May 7, 2008
Present: Bonn, Short, Matthews, Montanaro, Wallace, Cassidy, Steege, Preston
1. WI proposals
From Biology: A proposal to allow two faculty to teach the senior seminar. Both faculty are WI approved. A request has been made to add WI designation to their sections of the senior seminar, even though neither one has submitted a proposal. They will be using the same syllabus created for another section of senior seminar that has been previously approved by the committee.
The consensus of the committee was as follows: when faculty who are not the original proposers of the course teach a WI course, they should submit both the form and syllabus (even if it is the same syllabus given to them by the course originator). The rationales behind this were as follows: even though this case involves full-time faculty, we do not want to set a precedent which would create potential problems of department chairs submitting syllabi for adjuncts in a similar situation. Second, and more importantly, the committee believed that the actual submitting of a proposal is necessary for both record keeping and a “contract” of sorts between faculty and the WAC committee, even if they intend to use someone else’s syllabus (which some members were not necessarily opposed to in principle, but uncomfortable). This is consistent with our policy of submitting the form again for an approved faculty member and course for renewal.
Faculty Member Dept. Course Action
Duncan English American Literary Traditions passed
Maria Carrig English Senior Seminar passed
Leslie Cameron Psychology Cognition passed
Renaud/Vogt Classics Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Ancient World passed
2. Waivers
Ashley Ferrara, denied (transfer student, senior, but still has time to take a course outside her major next fall).
Melissa Hawn, granted (transfer student, no opportunity to take course before graduation).
3. August writing workshops draft—AW and RM
Alan gave an update on the August workshop, sessions are shaping up. He and Rick will continue to work on this through the summer.
4. Welcome to chair of WATF, Chris Renaud
5. Cassidy to talk with Heritage on them using workshop time for teaching writing specific to Heritage.
6. Plagiarism: Committee discussed using the Hacker text as a standard for WI courses, consensus was that we might want to issue some kind of statement that encourages faculty to use common source for definition, etc. More discussion to follow.
Meeting Adjourned at 1:07