ASCRC Minutes 10/7/14
GBB 225, 2:10 p.m.
Call to Order
Members Present: C. Chestnut, D. Coffin, J. Deboer, L. Eagleheart, L. Gillison, A. Lawrence, T.
Manuel, C. Meixner, T. Thibeau, E. Uchimoto, N. Vonessen
Ex-Officio Present: G. Bryant, J. Hickman, B. Howard, N. Lindsay
Excused: J. Laine
Minutes: The 9/23/14 minutes were approved. The meeting began with the UM Minute.
Communication


New student member, Cody Meizner was welcomed to the committee and members introduced
themselves.
Interim Registrar Hickman announced that the University has agreed to purchase Degree Works.
Once the software arrives implementation should take 18 months.
Business Items

The Committee reviewed the curriculum form distribution and set consent agenda dates. Given the
two Tuesday holidays in November subcommittee chairs’ presentations should be limited to items
that require discussion. Most items can be approved in groups as long as there was consensus by
the subcommittee. ASCRC will not meet next week to allow subcommittees time to conduct the
review.
Subcommittee
Business &
Journalism
Education & Fine
Arts
Forestry &
Biomedical Science
Humanities
Science
Social Science
Number of Proposals
e-curr
X
PM
26
1
13
I
10
II
3
11/18/14
68
3
13
3
2
10/21/14
19
2
9
1
21
50
24
23
0
6
7
17
4
4
7
1
Date
10/21/14
1
2
11/18/14
10/28/14
10/21/14
The Business and Journalism Subcommittee has several proposals from the Bitterroot College for
which they don’t currently have members with expertise. Additional reviewers will be solicited from
Missoula College to assist with the review.

The Counting Degree Credit Guideline language was sent to five staff members for feedback. Most
found the information helpful. Loey Knapp still felt clarification was needed regarding the upperdivision writing in the discipline course. Chair DeBoer will communicate with Loey regarding the best
way to implement the guidelines.

Professor Vonessen reported on the status of the items on the recommendation document
(appended) from the Catalog Workgroup.
1. The text editing will hopefully be completed in December.
2. Likewise the A-Z index should be completed in December. The Registrar’s Office will ask
departments to input tags in their pages to allow for links to be included in the index.
3. (1)The department course listings now include course numbers and credits. This was
completed by IT.
(2) The long course title requires more testing, but should be completed in December.
(3) Banner shows most Graduate courses with a UG status. This is a technical issue with
Banner and would not be simple to correct. The issue should be brought to the attention of
Graduate Council.
(4) Listing all courses offered by the department, specifically for the Missoula College is
unresolved. Banner requires one campus to be listed under department for courses.
4. (1) ASCRC drafted guidelines for degree credits pulled from Degree Builder.
(2) ASCRC will discuss the feasibility of degree builder containing blocks for programs
with repetitive cores for various options with Loey Knapp.
(3) ASCRC discussed whether degree maps should be included in the catalog. Degree
maps will be available once Degree Works is implemented. The current issue is that
advising materials (maps) maintained by departments may be inaccurate given that
curriculum changes occur every year, and there is no central oversight of the degree
maps. The example of how University of Alaska
http://www.uaf.edu/advising/degree_info/) handled the situation was displayed. It is
important that students understand the consequence of changing majors. ASCRC is not
clear whether maps should be created for the interim until Degree Works is operational.
There will be a plugin available in CMS to create similar looking maps. Degree Maps
should be an outline with a lot of fill in the blanks.
Every time the department meets with the student there should be documentation.
Exceptions or substitutions to degree requirements are entered into degree works when
approved. Members will be sent the link to a Degree Works demo
https://ellucian.webex.com/ellucian/ldr.php?RCID=0705f301ce33a487bdc4a729
2c441b2c
There is currently a Working Group discussing of the various components of
implementing a Degree Audit system .
5. There was a lot of discussion regarding redesigning the catalog home page. It was
suggested that a committee be assigned to make revisions. The student members on ASCRC
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were asked to share the recommendations to ASUM for feedback. The current home page
was created by a student focus group.

Professor Coffin reported that the Dual Enrollment Workgroup met last Wednesday. It reviewed its
charge and will focus its work on three areas: 1) academic quality, 2) Information resources, and 3)
management flow chart. The end result will be a users’ manual for Dual Enrollment at UM.
Information resources will include examples of the signed MOU agreements with instructors.
Although the management flow is not under ASCRC’s purview, it does cross over into quality
assurance as in pertains to the qualification of instructors and who will make sure the courses is
taught with the correct book. This oversight must be at the departmental level. These three items
were divided among the Workgroup members to research and create first drafts.

Chair DeBoer, Associate Provost Lindsey, Beth Howard and others from Missoula Campus attended
the Prior Learning Assessment Summit in Helena last week. The Taskforce is working on system
guidelines that individual institutions can adapt and tailor to specific needs. The intention is not to
require all campus to adopt the same approach. However, there should be similar ground work with
regard to communication to students. It should be clear that the credit is for demonstrated learning
not credit for experience. The learning must be comparable to classroom learning.
The most controversial is credit by portfolio review. If done properly it is a comprehensive process.
The good news is that it requires a certain amount of academic rigor; the bad news is that it is very
time intensive. The critical question is who is going to be subject matter experts. Does the system
want to trust outside agencies given our faculty don’t have a lot of extra time? The Taskforce is
looking at the issues and drafting general language.
Credit for Prior learning includes AP, IB, Clep, and Ace. UM has already been accepting these
credits. The national data indicates that time to degree is shorter for students with PLA credit time
degree is shorter. These students seem to be more engaged and take more credit. The data also
looked at employability, as well as students readiness for higher level work in the area which they
received PLA credit. The numbers are quite good especially in the area of technical and clinical
based programs. Members should address any concerns to Beth Howard. One issue of concern is
related to equity and transfer. Some subjects do not have equivalent exams such as native
languages.
The Taskforce is meeting again at the end of the month to work on the guidelines. The drafts will be
distributed to colleges, including Tribal Colleges for additional feedback and recommendations for
implementation early next year. This is not intended to be a mechanism for students to shop for the
institution that gives them the most credit. No credits are awarded until the student is enrolled. Any
fees associated with the process cover administrative cost of evaluation and are not equated to cost
per credit.
One of the impetuses for this is that Montana does not have enough prospective students to meet
the state’s workforce needs. So it is necessary to entice students from outside Montana and to
make college education assessable to more people.
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The national data indicates that adult learners with some PLA credit are more likely to progress to
degree than your typical college student in their 20s.
OCHE would like to get guidelines in place ahead of the curve and is piloting portfolio review with
the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) at Billings and Northern. Both the student
and the University pay fees to CAEL associated with the service.

Megan Stark, Writing Committee Chair –elect joined ASCRC for the discussion of the revision to the
Writing Committee Charge. ASCRC approved the changes (below), but suggested a final reading
without track changes.
The primary responsibility of the Writing Committee is ongoing evaluation and assessment
of the appropriateness and effectiveness of General Education writing requirements and
criteria. The Writing Committee acts as an advocates for effective writing instruction,
curriculum, and assessment; : proposes revisions to the General Education writing
requirements and criteria; and reviews writing course proposals for the writing designation
and transfer equivalency appeals for writing courses. In addition, the Committee monitors
the programs of the Writing Center, monitors the University-wide Program-level Writing
Assessment, and collaborates with campus groups to provide faculty development
workshops .assessment procedures, results, and appeals.
A Working Group of the Writing Committee is working on improved labeling for the approved
writing course and upper-division writing in the discipline. There is a lot of confusion on campus.
The Working Group has completed an environmental scan of the available courses. There are a
number of approved writing courses at the upper-division level.
There was a brief discussion regarding the learning outcomes of writing courses and Professor Stark
mentioned the October 23rd Workshop on ProQuest Flow, a citation management tool.
Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 3:55 p.m.
ASCRC Catalog Workgroup Report
10/03/2014
The ASCRC Catalog Workgroup met on Tuesday, September 30, 2014. Participants:
Nikolaus Vonessen, ASCRC
Caleb Chestnut, ASUM
Matt Filer, Assistant to the Registrar
Brian French, Undergraduate Advising Center
Bonnie Holzworth, Associate Registrar
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Sandi Nelson, SoBA Advising Coordinator
Nick Shontz, IT Web Developer & Strategist
The workgroup had been charged to discuss priorities and needs for the 2015-2016 Catalog
ahead of curriculum review and the spring editorial session.
1. Academic Information Section
The Workgroup identified the following tasks:
1. Break long chapters, especially “Policies and Procedures” and “General Education” into
sections, each appearing on its own page. This should make use of the navigation panel on
the left.
2. Ensure consistent and appropriate use of headings.
3. Anchors: Most, if not all headings should have an associated anchor, so that it is possible to
link to that heading (in particular from the index, see below).
What happens next: Bonnie Holzworth and Matt Filer will work on implementing these items,
and report to ASCRC as appropriate. This will already be done during the current semester,
since it only involves editorial changes.
Expected Completion: December 2014
2. A – Z Catalog Index
The current A-Z Catalog Index is cluttered with links to the many degrees, and needs many
additional entries which will have to be added manually (e.g., to Residency Requirements, Credit
Requirements, Credit Limitations,…). The workgroup decided to not list the degrees in the A-Z
Catalog Index, since a complete list of degrees can be found by clicking on “Colleges and
Schools”. (It might make sense to also have a link “Degree Index” which would link to the same
page as “Colleges and Schools”.)
What happens next: Bonnie Holzworth will work on this, with technical assistance by Nick
Shontz as needed. This will already be done during the current semester, since it only involves
editorial changes.
Expected Completion: December 2014
3. Course Listings under Departments (pulled from Banner)
1. FYI, already implemented by IT: The Catalog course listings under each department and
program now include for each course the number of credits and the level.
2. Long Course Titles: The course descriptions in Banner still do not use the full titles of
courses although that is feasible in Banner. Consequently, lists of course descriptions
(obtained by CyberBear or on the Catalog pages of Departments and Programs) still have to
use the short, abbreviated title (e.g., “M 445 - Stat/Math/Comp Modeling” instead of “M 445
- Statistical, Dynamical, and Computational Modeling”.) Fixing this is seemingly relatively
easy, but the necessary testing, which was supposed to take place in Fall 2013 has
seemingly not yet been completed.
What happens next: Bonnie Holzworth and Matt Filer will work on enabling long course
titles in Banner and CyberBear.
Expected Completion: December 2014.
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Follow-up: Once this is done, ASCRC should request that IT also enable the long course titles
for the course listings in the Catalog.
3. G-only courses: We used to distinguish U, UG, and G-courses. Because of technical reasons
(involving hard-to-avoid idiosyncrasies of Banner), nearly all G-courses are listed with
“Level: Undergraduate, Graduate”. It seems that this should be changed to “Level:
Graduate”. It seems that implementing this would not be easy.
Follow-up: This should be brought to the attention of Graduate Council.
4. Listing all the courses taught by a given department: Because of technical reasons
(involving hard-to-avoid idiosyncrasies of Banner), each course can have in Banner only one
associated department. With the advent of common course numbering, there are quite a
few courses taught by more than one department (in many cases involving both a
department at Missoula College and a department on the Mountain Campus). Currently,
these courses are only listed in the Catalog under one of the departments involved, giving
the wrong impression that the other department is not offering this course.
What happens next: ASCRC is discussing this issue.
4. Degree Descriptions (pulled from DegreeBuilder)
1. FYI: ASCRC is currently discussing detailed instructions for computing the “Degree Specific
Credits” that are listed for each degree. This will likely include also a listing of how many of
the Degree Specific Credits usually satisfy lower-division General Education requirements.
(This will likely be easy to implement.)
2. Including requirements by reference: This concerns bachelor degrees with options, were
the requirements for the option are in addition to the requirements for the no-option
degree. In these cases, DegreeBuilder currently requires repetition of the no-option degree
requirements under the requirements for the degree with option. This duplication is
difficult to maintain (when program changes occur), and will likely lead to unintentional
discrepancies in the future. I suggest permitting degree requirements by reference instead
of duplication. This is best explained by an example. (There is a similar problem for
Business degrees.)
Example: The requirements for a “B.A. in Mathematics” (no option) and the “B.A. in
Mathematics with an option in Applied Mathematics” are identical, except for the very last
requirement in the Applied Math degree (called “Requirements for the Applied Mathematics
Option”). In DegreeBuilder, the entry for the Applied Math option should not duplicate the
requirements from the no-option degree, but instead include them by reference. There
seem to be two options how this can be done:
a. DegreeBuilder could, behind the scenes, include the various requirements for the
no-option degree in the Applied Math degree, so that the presentation of the Applied
Math degree looks exactly like it does in the current Catalog.
b. Or one could simply refer to the requirements of the no-option degree, maybe with
language along the lines: “To obtain a B.A. in Mathematics with an Option in Applied
Mathematics, students must satisfy all requirements for a B.A in Mathematics in
addition to the option requirements listed below.”
Note that this is currently already done for secondary education degrees (which
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have links to the “Licensure Degree Requirements”, which are listed on a separate
page.
What happens next: ASCRC should discuss with Loey Knapp, Director of Special
Projects for IT, to what extent this is feasible.
3. Inclusion of 4 Year Degree Maps (“Suggested Course of Study”): The lack of these in the
current Catalog is a major issue for advising. IT is currently working on a plugin for the
Cascade CMS which departments and programs will be able to use to post standardized
degree maps on departmental websites. This tool will be available soon. It is expected that
degree descriptions and degree lists in the Catalog could be linked to the degree maps on
the departmental websites.
What happens next: ASCRC should reconsider inclusion of degree maps in the Catalog, or
discuss the possibility of linking from the Catalog to degree maps on departmental websites.
One issue with the latter is that degree maps depend on specific Catalog years, and links
from archived Catalogs could lead to incorrect (because updated) degree maps.
5. The Catalog Homepage
There was a lengthy discussion about redesigning the Catalog home page
(http://www.umt.edu/catalog/default.php). One of the issues mentioned is that listing
departments by colleges and schools is not intuitive for students; better would be replacing the
link “Colleges and Schools” by a link “Departments and Programs”, which would link to a long
alphabetical list of departments and programs. Brian French provided quite a few additional
suggestions, which are appended at the end of the report.
What happens next: The Workgroup recommends that the Registrar’s Office convene a small
taskforce to look into redesigning the Catalog home page.
6. Other
1. Removing unused attributes form the CyberBear Course Search: This is not quite a
Catalog issue. In the CyberBear Course Search (liked from http://cyberbear.umt.edu/),
there is a drop-down menu “Attribute Type”. This contains two old attributes that are no
longer used: “Writing Course-Lower-Division” and “Non-Western”. These unused
attributes should be deleted from the drop-down menu. There was the concern that this
might involve modifying Baseline Banner.
What happens next: Bonnie Holzworth will investigate this and report to ASCRC.
Additional Suggestions for the Catalog Homepage from the Office for
Student Success (Brian French is OSS representative)

Links to Academic and Registration Calendars

Clear delineations for academic departments and programs (I am not so sure students
know to look under Colleges and Schools, perhaps a renaming to Colleges, Schools, and
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Programs might resolve that), Financial Aid (I am not sure students would know to look
under Expenses), Tuition and Fee tables/schedules, etc.

Combine areas of overlap into sections with linked subsections (see Utah State
University’s catalog http://catalog.usu.edu/index.php?catoid=8 – their layout mimics a
number that I’ve seen, grouping things in subset links, rather than huge walls of text)

I’m confused by the last sentence on the catalog overview – “The University enhances its
programs through continuous quality review University for improvement and remains
fully accountable to the citizenry through annual audits and performance
evaluations.” Shouldn’t “University for improvement” be removed for that to make
sense?

It’s important to remember that students comprise the primary audience of the catalog.
All content and navigation design should strive to make information easily accessible.

We recommend continuing student-based focus group discussions and incorporating
students’ feedback into future design considerations.
Proposed Redesign of the Catalog Homepage by Jimmy Stevens, UAC
See next page.
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