January 2007 – Agenda & Minutes

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Members Present: Sheryl Beach, Geoffrey Birchard, Estela Blaisten (chair), Tim Born, Dan Cox, Rick Diecchio, Robert Ellsworth, Rebecca Goldin, Dimitri Klimov, Barry Klinger, Barry Kronenfeld
Members Absent: Peter Becker
Guests Present: Kathleen Alligood (Honors Program in General Education)

Call to order. Meeting was called to order at 11:04 am

  1. Approval of minutes:
    1. Revision of the December 14 minutes were approved.
  2. Announcements and comments:
    • Dr. Becker shared his report with members of the committee by email. This report notified that the Graduate Council met January 17, and all 31 of the COS items were approved as follows:
      • New Courses (Action Item):
        • ASTR703 Planetary Sciences
        • CSI745 Nonlinear Optimization and Applications
      • Modified Courses (Announcement):
        • BINF637 Forensic DNA Sciences
        • BINF704 Seminar in Bioinformatics
        • BINF998 Doctoral Dissertation Proposal
        • MATH551 Regression and Time Series
        • MATH554 Mathematics of Compound Interest
        • MATH555 Actuarial Mathematics I, II
        • MATH556 Actuarial Mathematics I, II
        • MATH653 Risk Theory
        • MATH654 Survival Models and Construction of Tables
        • MATH655 Pension Valuation
        • NANO500 Introduction to Nanomaterials and Interactions
        • NANO510 Nanocharacterization
        • NANO520 Survey of Nanostructures
        • NANO530 Nanomanufacturing
        • NANO610 Nanoelectronics
        • NANO620 Computational Modeling in Nanoscience
        • PHYS780 Topics in Computational Physics
      • Deleted Courses (Announcement):
        • BIOS711 Biology for Astrobiologists
        • BIOS713 Seminar in Astrobiology and Ethics
        • BIOS715 Astrochemistry
        • BIOS721 Cellular Neuroscience
        • BIOS723 Developmental Neurobiology
        • BIOS787 Literature of Astrobiology I: Earth as an Environment for Life’s Origins
        • BIOS788 Literature of Astrobiology II: The Emergence of Life on Earth
      • Modified Programs (Announcement):
        • PHD in Biosciences
        • MS in Biology
      • Modified Concentrations (Announcement):
        • Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Concentration
        • Molecular Biology Concentration
        • Microbiology and Infectious Disease Concentration
    • On behalf of Rick Diecchio, Assad Khan shared with the committee that all undergraduate courses discussed and approved by the committee have been submitted to the Registrar’s office with following exceptions:
      • ** EOS 410 needing a minor format change
      • ** The block of CDS courses, which should await for SCHEV approval of the CDS BS. The Registrar will process all approved CDS course proposals contingent to the SCHEV decision.
    • By petition of Rebecca Goldin, and after appropriate discussion, the meeting date for March was moved to March 29.
    • A discussion on the possibility to include in the signature pages of the course proposal format a title or some indication to which course it belonged was initiated by request of Rebecca Goldin. It was decided that a typed line saying “for approval of course YYY000” will be added inside the signature box of the proposal cover pages in all future submissions that require signatures from departments other than the submitting department.
    • It was decided that when any proposal submission contains signatures from other departments, the electronic posting of these proposals will carry in the signatures boxes the legend “signed by department X.” The purpose of this new instruction is to let the members of the committee know what departments have signed the hardcopy cover pages.
  3. Old Business
    • Review of postponed courses
      • **GEOG 685 – Postponed
      • **CDS 487 – Approved pending Bob Ehrlich’s signature and revisions to cover page.
      • The Physics Department is satisfied with the changes introduced to the proposal for this course.
  4. New Business
    • **MATH 495 – was postponed, but nominally approved, pending revisions such as adding consent of instructor to the prerequisite line, be or not be repeatable within degree.
    • **Honors General Education Program
      A discussion was led by Kathy Alligood, Associate Director of the Honors Program in General Education and Professor of Mathematics. Discussed the new changes and the decreased to 16 credits of math and science courses in the general education honors curriculum. The reduction is intended to encourage more of the eligible students to opt for the Honors program.
      • Five Gen. Ed. courses with honors sections will be offered in the trial year. They are:
        • BIOL 213
        • CHEM 211, 212
        • MATH 114
        • PHYS
      • Her office will submit the new revision for trial during one academic year starting in Fall 2007. An evaluation will take place afterwards to see if the program is working as expected. After that year, a decision on whether to change/add course numbers will be made.
    • The committee invested time in discussing the department based Honor programs, and also discussed possibilities of adding an “H” to the course prefix and number. This option seems to be problematic for the Registrar.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 PM.

Download original PDF documents:
Agenda: January 2007
Minutes: January 2007