November 13, 2012 Academic Council Agenda

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, November 13, 2012 from 10:30-11:45 a.m. in the Keller Hall Reception Room. Please review the agenda below and the cited materials in advance of the meeting.

Approval of minutes from the October 23, 2012 meeting.


Consent Agenda:

Drop required study abroad requirement for the Chinese Study minor:

The Chinese Studies major requires an approved study abroad experience;  for Chinese Studies minors,  study abroad is strongly suggested, and indeed most of them do so.  However, the unusual provision that study abroad be REQUIRED even for a minor was put into place a decade ago,  when we only had one person teaching Chinese, and no major in sight.   A single person could never offer enough language courses to even cover a minor program, so the study abroad requirement just described the reality that unless you took some 300-level Chinese language courses abroad, you would never get enough classes for a minor anyway.  In short, it's an obsolete requirement.  None of our other MLC minor require study abroad except Japanese, which is still a one-person program with no major. MLC vote to discontinue this requirement: 6 Sept 2012.

"On Nov. 2, 2012, the faculty in the Department of Religious Studies voted to eliminate the course, RELG400: Seminar in Approaches to the Study of Religion. RELG400 will no longer be required for completion of the major or minor. Instead, majors and minors will be required to take an additional 300-level course in Religious Studies."

Discussion Agenda:

- Admissions Update with Nanci Tessier

- Talent Web Training with Kim Wilson
-Chairs Professional Development Accounts