Undergraduate Curriculum Forum

Minutes
Adanti Student Center, Room 301A
Thursday, February 26, 2009

Present: Deborah Weiss (Chair), R. Vaters-Carr, Y. del Amo, S. Grace, M. Das, O. Gulacar, R. Glinka, I. Antonios, L. Foss, A. Abugri, M. McClain, M. Fede, D. Marino, E. West, B. Nakamura, J. McGinn, M. Hartog, E. Frank, R. Mullen, R. Kustin, J. Irving, L. Rebeshchi, D. Flynn, R. Cain, D. Pettigrew, K. Gatzke, J. O'hara, K. Marsland, D. Smith, J. Tait, M. Kiarie, G. Adams, M. Cameron, T. Lin, K. Barnett, G. Cochenet, A. Marsoobian, K. Rondinone, M. Shea,

Absent: M. Narumanchi, K. Skoczen, S. Felsenfeld, N. Marano, C. Coron, E. Schmitt, C. Simoneau, W. O'Brien, K. Cummings, J. Sullivan, J. Mielczarski, J. Fields, S. Graves, D. Tomasko, K. Laing, D. Bentley-Drobish, Q. Bright

I. The meeting was called to order at 9:40 am.

II. Announcements
• D. Pettigrew reminded us that the 11th annual Faculty Research Conference will be in EN A-120 starting at 9:30am on March 7, 2009.
• Cinema du Monde will be showing The Hours with hosted by Vara Neverow who is an authority on Virginia Woolfe.
• D. Carroll announced that the WACC contest has 8 complete entries and is looking forward to more participants.
• K. Marsland reminded us that the W-course deadline is a target deadline rather than a hard and fast rule.  Now that the paper schedule is no longer printed, we are no longer bound to its deadlines, however lead time is still needed to review proposals.  Departments need to submit proposals in a timely manner to allow for their scheduling of courses.
• D. Weiss announced a day-long retreat available to ten UCF members to participate in discussions for key leaders in campus roles.

III. Approval of UCF minutes of February 12, 2009
• All approved minutes with no abstentions.
IV. Standing committee reports (minutes and committee motions)

a. NPIC - minutes received
• Began discussion on a Program Curriculum Committee
b. NMC - minutes received
c. WACC - committee did not meet
• Discussing program revisions via wiki
d. PRAC - minutes received
• Two motions upon which to vote:
• UCF concurs with PRAC's recommendation that the Nursing Department has met the first three standards for assessment
• UCF concurs with PRAC's recommendation that the Biology Department has met the first three standards for assessment.
• Each motion passed unanimously
e. UWIC - committee did not meet

V. Ad hoc reports (per committee request) - Standards committee is working on a draft of the Standards document, the new course proposals document, and the flow of proposals document.

VI. New Business - The Steering Committee moves that the Liberal Education Proposal, written by the General Education Task Force, be brought to the Faculty Senate for its consideration and then to the faculty for referendum vote.
• Steering Committee indicated that the word choice was to move the document forward to the Faculty Senate rather than approving the proposal.
• After the Steering Committee presented this motion, the floor was opened for discussion.
• K. Gatske - wanted to know what happens if this does not pass. D. Weiss and J. Tait confirmed that the General Education Task Force (GETF) would be disbanded and a new committee would need to be formed and the proposal would be discarded. 
• R. Gilliland does not want to keep the 24 goals as they are too unwieldy.  D. Weiss believed that the faculty referendum is binding and cannot be altered so the Liberal Education Proposal (LEP) must be based upon these 24 goals.  R. Gilliland regrets that part of the faculty referendum.
•  W. O'Brien said that UCF is charged with recommending this proposal to Faculty Senate. If we do not say that we approve the proposal, the Faculty Senate may not be sure how to proceed if UCF does not approve the document.  He likes that the new proposal "does not disallow" new language changes.
• D. Pettigrew gave several reasons for not voting LEP forward: 1) the committee failed to enter into a dialogue with the alternate proposals; 2) UCF needs to discuss the new faculty lines needed for the technological fluency and critical thinking competencies.  He believes that the university will need 20 new lines to teach these classes; and 3) he believes that this fails the fundamental tenet of assessment - will we be able to tell what was successful when we implement so many things at once?
• M. Shea did not believe that the LEP will require 20 lines; D. Pettigrew explained a calculation based on number of entering students and number of classes needed.
• R. Gilliland discussed concerns with Tier 2, stating that none of the courses have been taught before and that this will be a major endeavor to create these courses - even spread out across 3 years.  He is concerned that: 1) there are no data that the non-disciplinary approach to Gen Ed is effective; 2) this will be expensive and he's not sure it will improve standards; 3) with a non-disciplinary approach to Gen Ed, there will be a "race to the bottom" to retain students in the courses; 4) the motivation to appease NEASC may encourage UCF to vote for a proposal that overreaches the plan and does not need to be so complex it undermines the program; and 5) our competency courses English, math, etc. are good, but the rest of the competencies deserve more scrutiny. He suggests maybe we could propose that parts be approved by UCF rather than the entire proposal.
• M. Hartog liked the positive change in the tier 1 competencies by requiring students to pass their mathematics requirements early so that other classes can use the mathematics to enhance their courses.  He feels that we will ensure that all of our students will be able to use and apply the quantitative reasoning in their courses.
• W. O'Brien wanted to clarify D. Pettigrew's first point: 1) he felt that since the GETF was an elected body that it required more in-depth thought and attention then alternate proposals some of which were misunderstandings of the original LEP document.
• K. Marsland wanted more information about critical thinking, specifically what it entails and when it appeared in the Tier 1 competencies?
• J. Tait said that they are using the American Philosophy Society's definition of critical thinking, the ability to reason, synthesize and break apart ideas. He mentioned that it has been a part of the Tier 1 competencies since the first version of the proposal was presented.
• R. Vaters-Carr has several questions: 1) Will philosophy take the lead in the critical thinking competency? 2) How will non-English department professors handle the FYE/ENG 111 classes? 3) How will the we handle advising, especially with transfers? and 4) How will we address all of our students' abilities in the different programs?
• J. Tait said in response to R. Gilliland 3) that the competency exams will aid in recognizing when students taking a tier 1 course are not fulfilling a competency exam so the 'race to the bottom' will be avoided. He responded to R. Vaters-Carr's 4) that the available chart can be expanded to address all of our students' needs and it is on the website.
• J. Irving is concerned about how difficult advising students will be.
• M. Shea said we are forgetting that the Gen Ed program is pretty complicated right now; we are just more familiar with it.  Also, most incoming students are not prepared to take upper level courses with our current program and the Tier 1 competency classes can be exciting and can help us prepare the all but 2.7% of our students that are prepared for college.  He feels that some of the alternate programs are misleading and that the GETF's new curriculum will help address the needs that our current Gen Ed is not meeting.
• D. Levine thinks that 1) the LEP treats all of our student body the same, 2) Tier 1 takes away creativity and autonomy for our students, 3) all alternative programs would stress the importance of taking math classes early in the program, 4) we do not need to vote for this plan to appease NEASC because the administration has a 'back-up plan.'
• J. McGinn said that because of FYE we have changed how first year students are advised.  They now have a mentor they can keep their entire career, Academic Advisement and FYE are also available to them.
• G. Adams is in favor of abstaining from the vote.  He is concerned with the standardizing of assessment that views students as 'products' and is leary of  how this will standardize the curriculum.
• Other comments were tabled for the next meeting.
• D. Weiss took a straw poll to see who would be ready to vote within one to two meetings: 17 said yay, 6 said nay, and 2 abstained.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:00am.
These minutes respectfully submitted by Kathleen Rondinone