ASCRC Minutes 9/3/13
GBB 202, 2:10 p.m.
Members Present: J. Deboer, L. Gillison, C. Henderson, L. Eagleheart, S. Samson, T. Thibeau, N.
Vonessen, G. Weix,
Members Absent/ Excused: S. O’Hare, J. Hickman
Ex-Officio Present: B. Holzworth, N. Hinman, E. Johnson, J. Zink
The minutes from 5/7/13 were approved.
Communication Items:

New members were welcomed and members introduced themselves.

The curriculum deadline is September 27th this year, a week later than last year.

This will be the first year using e-curr, the electronic signature system for course forms.
Subcommittee chairs will receive messages after forms have been approved by academic
deans. They may wish to set up a rule in Outlook to move the messages into a folder. The
forms do not need to be reviewed until they have all been submitted after the deadline. The
subcommittee chair will communicate with their subcommittee and not approve the forms in
e-curr until the subcommittee has reached consensus.

The timeline for committee business was briefly discussed. Next week the Committee will
review the motion to eliminate the UDWPA in place of program level assessment. It is
hoped that this will be approved in order to make the September 12th Faculty Senate meeting.
For the next couple of weeks workgroups will work on various issues. On October 1st we
will know the breakdown of curriculum forms and subcommittee consent agendas will be
established. Most of October and November will be devoted to curriculum review.

An update on prerequisite checking implementation was postponed in the absence of interim
Registrar Hickman. The Provost has approved another 200-300 courses for fall 2014
implementation.

The complete course title does not appear in the Banner course descriptions. Baseline
Banner has the field, but it needs to be tested. The Registrar’s Office is short staff, so an
activation target date is unknown.
Business

Tully Thibeau volunteered and was approved to serve on the Academic Court. Approval of
an alternate member was postponed until the Committee membership is complete.
According to Interim Associate Provost Hinman, the title of the Committee will change to
Academic Conduct Board. It deals with issues of conduct not complaints.

Subcommittee Chairs listed on the website agreed to serve. Some subcommittees are short
members. Requests have been sent to Department Chairs. Two of the members on the
humanities subcommittee resigned in part due to frustration regarding ASCRC’s approval of
repeatable topic courses. The Committee will discuss the need for a repeatability procedure.

Professor DeBoer was nominated and approved for Chair-elect.

The seconded motion from the Writing Committee to change the title of the general
education category form English Writing Skills to Writing was approved.

ASCRC discussed the seconded motion to add a designation to writing courses and change
the name of the upper-division writing requirement in the major to upper-division writing in
the disciple. It amended the motion so that both the approved writing course and upperdivision writing in the discipline would be designated by a (W) after the title. It was
concerned that UDW would be confusing to students and was too many characters for the
short title field which shows on students transcripts. The attributes in Banner differentiate
the courses, but is not visible on the course listing. The catalog language with regard to the
distributed models was sent back to the Writing Committee for deliberation.

ECOS requested that ASCRC investigate how the university grants credits for military
courses and whether a procedure needs to clarify the process. The current policy, “Elective
credit may be given for military courses according to the recommendations in the American
Council (ACE) Service Guide.” This guide may be found at:
http://www2.acenet.edu/militaryguide/CourseSearch.cfm
The Graduation Appeals Committee has had some cases related to military credit due to the
lack of information on the transcript and difficulty of identifying the courses. The ACE
guide suggests appropriate credit, but the transcript only shows TR for an experiential
transfer and does not list the title. The transfer evaluation should have this information.
Interim Associate Provost Hinman suggests that this item be put on hold until the intent of
the Board of Regents is clear. The Commissioner’s Office asked that all campuses submit
policies this summer.

All standing committees of the Faculty Senate are charged with an annual review of its’
policies. A workgroup consisting of Professors DeBoer, Thibeau, Vonessen, and Weix
agreed to conduct the review.
In addition there are several issues that may require new procedures. Crosslisting for
example is on hold until the completion of the pilot project. The guidelines for establishing a
new rubric are pending the recommendation of a Faculty Senate Taskforce.

A workgroup was also formed to flesh out issues associated with the motion from the
General Education Committee to allow only programs with extended majors to qualify for
exception from the language requirement. Professors Gillison, Henderson and Samson will
work on this issue. Some of ASCRC’s concerns were outlined in the April 30,02013
minutes. Guidelines for how credits are counted in the major may be necessary.

The Workgroup established to look into study skills / transition courses last year chaired by
Director O’Hare will reconvene to make recommendations. Discussion of this item was
postponed in Director O’Hare’s absence.

Loey Knapp, Director of Strategy Projects in Information Technology has a Taskforce
looking into the degree audit function in Baseline Banner. ASCRC may consider asking for
an update given last year’s ASCRC Degree Audit workgroup did not make a
recommendation.
Good and Welfare

Professor Weix asked that the Committee consider the curriculum overlap issues of the
Missoula College and the main campus. The Provost has a Taskforce evaluating the issues
that should have a recommendation by the end of the fall.
The meeting was adjourned at 4.00 PM