WAC Committee Meeting Minutes – 3/20/07

The meeting was called to order at 12 noon.

The committee discussed and unanimously approved two proposals for W.I. courses, Jim Lochtefeld’s Religion 100 (Understandings of Religion), and Gary Williams’ proposed 40X course, Sport and Exercise Psychology. The committee’s approval of Gary Williams’ course is for W.I. status only. The course itself must still be granted divisional and CPC approval.

Alan Wallace brought up the question of transfer students’ potential problems with meeting W.I. requirements. After some discussion, the committee agreed that transfer students would be permitted to submit petitions requesting waivers for the W.I. requirement. The WAC committee will appoint a subcommittee to review these petitions and grant or deny them.

Alan Wallace presented a list of issues the committee has discussed over the past year that need to be discussed further and/or acted upon. The committee discussed several of these issues:

o Mark Snavely will work with the college webmaster to design a W.I. course approval renewal form that will be convenient for faculty to use and will supply the necessary information needed to the WAC committee as well.
o The committee will devise a system to keep track of adjunct/contract instructors who teach W.I. courses to insure that these instructors do not end up teaching a disproportionate number of these courses.
o Rick Matthews and Alan Wallace will develop a F.A.Q. brochure to distribute to faculty. One question that will be addressed in the brochure is how to advise students so that the majority of them do not complete their W.I. requirement within their first two years at Carthage. The brochure will also include a statement that instructors taking the WI workshop will be “compensated on a one-time basis” only.

o The committee decided that the inclusion of a detailed syllabus would not be a required inclusion for W.I. course proposals, but that such inclusion would be highly recommended.
o The committee discussed the Writing Center budget and fellow pay issue. Jean Preston will pursue with Kurt Piepenburg and Brad Andrews the plans for the Writing Center budget for 2007-08.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:05 p.m. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 2, time and place TBD.

Respectfully submitted,

Jean Preston