Minutes - 10/7/1999

Call to order:

President Mikkelsen called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m.

Senators present:

Aschermann, Bargar, Brandt, Cronk, Fowler, Hamzaee, Leonard, McLear, Mikkelsen, Nelson, Reidy,
Wagner, Wallner

Senators absent:

Brooks, Greiert, Roberts

Ex-Officio:

Janet Murphy, president of Missouri Western State College
James Roever, vice-president for academic affairs

Guests:

David Bennett, Jeanie Crain, John Cook, Jeanne Daffron, Jennifer Hegeman, Martin Johnson, Kathyrne
Mueller, Evan Noynaert, Cornelius Van Dyke

Minutes of the previous meeting:

The minutes of the September 16, 1999 meeting were approved with the following corrections
(Wallner/Leonard):

(1) corrected spelling of senator Hamzaee’s name;

(2) removed editorial corrections (shown in square brackets) to Kenneth Dagel’s document identified as
Attachment C of September 16, 1999, thereby restoring document to its original form as distributed at
meeting;

(3) removed editorial corrections (shown in square brackets) to John Rushin’s document identified as
Attachment D of September 16, 1999, thereby restoring document to its original form as referenced but
not distributed at meeting.

Report from the college president:

MWSC president Murphy reported her concern resulting from a recent Council of Presidents meeting
wherein several college presidents were not informed about the General Education Steering Committee’s
proposal to revamp general education programs/requirements for Missouri colleges and universities. She
further expressed concern that college faculty senates had very little knowledge of this proposal. For this
reason, she charged president Mikkelsen with the important duty of contacting colleagues in other Missouri
colleges and universities (as well as MWSC) so that they are aware of this proposal.





Report from the vice president for academic affairs:

James Roever, vice president for academic affairs, reported that the upcoming review by the North Central
Association is moving forward, with MWSC’s documents to be submitted to the Association in November,
and with the scheduled visit of seven team members to occur in February. All subcommittees for this
review have completed their work with required documentation. He noted that the visiting team will be
provided with executive summary rather than these various original documents.

Report from the faculty senate executive committee:

Mark Mikkelsen, president of the faculty senate, reported on the recent Missouri Association of Faculty
Senates (MAFS) meeting held in Jefferson City on October 4, which he and senator Nelson attended. At
this meeting, representatives from faculty senates from most Missouri public colleges and universities were
in attendance, as well as several guests, including Robert Stein, academic liaison for the Coordinating
Board of Higher Education, and state representative Ted Farnen, Chair of House Higher Education
Committee. Among the topics discussed at the meeting were mission enhancement, dual credit, and the
proposed General Education Steering Committee’s (GESC) proposal for revamping Missouri general
education programs. It was further reported that a general meeting concerning the GESC’s general
education proposal is to be held in Columbia on October 26 and 27, for which he recommended
participation by as many MWSC faculty as possible. Finally, he announced a meeting of MWSC faculty
for next Thursday, October 14, at 3:30 p. m., for the purposes of informing and soliciting discussion
concerning the GESC proposal.

Presentation by Jennifer Hegeman (chair, CS/M/P) on the General Studies Committee Proposal:

Add a fourth subcategory, computer literacy, to the list of required Category One -- Basic Skills courses,
and allow students to satisfy this requirement either by completing one of two existing courses, CSC 100
Computer Literacy or CSC 101 Computers and Information Technology, or by passing a proficiency
examination.

A complete curriculum proposal from the department of computer science, math, and physics was
distributed (available by request). Cornelius Van Dyke distributed documents entitled Outline of Sample
Computer Proficiency Exam and Status of the Proficiency Testing (available by request), which detailed the
list of tasks which students must accomplish in order to successfully pass the Sample Computer Proficiency
Exam and the statistical results of the sample test administered on October 6 and 7. He reported that to
date, eleven students have taken the sample exam, of which three students passed while eight students
failed. General discussion followed in which some possible reasons for failure were cited and in which
suggestions for a more representative sample were suggested.

Jennifer Hegeman presented two viewpoints in favor of passing this proposal: (1) our graduates need to be
competent in computer skills since computers are widely used in virtually all fields; and (2) our students
would benefit from better computer skills since our courses are becoming highly dependent on technology.
She distributed documents entitled Newton's Law: America’s next class war involves hearts and minds of
youths by Ken Newton (available by request), in which the importance of computer usage skills is
presented, and APPENDIX A: COMPARISON OF COMPUTER LITERACY REQUIREMENTS IN
GENERAL STUDIES (available by request), in which student enrollments, numbers of credits in general
studies programs, and whether or not a computer literacy course is required as a part of general studies, are
compared among twenty-two colleges and universities in Missouri and several surrounding states.
Hegeman then reported that additional faculty and resources would be required in order to properly
implement this computer literacy requirement at MWSC, noting that, although she strongly supports the
motion, she is not willing to sacrifice other faculty and resources in the department of computer science,
mathematics, and physics in order to implement this requirement.




General discussion followed concerning pros and cons of the proposal, mostly centering on costs and
additional facilities/resources required for implementation. Other discussion centered on the notion that if
inclusion of the requirement in general studies is indeed mandatory, then money and costs should not be the
real issue. Furthermore, discussion concerning students’ acquisition of computer skills in other courses
(e.g. MGT 201 as an example) might provide ample opportunity for our students to become proficient in
these computer skills. Dr. Roever then recommended a random sampling to test MWSC graduating seniors
who have already completed their programs, in order to ascertain which computer skills they have mastered
from within their required courses and experiences. Others pointed out that we perhaps do not have enough
information to properly pass on this issue.

Discussion of General Education Steering Committee’s Proposal for General Studies

Jeanie Crain was invited to present material in order to open the discussion on the GESC’s proposal for
revamping the Missouri general education requirements, in which general studies courses throughout all of
Missouri’s public colleges and universities and community colleges would be goal and competency
oriented. She began the discussion by stating that she would share information from two standpoints: (1)
the process of the proposal, and (2) the proposed document itself. Crain then distributed a memo entitled
REPORT ON WORK OF GENERAL EDUCATION STEERING COMMITTEE (available by request),
which describes the progress of Phases I, II, and III of the proposal. She then distributed a document
entitled AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY (available by request) which details information concerning the
upcoming fall faculty working conference in Columbia on October 26 and 27. Following some brief
discussion of these items, Crain distributed an untitled document (which is a subsection of pages 4 and 5 of
the original full proposal of the GESC) (available by request) which describes the Prescribed General
Education Curriculum and the Program-to-Program Insitutionally Articulated Degrees, around which
some discussion followed. She then distributed a document consisting of pages 3 through 11 of the
evolving policy, which describes statewide general education policy (consisting of rationale for general
education, responsibilities, transferability of lower-division general education credit, general education
goals and competencies, skill areas of communicating, critical thinking, managing information, and
valuing; knowledge areas of history and social and behavioral sciences, humanities and fine arts,
mathematics, and natural and physical sciences; structure of lower-division general education curricula;
general education program review and approval processes) and transfer degrees. Considerable discussion
followed, concentrating mostly on confusion concerning the meaning and intent of “competencies,” extent
of retained institutional autonomy, problems of transfer credit review for students transferring to MWSC
who have not yet completed the full 45 general studies credit hours, and assessment/review procedures
which would be mandated by the state. Additional discussion followed referenced to the (previously
distributed) document comparing the “old” and “new” policies of general education.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 6:00 p. m.


Respectfully submitted,



G. Barry Nelson, secretary