Policy Committee
Minutes
January 7, 2005

Present: Jim Hicks, Linda Bastian, Jane Holman, Michael Warwick, Porter Raper, Kate Carney, Michael Sonnleitner, Taylor Hanna, Cheryl Scott, Mary Lane Stevens

The committee set the dates for the prerequisite forums (to hold  them in conjunction with campus TLCs), and they will be posted on the Policy Committee website. We’ve decided to have two meetings at each comprehensive campus and one at Southeast.

For the forums, we will have committee representatives introduce the policy proposal and facilitate the discussion. Our intent is to take the pulse of the college community and see if there is support for a college-wide policy that would adopt prereqs for general education transfer courses. The policy under consideration includes the possibility of an opt-out avenue for those SACs justifying particular courses remaining without prereqs.

We decided to contact student organizations to get student involvement with the forums, and to encourage administrators to attend. When Porter presents his report at the next EAC meeting, he will encourage EAC administrators (and others) to attend.

The committee was concerned that one of the biggest obstacles for the prereq policy—if adopted—was the worry about enrollment, and we decided to attempt to get a statement of support from the administration regarding flexibility with low course enrollment during the transitional phase (if the policy is adopted, there would likely be a temporary period where enrollment would drop in gen ed courses as students were directed to the appropriate DE courses to shore up their skills).

We also discussed national studies focusing on how underprepared college students are, and we decided to include a few of these studies on the website (AFT, Public Agenda, National Endowment of Arts). Jane recommended we put the Comp/Lit SAC’s program review, which reaches conclusions about preparedness and success, there as well.

The committee went over our website to improve its accessibility, especially for the upcoming prereq discussion: we will have Brett Williams make the recommended changes.

Because of the magnitude of the prereqs issue, we decided it would not be wise to take on other potential policy issues at this time.

We will meet again after the forums on Friday, 2/11 at 2:30 back at the CWTC.