DSAC Minutes, 10-4-12

DSAC Minutes, 10-4-12

by

  1. Dr. Robert Hinde- Proposed Changes to the Arts & Sciences Curriculum
    1. Overall purpose of the changes to simplify the curriculum and align it with university requirements
    2. Allow students to get into their major and connect with faculty in a more expeditious fashion
    3. Substance of proposed changes

i.     Quantitative Reasoning, Writing Communications, Oral Communications are staying the same to comply with university requirements

ii.     Arts & Humanities, Natural Science, Social Science, and non-US History will all require 2 courses, regardless of degree sought (BA vs. BS)

iii.     Foreign Language will be required through the sophomore level

iv.     A new requirement, Connections, will replace the current Upper-Level Distribution

  1. Designed to be more focused than the current ULD requirements
  2. Intended to build on the foundation of lower division knowledge to connect across disciplines
  3. Fulfilled through having 2 majors, having a major and a minor, accumulating 9 total credits of study abroad, or taking at least 3 courses from an integrated course collection
    1. Theses collections will be created by faculty to incorporate classes from various disciplines that all deal with a central theme
    2. e.g., Perspectives on Global Citizenship containing courses from disciplines including Political Science, Philosophy, Geography, History, and Anthropology
    3. In the future, students would be able to work with faculty to create new collections
    4. These curriculum changes would go into effect in the Fall of 2014
  4. Curriculum Meetings
    1. UTracK and general Arts &Sciences are still to come
    2. If you haven’t yet signed up and are interested, contact Lindsay at llee26@mail.tennessee.edu
  5. Dean Lee-Graduation
    1. Graduation Speaker

i.     Our focus is on inviting back successful alumni as speakers

ii.     Those present ranked potential speakers and offered additional suggestions (For those not present, the list of potential speakers is attached to this e-mail.)

iii.     Dean Lee requested that we keep this information amongst ourselves for the time being

  1. Graduation Performances

i.     As part of graduation, a graduating senior will give a talk to the graduating class and another will give a presentation of the arts.

ii.     Ways to get applicants for these were discussed

  1. Ensuring that departments know about this
  2. Emphasizing the application right before Winter Break
  3. Having departments nominate students
  4. Getting the word out through departmental clubs
  5. Getting the word out through advertising in the library
  6. Talking to students who have applied to the Spring EUREKA competition