General Education Committee
Meeting Minutes
February 2, 2004

In Attendance:
Virginia Clark Johnson, Kate Haugen, Char Myhre, Marina Ioudina, Grant
Striemer, Jim Larson, Bob Harrold, Orv Swenson, Larry Peterson, Brian
Dougan, Doug Rymph, Kristi Wold-McCormick, Ranelle Ingalls

Volunteer recorder is Brian Dougan.

Minutes from January 26, 2004 were unanimously approved.

Larry reminded the assembly to come to an understanding about the term of their committee membership so we can elect next year's chair and have new members confirmed at the May 10, 2004 meeting of the Senate. While committee assignments are made yearly, a member can serve up to four consecutive years. Both Justin and Phil's terms end this semester.

Larry reminded the group to attain meeting schedule information for Colleges with GE courses so that he can be put on their agendas to discuss our web based assessment plans.

Larry provided an update on our request to Carolyn Schnell and Bill Slanger to review UNIV 189 and its continuation in its present form in future NDSU curricula. Carolyn responded that she has already compiled much of this information. There was concern expressed about how these courses are being taught.

There were no student petitions to consider.

Larry reported on his sending notice to all the non-responders to the General Education Categories Integrated into Majors Department Reports. He has received a few and has given the rest until the end of February to submit. With concern for managing the massive amount of paper associated with the reports, it was suggested that they be scanned, made into pdf files, and posted on the GE web site.

The Science and Technology Subcommittee reported that they have a meeting planned for February 12th and will report to the committee at the next opportunity.

There was no report from the Humanities and Fine Arts and Communication subcommittee.

The Social and Behavioral Sciences, Qualitative Reasoning, and Wellness Subcommittee distributed their rubric for Outcome 3. It was explained that the matrix avoids discipline specifics for efficiency and uses the language of Bloom's taxonomy. Not all issues are expected to be addressed in 100 level courses, but the matrix provides a variety of targets at which to aim. The matrix was approved by the committee.

The rubric for Outcome 7 as presented by Marina Ioudina last week was reviewed and approved by the committee after modifying the document by eliminating the verbiage at the top of the page. It was agreed that both matrices were subject to change if need be in the future when the remainder of the information is compiled.

Larry distributed a document concerning a proposal to revise the General Education writing requirements from Dale Sullivan, head of the department of English. Discussion concluded with an agreement to invite Dale to address the GE committee as an attempt to satiate our concerns about how they will identify the students who can skip ENGL 110 and what the implications of this change will be for their department and the campus. Larry has since sent an Email to Dale as an invitation to do so on Monday March 01 at 3:00 in the Badlands room. If Committee members want copies of the supplemental material submitted by the English Department, they should contact Larry.

Meeting was adjourned at 4:55pm.