The Council on Academic Affairs approved a new music course proposed by Shellie Gregorich, chair of the musical department.

The new course, MUS 3201: Orchestral Repertoire Performance for Brass, Winds, and Percussion, will allow students to explore many orchestral excerpt repertoires.

According to Gregorich, this class will better help students practice pieces they will have to perform when auditioning for professional orchestras.

The class will allow students to practice and refine performance pieces from various different musical eras.

Gregorich plans on class time to be about more than just performing the pieces.

“Class time would be spent performing the excerpts, talking about them, giving feedback, talking about performance practice like how to do trills in the baroque period as opposed to the romantic period,” Gregorich said.

Topics in the class are subject to change from semester to semester depending on which types and how many of each instrument are enrolled at that time.

“If one semester you have mostly flutes and trumpets but no trombones, you’re not going to cover excerpts that aren’t relevant,” said Gregorich. “If I was teaching it, I’d really look at the enrollment to pick which things I was going to focus upon.”

Gregorich is planning to offer the class to junior and senior performance majors every two years and allowing it to be repeated if wanted or needed by students.

The council also discussed the general education moratorium for the 2019-2020 academic school year.

The proposal was put forward by Provost Jay Gatrell to extend the gen ed moratorium through the current academic school year.

The moratorium is already in place following the last academic year.

Gatrell expects it to get back to business as usual after this academic year so that there is no extension of the gen ed moratorium.

Billy Hung, council member and professor for the biology department called the spring 2020 deadline for people wanting to propose gen ed courses “optimistic” due to the gen ed committee currently being populated with interim members.

The item concerning the gen ed moratorium was approved.

The Council of Academic Affairs chair, Marita Gronnvoll, added a last-minute item to be discussed during the meeting.

A request was made from textbook rental to add a member of the council to the Textbook Rental Advisory Committee.

The committee is comprised of representatives from the CAA, the Council on Graduate Studies, the Graduate Student Advisory Council, the Faculty Senate, the Faculty-at-Large, and the student body in hopes of providing students with cost effective access to textbooks.

A request was made from textbook rental to add a member of the council to the Textbook Rental Advisory Committee.

The committee is comprised of representatives from the CAA, the Council on Graduate Studies, the Graduate Student Advisory Council, the Faculty Senate, the Faculty-at-Large, and the student body in hopes of providing students with cost effective access to textbooks.

Rebecca Throneburg, council member and professor for communication disorders and sciences, will now be added to the committee.

Textbook Rental is currently requesting that a second member from the Council of Academic Affairs be added to the Textbook Rental Advisory Committee.

The council decided to refer textbook rental to the Faculty Senate for another member.

The council approved all three of the executive actions altering various courses in the music department.

Ensemble courses in MUS 0200 A-F, MUS 0201 A-F, MUS 0202 A & B, MUS 0203 A-F, MUS 0204 A-E, MUS 0205A, MUS 0207 A-F, MUS 0211 A-F, MUS 02015 A-E, MUS 0220 A-F, MUS 0221 A-F, MUS 0222 A&B, MUS 0230 A-F, MUS 0231 A-F, MUS 0233 A-F, MUS 0240 A-F, MUS 0242 A-E, MUS 3120 A-E will now have an “R” after them to indicate they are repeatable.

The current letters after the course number will be removed in the titles.

CAA’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 3 in the 4440 room of Booth Library but may be cancelled because of a lack of agenda items.

Emilie Bowman can be reached at 581-2812 or at ejbowman@eiu.edu.