ASCRC Minutes 3/13/12
GBB 202, 2:10
Members Present: B. Borrie, G. Coon, D. Dalenberg, N. Greymorning, M. Grimes, C. Henderson, C. Knight, Z. Patten, C.
Springmeyer, J. Staub, L. Tangedahl
Members Absent/Excused: W. Davies, B. Holzworth, D. Stolle, S. O’Hare, A. Walker-Andrews
Ex-Officio Present: E. Johnson
Guest: J. DeBoer
Chair Tangedahl called the meeting to order at 2:10 p.m.
The minutes from 3/6/12 were amended and approved
Communication Items:

New student members Zach Patten and Gwen Coon were welcomed to the committee and members introduced themselves.
Business Items:

The procedures review workgroup is working to rewrite the course form instructions and the subcommittee responsibilities
procedure to be more concise. Professor Grimes summarized his thoughts regarding the revisions.
Learning Goals
What should students know, understand, or be able to do at the end of the course?
What information is essential?
What knowledge or skills are relevant to the subject area?
Learning Outcomes
What performance of behavior will indicate, to the teacher and the students, that students understand?
What criteria will differentiate among the different levels of understanding (e.g., knowledge, understanding, application,
analysis, evaluation, synthesis)?
What assessment tools will both engage students and measure learning?
ASCRC Forms
What is the purpose of the form? To make sure that the proposed course, or changes to the course, meet academic standards
and technical requirements. ASCRC will review forms by assigning members to subcommittees according to academic
discipline.
Important questions that we look for:
What is the course name, catalog description, number of credits, and who will teach it?
Has the course number been assigned with consideration of common course numbering?
What is the rationale for a new course, or change to an existing course?
Does the syllabus indicate a course of study and assessment with appropriate learning goals and measurable learning
outcomes?
Have the appropriate administrator(s) signified their approval (signed)?
Secondary questions: are the technical requirements met for graduate increment for co-convening courses and/or fees?
The workgroup agrees that the forms should be electronic only. This may create an issue with regard to verifying the official
version. However, there is software available, such as Acalog that is designed for catalog development that allows for proposal
creation, approval and publishing. The software is capable of pulling information from Banner.

The CCN/Rubric Tansition work group is working on revisions. It requested that ASCRC consider the language of the CCN Flow
chart provided by the Office of the Commissioner for Higher Education. It appears that there is an additional layer of oversight
from other campuses that have courses in the same discipline. The worgroup should consider how the language on the Flow Chart
can be revised so that this is not the case. ASCRC can then send recommendations to OCHE.

The Academic Oversight Workgroup sent a draft discussion paper for members to consider. It will be first on the agenda for next
week’s meeting.

John DeBoer chair of the General Education Committee presented the following motion from the General Education Committee:
General Education Committee Motion, 2/29/12
Effective autumn semester of 2014, undergraduates must fulfill the general education modern and classical language
requirement unless enrolled in a program of study requiring more than 48 credits leading to a first baccalaureate degree.
Credits for the program of study include all requirements for the primary major including options and designated pre-requisite
courses, excluding general education courses unless required by the major.
John went on to provide background for the motion. The Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate charged the committee with
with investigating the issue in 2009 (appended). The symbolic systems exception was a compromise intended to serve programs
that did not have room in their curriuculum for a language, however when the framework language was implimented, many
programs that seemed not to be credit heavy were eligible for the exception based on a symbolic systems requirement. The
General Education Committee has been looking into the issue for three years. John stated that arguments in favor of the motion
include that a langauge requirement is important to the mission of a liberal arts univiersity and the focus on global leadership.
John also spoke to the Chris Comer, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, who generallt supports the language requirement. But
John went on to state that arguments against the motion include that enforcing the motion may be an unfunded maindate for
additonal sections of language instruction, although entrance requirements, test-out options (appended), and on-line instruction
that may lessen the need for additional sections. A letter was sent to affected departments last spring asking for the rationale for
applying for the exception (appended), response from some affected departments was not favorable to the motion.
After John DeBoer left the meeting, ASCRC went on to discuss the motion. There was consideration for what languge would serve
the students best in their future lives. Spanish courses have high enrollment and some Montana High Schools are now offering
Chinese and Arabic. Interest in German and French is decreasing.
The committee also discussed how the credits were counted and revised the motion lanaguage to include co-requisite and cognate
courses. Geosciences and Computer Science have over 48 credits required when cognate courses are considered.
Departments may be willing to re-evaluate their requirement. One option may be to promote the language requirement in a
positive way rather than to impose another rule.
Chair Tangedahl asked members to send him an email if they would like to see aditional data. Director O’hare should have the
data on the number of majors soon. The Provost was also given a heads-up regarding the motion and indicated he would have the
Planning office do a cost analysis.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:05 p.m.
ECOS Charge to the General Education Committee, 4/9/09

The General Education Committee (GEC) shall formulate criteria upon which exceptions to the lower division expectation for
general education courses will be granted. Upon approval of any such criteria, the GEC shall conduct an immediate review of
all upper-division courses with GE designations under these criteria. The GE proposal form should be modified to request
justification for the upper-division exception.

As the Symbolic Systems option was granted at the behest of departments with credit-limited majors, the GEC shall formulate
credit benchmarks for departments to qualify for the option, in addition to the existing standard of a required sequence.

The GEC shall consider a requirement that any prerequisites for GE courses may be waived by permission of instructor.

The GEC shall consider limitations on the number of upper-division GE courses that a department or program may offer.
Excerpt from General Education Committee Annual Report 09-10

The GEC spent several weeks in spring term considering the issue of the symbolic systems requirement, as
charged by the Faculty Senate. It discussed the criteria and mechanism for programs to apply for exceptions to the
Modern and Classical Languages. This discussion is ongoing, as more information is needed concerning the
capacity of MCLL and other language courses to serve the needs of additional students with existing resources. In
connection with this discussion, the GEC met with Linda Gillison Chair of Modern and Classical Languages and
literature. She explained the logistics of students fulfilling the Modern and Classical Language requirement. Not all
students need to take the first year (101 and 102) language courses. The requirement is to demonstrate
proficiency at the 102 level. Students can take the placement exam (offered for French, German and Spanish). If
they place in the 201 level, then they have satisfied the requirement. Students can also self place after
consultation with a faculty member. Student can also satisfy the requirement by proving proficiency from taking
languages from other universities. The requirement can also be satisfied with advanced placement (AP) or
International Baccalaureate (IB) credit.
MCLL strongly believes that UM should have a commitment to teaching languages given its global
mission. [Chair's comment: I strongly concur. UM has been trying for at least the last fifteen years to institute a
chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on campus; currently, we are one of only three public flagships that lacks a chapter of
the nation's oldest and most prestigious academic honor society (founded in the 18th century at William and Mary
by Thomas Jefferson and others). UM's lack of a meaningful foreign language requirement for its students has
been a major obstacle to this outcome.]
Excerpt from Annual Report 10-11
Symbolic Systems Issue:
A multi pronged approach will be taken to address the symbolic systems issue. First, a friendly letter will be sent to programs that are
not credit heavy but require students to take the symbolic systems requirement. The letter will ask for a rationale not to require
students to take a foreign language given the university’s mission. After responses have been collected, the committee will consider
whether to move forward with the motion and revise the framework so that only extended majors would be eligible for the exception
to the foreign language requirement.
Pending motion:
Effective autumn semester of 201X, undergraduates must fulfill the general education modern and classical language
requirement unless enrolled in a program of study requiring more than 48 credits leading to a first baccalaureate degree.
Credits for the program of study include all major requirement and pre-requisite courses, excluding general education courses
unless required by the major.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rationale Letter
Dear Colleagues:
The General Education Committee requests your academic unit’s help in conducting an informal study regarding baccalaureate-degree
programs that require a course sequence in a symbolic system in lieu of the default foreign language general education requirement.
ECOS has charged the General Education Committee with setting credit benchmarks for degree programs to qualify for the symbolic
systems option.
Your academic unit has been selected for our study because our informal audit shows that it falls below a 48 credit-hour threshold
identified by Board of Regents’ policy 303.1 for a credit-heavy program of study. What rationale led your unit to choose the
alternative symbolic systems sequence over the default foreign language general education requirement for completion of your unit's
degree? Please submit the rationale to the Faculty Senate Office (UH 221, or camie.foos@mso.umt) by September 2, 2011.
We want to understand how a 48-credit-hour threshold might affect programs such as yours before we make any recommendations to
ECOS.
Your unit might also be interested to learn, if indeed it has not already, that the academic society Phi Beta Kappa, currently
considering establishing a chapter at the University of Montana, requires its members attain an intermediate-level (two years) of
coursework in a foreign language but acknowledges that credit-heavy programs of study also might not be able to accommodate its
foreign language requirement.
Thank you for your patience and consideration regarding this matter
Sincerely,
General Education Committee
LANGUAGE TEST OUT OPTION
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
The requirement for 2 semesters of the same language DOES NOT AND NEVER HAS MEANT that the student must complete 10 credits of
language classes. There are many, many routes by which the student can show proficiency at the end-of-second-semester level without taking
10 credits of language.
The student may take our placement exam in a language in which he/she has had previous instruction and place into third semester
language. In that case, the student DOES NOT NEED TO TAKE ANY LANGUAGE COURSE with us. Each time we give the placement exam, we send
a list of students to the registrar on which we indicate which students have completed the requirement on the basis of the placement
exam. That fact is then entered on the student’s record in the registrar’s office, and it is never required that he/she take a language class at all.
The student may take our placement exam in a language in which he/she has had previous instruction and place into second semester language.
In that case, if the student takes the second-semester course and passes it with a C- or better (thus passing the gen ed grade hurdle), HE/SHE IS
NOT REQUIRED TO TAKE ANY FURTHER LANGUAGE; nor is it ever required that the first-semester course (which the student didn’t, in fact, take)
appear on the transcript or be accounted for in any way.
The student may place himself/herself ON HIS/HER OWN JUDGMENT into a second-semester (or more advanced) course of language
instruction. If he/she passes that course with a C- or better, that course appears on the transcript and may be listed all by itself in the section of
the graduation papers which asks how the student completed that language requirement. The principle is this: our language courses are
sequential and depend on a regular and orderly building-up of language skills. A student who has completed a more advanced language course
IS ASSUMED, BY DEFINITION, TO HAVE THE SKILLS REQUISITE FOR A LESS ADVANCED COURSE. Thus, the less advanced course never needs to be
completed on the UM-M campus.
In a language section where we do not have a computerized placement exam, the student will confer with a faculty member to determine
his/her skill level and likely placement into our language curriculum. Completion of a second-semester or more advanced course with a grade of
C- or better will be reflected on the student’s transcript and understood to represent completion of the gen ed language requirement. In this
case, as in 3 above, when the student and advisor are working on the graduation papers, this course may be listed alone in the area concerned
with gen ed language requirements; it will be understood by the registrar’s office to indicate completion of the gen ed requirement.
The student may transfer credit for a second-semester language course from another campus and, if that course has been determined to be the
equivalent of our second semester course, that course appears on the transcript as equivalent to a course which fulfills the gen ed language
requirement and, again, THE STUDENT IS NEVER REQUIRED TO TAKE A LANGUAGE COURSE ON CAMPUS.
The student may present AP or CLEP language credits at the appropriate level and receive appropriate credit; if that credit includes the
equivalent of our 2-semester first-year sequence, that will be understood by us and by the registrar’s office to indicate completion of the gen ed
requirement.
Language
Required Score to
Place Out of 102
Amount of
Students
Total Amount of
Student Taken
Exam since
6/24/10
Percentage
of Placing
Out of 102
levels
French
German
Spanish
333 +
384 +
346+
35
20
149
106
58
373
33%
34%
40%