ASCRC Minutes 12/3/13
Poetry Corner, Mansfield Library, 2:10 p.m.
Members Present: J. Deboer, L. Eagleheart, K. Easwaramurthi, C. Henderson, L. Gillison, T. Manuel,
S. Samson , T. Thibeau, M. Triana, E. Uchimoto, N. Vonessen, G. Weix
Members Absent/ Excused: B. Holzworth, J. Laine
Ex-Officio Present: J. Hickman, N. Hinman
Guest: N. White
The minutes from 11/26/13 were amended and approved after the presentation by Professor
White, Chair of the General Education Committee.
Communication Items:

Professor White summarized the document (appended) describing the General Education
Committees experience of the articulation between Global Leadership seminars and the
General Education Framework. For the most part the courses have been approved for onetime-only general education designations. However, the courses are not often a good fit.
Although the courses are intended for freshmen, the content seems to be at a higher level
with higher expectations of the students. Some of the topics are fairly narrow and not
introductory or foundational. The General Education designation is intended to be an
incentive for students to take the courses, but it is not clear that the designation is necessary.
The General Education Committee did not want to miss an opportunity to provide
information regarding the difficulties and would like the document to be considered in
conjunction with the GLI presentation the Faculty Senate this Thursday. ASCRC agreed that
the document should go to the Faculty Senate as information.
ASCRC discussed the possibility of a member of the General Education Committee serve on
the GLI Taskforce. Chair White will ask for volunteers. There are concerns that the current
program design is not scalable.
Business

The following updates were made to the General Education Consent agenda based on email
communications from members of the General Education Science Subcommittee.
ASTR 131
Elementary Astronomy I
Renew
ENSC 245 / NRSM
210N
Introduction to Climate, Water and Soils (title
change)
Renew

The prereq revisions for Communication Studies were approved based on the revised
justification and template (below) communicated via email. Table of changes is appended.
Communication Studies proposes to remove pre-requisites from (i) COMX 240, 241, 422 and 460
because they have become unnecessary as per faculty instructing them, (ii) COMX 311 and 421
because non-COMX students make regular use of courses in completing degrees and thus
promotes advancement, (iii) COMX 343, 414 and 423 because consent of instructor furnishes the
unit more flexibility in who may/may not enroll in courses, and (iv) COMX 312 because it targets
students who typically do not have resources to complete both pre-reqs: The totality of changes
facilitates access by a created breadth of students to these COMX courses not previously
available.
We thought that this model might help serve you as a template (e.g., propose X because of Y
resulting in Z) that can be applied to the PCOM restriction on varieties of COMX courses as well
as to adding pre-reqs made to COMX 460.

The Group III catalog language was edited and approved (appended below).

ASCRC discussed and revised the draft questions regarding support for international
students. The questions will be reorganized and sent to Associate Vice President O’hare.

The Writing Committee briefly discussed the EASL courses. Unless Linguistics requests the
courses fulfill a writing course requirement. Professor Appelbaum from Linguistics serves
on the Writing Committee and indicated there is no interest in the courses fulfilling the
writing requirement. There is also a discussion taking place regarding the difficulty of
international students are having on the composition placement exam. Often they place into
WRIT 095. The Interim Director of Composition would like the TOEFL score to place serve
as a diagnostic and place students into the appropriate composition course. The placement
exam is a written exam. Students are not allowed to use a computer. Although Composition
is part of General Education, the Writing Committee does not have oversight over the
program. It was suggested that the interim Director Ratto- Parks be included in the meeting
with Associate VP O’hare, International Programs Director Zaglalo-Melo, and The Office of
Foreign Student and Scholar Services Director. Camie will follow-up with Associate Vice
President O’hare regarding this suggestion and a date for the meeting.

Chair Henderson, Chair-Elect DeBoer, and Interim Associate Provost Hinman began a
discussion regarding information literacy. They discovered that the Library has a robust
outreach effort to integrate information literacy into courses. A rubric is available at each
course level. The library liaisons work with faculty to imbed information literacy into course
assignments. It has also developed 1 credit add-on courses at the 200 and 300 level.
Students in WRIT 101, COM 111 Public Speaking, and Global Leadership seminars work
with librarians on curriculum-integrated information literacy assignments. Information
literacy is also a requirement for both approved writing courses and upper-division writing
courses, although faculty seem to be confused with how to address the item on the forms.
The Writing Committee is working to revise the form to correct this. Camie will include
some additional language in the form regarding contacting librarian liaisons for assistants
with imbedding information literacy into course assignments for the Writing Committee to
consider.
The meeting adjourned at 4:00 PM
UM’s General Education Framework and the Global Leadership Initiative Seminars
In the three years since the beginning of the Global Leadership Initiative (GLI) pilot program (20112013), the General Education Committee has been asked to review proposed GLI seminar courses for
general education designations. This initially included several sets of GLI seminar courses that were
submitted independent of the normal review period, and now includes a subset of courses submitted
during the annual cycle. During each of these review periods there have been several GLI courses that
did not easily fit within the existing General Education framework. In each of these cases, the General
Education Committee faced three alternatives: (1) rejecting any courses that failed to meet the General
Education criteria articulated and approved by Faculty Senate, (2) requesting the faculty members to
revise the problematic courses, or (3) making special allowances to facilitate the GLI pilot program.
Since the mandate of the General Education Committee requires us to implement the guidelines and
framework as approved by Faculty Senate, special allowances were properly not an option. Certain
proposals were approved as one-time only offerings pending closer consideration of this problem.
Related concerns crystalized as we re-examined criteria and discussed the scope of our discretion and
considered how to advise faculty who submitted the problematic courses.
Although the General Education requirements and the GLI both intend to help students to be successful
global citizens, and potentially even leaders, proposals for GLI classes do not always fit within the
General Education criteria. Problems arising for such classes proposed for General Education credit
cover the following range:



The class meets too low a percentage of the group requirements;
The class could be considered for two groups but does not fully meet the requirements for
either;
The class does not meet the requirements of any group.
In the case of at least one proposal, the very features that called the course into question as a viable
General Education offering seem to have been designed to fit in with the style of the GLI initiative. This
may be indicative of a larger, underlying problem.
There are two aspects of GLI courses that we have grappled with repeatedly. First, the thematic focus of
GLI courses has sometimes been so narrowly defined as to contradict the intent of General Education,
which comprises broad and foundational coursework. The second issue relates to the interdisciplinary
aspect of GLI courses, which sometimes leads to courses that meet more than one General Education
area partially, but fits into none of them completely. While the GLI seminars are designed to address big
ideas and enduring questions within thematic guidelines that span multiple disciplines, the existing
General Education framework consists of eleven broad categories based on similarity of discipline.
Despite this difficulty, it is noteworthy that the majority of GLI seminars have been approved for General
Education credit on a one-time basis. These were courses that included interdisciplinary content, but
still had sufficient elements from one of the component disciplines to satisfy the General Education
criteria for that group.
This leads us to offer the following observations:
1. The GLI course guidelines could be revised to provide faculty with clearer instructions to
accommodate both criteria. The current GLI guidelines highlight “Goals” that emphasize an
interdisciplinary approach toward big and enduring questions, but do not mention General
Education; see http://umt.edu/gli/seminar_proposals.html. Only much later, under course
"Requirements," are the instructors asked to list which General Education perspective their courses
plan to meet. Some of the current conflict might be avoided by simply upgrading “Meeting a
General Education designation" to "Goal" status. This would enable faculty to approach the course
design with the general education requirement clearly in view, rather than developing
“interdisciplinary" designs and then trying to fit these into a perspective as an afterthought. The
current General Education perspectives are sufficiently broad in scope to accommodate
interdisciplinary work, so long as they are firmly grounded in a single perspective.
2. The GLI course guidelines could be revised to eliminate or make optional the requirement to qualify
for a General Education perspective.
The idea of changing the General Education framework to accommodate these types of courses has also
been raised, but this would require a much larger process in order to evaluate the merits of requiring
such courses, examine how this would affect the existing General Education framework, and then obtain
approval from ASCRC and Faculty Senate. The Committee does not believe this is a viable option at the
present time.
___________________________________________________________________________
Group III: Modern and Classical Language
The language requirement can be met in any of the following ways:
1) by achieving a C- or better in a second-semester language course offered at the University of
Montana;*
2) by achieving a grade of C- or above in a language course numbered 201 or above at The
University of Montana;
3) by presenting a transcript record of completion with a grade of C- or better of a secondsemester (or more advanced) language course at an accredited college or university;
4) by achieving an appropriate score on a placement exam administered by the department of
Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures in any of the languages taught in the department;
5) by receiving verification of an appropriate level of proficiency in any other natural language in
collaboration with the department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. Note that the
student’s native language, if it is not English, can be used to fulfill this requirement.
* Three 3-credit courses of Irish are required to fulfill the general education requirement.
Upon completion of the Modern and Classical Languages requirement, the student will have a basic
functional knowledge of a second natural language sufficient to:
read and write if the language is classical, such as Latin or classical Greek;
speak and aurally comprehend, if the language does not have a written tradition, such as Salish;
perform all four skills (speaking, aural comprehension, reading, and writing) if the language is
modern and has a written tradition, such as Japanese or French.
demonstrate both receptive (visual comprehension) and expressive (manual production)
proficiency if the language is American Sign Language.**
**As of fall, 2013, American Sign Language has not yet been approved for the general education
language requirement.
Communication Studies Prerequisite Changes
Normal font: current catalog
Italics: proposed amendments
PRE-REQ
MAJOR
LEVEL
REASON
111 delete
Not needed; never enforced
105 Interpersonal Communication
Introduction to Public
111 Speaking
202 Nonverbal Communication
Intl and Development
204 Communication
Communication in Small
210 Groups
Intro to Organizational
220 Communication
Communication in the
222 Workplace
224 Professional Communication
Introduction to Rhetorical
240 Theory
241 Persuasive Communication
242 Argumentation
SOPH cut
Not needed; never enforced
292 Special Topics
311 Family Communication
312 Forensics/Honors
115 delete
111/242
delete
No PCOM
Course needed by other majors
Restriction blocked primary
audience
111 or C/I
No PCOM
Adding C/I for flexibility
Persuasive Speaking and
343 Criticism
347
349
Rhetoric, Nature, and
Environmentalism
Comm, Consumption, and
Climate
No PCOM
No PCOM
351 Principles of Public Relations
No PCOM
majors and minors
No PCOM
352 Public Relations Portfolio
No PCOM
380 Gender and Communication
No PCOM
391 Special Topics
No PCOM
398 Internship
412 Communication and Conflict
413
No PCOM
PCOM restriction to manage
enrollment pressure; this
restriction
has long historical precedent in
our
department to help majors
complete
our degree and facilitate
enrollment
among student seeking
complementary
Communication and ConflictWriting
No PCOM
Communication & Personal
414 Relationships
415 Intercultural Communication
421
422
Comm in Non-Profit
Organizations
Communication and
Technology
423 Org Comm Cons & Training
115 or C/I
No PCOM
445
447
449
Communications Research
461 Seminar
485 Communication and Health
491 Special Topics
492 Independent Study
wishes to retain pre-req
Course serves several other
programs
No PCOM
220 delete
No PCOM
220 or C/I
No PCOM
Not needed; never enforced
Adding C/I for flexilibility;
primary instructor
No PCOM
wishes to retain pre-req
Communication in Health
Organizations
Rhetorical Criticism and
Theory
Rhetorical Construction of
Woman
Rhetoric Women's Activism
460 Research Methods
Adding C/I for flexibility;
primary instructor
220 delete
424 Crisis Communication
425
No PCOM
No PCOM
No PCOM
No PCOM
No PCOM
Stat courses
co-r. 460
delete C/I
COMM
COMM
No PCOM
No PCOM
No PCOM
Rewording to specify courses
and grade
C/I not necessary
For 460/461, course is required
of all majors
and biggest enrollment
bottleneck