At its upcoming meeting on Thursday at 2 p.m., Eastern’s Council of Academic Affairs will be discussing various proposals via D2L Collaborate.

At this meeting, the council will be voting on a proposal to change the General Studies (BGS) program name to Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS).

This name change is being requested for many reasons, including to provide a more nuanced name for the program and to prevent further confusion around General Education and General Studies. This request is also being made so Eastern can follow suit with other universities around the country that have changed their General Studies program names to Interdisciplinary Studies. The council will also meet to vote on two proposals for new courses to the World Languages and Cultures program.

One of the courses is an honors class called Spanish Through Latin American Narrative and Film. This course is designed to help develop students’ writing proficiency in the Spanish language by studying literary works and writing about them.

The rationale for the proposal is that through this course, “students will expand their vocabulary, strengthen their command of grammar, and gain confidence to express themselves in writing.”

The other course being proposed for the World Languages and Cultures program is an honors class called Hispanic Cinema. This course will be designed to introduce students to the cinematic work of Latin American film artists and to help them develop cultural proficiency and interpretive skills.

The proposal states that “students completing departmental honors in Spanish need regularly offered courses. Also, students completing University Honors and who major or minor in

Spanish deserve to have honors course options in Spanish. There are currently no upper-division Spanish honors courses. Students have historically fulfilled honors requirements by completing honors-level projects in regular courses.”

The council will also be meeting to vote on revisions being proposed for two existing courses in the Communications Disorders and Sciences (CDS) program.

One of the courses being revised is the Honors Research Methods in Communications Disorders and Sciences class. The proposal requests the class be changed to a 3000 level course “to accommodate the increasing number of highly qualified CDS students with AP Credit, Dual Credit, and/or transfer credit hours that allow them to complete the CDS degree requirements in 3 years.”

The proposal explains that although these students are well qualified to begin the CDS Departmental Honors Program in the fall semester of their second year at Eastern, they may not yet have the 60 hours required to take a senior level course. Rather than continuing to ask for exceptions, the department requests a change in the course number to allow these students to enroll prior to completing 60 hours.

Another course being revised is the Honors Senior Seminar in Communication Disorders and Sciences class. The proposal states that the course should be updated “to reflect adjustments to the lab portion of the course. No changes have been made to the lecture part of the course. Lab content and assignments have been adjusted to align with best practices in the profession and for departmental honors students.”

The council will also vote on revisions proposed for the Communications Disorders and Sciences Honors Program as a whole. The proposal requests revising the wording to the CDS Honors Program to “clarify the current/longstanding admission process and to reflect changes in course number and title to two of the three required CDS Honors courses.”

The council will also vote on the proposal to consider a limited moratorium on proposed course-based modality changes for the 2021 calendar year. The proposal also informs the council that the Office of Academic Affairs will review all online or hybrid course actions submitted to the Council of Academic Affairs in Fall 2020 to determine if implementation in a future term would be appropriate.

The proposal explains that:

“The proposal is limited as requests that are necessary to support explicit degree requirements in 100% online programs, off site cohorts, or the BGS program would be exempted. However, all other requests to transition a traditional face-to-face course to online or hybrid requests would be postponed until January 1, 2022 with an approved implementation date after July 1, 2022.”

Kyara Morales-Rodriguez can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].