The KSC Senate held its 551st meeting, its second of the spring semester, on Feb. 25, where it discussed changes to the Morris-August Honors Program, education program and credit transfer policy.
Senator and professor of mathematics, Mike Cullinane, discussed how the College Wide Academic Program Committee will work with the Senate Curriculum Committee to manage honors program curriculum proposals.
“We recommended unanimously for the SCC to approve the changes to the honors program,” Cullinane said. “And so those changes are basically to bring in an alignment with the new general education program. On one hand, should honors program courses that are designed to meet general education requirements, and other courses that are designed to meet general education requirements, come through CAP for some sort of review?”
Cullinane said honors program courses are not brought to the Senate Curriculum Committee for approval. Instead, the honors program council and director handles those matters.
The Senate Curriculum Committee, headed by Senator and professor of history Nick Germana, spoke second on the topic of proposed changes to the honors program course approval.
“I thought it would be official for our two committees to talk together and discuss the history behind this process,” Germana said. “And also be thinking about how the curriculum process is going to work with the College-Wide Program [Committee].”
The Senate voted unanimously to approve the changes to the honors program and the process of review for its courses with the College-Wide Academic Program Committee.
Germana said the SCC also considered changes to the education program.
“There’s been one B.S. in Education and Elementary and Secondary Ed. were options within that, but that was not really the way it was supposed to be,” Germana said. “They really needed to be separate programs– a B.S. in Elementary Ed. and a B.S. in Secondary Ed. Technically these are new programs, but they’re the same curriculum we’ve had.”
After unanimously passing the new B.S. programs in Elementary and Secondary Education, the senate also approved the inactivation of the current honors program courses and replacement with the new honors programs courses proposed by professor Philip Barker.
The Academic Policy and Standards Committee, headed by Senator and professor of history Greg Knouff, who is also chair of the history department, was the last to speak.
“We approved and worked on a revision to the credit transfer and we’re continuing to work on a proposed revision to the credential integrity policy which we did not complete,” Knouff said. “But we did vote to unanimously approve the revisions to the credit transfer and I would move that the senate approve this proposed revision to the credit transfer policy.”
The senate unanimously passed the proposed revision to the credit transfer policy and adjourned around 4:30.
Hope, managing executive editor of The Equinox, serves as a KSC Senator and was not involved in the process of writing or editing this Equinox article.
Chloe Erno can be contacted at
