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University-wide General Education Committee Meeting Minutes
November 18, 2009
Voting Members Present: Jonathan Beck, Laura Berry, Malcolm Compitello, Thomas Fleming (Chair), AnneMarie Hall, Robert Indik, Elaine Marchello, Ken McAllister, Judith Nolen, Sergey Shkarayev, Doug Toussaint
Non-Voting Members Present: Gail Burd, Celeste Pardee, Debra Tomanek
__________________________________________________________________________________
Chair Tom Fleming called the meeting to order at 3:04 PM.
I.
Introductions
Tom welcomed Robert Indik, representing Foundations – Mathematics, and Debra Tomanek, newly
appointed Assistant Vice Provost for Instruction and Assessment. Members introduced themselves.
II. Approval of meeting minutes from October 21, 2009
Elaine made a motion to accept the minutes as presented. The motion was seconded and approved
with 9 in favor, 1 abstention.
III. New Courses
Tom gave updates on courses reviewed at the October meeting:
 The instructor of H ED 397A, Service Learning for Academic Achievement, was notified of UWGEC’s
decision and the reasons for denial. The instructor thanked the Committee for the feedback and
expressed interest in revising the course to meet General Education criteria.
 The instructor of ARH 321, Introduction to Contemporary Art, removed ARH 202 as a prerequisite,
per the Committee’s request.
Laura, spokesperson for the New Course Subcommittee, reviewed a proposal for an existing course:

ART 242, Introduction to Photographic Concepts (Tier Two - Arts). This hasn’t been taught for
several years so it has been updated for a pilot program this summer in Provence, France.
Thereafter it will be taught on main campus. The photography is digital, and no darkroom work is
required. According to the syllabus, approximately 40% of the grade is earned before week 8. It
includes the necessary writing assignments, although there’s no option for revisions. To
accommodate Honors students, the instructor would approve an Honors contract with more indepth assignments. A concern was expressed about the required digital camera, but Laura
explained that students without cameras could make arrangements to borrow one.
Malcolm made a motion to approve ART 242 for Tier Two Arts. The motion was seconded and
approved with 10 in favor, 1 abstention.
IV. Periodic Review of existing Tier One courses
Tom reminded members that the purpose of the 2010 course review is twofold: (1) to determine which
courses currently meet General Education standards, and (2) to advise instructors whose courses don’t
meet the standards on ways to bring their courses up to par. UWGEC will not recommend
decertification of any course that no longer includes all of the criteria.
Referring to the Action Plan developed at the October meeting (see 10/21/09 minutes), he reported:
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1.
The Office of Room & Course Scheduling sent him a list of Tier One/Two courses (by title and
instructor) that were offered in the past 2 years. In Fall 2009, 74 Tier One courses are offered;
however, there are 97 different instructors teaching these courses. Since each instructor probably
creates a unique syllabus, the sections with different instructors should be reviewed as different
courses. Tom will check the offerings for 091, 084, and 081 terms, pulling in those courses not
taught in 094, to arrive at the total number of courses. He will remove those reviewed in 2007-08
from the total, will randomly pull 20% for review, and will obtain class syllabi from D2L.
2. Tom asked the Periodic Review Subcommittee (Jonathan, Elaine, Sergey, Amy, Leslie) to (a) draft a
communication to the selected faculty stating the purpose for the survey and asking them to
participate, (b) draft a questionnaire to be used in the interviews, and (c) prepare a list of resources
and good practices to give instructors. He will e-mail the subcommittee with this charge. Drafts of
these 3 documents should be ready for consideration at the December meeting.
Regarding the survey, Gail asked that it include questions related to: (1) if and how the courses
meet the writing requirements, and (2) if/how many include breakout sessions for discussion—if so,
how many students are assigned to each. Since breakout sessions are usually facilitated by GATs,
this information would give her a sense of the cost of each course.
3. In the Spring every UWGEC member will contact and interview 1 – 2 instructors. If there are about
25 course instructors divided among all members, the one-on-one survey won’t require more than
a couple hours for each member. It might be an informal meeting over coffee or lunch, with
questions such as, How are you implementing the writing requirement? What problems have you
encountered? How do you accommodate Honors students? He expects that most courses meet the
General Education criteria. If not, UWGEC will offer to help, perhaps with a referral to services,
technology, and classes available in the new Office of Instruction and Assessment. Members will
also collect syllabi—if those are unavailable through D2L—and Teacher Course Evaluations.
4. Based on all information collected, UWGEC will determine the extent to which the courses
currently meet Tier One guidelines. The next steps should then become clear. For example, per
Gail’s suggestion at the October meeting, if a decision is made to identify writing intensive courses
with a “W”, Mosaic/PeopleSoft will allow this attribute to be noted at the course or section level.
Discussion followed on the preparedness of incoming first-year students for college-level writing.
There was a general sense that first-year students who complete ENGL 101/102 at the UA are more
prepared for writing intensive Tier One courses than are students who bring in transfer credit for ENGL
taken while in high school as dual enrollment with certain community colleges (e.g., Rio Salado
College). Anne-Marie reported that this issue has been acknowledged at the state-wide English
articulation task force meetings but had not been resolved. Should those dual-enrollment students
take a composition placement/competency exam during New Student Orientation before credit is
transferred for ENGL 101/102? She believes that ASU would back a UA initiative to verify the writing
competency of dual-enrollment students. Gail noted that tackling this issue would be politically
challenging and asked for longitudinal data on these students that would show how they perform at the
UA, in comparison with a control group—students who complete ENGL 101/102 at the UA.
V. Proposal to Streamline General Education Course Submissions
Guests: Tom Bourgeois, Mosaic Project; Fernando Chavez, Room & Course Scheduling
Celeste explained that the objective of the proposal is to eliminate duplication of effort (see 11/16/09
proposal). Currently, instructors submit a new General Education course proposal via Form Link on the
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Registrar’s Office site for the Course Catalog and via a separate online form on the UWGEC site for
General Education. She recommends one submission via Form Link, with additional questions related
to General Education criteria when the instructor indicates that the proposal is for Tier One/Two.
Members supported this change, assuming that Form Link and Mosaic/PeopleSoft can accommodate it.
Tom Bourgeois and Fernando addressed the feasibility of expanding Form Link for this purpose.
Although Mosaic will soon become the system of record for courses, Form Link will still be used for the
approval of new courses. The difficulties in modifying an old system include (1) the time and resources
involved, (2) the space needed to pull in UWGEC’s questions, and (3) the JavaScript code—a
programming language that is seldom used today. While it might be possible to add a few questions on
a new Form Link page, it’s doubtful that there’s sufficient capacity to add a full syllabus to Form Link. A
syllabus is now sent as a separate pdf file, which is the most difficult part of the Form Link process.
Members confirmed that syllabus submission in Form Link badly needs repair.
Tom agreed that Form Link could be amended or patched to accommodate UWGEC’s needs. In the
long term (minimum 18 months), a course and syllabus submission process might be built into Mosaic
(with access via Faculty Self-Service), but this option doesn’t exist at present. He will gather more
information from the UWGEC course submission site, from staff responsible for Form Link, and from IT
experts regarding the requested changes. Ken offered to assist Tom on the Form Link modifications (as
a consultant) using his JavaScript skills. Tom will draft a modification plan for the Committee’s
consideration and will report on his progress at the December UWGEC meeting.
Tom Fleming asked if there were any objections to implementing Celeste’s proposal—to the extent
that current resources permit. Hearing none, he directed Tom Bourgeois and Fernando to proceed.
VI. The next meeting will be on December 16, 2009. Tom adjourned the meeting at 4:15 PM.
Respectfully Submitted by Celeste Pardee
11-23-09