The Council on Academic Affairs will discuss industrial technology courses and creating a new minor in broadcast meteorology at 2 p.m. in the Arcola-Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The two courses proposed are INT 2523, Routing and Switching Fundamentals, and INT 3153, Advanced Routing and Switching.

CAA Chair Nancy Marlow, professor of management and marketing, said these are prerequisite courses which deal strongly with computers, specifically local area networks.

“People (propose new courses) on a fairly regular basis,” Marlow said. “Usually new technology will require such a thing.”

The proposal rationale for INT 2523 and INT 3153 states industrial technology students with a concentration in automation and control need to know how to work with advanced networking technologies.

Ninety percent of businesses recently surveyed need industrial technology graduates to have networking experiences, the proposal states.

The CAA also will discuss a proposal to create a new minor in broadcast meteorology.

Currently, the departments of geology/geography and speech communication offer the fundamental weather and climate courses. These departments want a joint minor based on weather and broadcasting.

“We believe, without requiring any additional resources at this time, we are able to enhance the background of our own and other interested majors by structuring the meteorology and broadcasting courses … in the geology/geography and speech communication disciplines into an interdisciplinary broadcast meteorology minor,” the proposal states.

Marlow said the minor would be something to better prepare the students who want to work in television weather broadcasting.