Minutes
Curriculum Committee
4:15 p.m., Tuesday, February 14, 2001
Fell House Conference Room

Members: Gerald Adams, Mark Schneider, Pablo Silva, Elizabeth Dobbs, Josh Blue (01-53), Kendra Young (15-43), and George Carroll (03-08). Guest: Paula Smith

1. The minutes from the 1/22/01 meeting were approved as corrected.

2. The committee reviewed the program outline and the course offerings for our Grinnell-in-Washington program. It was noted that this is an experimental program and we currently have 6 or 7 applications for GIW.

3. The committee had a brief discussion on the progress of the proposed American Studies Concentration. Jim has appointed a committee to work on the concentration. The committee has met once to outline the issues. A second meeting will be held to work on what should be included in the concentration. A third meeting will be held to pin down the details and then it will be presented to the divisions for approval. At that point it will come to the Curriculum Committee and then to the full faculty for approval.

4. The representatives of the Humanities and Social Studies Divisions will discuss with their respective divisions what should be an appropriate title or titles for the type of course work they would oversee during the summer. It may be that we will need one or two titles to indicate the nature of the work done during the summer. There was a general discussion of the current course descriptions for 297, 387, and 397. It was decided that for the present we would take the descriptions from the current catalog, the descriptions from the application forms, and the suggestions given to us by Helen Scott last fall and blend them into a single set of descriptions for the catalog for next year. This will not involve any revisions that will need divisional approval. Once we have a single set of descriptions the Committee will return to the issue of possibly making some revisions of these descriptions.

5. The committee approved the formation of a MW 8:00 - 9:50 am time block. It has been used experimentally by a few faculty over the last two years and it has proven to be acceptable to those who have used it and it has not interfered with MWF 8:00-8:50 or 9:00-9:50 am classes.

6. The committee briefly reviewed the work done by this committee regarding the course proposal process and the catalog revision process. At our next meeting the committee will examine the suggested changes in the process to see if they make sense. It was suggested that changing the frequency of a course offering should have both departmental and divisional approval.


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