Minutes of the September 19, 2006 meeting of the University College Committee

Attending: B. Bowen (out-going Chair), S. Campbell, L. McSweeney, E. Smith (newly elected Chair), E. Wilson (ex-officio)

A proxy was held by B. Bowen for R. Rodrigues.

1.) Election of new Chair
Dr. Smith volunteered to be Chair of the committee and was unanimously elected. Dean Wilson acknowledged Dr. Bowen’s efforts in leading the committee last year.  Dr. Smith took over the meeting.

Dean Wilson mentioned that Sharon Wilcox could help coordinate the meeting times and locations for future meetings.  Dr. Perkus will not be a regular attendee, but may attend as a visitor on an as-needed basis.

2.)  Update from University College
a.) Dean Wilson mentioned that one of the committee’s pending agenda items was examining the impact of online courses on traditional classes.  She mentioned that there was a faculty survey about online courses and there was a good response.  One major concern she saw repeatedly was that faculty felt that their traditional classes were in competition with the online courses.  To address this concern she will now schedule online courses at different times than the traditional courses.  Dean Wilson mentioned that Janice Dunn or Dr. Perkus could discuss the data examining the impact that online classes have had on traditional classes.

b.) Another issue that is currently being addressed is to improve the communication between UC and department chairs.  Faculty (full-time and adjunct) will receive teaching forms from UC.  As part of the form, instructors interested in teaching for UC would fill out the form and would indicate via a check box that they had consulted with their Chair to make sure that the course is appropriate and meets the requirements of the department.  Dr. Perkus would then follow-up with the Chairs once he got the forms back.

Dr. Perkus is also working to ensure that adjuncts teaching for UC have appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching and are approved by the appropriate department.  Also, UC wants to increase department oversight in what the adjuncts teach, say, for example, having the department review the syllabi.

c.) Dean Wilson mentioned that she has received some requests for online courses from students who were studying abroad.  While this is a relatively rare event, she expects more students to do this and that it must be monitored.

d.) She mentioned that returning UC students can now register for classes online.

e.) The MFA has been approved by the English department and planning is to continue this year.
f.) A Master’s program in Museum Studies is being investigated and is in very early stages of development. The proposal has not yet made it to the department level and preliminary market research is being conducted.  There is no program like this currently in CT; however, there is interest from several museums as well as from alumni.

g.) Dean Wilson stated that University College would be overseeing Study Abroad and will be working with International Student Support Services to help increase the recruitment and retention of international students.

3.) Other/New Agenda Items
Dr. Smith reminded the committee of some of the agenda items left over from last year, including encouraging more faculty to teach for UC, addressing faculty concerns about online courses and to increase non-traditional students’ on-campus experiences and access to facilities.  

Dr. Campbell mentioned that it would be useful to construct some type of assessment of online courses to determine whether the learning outcomes for the online course were being met. She also mentioned that one of the difficulties she had with her online course was some students’ lack of computer literacy.  She suggested some sort of requirement, like the one that Norwalk Community College has, where students would be required to demonstrate proficiency on the computer.   Students lacking computer proficiency would then need to take remediation classes to learn the basic computer skills needed for online courses.

Dean Wilson mentioned that it would be helpful to get feedback from the committee about Goal III of the strategic plan.  She would like Walter (Skip) Conlan, S.J. to come back and update the committee regarding his work on this goal.  Dr. Smith said that some of the professional schools already do things mentioned in Goal III.  It would be helpful to identify what is being done already in Grad. Ed, UC and Nursing and discuss how it can be expanded.

Dean Wilson asked that the committee give recommendations and feedback for General Studies courses that are offered through UC.  Since there is no curriculum committee that can approve these courses, she asked the committee for input and advice. Dr. Campbell mentioned that it would be helpful to have the course materials ahead of time since reading through curricular items can be quite time consuming.  That way we could use our committee meeting times more efficiently.

Dr. Smith recalled that the committee needs to look at the change of affiliation of the Florence program.

The committee adjourned at 3:40p.  

Respectfully submitted,
Laura McSweeney
Approved 10/20/06 SHCampbell