Minutes

Undergraduate Studies Committee

Meeting of February 12, 2004

Present: Michael Arenson, Douglas Buttrey, John Courtright, Joseph Di Martile, Louis Hirsh, Amy Johnson, Thomas Leitch, Charles Pavitt.

The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. After waiving a reading of the minutes from the preceding meeting, the Committee began by discussing the different minimum grades required for courses fulfilling the A&S Mathematics requirement (D-) and ENGL 110 (C-). According to Marcia Watson-Whitmyre, the University’s requirement in Composition goes back many years, but no minimum grade in Mathematics had been specified in the catalog until two years ago, when queries from interested faculty members led to its explicit specification as the default minimum grade. After debating the pros and cons of attempting to make the two requirements more consistent, the Committee agreed to return to the matter within the next month. The Committee next voted 5-0-0 to approve a revised proposal from the Department of Art for a new Minor in Interactive Design.

Michael Arenson, speaking on behalf of the Subcommittee on Multicultural Outcomes, presented a list of six outcomes the Subcommittee had agreed upon. The Committee voted to amend this list by deleting the fifth outcome, slightly changing the order of the remaining five, and approved it as amended, then weighed at greater length the advantages of a large list of multicultural courses versus a relatively small number of courses specifically designed to achieve the new multicultural outcomes. The Committee tentatively agreed to consider bringing forward a proposal to the Faculty Senate to establish a pilot version of such a course.

The Committee then turned to New Business, passing by identical 4-0-0 votes all the following proposals: a revision to the B.A. in Economics; revisions to the B.A. programs in Foreign Languages and Literatures (French Studies, German Studies, Italian Studies, and Spanish Studies); a revision of the FLLT Minor in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies; the creation of a new FLLT Minor in Chinese; and revisions to the B.A. and B.S. programs in Mathematical Sciences. After discussing several unclear areas in the proposed revision to the B.A. in Secondary Mathematics Education, however, the Committee returned it to the Mathematical Sciences department for further clarification.

The Committee then turned to consider several proposals from the Department of Music, passing once more by identical 4-0-0 votes revisions to the B.A. in Music, the B.A. with a Concentration in Music Management Studies, the Minor in Applied Music—Principal Instruments, and the B.Mus. Major programs in Applied Music—Instrumental Concentration: Principal Instruments, in Applied Music—Piano, in Applied Music—Voice, in Music Education, and in Music Theory/Composition, subject to receiving clarifications on several points from the Department of Music.

After noting that the Department of Biological Sciences had declined to endorse unconditionally the new option of using BISC 207 to fulfill a requirement for the proposed revision to the B.S. in Physics, the Committee voted 4-0-0 to return the proposal to the Department of Physics until the two departments could agree on an arrangement for the requirement. Agreeing to hold over the rest of the agenda for the next meeting, the Committee tentatively agreed to meet again from 9:00 to 11:00 Wednesday, 18 February, and adjourned at 11:15 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Thomas Leitch