Minutes of the Academic Policies Committee
for December 11, 2009

The meeting was convened at 12:05 p.m.

Present:  Laura Gellott, chair; Susan Hawkins Wilding, Rhonda Kimmel, James Kinchen, Ron Otto, Joy Wolf.

Excused:  Gail Gonzales, Stuart Hansen, Dennis Rome, Carmel Ruffolo. 

Absent: Erin McDermott, student member. 

Business: 

1. Minutes of November 6, 2009 were corrected and approved.

2. Laura Gellott announced that the Senate, at its November 24, 2009 meeting, had approved the one year pilot “Shared Governance Internship Program,” the granting of credit to students for service on several governance committees.  This will take effect in Fall 2010.  The committees on which service will carry credit are:

Academic Actions

Course and Curriculum

First Year Experience

Academic Policies (APC)

Committee on Academic Planning (CAP)

Departments agreeing to grant credit, using their existing internship course numbers and framework are the History Department, Political Science Department, and Soc/Anthro Department.

3. Resolution on Advising. There was extensive discussion of a draft resolution on advising, aimed at supporting recommendation made by the Committee on Advising in its 2008-09 annual report.  A redraft of this resolution, incorporating some of the discussion, will be taken up at the first meeting of the Spring 2010 APC.

4. Retaking courses.  There was some brief discussion of an item forwarded by the COMM Dept. concerning problems with students repeatedly failing the capstone course.  There is no uniform/university policy on the number of times a student can retake a course.  There was agreement that it should be up to departments to set limits on retakes, especially on gateway or capstone courses within the major.  This could be reported to the Senate as an information item.

There was also some discussion on the ongoing problem of student retakes of skills course, especially the Math 015/102/111 courses.  This is part of the bigger problem of getting students to take these within the first 60 credits.  More discussion on this to come in future meetings.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:00.

Submitted by:

Laura Gellot