Undergraduate Academic Council
Meeting : UAC Meeting Wednesday, April 1 st , 2009, 12:30-1:30pm
Room: Undergraduate Ed Conference room LC31J.
Present : Maria Brown, Yu-Hui Chen, Steven Doellefeld, Sue Faerman, Timothy Groves,
Bob Keesee, Jane Kessler, Joan Savitt (Chair), Greg Stevens, Dan White and Bob
Yagelski.
Review of the minutes : Minutes from March 18 th
meeting were approved as amended.
Report from the Chair:
--The Chair reported that the First Year Experience (FYE) representatives also presented their proposal to the Senate Executive Committee; concerns regarding budget and the proposal’s content were raised.
--The UAC bills that are pending will be going to the Senate April 6 th
.
--The Chair also inquired about the effective date that should be in the Criminal Justice
Honors bill going to the Senate at its next meeting. Discussion was that it should be effective immediately and retroactively.
--The Chair urged council and committee members to indicate their wishes about continuing on UAC or elsewhere in response to email from the Senate secretary.
New Business:

Review of the proposal for admission of students with an International
Baccalaureate degree. This proposal will be placed on the agenda of the full UAC since the Admissions and Academic Standing Committee is currently lacking enough members to reach a quorum.

Medical Anthropology: The changes the department is requesting are small.
They are asking these changes be retroactive to Fall 2004. UAC voted to accept them. This information will be reported to the Senate.
 Should some double major combinations be blocked?
A concern had been raised by the East Asian Studies department that students were not being blocked from double-majoring in that department’s closely related majors despite the EAS Department’s wish that they be so blocked. At the moment there is no policy in place to prevent students from electing any specific combination(s) of majors. UAC determined that no such policy was needed. Departments with multiple majors, as opposed to tracks within the major, can act defensively to make their majors more distinct, but overlap between double majors is allowed and there is no reason UAC could see to change that.

Education Studies Minor : The Committee reviewed the proposal and found this request to be well-reasoned. The increasingly large numbers of students who declare this minor every year already have caused resource issues for the department. The
School of Education is requesting to institute a GPA requirement of at least 3.0 for all students who wish to declare this minor in the future. Other minors on campus have similar requirements. Concerns were raised over the consequences of this kind of

action becoming more widespread. Will other departments and or schools made the same request? There are currently no rules in place for determining under what circumstances a minor could be restricted. Since the School of Education made their proposal using the same rules that are in place for majors, UAC felt they had been reasonable in their approach and that therefore, UAC would not delay voting on this request. However, the proposal was sent back for revision, as it did not address how transfer students would be screened, nor was prospective bulletin copy submitted.
UAC accepted the general concept of the restrictions and expects to vote on a corrected version of this proposal at the next meeting.

UAC also determined that it should study the question of creating a policy for restricted minors later this semester .
Meeting adjourned at 1:40pm.
April 8 tentative meeting cancelled.
Next meeting will be April 15 th
12:30 to 1:30PM in the Dean’s Conference Room,
LC 31J