General Education Committee
Friday, December 5, 2003, 4:00 - 5:00 PM
Plains Room, Memorial Union, NDSU

Committee members attending: Brian Dougan, Robert Harrold, RaNelle Ingalls,
Marina Ioudina, James R. Larson, Char Myhre, Larry Peterson, Doug Rymph,
Grant Striemer, Orven Swenson, Justin Wageman, Kristi Wold-McCormick

1. Larry agreed to serve as recorder for the meeting.
       
2. The Minutes from the November 21, 2003 meeting were approved unanimously.
       
3. Jim Larson was welcomed as the new student representative to the Committee, replacing David Axt.
        
4. The Committee considered four student petitions.
   
   The Committee approved (Harold/Larson) petitions from Student A and Student B to accept ED 389: Native Americans and Multicultural Instruction Practices as meeting the cultural diversity requirement. Justin will contact the instructor about submitting the course as a general education course.
   
   The Committee approved (Harold/Swenson) a petition from Student C to substitute his military basic training and his specialized training as a medic for the Wellness requirement.
   
   The Committee rejected (Striemer/Larson) a petition from Student D to waive the global perspectives requirement because he was unaware of it until his graduation audit.
        
5. The Committee approved the following course that was resubmitted after being tabled at the November 21 meeting.
   
   

   Course No.	Course Title	Categories Requested	Outcomes
   Art 110	Introduction to Visual Arts	A, D	3, 6

   
   Larry reported that he has contacted the instructors of ART 111, MUS 103, and WS 350 to help them revise their courses for resubmission.
         
6. There were no reports from any of the subcommittees.
        
7. The Committee discussed the proposal from Orv to develop rubrics for the General Education Learning Outcomes. We agreed to begin with the rubric templates based on the completed example for Outcome 5. We agreed to use our existing subcommittees to develop the rubrics and to focus on the ones the subcommittees see most often. We divided them as follows:
   
   Science and Technology - Outcomes 5 & 2
   
   Humanities and Fine Arts & Communication - Outcomes 1 & 6
   
   Social & Behavioral Sciences, Quantitative Reasoning, & Wellness - Outcomes 3, 4, & 7
          
8. The Committee also discussed the proposal from Orv to develop formative assessment questions for the General Education Learning Outcomes. These might be connected with the Survey of Student Engagement (http://www.ndsu.edu/SSE/data/survey_form.pdf). Larry will meet with Sudhir Mehta to see if we can link the data base of general education courses and their outcomes to the web-based formative assessment tool (WBFAT). If that can be done, then when an instructor for a general education class used the WBFAT formative assessment questions tailored for her/his general education learning outcomes would automatically come up as options. We will rely on our existing subcommittees to prepare possible questions.
         
9. Larry reported that the proposal from the English Department to revise GE Communication requirements will be revised with information on which other universities have a vertically structured writing requirement and that scholarship supports this idea.
        
10. Larry reminded Committee members who have not sent him their schedules for next semester to please do so.