The Council on Academic Affairs will meet at 2 p.m. on Thursday in the Edgar Room of Booth Library.

The council will get an update about their electronic course proposal form, which was re-discussed at a meeting last semester on April 26, 2018.

Nathan Atkinson, a web developer in the Center for Academic Technology and Support who originally showed the council his proposed electronic form, said in that April 26 meeting that he wants the form to make the submission process more efficient.

“It’s essentially a workflow where a faculty member could submit a course proposal form, and then it goes to the department, then to the college, then to CAA,” Atkinson said.

The council will also discuss the Faculty Senate’s proposed changes to organizations on campus to create more shared governance.

The senate, at their meeting last Tuesday, decided to potentially shy away from creating a senate oversight and look more into senate constitutional changes that could lead to more collaboration.

Todd Bruns, senate chair and scholarly communication librarian and institutional repository director, proposed the creation of a ‘Faculty Congress’ which would house CAA, the Council on Teacher Education, the Council on Graduate Studies and the senate.

“So when we have elections, if one of our colleagues runs for CAA, they are representing faculty on the issues that CAA addresses,” Bruns said Tuesday. “(Faculty Congress) is the organizational umbrella of CAA, which works on curriculum, of COTE, which works on teacher education, CGS, which does what it does, Faculty Senate does everything else.”

Bruns said the congress would be codifying and saying that all those organizations together represent the faculty.

The council will also receive a general education committee update, something they have also been working for a while.

The council has been hesitant to ratify any official changes the general education committee might include until overall university transitions have stabilized more.

At the council’s last meeting, it said the main concern with the committee is the potential involvement of the new College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which now houses 90 percent of the general education courses at Eastern.

The college’s involvement cannot be determined until they have time to organize and stabilize their own college committee structures, the council said.

Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581-2812 or at bsschwartz@eiu.edu.