Curtis reminded the committee of details for the Senate meeting on Friday, August 13 at 1:30 in Killian 104. According to the approval process, there will be no further changes to the proposal without delaying the process. It will be presented for information at Friday's meeting and will come up for approval at the September 16^th meeting. At that time, if it is not approved, it can be sent back to us with more suggestions. Otherwise, it will have to be approved as is.

Curtis and Nory met with Dean Vartabedian in late July. He listened to our description of the proposal's history, and asked some questions. On August 3^rd, Curtis and Nory met with VC Collings, Fred Hinson, Terry Kinnear and Dean Vartabedian to discuss the sequence of events beginning with the Senate meetings and beginning to think about implementation considerations. Curtis described how the committee had responded to the suggestions for revision.

At the Senate meeting, we need to be ready to defend our choices. Up till now, we have listened to others' suggestions, but this time we must be ready to say why we made the decisions that we did. What are the areas where we might expect difficulty? The issues raised with regard to the Fine & Performing Arts and the one-hour leisure courses might come up again. We will need to explain our concept of the Wellness course in order to address these questions. We want the associated activity to be a physical fitness activity; we suggest that the Wellness category be closely monitored in the assessment procedures, and that if it does not evolve to meet the goals of the program, then it should be changed. Further, art goes beyond leisure and has academic content, so it is more properly addressed in the Perspectives area, within the Fine & Performing Arts category. The three credit hour requirement does not imply 6 contact hours of studio course; the applied component can take many forms and does not have to be "studio". Also, we wanted to avoid one hour courses to prevent freshmen schedules with eight courses, which has happened in the past--this is very confusing to a new student, and not consistent with the best model of the college experience. We can expect the Sciences to continue to express their concern about resources, but we have VC Collings' assurance that these issues will be addressed if the faculty decides to approve the science requirement in this program. The "double-dipping" issue in the sciences may come up again. The "42 hour rule" in "over-crowded" majors may come up again. We have looked in the catalog and see only one program for which this is a genuine issue as stated in the catalog (which is a contract with students!).

Brian reported that at the Council of Deans Retreat, VC Collings spoke very well for the Liberal Studies program, and was passionate about wanting to make this program work. All faculty should participate, and the Liberal Studies program is an important part of student and faculty life at WCU. Collings made very clear that liberal studies ties into retention efforts. The Liberal Studies program was a central issue at the Dean's retreat!

We need to summarize the changes we made in the proposal: the upper level elective must be outside the major, and so on. We should review what the recommendations were and what we did with them.

A motion was made to approve the revised proposal (Dana) and seconded (Lois). The proposal was approved by all present, but we did not have a quorum present. Curtis obtained the quorum vote by telephone, and asked all who were not present to express their vote by email, phone, or in person by Friday.

We need to sort out the issues and review the minutes to prepare for the Senate meeting on Friday.

In the meeting with Collings, some implementation concerns were raised. Fred Hinson was curious about the role of the General Education Committee. Althought these considerations were not Review Committee issues, we discussed them for some time. The General Education Committee will have a role as long as the old General Education program is still in existence. It will co-exist with the Oversight Committee and the two will need to consult about implementation and overlap issues. The Liberal Studies program will not be implemented by the Fall of 2000 because of the course approval calendar, although this is the date stated in the proposal. It will actually come on-line in the fall of 2001. Learning communities will need to continue to phase-in. However, the overall change from GE to LS should occur as quickly as possible. There should be members of the Review committee on the Oversight committee to help answer questions about implementation and tranisiton issues. Dean Vartabedian raised some questions about working with community colleges to make sure that articulation issues are resolved smoothly. This should be easier with the LS program than it was with the GE program.

Following the meeting, Dean Vartabedian asked questions about Wellness (concern that it would become a generic PE program), Oral Communication (again, concern about becoming generic, how assessment will be done, how reticent speakers are identified), and about learning communities. Curtis met with him again to discuss these issues further.

Respectfully submitted,

Nory Prochaska, recording secretary

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