Undergraduate Studies Committee
April 4, 2012
Minutes
Present: Rocio Avila, Bem Cayco, Cary Feria, Deepika Goyal, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Jaehne, Ravisha
Mathur (Chair), Weider Yu
Absent: Damian Bacich, Lori Salazar,
Guests: Stephen Branz (UGS), Gloria Edwards (UGS)
I.
Approval of Minutes
The Minutes for 3/7 were approved with 1 abstention.
The Minutes for 3/21 were approved with 3 abstentions.
II. Double Degrees and Degrees requiring a Minor
Cindy Kato from Academic Advising and Retention Services (AARS) attended the meeting to
discuss double majors and high-unit students. She began by giving a brief explanation of how
high-unit students are currently advised.
AARS requires any student with more than 150 units to meet with an advisor. The advisor and
student then work out a plan of study that will assist the student in graduating. If the student has
met all the criteria for a degree, but has not yet filed for graduation, a 2009 Presidential
Directive allows SJSU to graduate that student:
PD 2009-5 states (in part):
Effective with registration for Spring 2010, any undergraduate or graduate student will be
precluded from enrolling in any additional state-supported courses when that student has
already met all necessary requirements for the degree for which that student is matriculated.
Moreover, students who have met all requirements for graduation prior to any semester in
which they are enrolled will be permitted to drop all courses for which they are registered,
with little or no penalty, and to graduate at the next available date. Students who have earned
more than enough units to graduate but have some remaining requirements to complete, will
be advised and precluded from registering in any courses other than those required for a
timely graduation.
As part of the implementation of this directive students that have completed more than 90 units
are prevented from changing their major unless they receive permission from the AVP of Student
Academic Success Services. AARS does not automatically prevent students from changing their
major (if it does not entail adding a large number of additional units); they work with students to
create a path to graduation. To prevent students from becoming high unit seniors, AARS
encourages transfer students to complete any lower division prerequisites for their degree at a
community college. Units that are completed in this way are not counted as SJSU units.
If a student is admitted to SJSU planning a double major and is working on both majors the entire
time, they do not usually become high-unit seniors. The problem is those students who are
seniors who have fulfilled most of the degree requirements for their primary degree and NOW
want to declare a second major.
Like a change of major, students who have completed 90 units and have not begun taking any of
the classes in the second major, are not allowed to declare a second major. If the student still
wants to declare the second major, there is an appeal process. Interestingly, double majors are
more of an issue at the graduate than the undergraduate level.
The Committee believes that allowing a student to declare a double major is a privilege.
Unfortunately, SJSU does not have a double major policy in place. However, guidelines could
still be developed. The following criteria were suggested for double majors:

A minimum GPA (possibly 3.0 or higher).

Any student on probation would be required to drop one of their majors. Often students
who are double majoring do well in one but are unsuccessful in the other. They are often
disqualified from the major in which they are performing poorly.
AARS does not require students to graduate at exactly 120 units. However, students with more
than 150 units are consuming resources and preventing SJSU from admitting freshman or
transfer students.
The CSU’s current emphasis on graduating students with as close to 120 units as possible now
impacts students interested in becoming CPAs. Applicants cannot sit for the California CPA
unless they have completed 150 units. Since SJSU’s Accounting concentration is 120 units, and
the Accounting Information Systems concentration is 122 units; there are an addition 28-30 units
students must complete if they want to qualify for the CPA exam. If they cannot take these
classes from SJSU, they will need to take them from a community college, a private university, or
an institution that will accept undeclared or non-degree seeking post-baccalaureates.
The College of Business is concerned because they believe that if the student getting degrees
continue to take classes at SJSU, they will receive a higher quality education and perform better
as CPAs. If they attend a community college to pick up the final 30 units, they may not be able to
advance their learning in accounting. These SJSU graduates may not perform as well as CPAs
from other institutions that allow their students to complete their 150 units with upper division
courses.
Unfortunately, if Accounting students are allowed to complete 150 units (even though their degree
is only 120-122 units) fewer freshmen and transfer students can be matriculated. At SJSU 85%
of enrollment target is taken up by existing students.
If Accounting and Finance professors believe that they currently have a high quality accounting
degree, whether students complete the extra 30 units here or at a Community College should not
make a difference. With the current budget climate, SJSU needs to provide the highest quality
education they can within the constraint of 120 units.
Other AARS concerns are students who expect to graduate in one term, but find out that they
need one more class. To qualify for financial aid these students must be enroll in a minimum of
12 units, even though they only need 3 to graduate. The more students consuming ‘extra’
classes, the fewer new students can be admitted.
The Chancellor’s Office will be examining all CSU’s to make sure that any degree that requires a
minor only does so if they can stay within 120 units. For departments such as World Languages
and Literatures and Art and Design, partnering with other departments could become a
problematic as many of these Minors are high unit.
The legislature is considering changes to the minimum number of units for a Minor. Materials on
this proposal will be sent to the Committee along with the Minutes.
Action Item: UGS will send information to the committee on the data/publication referencing a
change in the Minor requirements.
III. Capstone Courses
A spreadsheet listing all the degree programs that have a category in their degree call “senior
seminar” or “capstone” was distributed to the Committee. This will be a discussion for our next
meeting.
Action Item: UGS committee members are asked to think about requirements for capstones as
well as to survey their respective colleges about: whether each major has a capstone and what
content is taught in those capstones (relative to the major).
IV. Pending
Review and approval of minutes (April 4, 2012)
A. Proposed changes to Title V language re minimum requirements for minors
Note the comments about the attached memo:
 Dr. Mallon from the CSU stated: The changes are intended to provide
clarification of often misunderstood policies. In the case of s. 40500, the
amendment would remove minimum requirements for minors associated with BA
degrees, thereby allowing campuses to set such standards.

Dr. Branz interpreted the language in the memo as follows:
"(c) Minor. A minor consisting of 12 or more semester units, of which six must be
in upper division credit, may be required."
is inside the larger section titled "40500. Bachelor of Arts
Degree: Required Curriculum" -- so my interpretation is that we may no
longer require a minor as a b=part of the BA degree. This doesn't seem to be
changing the section of Title 5 that defines the minimum criteria for minors.
B. Capstone courses:
 Do all majors have them?
 Use of capstones for WASC, assessment, credit hour
C. Developing comprehensive greensheets
 Use of SLOs, what should be the content on every SJSU greensheet, meaning and
rigor of the degree
D. Website review:
 Any gaps?
 Resources for faculty and staff
Meeting adjourned: 1:05 pm
Gloria Edwards