The Council of Academic Affairs approved the revision, expansion and creation of various courses in Eastern’s catalog at Thursday’s general meeting.

A sustainable communities course in the family and consumer science program was approved with a 10-1 vote.

Assistant family and consumer sciences professor Nichole Hugo said the class will serve as a general education course for non-majors and majors to take. The course would cover the social and economical aspects of sustainability regarding human communities and their relationship with the ecosystem.

The CAA also approved the revision of the communication studies courses in order to change level 2000 classes to level 3000 classes. This was suggested to alleviate the difficulties transfer students run into when having to take level 2000 courses due to lack of transferable credits.

CMN 2630, 2020, 2030 are among the sophomore courses being moved to junior level courses.

CMN 3470 and CMN 3710 were among the courses approved to be offered as online classes.

Communications in workplace relationships is a new course that was also approved for communication studies. It will cover interpersonal communications in corporate settings.

The CAA approved offering the course politics and pop culture as an online course throughout the year and not just for summer sessions.

A new minor for business analytics was also approved along with new a new course in psychology that covers neuropsychology.

Technology, history and human societies was also approved as a class and will have two professors teaching it. This course will be offered as a general education course for students to explore courses in both history and applied engineering and technologies.

The last new course approved was an intro to ecology and evolution course that was presented by biological sciences professor Zhiwei Liu. It combines two intro courses rather than making students take separate ones.

Angelica Cataldo can be reached at 581-2812 or amcataldo@eiu.edu.