Curriculum and Assessment Policy Committee (CAPC) Report

given to the University Senate on April 19, 2010

submitted by John Swinton

New business:

We started our meeting by extending our appreciation to the non-elected Senate volunteers who served during the year: Carol Christy, Julia Metzker, and Michael Bonner.  At this point the chair extends his gratitude to all who served on CAPC this past year.  It was a pleasure for me to serve with such a dedicated group.  You all did your University proud.

Information items:

Dr. Martha Colvin: informed the committee about minor changes (course renumbering, essentially) to the Music Therapy Courses to bring them in line with Music Department accreditation requirements. 

Dr. Flora Culpa-Bondal: The Registered Nursing to  Bachelor of Science in Nursing (RN-BSN) program will be changing to a mentorship model.  This change replaces a capstone course with a mentorship experience.  It represents a better use of current resources an allows for better assessment of student outcomes.

Dr. Tony Alcarria: The Modern Foreign Languages Department plans to adopt placement tests for students entering into the language sequences.  Too many students are enrolling in classes that are not at the appropriate level.  CAPC suggested the issue of paying for the testing be taken up by RPIPC. 

Second item:  The College of Arts & Sciences plans to do away with the ESLG 1002 course (second semester of English as a second language).  Few students take it and it will allow for a reallocation of resources so that the 1001 course can be offered in both the fall and spring semesters.

Heads up:

The Department of Modern Foreign Languages is considering going form a 3-hour per course model to a 4-hour per course model.  The fourth hour would include outside of the class work.  While it is not clear that such a change would fall under CAPC’s purview, we offered to be a central sounding board as the proposal moves forward.  We asked Tony (who bravely served as the emissary for the issue) relay back to his department that Senate would probably want to be assured that all departments that might be affected by such a change be consulted before the proposal moves forward.  CAPC seems like a place where those discussions might occur. 

Discussion:

CAPC concluded its regularly scheduled meeting with a discussion of the Proposed Outcomes for the GCSU Core Curriculum (which passed in the Senate last spring; the new USG core framework was approved by the BOR last October).  While ultimate clarity on what could be assessed and how was elusive, the committee did agree that top priority should be to nail down assessment measures for communication skills (written and oral) and to examine how to measure critical thinking skills and information literacy skills.