CAA approves 6 of 7 action items Thursday

Adam Tumino, Editor-in-Chief

The Eastern Council on Academic Affairs met Thursday afternoon for the first time this semester, approving the first six of the seven action items on the agenda.

The first item of the new year was a proposal to change the name of the General Studies program to Interdisciplinary Studies. The rationale for the change was to match national trends in renaming General Studies programs, help the program’s marketability and remove confusion between general education courses and the General Studies program.

The second item was a proposal to change the wording of the Communications Disorders and Sciences 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,” according to the proposal’s rationale.

The third and fourth items were revisions to courses in the Communication Disorders and Sciences program. CDS 4690 Honors Senior Seminar in CDS was revised to reflect changes made to the lad portion of the course. CDS 3666 Honors Research Methods in CDS was revised 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,” according to the proposal.

The fifth item was the addition of a new course in the World Languages and Cultures department, WLS 3390 Hispanic Cinema, Honors. The course is designed to introduce students to films in Spanish from Hispanic artists.

The sixth item was another new course for the WLS program, WLS 3090 Spanish Narrative and Film, Honors. This is a writing intensive course in which students will study literary works and write about them, among other things.

The seventh item on the agenda, which was tabled until a later meeting, was a Limited Moratorium on Course Modality Changes.

The Moratorium read in part:

“The purpose of this memorandum is to request the Council on Academic Affairs consider a limited moratorium on proposed course-based modality changes for the 2021 calendar year. 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.”

The council also discussed the plans for the Naming Committee this semester, which met Jan. 20 to discuss the possible renaming of Douglass Hall. The committee is working on how to receive feedback from the community regarding the name change.

CAA will meet again Jan. 28 via D2L Collaborate.

 

Adam Tumino can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].