Academic Policies Report 2008-2009

          The Academic Policies Committee met on 11 occasions during the 2008-09 academic year:

September 5, 2008
September 26 , 2008
October 3, 2008
October 24, 2008
November 14, 2008

January 23, 2009
February 6, 2009
February 20, 2009
March 27, 2009  (special meeting in connection with CAP and open discussion with interested       faculty and staff re: need for clear definitions of and policies related to distance                        education)
April 3, 2009
May 1, 2009

I.  APC brought the following recommendations to the Faculty Senate:

1.  The "1+3" Agreement with Gateway Technical College.  This is part of a larger UWS/WTC (Wisconsin Technical Colleges) initiative to package a cluster of general education courses being taught at a WTC institution and promote the possibility of students taking up to 30 credits of gen ed work at the technical college and transferring that work to a neighboring UW institution.   In most cases these are courses already being accepted at Parkside as part of earlier articulation agreements.  What is new is the "packaging" and "marketing" of the 30 credits as, in effect, a freshman year at Gateway prior to transferring to Parkside. 

The Senate APPROVED this on October 21, 2008, including APC's stipulations that UWP and GTC officials meet to address some expressed concerns about course content and instructor qualifications, and that the agreement  be reviewed periodically, perhaps with every new catalog cycle.

2.  BIOS honors in the major.  Taken to the November 25, 2008 Senate meeting as an information item. 

3.  Added language to the existing policy on accommodation of religious observance.  APPROVED by the Senate at November 25, 2008 meeting.

4.  Late drop policy: changing the words "Advising Center" in the second paragraph to "Registrar's Office" as the place where students should file their request for a Late Drop.  APPROVED by the Senate on April 22, 2008.

5.  Academic Forgiveness: Clarifying language to the existing policy:  inserting the word "cumulative" in front of the 2.5 grade point average that a student must have attained before they can request academic forgiveness; and changing the word "attempted" to "earned" in reference to the number of credits a student must have at the time they make the request. APPROVED by the Senate at its March 10, 2009 meeting.

II.  APC discussed but DECLINED to forward to the Senate the following matters:

1.  A uniform syllabus policy, proposed by Dean Don Cress.

2.  A proposal from First Year Governance Committee: "If a student is on probation or strict probation and: The students' cumulative GPA is above a 2.0 the student will not be suspended but will remain on strict probation until the term GPA is 2.0 or better and the academic record contains no grades of incomplete."

III.  VSA (Voluntary System of Accountability) Testing.  APC recommended to the Provost's Office) that the university adopt the CLA exam.  It also forwarded additional suggestions regarding implementation of this exam, based on the chair’s correspondence with other UW campuses, and attending a session at the Spring OPID conference.

 IV.  Items to be dealt with by the 2009-10 APC:  

Creation of a Transcript/Standards Committee to handle some items currently referred to the Academic Actions Committee.

A range of policy issues connected with on-line courses.

Approved on Sepember 14, 2009, and submitted to the Secretary of the Faculty.