Policy Committee
Minutes
April 1, 2005

Present: Linda Bastian, Jane Holman, Michael Warwick, Cheryl Scott, Frost Johnson, Michael Sonnleitner, Karen Jolly, and Porter Raper.

Discussion :

The PC needed to clarify a few areas in its prerequisite proposal:

Courses targeted: rather than use the term “gen ed transfer courses,” the committee decided to focus on this more detailed (and far less confusing) description of the courses this policy will target: Any lower division collegiate course that meets a gen ed requirement for AS, AAOT, AGS, or AAS degree (these would include all courses on the A list, B list, and gen ed list currently in the catalogue).

Casual Students and prereqs: to reduce barriers to casual students who may not need to meet the prereq requirements of a course, the committee decided that it would be best to stress the instructor approval mechanism already in place. We would encourage more pronounced language in the schedule and catalogue regarding instructor approval and those casual students who may have the prerequisite skills, but who may not want to go through our testing procedures.

Courses for DE-level students: the committee decided that it would be very helpful to have SACs identify any courses that may be appropriate for students with pre-college skills. We will put together a list so that the PC and EAC will be assured that there are enough courses for DE-level students to take as they work on strengthening their basic skills and also qualify for FT status for financial aid purposes (courses mentioned include keyboarding, college success skills, basic computer skill courses, music, along with writing, reading and math).

Other changes to the proposal: we decided to add suggestions made at the March EAC meeting regarding greater emphasis on building college survival skills with the population of students who don’t meet the prerequisites, and to specifically mention transcript assessment in our paragraph on student services support. We also decided to be more specific about the number of students in a low-enrolled course during the transition phase: courses should have a minimum of 10 students to continue.

Necessary support for implementation: The committee decided to move forward with president Pulliams’ request for estimates on the amount of support needed for implementing the prerequisite requirement on these 3 levels: support for DE, support for student services, and support for the lower-enrolled courses during the transition phase. We decided to find out from IR the exact number of students the proposal would affect, and then start working on the financial estimates in the above 3 areas.

For the next EAC meeting on 4/20, we decided to offer the proposal as a discussion item.  We also discussed what to do if the administration could not come up with the minimum amount of financial support for the implementation, including the possibility of recommending a tabling of the prereq proposal until adequate funding becomes available.

There was discussion about whether we should recommend going forward with the prereq proposal even without adequate funding, but a majority wanted to ensure funding was in fact available before we recommended the EAC to endorse implementation.

We also talked about the possibility of endorsing an EAC policy that would strongly recommend prereqs for courses that don’t currently have them (with perhaps a concerted awareness campaign for faculty about the importance of ensuring courses were conducted with the expectation of college-level skills, and stronger communication with students about the need for working on basic skills, etc).  Committee members pointed out how helpful it would be, in this scenario, if they knew right away those students who were at the pre-college level in terms of skills.