Undergraduate Studies Committee
March 20, 2013
Minutes
Present:
Absent:
Guests:
Ann Agee, Rocio Avila, Bem Cayco, Paul Douglass, Cary Feria, Laura Hart, Laura
Ingraham, Dennis Jaehne, Ravisha Mathur (Chair), Peter Lee,
Weider Yu
Stephen Branz, Gloria Edwards (UGS)
I.
Approval of Minutes.
The 3/6/13 minutes were approved with 1 abstention.
II.
Capstones/Culminating Experience
An article was distributed at the last meeting, “The Professors’ Big Stage,” from the New York
Times, March 5, 2013, which discussed the MOOCs (massive open online course) revolution.
The article addressed the shift from students taking a specified amount of time to receive a degree
to students achieving competency in specified subjects to achieve a degree. Programs having an
integrative experience at the end of a student’s college education would allow the possibility of
assessing major specific competencies.
Our accrediting agency Western Association of Colleges and Schools (WASC) has become more
interested in accredited colleges being able to demonstrate that, at the time of graduation, students
have achieved stated competencies. Having a capstone or culminating experience allows a
department to provide the student with a summative assessment at the end of the college career.
This allows students an integrative experience where they can pull all of the information they
have learned together. The question is whether this should be a requirement?
All programs at SJSU are engaged in ongoing assessment of their educational effectiveness. Each
college has developed a mission statement and all programs have developed learning objectives
for their students. Programs and Colleges report their progress on assessment each semester. For
more information on the objectives for each program, see
http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/faculty/programs/
Because the direction of higher education appears to be moving away from ‘seat time’ and toward
competencies, the university, college or program could require students to meet some competency
before graduation.
UCLA has gone through this process and now requires every major to have a capstone.
Administration took a number of years to gain faculty input and support in the development of
their policy. UCLA’s capstone criteria include:
1. The project must require the student to engage in a creative, inquiry-based learning
experience that deepens the student's knowledge and integration of the discipline.
2. The project may be completed individually or by a group of peers, provided each student
is given agency; each student's contribution must be significant, identifiable, and graded.
3. The project must culminate in a tangible product that can be archived (including film,
video, etc.) for at least three years by the responsible unit (department or program).
4. The project must be part of an upper-division course of at least four units, usually within
the curriculum established for the student's major or minor. Whenever possible, capstone
courses and projects should be taught and mentored by ladder faculty.
5. Opportunities must be available or developed for students to share their capstone
products (paper, performance, or project) publicly. Examples might be a presentation to a
peer audience such as a class, a departmental mini-conference, or a research group
meeting; a poster at a department or campus venue or professional meeting; campus
music, dance, theater or art event; or a competition that is judged by the professional
community in the discipline.
As quoted from their website: “Capstones are designed to be the culmination of a UCLA
undergraduate experience. Capstones at UCLA range from yearlong sequences of courses
or tutorials to a single seminar and from honors theses to comprehensive seminar projects
or internships. They may be based in tutorials, labs, advanced courses, or seminars, and
may include either individual projects or team-based projects.” Capstone experiences
may be mentored by faculty or by advanced graduate students (with faculty oversight).
They may culminate in a major or a minor or might build on other educational
experiences unrelated to a specific curriculum, including yearlong projects such as
UCLA's Undergraduate Science Journal.
See: http://www.capstones.ucla.edu/criteria.htm
There is also the possibility that the senior experience could be outside of the major. Boston
College has followed this model and their culminating experience is described as follows:
“A course for seniors: Reserved for seniors and second-semester juniors only, the
Capstone program is designed to cap off college by facing the questions of life after
graduation. The Capstone Seminars (UN 500-599 only) directly address the hopes and
anxieties that seniors face but seldom find treated in traditional courses. They relate the
life and learning of the past four years to the life and learning ahead. The Capstone
Seminars take seriously the struggle to integrate four crucial areas of life: work,
relationships, society, and spirituality.”
These capstones ask specific questions:
How did my education prepare me to live?
With everything I want to do, what will I have to compromise?
How can I balance my career and my family?
Can I find work with a higher meaning than my income?
Special features of the capstone courses:
 Faculty from various departments
 Each section limited to 15-20
 Class meetings held in leisurely, informal settings
 Innovative teaching methods
 Interdisciplinary reading
 Guest speakers from professional life
Capstone Seminars satisfy major requirements in certain departments.
Information from: http://www.bc.edu/publications/ucatalog/schools/cas/un/undergrad.shtml)
UNIVERSITY CAPSTONE COURSES
SJSU does have University Learning Objectives. These include:
ULO #1 — Demonstrate mastery of the depth of knowledge required for a degree, as
identified by its program learning outcomes
ULO #2 — Produce, independently or collaboratively, an investigative, creative, or practical
work that draws on theories, tools, technology, or methods from at least two academic
disciplines
ULO #3 — Demonstrate competency of advanced level analysis in each of three broad areas:
Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences
ULO #4 — Demonstrate skills necessary for life-long learning, including critical and creative
thinking, communication fluency, information literacy, quantitative fluency, and the ability to
engage effectively in collaborative activities
ULO #5 — Demonstrate integration of theory, practice, and problem-solving to address real
world issues or contexts
ULO #6 — Intentionally act to address a global or local problem in an informed manner
While a university-wide course could address these overall competencies, each program would
need to include this course in their curriculum and, if they did not have electives, give up a major
requirement.
Capstones are also complicated by whether the discipline is narrow enough to have all students
complete the same coursework. Some programs require students advance through a number of
courses and require prerequisites for most of their upper division courses. Other programs have
few prerequisites on upper division coursework and allow the student to choose their area of
interest. Both types of degree present difficulties with integrative, summative capstone or
culminating experiences.
As an example, ChAD has a capstone course. Students in this course were informally surveyed
and found this class to be very different from other courses in the major. There was more of an
outside focus. Many students felt that this course helped them become more connected to the
discipline and the department and gave them an understanding of areas outside their own focus.
A capstone doesn’t need to be a course. The Biology programs give the ETS Field Study Exam.
This costs the student $25 - $40. Nursing has the NCLEX. However, neither of these
departments/programs requires passage of the national or regional exam for graduation. While a
graduate cannot practice as a nurse without passing the NCLEX, there are no graduation penalties
for students who do not pass.
The committee also discussed culminating projects across courses and how that may be a more
realistic or feasible option for programs. Alternatively, the university might be interested in
developing Last Year Experience courses (as a counterpart to First Year Experience courses).
However, there would be challenges to offering this type of course (where would it be housed,
would this be an integrative experience).
Another idea to assess graduation competencies is to pull a random sample of students and pay
them for the day. These students would take a series of tests that would demonstrate their
competency in a variety of areas. The student could be incentivized with either money or a letter
of recommendation.
Some on the committee are in favor of the capstone idea. It is believed that a capstone experience
allows student to exit the major with the ‘big picture’ in mind. Others worry that some disciplines
are so broad some programs would need to develop a number of capstone courses. It is possible
that none of these classes would reach the enrollment necessary to hold the course. An example is
Business, where there is only one business degree with a number of concentrations. All the
programs are concentrations under that degree. While a capstone course, Strategic Thinking, is
required of all majors, this course is not tailored to specific areas in each of the programs.
The idea now is to find the level of support for this idea. The college curriculum committee might
be a good place to start to build support for this idea. If the college supports the idea, it might be
an easier sell. We want campus discussion and multiple models to be developed.
Action Item: The idea of a capstone or culminating experience will be proposed to the Associate
Deans and for their input and discussion.
Action Item: Dennis will draft a memo on the idea of capstones/culminating experiences and
send it to the committee for feedback before giving it to the Associate Deans.
Action Item: The members of the committee should contact their college curriculum committee
and get on the agenda after this memo is sent out.
III.
Guidelines for Double Degrees
There was discussion last year about the difference between degrees and concentrations. How
many units would need to be in common and how many unique for both a new degree and a new
concentration?
This issue was discussed in C&R on November 2, 2009. At that time C&R had the following
questions:
1. What does a ‘concentration’ provide a student that they would not get in an
emphasis?
2. How specific is a degree at the undergraduate level?
3. How specific should a degree be at the undergraduate level?
4. Should the title of a concentration be a field or subfield in the discipline?
5. Are student pressured to present themselves as more specialized? Is having a degree
with a concentration more desirable to students now than in the past?
6. Does SJSU want to consolidate degrees or allow further proliferation? What is the
cost of proliferation:
a. Advising issues—it may take more time to describe the differences in
concentrations that are not well differentiated in the field;
b. If a decision is made to look at small programs, those departments with a large
number of concentrations may have small numbers in each concentration
although be quite robust overall.
c. Developing a concentration is a commitment to allow students to graduate in that
degree. Even though degrees can be discontinued a teach-out must be developed
for each student left in the degree after its termination.
d. Departments that have a large number of concentrations can use such as a
bargaining chip to obtain greater resources and to make the case for hiring more
faculty. A Chair can use the existence of a concentration to argue that his/her
department needs more resources to serve the students in a concentration. Even
when a concentration is being phased out, resources are needed to support a
teach-out.
One recommendation is:
1. Two different degree programs must have 24 (BA) or 36 (BS) unique units. They must
differ from other degrees by at least 12 units.
2. Concentrations must have a common core of at least 24 units and must differ from other
concentrations by at least 12 units.
Action Item: The committee members will return for further discussion.
IV. Pending
 Guidelines for culminating experience and/or capstones (Dennis Jaehne).
 Changing UGS committee charge (Ravisha Mathur).
 Departmental Honors. Survey department chairs.
 Guidelines for Double Degrees
 UGS orientation guide
Meeting adjourned: 1:10 pm
Gloria Edwards