, because of course restrictions. 

ü       Chiho Lai asked if it is possible to get an override ahead of time, so a student can register in an early phase. It is possible to get an override the very day the next year’s schedule is printed. 

ü       Dean Ghali noted that just the signoff on the override does not guarantee a student any rights.

ü       Ideally, overrides should be issued when the faculty advisor signs off on the course.  Otherwise the signoff is not useful.  Some sort of guarantee should be available.

ü       Overrides in advance give the student the same priority registration based on credits.  It just gets them past the restriction on the course, and makes it equal.  The override is not absolute; if the class is full it does not work.

ü       With the Degree Audit System we can eventually ascertain how many students there are in a given major, and what courses they need to complete the major.  Eventually, as we see course demand, we might be able to predict space needs earlier.

ü       Starting Winter Quarter, all of the Transfer Student courses are listed in our system, and in theory we can turn that information on.   All Transfer Courses will be listed, not just those from Washington State.

ü      Advising should be familiar with the prerequisites, and the college advisors can make them clearer on a case-by-case basis.

Cross Proof Catalog Copy with Curriculum Proposals within the Department

There Can Be No Substantive Catalog Changes Unless Approved by ACC

§    Catalog copy for some Departments, e.g.,  Communication and Physics, states that a student who falls below an overall 2.5 can be dropped from the major.  The ramification is that a student could find out in the penultimate quarter that he is no longer a Communications Major or a Physics Major.  The copy was never approved by ACC, but found its way into the catalog through the editing process.  Kathy Knutzen reported that her college has initiated a system whereby they read the catalog copy and match it up with course approvals.  There is cross- checking in an ongoing manner to make sure that the course proposals and the catalog copy match.

§    The process of cross-checking ought to be automatic throughout the colleges.  Text from the course descriptions in the catalog should match course proposals and be submitted in the language of the minutes in accordance with the sample curriculum minutes.

Reconciling the Purpose of the General Studies Major

v      Chair Downing reported that some changes have been instituted to reconcile the chief purpose of the General Studies Major with the idea that a major ought to be coherent and constitute an acquaintance with a discipline.

v      Karen Perry is currently advising the General Studies majors, providing them with checklists and directing them towards completing a regular major, or finishing a GS major as appropriate.  A capstone writing course is in place, UNIV 397g (to be UNIV 410?), which filled up immediately.

v      There are several courses which may be more particularly designed for general studies majors; these produce SCH, and ought to be housed in a Department.  These courses are in the process of being identified. 

v      Dean Ghali noted that the access discussed above may apply to GSM.  Someone will have to sign off on these courses; however the list of courses is shorter.

Curricular Approval for Orphan Courses

There is still the ongoing problem of approval for several sets of courses that are not housed in a particular college.  Kathy Knutzen noted that in addition there are about five or six minors in the catalog that do not report to anybody.  A process is required to draw these courses in and have a curricular review for them.

FORMS

§    It is requested that technically savvy people look into the forms for course approval, especially the E-Sign forms, which appear to be poorly designed.  These forms are merely a copy of the old printed forms approved by ACC one time.

§    These forms need to be redone electronically showing the proper routing, with notification to the Departmental Librarian that the course is happening, whether or not the faculty teaching the course requires library resources.  Each Department has a Library Liaison who should be consulted when a new course is being put together to ensure that there are library materials to support the course.  The faculty member designing the course should contact the Library Liaison and this should be no later than when the course reaches the College Curricular committee.  While the faculty member should talk to the librarian, if nothing is required, there is no need to submit the form.  Various forms are currently available on the Faculty Senate website, under the ACC link. http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/senate

Adjournment

Commissioners adjourned at 5:15 pm.

Rose Marie Norton-Nader, Recorder, April 25, 2006

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