The Council of Academic Affairs will be meeting at 2 p.m. on Thursday via D2L Collaborate to vote on proposals for the revision of existing programs and the addition of new courses.

The council will be voting on a proposal to streamline and update the course offerings in the anthropology minor. The department proposes adding new elective courses to the minor and eliminating those that are either no longer offered or rarely used to satisfy the requirements for the minor.

As the proposal states, the revisions to the anthropology minor will help place greater “emphasis on courses that are introductory in nature and those that do not require prerequisites. Course substitution remains an option for students who wish to count specialized upper division electives toward the minor.”

Another proposal the council will be voting on comes from the department of philosophy, which proposes making small revisions to the wording of the description for the philosophy department honors program. Though the revisions do not create any significant changes, the department believes the changes will eliminate possible confusion.

The council will also be voting on proposals suggesting the addition of new courses.

One such proposal asks for a new course to the electrical engineering program. The class is called Introduction to Logic Design, and it will introduce students to number systems and codes, logic gates and Boolean algebra, and more.

The rationale for this proposal is that because digital logic is the basis of most kinds of modern electronics, it is important to offer this course in the department of electrical engineering as a required major course.

The proposal also states that this course will “help freshmen-level students obtain necessary, basic concepts to design digital electronics and computer systems. Furthermore, as students will be able to develop their ability to think logically, analytically, and critically, this course will be applicable across many areas of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and other relevant scientific fields.”

Another proposal being voted on proposes a new course for both the electrical engineering and physics programs, which is a class called Introduction to Plasma Physics. In this course, students will have the opportunity to study the implications and applications of plasma. They will also study the different interactions plasmas have with electric and magnetic fields.

The department believes that it is appropriate to offer this course in both the electrical engineering and physics programs as an elective because this subject applies in a variety of important ways. As the proposal states the course “will be an important topic for understanding the world as well as developing new technologies. Furthermore, the mathematics developed in this course will be applicable across many areas of [electrical engineering and physics].”

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