ASCRC Minutes 2/10/15
GBB 205, 2:10 p.m.
Call to Order
Members Present:, J. Deboer, L. Gillison, B. Hillman, A. Lawrence, T. Thibeau, E.
Uchimoto, N. Vonessen, G.G. Weix
Ex-Officio Present: J. Hickman, B. Howard, M. Filer, N. Lindsay
Members Excused: M. Boller, G. Bryant, C. Chestnut, D. Coffin, B. Hollzworth, T.
Manuel, C. Meixner
Minutes: The minutes from 2/2/15 were amended and approved.
Communication

Professor Hillman was welcomed to the committee and members
introduced themselves.
Business Items

The Humanities Subcommittee is still waiting for a response with regard to
Honors College 393.

Discussion on the revisions to the Dual Enrollment Policy was postponed
to allow the subcommittee to meet.

ASCRC discussed the issue of whether Certificates require the same
length of time to become available to students. According to Policy
201.60 Effective Date if Approved Curriculum Forms, curriculum items are
reviewed in the fall and become effective the following fall when they
appear in the catalog. The issue came up because there are students
who will have completed all the course work for the Big Data Certificate
this spring. The Certificate was approved by the Faculty Senate last fall.
However, most of the courses have existed for some time. ASCRC agreed
to grant an exception to the policy to allow the students to receive the
certificate at the end of spring semester.
Chair DeBoer asked committee members to review Policy 201.60 and
policy 201.10 Certificate Guidelines to see whether additional language
should be added to address this situation. It seems with the transition to
an online catalog, effective dates could be more flexible. In particular
departments often apply for general education status in the fall and offer
the course in the spring. The issue with this practice is that the course is
already in the schedule without the general education designation. The
retroactive approval requires the course to be rebuilt in Banner with the
general education designation and any students enrolled manually moved
to the course with the general education attribute. Some argue that
students benefit from having access to the newly approved course status.
But would this be fair? Given that students already registered did not
know about the new course status?
The Graduation Appeals Committee sees petitions from students in
courses that were in the pipeline to receive general education credit.
Instructors tell students that the course was granted the general education
designation and they can appeal to have it count. The committee should
also consider the tendency for general education courses to be better
enrolled.

The proposed revision to Policy 201.00 Curriculum Review Overview was
discussed. The revision was proposed by Professor Vonessen due to his
experience as the chair of the Science Subcommittee. Proposals are
submitted that have not been thoroughly vetted by the department faculty.
The Department Chair’s signature should indicate that the proposal has
been internally reviewed preferably by a faculty committee. Many
departments have a review process. A mechanism for faculty feedback is
needed, but it should be clarified that the committee can be ad hoc to
allow for flexibility. Professor Vonessen will revise the language further for
consideration at the next meeting.

The Registrar’s Office will be looking into purchasing Curriculum
Management Software that will integrate with Banner and Degree Audit.
Demos will be set up with possible vendors. Interim Registrar Hickman
asked for volunteers to attend the demos to represent faculty interests. Ecurr will not be supported to expand to include the variety of curriculum
forms. It was created by the A & F Tech team which has now been
reduced to one person. The estimated initial cost for a system is
$18,000, with a yearly fee for support. A campus programmer would not
be needed to maintain the system and security would be built in. The
software would save the Registrar’s Office considerable personnel cost,
so an argument can be made for its purchase soon. Members should
think about the functions of e-curr that work well and those that could be
improved.
ASCRC may take a break in the spring if no additional business comes
up.
Good and Welfare

Sometimes advisors need to look at past schedules. Those available
online seem to truncate the data. This is a data storage issue with the
archived tables. The Schedules are archived in other formats as well.

The Office of Student Success is working on ways to get students to enroll
earlier. This is an issue particularly in the College of Humanities and
Sciences that require 12 students for a course to be taught given the
current budget situation.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 3:10 p.m.
In addition to the expectation of attendance discussed above, instructors may establish formal
absence policies to conform to the educational goals and requirements of their courses. Such policies
shall be set out in the course syllabus. Course syllabi will describe the procedures for giving timely
notice of absences, explain how work missed because of an excused absence may be made up, and
stipulate any penalty to be assessed for absences