2015-09-29 Minutes | The Administrative Boards

MINUTES
MEETING OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE BOARDS
of the General College and the College of Arts and Sciences
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
3:30–4:59 PM, 3020 Steele Building

The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m. and chaired by Senior Associate Dean Abigail Panter.

Members in attendance: Daniel Anderson, Rob Bruce, Kelly Giovanello, Amy Herring, Li-Ling Hsiao, Doug MacLean, Cary Levin, Lee May, Abigail Panter, Vladas Pipiras, Michael Rolleri, Margie Scarry, Nick Siedentop, Keith Sockman, James Thompson, Charlie Tuggle

Guest: Steven King

Absent: Navin Bapat, Chris Derickson, Karen Gil, Christian Lundberg, Christopher Putney, Mark Schoenfisch, Louise Toppin

Staff: Ben Haven

1. Welcome and updates by Senior Associate Dean Abigail Panter

Dean Panter welcomed the Boards to the first meeting of the academic year and started the meeting with a few updates.

A report to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS) is soon due. Seven items received responses from SACS. UNC-Chapel Hill must now respond to these seven responses. The College, in collaboration with the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA), is currently drafting this response with plans to be done by mid-January. The first draft response deadline is mid-November.
The Friday Center has a new program for active military, which allows certain military courses to articulate in for UNC-Chapel Hill credit. Certain courses are proposed for this certificate, each requiring a review. Dean Panter mentioned that some Administrative Boards members may be asked to participate in this review process.
The Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) and OIRA are conducting an assessment of the Making Connections Curriculum. The Foundations requirements may be easier to assess, but Approaches and Connections will require new kinds of mechanisms to include certain samplings of papers, teams of raters, and various kinds of rubrics. This process is necessary for accreditation and will be coming up next year.
The new Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences will start their position on January 1.
Nick Siedentop updated the Boards on progress toward a new online curriculum management tool. The program, called Course Leaf, is now being reviewed by the Procurement Office and ITS. Once implemented, the online brochure will be an interactive, dynamic resource to help students, faculty, and staff navigate through the various curricula, majors, and minors. OUE is hoping for a fall 2016 go-live, but the process may take longer given all the steps required for implementation.
The syllabus monitoring process continues. A new tool, the Online Syllabus Management Tool (OSM) is being piloted this semester with an expected go-live in spring 2016. This tool will make the collection of syllabi much easier for department administrators and will expedite the process of collecting the sample syllabi for the review process.

2. Undergraduate B.A. Degree Program in Interactive Media Programming, School of Media and Journalism, Steven King, Assistant Professor, School of Media and Journalism.

This proposal is intended to formalize a degree pathway in computer science, data visualization, and story-telling. In the professional world, there is no longer a division between media and computer science. Students looking to work in media must become developer journalists. Stephen King then answered questions from the Boards. Because the degree requirements are so rigorous, boards’ members had concerns about how students coming to the degree late would be able to fulfill all of the requirements in four years. The Boards also recommended that the School of Media and Journalism follow up with the Department of Communication to be sure there is no program overlap, and to see if there are additional courses in communication that could be taken by students to fulfill requirements in the Interactive Media Programming degree. Finally, the Boards had questions about the sustainability of the program if student demand exceeds what the current Media and Journalism instructors can teach. King will take these recommendations and comments into consideration. The Boards thanked the School of Media and Journalism for the opportunity to comment on this proposal.

3. Pre-Health Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program, Department of Biology and the Friday Center for Continuing Education, Rob Bruce, Director of the William and Ida Friday Center.

Rob Bruce gave a brief overview of the proposal. The Friday Center currently serves students trying to obtain science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) requirements for entrance into medical school as well as pre-professional health tracks, but does not offer post- baccalaureate certificates in these areas. Certificates make candidates more viable for these programs. This proposal is a result of demand from students and recommendations from faculty and advising staff. This will not affect department budgets or classroom allocation. No new courses will be taught to accommodate this certificate. The open spots are filled by Friday Center students after the full-time undergraduates have already enrolled.

The Boards expressed concern about the minimum grade point average requirement. It may be too high for those excellent students who have one bad year. In response, Bruce stating that the GPA requirement is still lower than some peer institutions and lowering it still further may negatively affect those students attempting to fulfill requirements for medical school. The Friday Center will certainly take the GPA requirement into account and consider lowering it if good students are being excluded. Boards members also had questions about how supply will meet demand if students need courses that don’t have available seats. Finally, the Boards asked how overlap is handled by the certificate program. What happens if a student has already taken and passed a course or multiple courses required for the certificate? As the proposal is currently drawn, those students would have to take the same courses for credit again to obtain the certificate.

4. Update on the North Carolina School of Science and Math Articulation Agreement, Abigail Panter, Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

Nick Siedentop provided some background on this proposal, which was initially approved by the Administrative Boards in January 2015. The articulation agreement was approved by the Administrative Boards going from language in supporting letters stating that only students who graduated from NCSSM with certain grades would receive corresponding course credit at UNC-Chapel Hill. However, this language was not noted in the agreement itself. Over the summer?, a letter was sent to students outside NCSSM, who took online courses at NCSSM, stating that they, too, would receive UNC-Chapel Hill credit for these courses. Additionally, these online courses were not mentioned in the language of the agreement, so standard courses were reviewed – but online courses were not reviewed – in advance of approval by the Administrative Boards. After a thorough discussion, it was suggested that a follow up be done, and additional information be brought back to the Boards at a future meeting.

5. Curriculum Committee Report, Associate Dean James Thompson

The Boards approved the most recent Curriculum Committee Report as distributed.

6. Curriculum Revisions, Curriculum Director Nick Siedentop

The Boards approved the following curriculum revisions, effective with the fall 2016 semester.

Undergraduate Bulletin text for all curriculum revisions

Next meeting: Review professional school credit limit policy for degree programs in the College of Arts and Sciences

The meeting adjourned at 4:59 PM.