CAA approves changes to studio art option majors

The Council on Academic Affairs approved revisions to the bachelor’s in fine arts: studio art option at a brief meeting Thursday in Booth Library.

Glenn Hild, the chairman of the art department, presented the revisions to the council. Though there were not many major revisions to the art option, there were some word changes to make certain aspects more prominent.

“We changed the word ‘may’ to ‘must’ so students have to apply for admission (after earning the required credit hours),” Hild said.

According to the course outline with revisions, students wishing to pursue this option must apply after earning a total of 45 hours of credit, complete the foundations program and have a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.25 for all course work, among other requirements.

The other revisions were mainly to credit hour requirements.

“We reduced the number of hours from nine to six (for required 3D studio art courses),” Hild said.

The CAA members added three new items to the agenda, which will be acted upon at the next meeting in January.

These items include revisions to the film studios interdisciplinary minor, revisions to the English Honors Admission Requirements and the revision of the course proposal format form.

The course proposal format requires the incorporation of at least one of the four learning goals to all courses. Another addition requires that all senior seminars address all four of the learning goals.

A topic from the Dec. 1 meeting that was briefly touched on at Thursday’s meeting was the formats and incorporation of online senior seminars.

Mary Herrington-Perry, assistant vice president for academic affairs, said there are currently seven online senior seminar courses since summer 2008. These courses will have to meet the four learning goal requirements.

The first CAA meeting of the spring 2012 semester will take place at 2 p.m. on Jan. 12 in Room 4440 at Booth Library. From there, the council will continue with its learning goal subcommittee meetings every other week, with the next one taking place at 2 p.m. on Jan. 19.

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.