APC Meeting 3-13-08—approved minutes

1. Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 10:05.

2. Roll Call

Present: Bickford, Bowman, Cook, Darrow (chair), Diestelkamp, Duncan, Frasca, O’Gorman, Penno

Excused: Benson, Clark, Eggemeier, Jipson, Larson, Patterson, Saliba, Sielestad

Guest: Pair

3. Approval of minutes from meeting of 28 February.

The minutes were approved with corrections.

4. Announcements

The next scheduled APC meeting will take place on Thursday 3 April at 10:00 AM in the POL conference room (where we had our first meeting this semster).

5. Old Business

The 2009-2010 Academic Calendar

The 2009-2010 calendar was discussed by the provost council, which accepted the fall proposal, but not the winter proposal. The provost will discuss the winter proposal with ECAS.

Report from CAP Subcommittee

Pursuant to the CAP subcommittee charge, chair Pair reported the following CAP activities over the previous fortnight:

1) There will be a joint Humanities Base and Cluster spring workshop on Tuesday 6 May. There will soon be an e-mail invitation to the wider campus community inviting them to participate. The main morning business of the workshop will be a CAP presentation of initial and developing ideas, with an invitation for response and discussion. Those interested in continuing the discussion in the afternoon will have an opportunity to do so.

2) The current topic of discussion is “diversity,” namely how to infuse diversity and concepts of diversity into the curriculum without simply creating more courses. CAP has been working on this topic with Jack Ling.

3) CAP has also been discussing how to embrace the intercultural and international components of the learning outcomes, again, without simply creating more courses.

4) CAP is following up on its GAP analysis, mapping current sample courses of study onto the learning outcomes to identify where deficiencies exist.

5) In all of this, CAP is also looking at how co-curricular learning experiences fit into the picture and considering the following questions:

a) What should the make-up of the list of specific required courses look like?

b) Which of these courses will be provided by a specific discipline?

c) What are the courses that will not fit into the first two categories?

CAP reading list issue: towards resolution

Art Jipson and Ralph Frasca will represent the APC in mediation hosted by the provost.

Senate DOC I-07-04 “Challenges and Recommendations for the University of Dayton Honors and Scholars Programs”

The APC is interested in hearing the CAP subcommittee’s thoughts on the proposal. Besides this, the committee compiled the following list of issues that it believes must be resolved in order for the proposal to win full Senate approval:

1. There needs to be more sense of how the new program would compare with honors programs offered by our main competitors.

2. There needs to be more demonstrated administrative support for the resource issues raised in the proposal, particularly how small-cap honors courses are figured into DCI reports.

3. There need to be less “might do” and more “this is what we will do” in the proposal, especially in re curricular issues and plans requiring resources. More “this is what the program is” rather than “might be” will make it easier to put a price tag on the proposal and secure financial support.

4. The proposal should offer a more definitive sense of what an honors course consists of and what the service and leadership will look like. How exactly does a potential Berry Scholar "clearly demonstrate leadership and service" by the end of the first year?

5. In re lines 166-199: The system needs to be simplified—converted into something that is easily understood by 17-yr olds and which reflects the language generally used to denote honors programs throughout the country. The three-tiered system in the proposal is too complex. “Honors” is an easily understood category. Adding “Berry Scholar” to the top of this as an addition to an honors degree will not add to the complexity.

Along the same lines, the committee believes that the “non-thesis” option within the three tiers needs substantially more justification. The sense of the committee is that a proposal that maintained a universal thesis requirement, but which expanded the definition of a thesis in a way that accommodated the team approach found in many of the professional schools would make for a stronger program.

6. In re lines 132-142: There are concerns about the logistics of student scheduling.

7. In re lines 210-213: The proposal should contain specific commitments of courses that meet general education requirements.

8. Providing additional upper-level courses within majors would be left up to departments. Departments wishing to attract honors students would be forced to provide for their desired audience.

9. There is enthusiastic support for lines 279-280; in some cases this might be a solution to the issue discussed under point 8.

10. The proposal is calling for "unit advisors" (with some sort of incentive that is not spelled out). It's not clear to me what that would mean. If this is not an assistant dean, but a faculty person, the training would have to be really intensive

6. New Business

None.

7. Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at approximately 11:30.