College Curriculum Committee Report
For the 2012-2013 Curriculum Review Cycle
I.
Background
The last 3 years have seen many changes to CNM’s curriculum
development and review process. The faculty and staff in each school
have worked incredibly hard in the last couple of years to comply with
everything the CCC has requested of them. After the last accreditation
visit from HED, CNM faculty and staff began to systematically address the
development of curriculum and to tie it to assessment plans. The creation
of a database of all student learning outcomes, began in the summer of
2010, was an important first step in curriculum and assessment alignment.
Much work was done by faculty to create and/or rewrite student learning
outcomes (SLOs) and to input the information on outcomes and
assessment methods into Microsoft InfoPath.
In 2011 the Department of Education mandated that all schools of higher
education define credit hours and determine credit hour: contact hour
ratios. The CCC and Deans Council worked on the development of
credit: contact hour ratios for theory, lab, clinical, practicum, studio, and
field experience. During the 2011-2012 cycle, most CNM courses
conformed to the newly defined ratios. During the 2012-2013 cycle, all of
the rest of the courses were revised to fit into the defined ratios. The lab
ratio of 3 contact hours to 1 credit hour awarded allowed schools to add
extra contact hours without adding more credit hours. This has provided
flexibility in adhering to accreditation agreements and industry standards.
II.
Conversion to CurricUNET
The 2012-2013 curriculum cycle was the first using the CurricUNET software
to facilitate the curriculum approval process. Catalog and Banner
information, along with data from InfoPath, which included Master Course
Outline Student Learning Outcomes, were uploaded into CurricUNET last
summer. Making the change to a curriculum management system
software has presented many challenges. The information from Banner
went back to 2007, so old programs and courses were uploaded to
CurricUNET and sometimes the newest information was not. The Master
Course Outline information was incomplete and the credit hour/contact
hour differences caused multiple issues with credit hour calculations.
Reports of these issues came from people testing the system and from
those trying to use the software.
CurricUNET had sent representatives for training sessions in the spring of
2012, but the “just in time” training was conducted by Elsie Hall, Academic
Curriculum Coordinator, sometimes with help from me. Elsie and I knew
that some of the information was missing in CurricUNET and that quite a bit
was wrong, but we also knew that we could concentrate on just using the
new or updated information for upload to the next online catalog, and
we could correct the unchanged data as time allowed. We only needed
to make sure that the new information being entered was correct. All new
programs and courses, course revisions, and program modifications had
to be entered into CurricUNET and the approval process we had set up
followed.
What we had failed to recognize was that we now had different
expectations than we’d had when the approval process had been
developed. We have a new VP for Academic Affairs who wants a
summary of the changes and not to approve every detail, and we now
have an Enrollment Services team who reviews the proposals, instead of
one person making all the decisions. We discovered that Financial Aid
does not need to approve some proposals. We decided to adjust the
approval process to better address our current needs. Some approvals
have already been adjusted by Elsie and others we will adjust before we
begin the 2013-2014 cycle.
For the day to day problems and questions, Elsie was in regular contact
with CurricUNET personnel. Throughout this process, Elsie has been
consistently competent. She has demonstrated an astounding attention
to detail and an eagerness to figure out any problem with the system.
Without Elsie, this process would have been much more difficult to
navigate. With her continued support, the use of the CurricUNET
curriculum management system software will better serve our curriculum
development process. More training will be available and a feedback
opportunity is now built into the Curriculum Development Process Timeline.
Eric Casius, Web Content Administrator, has reported that pulling reports
from CurricUNET has made uploading changes to the online catalog an
easier task.
III.
New Programs and Major Program Modifications
The CCC approved four new programs for inclusion in the 2013-2014
Catalog, two in the school of Health, Wellness and Public Safety, one in
the school of Applied Technologies and one in the school of Business and
Information Technology.
The two new programs in Health Wellness and Public Safety are an AAS in
Physical Therapy Assistant and an AAS in Surgical Technology. The
Physical Therapy Assistant degree students will be prepared to sit for the
national board exams administered by the Federation of State Boards of
Physical Therapy (FSBPT). The program is seeking accreditation through
Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE.) The
Surgical Technology program students will be administered the Surgical
Technologist National Certifying Examination just prior to graduation.
Surgical Technologists who take and pass this examination are certified
and authorized to use the initials CST to designate their status as Certified
Surgical Technologists.
An Architectural Woodworking Concentration was added to the school of
Applied Technologies’ Construction Technology AAS degree.
The school of Business and Information Technology added an AAS in
Cloud Technology, responding to the incredible growth in job
advertisements for virtualization and cloud computing.
The school of Health Wellness and Public Safety conducted a major
curricular revision to its AAS in Nursing, which was developed in
conjunction with the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium
(NMNEC.) CNM is an active partner in the development of the new
curriculum, which standardizes the first years of study so students can
transfer all Nursing coursework completed at CNM to a four year nursing
program at a New Mexico university. The revised coursework will start with
a small pilot cohort in the spring of 2014. For a few terms, HWPS will
continue to offer classes under the old Nursing curriculum (courses with
designations of NURS) while initiating the new Nursing curriculum (courses
with designations of NRSG.)
The school of Math, Science and Engineering modified the Biotechnology
Certificate of Completion and AS degree to include 3 new Biotechnology
courses. An articulation agreement with UNM is being developed,
allowing students to transfer to UNM to pursue a Biology degree with a
concentration in Biotechnology.
IV.
Other Developments
Many programs were modified to better serve students and the
community. Schools are making concerted efforts to pare down program
credit hours wherever possible, so that students can complete programs
quickly and enter the labor force. Perhaps partially as a result of the report
of the CCC sub-team, the Credit Hour Creep Team, new programs are
capped at a maximum of 74 credit hours.
Many courses were revised to better define theory and lab hours and to
bring credit: contact hour ratios into alignment. In some programs, such
as Aviation Management, this led to a repackaging of the curriculum and
several hours of work determining how many hours of “theory” and how
many hours of “lab” would be assigned to each course. As stated above,
all courses now comply with the credit: contact hour ratios determined
during the 2011-2012 cycle.
Associate deans, chairs, and other faculty have worked diligently to
correct and revise course and program descriptions and program term by
terms in CurricUNET.
Chairs have continued to update student learning outcomes in
CurricUNET and we now have SLOs for nearly every course at CNM.
Faculty in each school are now collecting assessment data and creating
assessment cycle plans to better assess student learning outcomes and
determine how to appropriately adjust content delivery and data
collection.
Today we have many new CCC members. Some veteran CCC members
have retired or moved on to new teams. Schools now can have up to 4
faculty representatives on the CCC, so we are able to have many faculty
representatives at each school presentation. Our bylaws were updated
during the 2012-2013 cycle and are posted on the Academic Affairs
webpage.
While people and processes have changed during the last few years, the
commitment to improve has not. I appreciate the energy and attention
to detail of the CCC members, and of the faculty and staff at CNM with
whom I have the pleasure of working. I am grateful for the opportunity to
chair this important team.