The Learning Goals committee discussed how their proposed changes were received by the different departments it presented the changes to in its meeting Thursday afternoon.

Karla Sanders, executive director for academic support and assessment center, said after presenting the document to all the departments involved, the changes have been minimal.

“Not a whole lot has been changed. We have made this public in a variety of settings for a number of years,” Sanders said. “So when I went around to the various colleges and faculty senate, it was not a surprise to anyone.”

Sanders said changes include changing the timeline for completing the project.

“If we do the foundation courses next year and just push everything back essentially a semester, that means that the Arts and Humanities courses, which would be the first ones up, would start Fall 2018,” Sanders said. “So it would be the next academic year.”

Sanders said general education was facing more problems than just the ones being addressed in the committee’s proposal.

“I do miss the days when I was begging people for seats as opposed to calling in the summer saying, ‘Do you want to cancel any of these classes?’” Sanders said. “I think we do need to think about downsizing some of our committees. It doesn’t mean they don’t have specific things each of them needs to do, but maybe they don’t all have to be 11, 12, 13, 14 people.”

Learning Goals committee member Misty Rhoads said filling committee positions may be a challenge.

“I’m just interested to see who is going to fill these positions. If you can’t fill Faculty Senate, you can’t fill CAA, the longstanding things, I don’t know how you are going to get people to fill this position,” Rhoads said.

Rebecca Throneburg said having separate learning goal committees may not be possible at this time.

“Do we kind of need them? Yeah,” Throneburg said. “Are we going to have them? Probably not.”

Throneburg said not having the learning goal committees would put a strain on other CAA committees.

“Probably what we are going to have to do is just not convene the learning goal committees and make sure the understanding is the gen ed committee is going to have to pick up that slack of providing resources,” Throneburg said. “Instead of having a leader with a committee behind you, the leader is going to have to be doing most of the leg work.”

Stacey Ruholl said if things start to shift in a more positive direction, these changes may not be necessary.

“This is our HLC project,” Ruholl said. “We do have a couple of years (until committee changes need to be made).”

Following the learning goals committee meeting, CAA tabled the proposal for a new engineering technology major, due to debates of what courses should be required in the major.

This is because the proposed major is currently based on the standards of the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology, which differ from the standards of Association of Technology Management and Applied Engineering.

Applied Engineering Coordinator Isaac Slaven said the ABET accreditation is what was focused on when creating the proposal because it has more notoriety.

“The current accrediting body does not have as much notoriety,” Slaven said. “If you want to become a professional engineer, they don’t recognize a program that is only ATMEA accredited. It has to be ABET accredited.”

Chrissy Miller can be reached at 581-2812 or clmiller9@eiu.edu.