August 24, 2020- Agenda & Minutes

gcraft

Time:  10:30am
Location: Zoom invite sent to committee members. If anyone else would like to attend, please email Jen for details.
Items to be considered on this agenda are due by 8/2/2020

When available, the meeting minutes will be indicated within bold brackets [ ] and are in draft form until they are approved by the committee.

Relevant Links: Undergraduate Council Meeting Minutes/ Graduate Council Meeting Minutes

I. Call to Order

II. Approval of the May 4, 2020 Meeting Minutes [Approved]

III. Announcements/Discussion

  • [Congratulations to Greg and his wife on the birth of their baby girl! Thanks to Frannie Dove for supporting the committee in Greg’s absence.]
  • COSCC Chair for the 2020-2021 Academic Year [Dr. Ramin Hakami was voted to serve as chair for the Fall 2020-Spring 2021 academic year.]
  • New Bachelor’s/Accelerated Master’s Policy for 2021-2022 catalog
    • These are not required, but we are now able to change our programs to accommodate:
      • Application into BAMs at 60 undergraduate credits (currently 75-100 credits)
      • Begin graduate courses at 75 undergraduate credits (currently 90 credits)
      • BAM students can take 12 graduate credits that apply to both the bachelor’s and master’s (currently 6 credits)
        • We must provide course suggestions that can meet both UG and GR program requirements (this is a new requirement)
      • An additional 6 reserve graduate credits allowed (credits that can be applied only to the MS. Reserve graduate credits will remain at 6 credits).
    • Please consider if this would be appropriate for your MS and its incoming students. The college will likely have a larger discussion about this, but let’s have any program changes ready for the December 2020 COSCC. [This upcoming policy was communicated to the COSCC members for departmental planning purposes. Questions from the committee included: “Can there be wording inserted to the policy that states that programs might have more stringent requirements?,” and “Must all BAMs now have a list of graduate-level course suggestions posted in the catalog, or is the newly required “curated list” populated at the time of student admission into the BAM (on a student-by-student basis)?” Jen will work on attaining these answers and will communicate them to the committee as soon as possible.]
  • Preparing now for the 2021-2022 University Catalog [A general reminder.]
    • Let’s aim for all course and program additions, modifications, or deletions to be in by the December 2020 COSCC.
  • Adding anti-racism verbiage to syllabi per syllabus email on August 13, 2020: “President Washington has committed to having all faculty include an anti-racism statement on their syllabi as part of his anti-racism and inclusive excellence initiative at Mason. The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force will be providing guidance to the Mason community as the group begins their work this academic year. In the meantime, we encourage you to see the Diversity and Inclusion examples on the Stearns Center syllabus resource page (under University Policies section) for statements that you might want to use or adapt for your courses this fall.” [Reiterating President Johnson’s email to the university.]

IV. Old Business

V. New Business – Undergraduate

New Courses

Modified Courses

Modified Programs

VI. Adjournment [12:12pm]

*Item added after the agenda was announced.