The Council on Academic Affairs’ regular Thursday meeting has been canceled.

“It has been canceled because there is nothing to add on the agenda and the one item that was to be acted on is being held,” said Kathleen Chancellor, office systems specialist in the academic affairs office.

The item to be acted on at Thursday’s meeting was a Council on Assessment of Student Learning recommendation regarding Speaking Across the Curriculum.

The action was requested to be postponed by Jeffrey Lynch, associate dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, until next week’s meeting or longer.

“Obviously, the recommendation will impact the resources of the College of Arts and Humanities in a significant way, and so we ask a bit of time to study the issue and to discuss it with the college’s administrative council and its faculty,” Lynch said in an e-mail to CAA Chair Ron Wohlstein, sociology/anthropology professor.

The proposal outlines six recommendations from Council on Assessment of Student Learning, which the speech communication department has endorsed –provided that sufficient resources will be available to support them.

Funds may be needed to reassign faculty, provide for summer grants and to provide assistance to students, according to the proposal.

As part of the CASL’s recommendations, in SPC 1310/1390 and senior seminars, speaking competency will be assessed. The ability to speak effectively would be one consideration in determining grades.

Also, faculty teaching such courses will have the opportunity to attend periodic workshops to help them facilitate consistent evaluation of speaking competence.

Another of the recommendations includes that at least three courses in a major should include speaking components and workshops on evaluation of speaking competence should be made available to related faculty.

Under the recommendations a Speaking Across the Curriculum Committee under the jurisdiction of CAA should be established to identify criteria to be used in deciding what “speaking components” are.

Lynch said he was planning to present the proposal to the administrative council for feedback at their March 19 meeting and he will ask each chair to distribute the proposal to “departmental colleagues” for review and discussion.

“By extending your vote to the March 29 meeting, you will afford the college the opportunity to respond thoughtfully to the Speaking Across the Curriculum proposal,” Lynch said.