CURRICULUM COMMITTEE
Salem State University
MINUTES
Meeting: 13/14:23
Date: 23 April 2014
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Sami Ansari; Elizabeth Blood; Neal DeChillo; Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello; Rebecca Hains;
Kathleen Hess; Sanjay Kudrimoti; Stephen Matchak; Christopher Mauriello; Rory McFadden;
Megan Miller; Zachary Newell; Anne Noonan; Mary Platt; Amy Sprenkle; Jeffrey Theis
GUESTS: Kanishkan Sathasivam (Political Science Chair), Leah Ritchie (Management
Department Chair)
I.
Chair’s Report
Jeffrey Theis announced that a quorum had been reached and called the meeting to order
at 3:09 PM
A. Meeting Schedule for Spring 2014:
April 30, 2014-Course Review Subcommittees (Chair meeting)
May 7, 2014—Committee of the Whole
May 14, 2014—Committee of the Whole
May 21, 2014—Committee of the Whole
Jeff announced that the minutes to the last meeting were approved via email.
Jeff read some Shakespeare to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. Other comments: Next
week, 4/30/2014 from 4 to5pm, the Provost is hosting forum for course caps in MLK.
Regarding CC new business: there are a lot of packets still to be cleared. Several packets
are moving along.
II.
Subcommittee Reports
No reports
III.
Special Business
A. Recertification of General Education Courses
We need to identify what we want to do about the recertification of Gen Ed courses.
Maybe in one of our final three meetings we want to map out some times and discuss
options. It might be better to have a few volunteers to research what other schools are
doing.
Some discussion about FYS – it might need to be on a different schedule and we might
want to look at them more frequently. Anne Noonan is interested in looking at options for
FYS. Neal DeChillo is interested as well. Jeff has agreed to talk to Elizabeth Coughlan to
see if she has the time to devote to that.
IV. Old Business
A. POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT (10/3/13) (Group A, S. Matchak and W-II, OC,
PGR, CS, HP, WC, 10/18/13)
POL319-Public Policy Analysis-Change in Course (W-II)
14:093
Stephen Matchak made a motion to approve the Political Science Department proposal 14:093;
Elizabeth D-O seconded.
Kani Sathasivam was the representative from the Political Science Department. This WII has been
approved by the WII subcommittee.
With little discussion and no changes, the vote to approve the Political Science Department packet
14:093 was unanimous
D. GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT (11/1/13) (CRS A, Liz B. WC, SR, CS, QR, W-II,
11/22/13) TABLED
GPH229-Geography of Caribbean and Middle America-Change in Course (WC)
14:276
GPH100P-Weather and Climate (SR)
14:278
GPH105-Introduction to Geography-Change in Course (CS)
14:279
GPH110-World Regions (WC)
14:281
GPH140-Introduction to Maps and Geographical Information Systems (QR)
14:282
GPH221-Geography of Canada (WC)
14:284
GPH222-Geography of the United States (CS)
14:285
GPH237-Geography of the Middle East (WC)
14:286
GPH251-Cultural Geography (CS)
14:287
GPH252-Native American Lands and Environments (CS)
14:288
GPH262-Survey of Travel and Tourism-Change in Course (CS)
14:289
GPH302-Geographic Research (W-III)
14:290
GPH285-Oceanography (SR)
14:299
GPH105H-Foundations of Global Studies: People, Places and Environment (Honors)-New
Course (CS)
14:280
GPH115-Global Climate Change: Causes and Consequences-New Course (SR)
14:291
Elizabeth Blood made a motion to take the Geography Department's packet 14:276, 14:27814:282, 14:284-14:291, 14:299 off the table for discussion; Megan Miller seconded.
Elizabeth Blood made a motion to approve the Geography Department's packet 14:276, 14:27814:282, 14:284-14:291, 14:299; Stephen Matchek seconded.
Stephen Matchak was the representative from the Geography Department. Note that proposal 14:283
was withdrawn from the packet. Discussion: This was a complicated packet; after a bit of back-andforth revisions, all relevant subcommittees approved the relevant proposals. 14:280 and 14:279
dropped the request for WC and instead were approved for CS.
Comment from members of the SR subcommittee: The SR subcommittee has not had an opportunity
to look at the revised SR proposal and they were not aware that the proposal was coming up as old
business because it was on the agenda as "tabled" so they did not think to review it. They had asked
for documentation as to what activities the students were doing in the class that would justify
categorizing it as SR. There was no evidence of Scientific Reasoning in the activities in class. The
way the narrative was written it did not seem like the course would use science and there were no
student activities other than exams. The department changed the narrative but did not add activities.
Students are not doing science; they are learning about science. Some discussion about what the
students will do in the labs would help. The department chair suggested that the SR courses be
tabled if the SR subcommittee is not ready to approve the proposals. Committee members agreed
that it would be better if the CID contained information about the SR aspects of the course earlier on.
14:299 has same issues. 14:291 – seemed to be more about the social effects of climate change not
the scientific aspects.
Megan Miller made motion to put those proposals (14:278, 14:291, 14:299) on the table; Neal
DeChillo seconded. Unanimous agreement
The department concurred; these will remain tabled until they have more evidence that they are
teaching scientific reasoning – to the SR Subcommittee's satisfaction.
Of the CS proposals, 14:285 had needed major revisions and the subcommittee was pleased with the
revisions. Question: why did 14:280, a new course, say that the course description was being
changed in the proposal for CS. Answer: this is an error that will be fixed. Since it is a new course,
there should be no "change in course description" and all course descriptions in the proposal need
to be the same. 14:290 was originally proposed as WII but was re-submitted as WIII.
Question: Why did you decide to include these courses in Gen Ed and not the others? Answer: The
department picked out the "service courses" – the lower-number courses – to send as candidates for
inclusion in the new Gen Ed. In the old core the department had DII and DIII courses so in the new
Gen Ed they expect to have courses in multiple categories – they chose to look at the basic courses.
The only upper-level course is the WIII course. This collection of proposals exemplifies the heart of
what the department wanted to include in the new Gen Ed; the department is working on other
courses, especially WII courses, for future proposals.
Revised Packet:
GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT (11/1/13) (CRS A, Liz B. WC, SR, CS, QR, W-II, 11/22/13)
GPH229-Geography of Caribbean and Middle America-Change in Course (WC)
14:276
GPH100P-Weather and Climate (SR) TABLE
14:278
GPH105-Introduction to Geography-Change in Course (CS)
14:279
GPH110-World Regions (WC)
14:281
GPH140-Introduction to Maps and Geographical Information Systems (QR)
14:282
GPH221-Geography of Canada (WC)
14:284
GPH222-Geography of the United States (CS)
14:285
GPH237-Geography of the Middle East (WC)
14:286
GPH251-Cultural Geography (CS)
14:287
GPH252-Native American Lands and Environments (CS)
14:288
GPH262-Survey of Travel and Tourism-Change in Course (CS)
14:289
GPH302-Geographic Research (W-III)
14:290
GPH285-Oceanography (SR) TABLE
14:299
GPH105H-Foundations of Global Studies: People, Places and Environment (Honors)-New
Course (CS)
14:280
GPH115-Global Climate Change: Causes and Consequences-New Course (SR) TABLE
14:291
With much discussion and some changes, the vote to approve the Geography Department's packet
14:276, 14:279-14:282, 14:284-14:290 was unanimous
E. MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT (12/1/13) (CRS C, Rebecca H., 2/24/14)
MGT320-Career Management and Professional Development for Undergraduate StudentsNew Course
14:326
MGT444-Change Management-New Course
14:327
Rebecca Hains made a motion to approve the Management Department packet 14:326-14:327;
Zachary Newell seconded.
Dr. Leah Ritchie was the representative from the Management Department. Discussion: These two
proposals were approved by CRS C. 14:326 is a one-credit course. 14:327 is a Change Management
course. Neither of these courses is looking for inclusion in the new Gen Ed.
Question for one-credit course: Isn't it the case that there are some concentrations in the Business
School that would not allow the students to take even a one-credit course? Yes, Accounting and
Finance are already above the 55-credit max. If students in those majors took the course the credit
could not be counted toward their graduation.
Although this course has only the pre-req of BUS170, the original intent was for the course to be
geared toward business majors only. Comment: if the intention is limited to business majors and
minors that should be in the course description. Question: We already have a career services center
doing this for our students. The worry is that the Business school is offering a credit bearing course
that other students do not have access to. Discussion: Other departments have discipline-specific
courses for career readiness because there are a lot of issues that are concentration-specific. Some
other departments incorporate this in other courses; this course is just calling it out specifically and
focusing on career readiness. This will be a free elective for the students. The department had talked
about folding this into another course, perhaps a first-year seminar. Question: How much of this is
generic career readiness and how much is discipline specific? Discussion: The content needs to be
discipline-specific enough that it cannot be delivered in a way that is not already offered.
Question: Was this course developed in collaboration with career services? Were they involved in
the thinking through this? Answer: Yes, this was collaboratively developed with career services.
Suggestion: Maybe the title should be changed from undergraduate students to business students.
The department chair agreed to make that change.
There was a bit of discussion about how different departments are teaching "career readiness" in
different ways. Committee members questioned how much Career Services is involved in these
developments. Career Services is very engaged with faculty departments; also very involved in selfassessment for students. Career Services is plugged in to curriculum and would like to be aware. It
would be interesting to see a list of career-readiness courses. The committee would like to make a
friendly recommendation to career services to work with academic services to compile a list of
courses that teach career readiness.
Discussion about 14:327: New course covering material that has been missing – how to be flexible
and deal with change in the workplace. This course, once approved, will be added to flowsheets as
corrective change for F15 and will be a minor elective for Management and Business
Administration.
With some discussion and few changes, the vote to approve the Management Department packet
14:326-14:327 was unanimous
The committee recommends that Jeff send a memo to the Director or Career Services stating that we have
noticed a number of proposals for courses that address career readiness and we feel that it would be
useful for them to compile a list.
There being no other business, Anne Noonan moved to adjourn the meeting; Zachary Newell
seconded. The vote to adjourn was unanimous, and the committee adjourned at 4:32 PM.
Submitted by __________________________________
Kathleen Hess (recorder)