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2018-09-25 Minutes

AGENDA
MEETING OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE BOARDS
of the General College and the College of Arts and Sciences
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
3:30–4:45 PM, 3020 Steele Building

Members in attendance: Rita Balaban, Claude Clegg, Amy Cooke, Lauren DiGrazia, Mara Evans, Beverly Foster, Kelly Giovanello, Richard Langston, Jennifer Larson, Lauren Leve, Lee May, David Mora-Marin, Ted Mouw, Abigail Panter, Valérie Pruvost, Nick Siedentop, Frank Tsui, Charlie Tuggle, Jonathan Weiler

Absent: Jessica Brinker, Kevin Guskiewicz, Christian Lundberg, Doug MacLean, James Thompson, Lyneise Williams

Guests: Li-ling Hsiao, Andy Perrin, Robin Visser

Staff: Ben Haven

1. Updates and Remarks by Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Abigail Panter
Panter began the meeting with introductions and a brief overview of a new cross-campus initiative. We as an institution will be compassionate, generous, and supportive of our students. In the wake of Hurricane Florence, faculty, staff, and administration came together in the last week to create the Student Success Hub for Florence Recovery. The Hub, initiated by the Provost to bring people together to support students during this difficult time, is an offshoot of the strategic plan for modernizing student support. The Hub uses the one-stop shop model, bringing together advisors, student affairs, admissions, the Registrar, and others in one place. It opened yesterday on the second floor of the student union. The Hub encompasses 32 trained staff and advisors across campus units to help 1500 students who have a home in affected areas and those outside designated areas but still affected by the storm.

2. IDEAs in Action General Education Curriculum
Andy Perrin, Special Assistant to the Dean, Director of Carolina Seminars, and Professor of Sociology
Perrin started his presentation with a brief overview of progress toward a new draft proposal. The final draft will be distributed to the campus for discussion at the beginning of November. The Coordinating Committee is now hearing back from expert panels made up a faculty to look at specific focus capacities.

To evaluate new courses in the first year, the College is piloting five Ideas, Information, and Inquiry (III) courses in spring 2019. The Committee is also looking for new and repeated III courses in fall 2019 and spring 2020. The Committee is hosting a lunch to discuss possible collaboration in this area, and the goal is to have faculty teach these courses at least three times if possible; however, there are some concerns from departments since this will pull instructors away from teaching courses for their majors. Offering these courses is going to be a balancing act between service to the institution and service to the majors and minors in academic units. The College will also offer two First year Launch courses in fall 2018 and hopes to offer some EDUC 101 courses and more FYL courses in spring 2019.

3. M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Li-ling Hsiao, Associate Dean for First Year Curricula and Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
Robin Visser, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
This is the first step in the approval process for this new degree. The former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences originally proposed the program as a joint Ph.D. program between Duke and UNC-CH per recommendations from the previous ten-year study that emphasized Asian Studies as a discipline for growth. Eventually, however, the Department of Asian Studies decided on the M.A. degree; the Department has a strong foundation in Chinese, but lacks faculty in other regions to support an interdisciplinary program beyond the M.A. Students in the program will learn about environmental challenges, with an emphasis on the arts and cultural aspects of environmental literature and urbanization. The Boards approved the request with a recommendation to consider how offering this graduate program may affect the teaching and research resources allocated for the undergraduate program

4. Disaster Response Policy for Enrollment Adjustments
Lauren DiGrazia, Assistant Provost and University Registrar
The Student Success Hub for Florence Recovery (florence@unc.edu) will continue to assist students throughout the fall term. The Provost has charged the Registrar’s team to come up with a way to ensure students facing extenuating circumstances get the support they need – even if actions taken may override current financial and academic measures. To help students in this mission, the Registrar, in collaboration with Hub partners, is looking for ways to adjust the current withdrawal policy for those students affected by the hurricane. The goal of the revised policy is to keep students in UNC-CH if at all possible; however, this conflicts with the current policy which states that full-time students must always be enrolled full time.

The team has put together a holistic approach to solving individual student issues. The steps are below:

  1. The student visits the Hub. The intervention team will do the research for the student to find out the academic and financial impacts of potential actions. A member of the team will sit down with the student to give them their options and develop a plan.
  2. The Registrar receives the plan of action and processes the request. The Registrar’s Office may need to override the standard re-admission process. In some cases, the student will be withdrawn for one term and then pre-registered for the next term. The goal is to remove the barriers for students in these situations.
  3. The deadline for making changes is the last day of classes, December 4, 2018. The team will consider students’ situations on a case-by-case basis afterwards.
  4. The team will also consider future terms since tragedy can have future impacts as well. A decision may be made later to extend the Hub and the initiative beyond December.

5. Course Committee Report
Nick Siedentop, Director, Office of Undergraduate Curricula
The Boards approved the report as distributed.

6. Program Committee Report
Nick Siedentop, Director, Office of Undergraduate Curricula
Some departments have difficulty putting together new minors since there is no standard University template or detailed guidelines for minor creation. The Boards suggested that the Program Committee put together additional documentation to guide academic units when they develop new undergraduate minors. The Boards approved the report as distributed with recommendations for the Program Committee to provide feedback for the new minor.

The meeting adjourned at 4:45 PM.

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The Administrative Boards of the General College and the College of Arts and Sciences are responsible for advising the Dean of the College about the undergraduate curriculum, including changes in that curriculum, approving individual courses offered in Departments and Curricula of the College, and making decisions when requested on specifications for degrees.