The Council on Academic Affairs approved two proposals Thursday to add a new course and revise another.

The board voted unanimously to approve the addition of economics course, Topics in Labor Economics, ECN 4890 for next semester.

Linda Ghent, an assistant professor in the economics department, said the new course was added to dig deeper into issues such as labor history, collective bargaining, labor law, poverty, compensation structure, discrimination and wage differentials.

Lower level economics classes spend the majority of time covering basic principles, and Ghent said she often wished the semester was longer to study more interesting topics students’ expressed interest in survey after survey.

The CAA also carried a motion to approve the addition of one laboratory hour to social science 3400, Methods in the Social Students in the Secondary School. Despite the added lab, however, the class still be worth three credit hours.

The additional lab time was proposed after the state reformed standards for all teachers to include specialized course work in reading, special education and applied technology. All perspective teachers will be required to take tests to assess their competency in those areas by 2003, said Charles Titus, an assistant history professor.

Perspective teachers currently have some exposure to reading, special education and applied technology, but he said the lab will allow students more time to focus on those issues.

The lab time will either free up class time to study the recommended issues while other aspects of class such as micro teaching models are moved into labs, or proved students the opportunity to work in a specialized environment designed to approach the three topics.

“In some ways … this is a little bit of a work in progress,” Titus said.

He said the department will continue to develop tools to monitor the effectiveness of the lab hour.

“A number of matters have come about that we don’t believe we can adequately address,” he said. “This will address them.”

The council also added several items to the agenda to be voted on after the semester break.

The items include a proposal from Ronnie Deedrick, student vice president for academic affairs, in favor of adding a students to department grade appeal procedures and a revised course proposal format.