The University of Connecticut’s senate allowed departments to reserve seats for certain majors in Topics of Inquiry (TOI) courses and added Juneteenth as a non-instructional day in a Feb. 3 meeting.
Common Curriculum Committee Chair Pamela Bedore explained old senate bylaws regarding reserving seats in courses for students with specific majors.
“For at least 30 years, there’s been a rule that […] you can reserve any number of seats using reserve caps in upper-level W courses that are specific to the major. You can only reserve 50% capacity for 2000 or above courses that have topics of inquiry, or currently [content areas],” Bedore said. “In the past, there was a rule that you could not reserve any seats in 1000 level general education courses that counted for content areas.”
Bedore discussed issues with senate bylaws on reserve caps being ignored and reserve caps being implemented in violation of senate bylaws.
“However, we were deeply out of compliance with that senate bylaw, so the CCC+ was asked to review this issue about a year and a half ago and we’ve spent quite a lot of time doing that,” Bedore said.
Bedore discussed plans for new reserve caps for courses and stated that they would be enforced.
“So what we propose here is to keep the 50% cap of 2000 and above, but to add a 25% cap for 1000 level courses, meaning that you can save a quarter of your seats for students in your major for 1000 level courses, but since it’s general education, 75% of those seats must be available to the general student population,” Bedore said.
Bylaws were added to exempt certain transfer students from common curriculum requirements. The senate agenda explained that some community college programs in Connecticut are designed for students planning on transferring to UConn. These programs have similar general education requirements to UConn, so language was added to ease the transfer process.
“Undergraduate students with associate degrees from CT State Community College that are designated as ‘transfer-oriented’ within the Transfer Policy are exempt from the Common Curriculum Requirements,” the new bylaw language added.
Additionally, during this meeting, Juneteenth was added as a non-instructional holiday. Senate Scholastic Standards Committee Co-Chairs Karen Bresciano and Jamie Kleinman discussed its implementation.
“In Fall ‘23, the [Senate Executive Committee] asked the [Scholastic Standards Committee] to consider adding Juneteenth as a non-instructional day,” a senator said.
Juneteenth was established as a teaching holiday in the Spring 2023 semester, with the provost issuing guidance to encourage faculty to be flexible with students who wanted to observe the holiday, according to the agenda. The recommendation for Juneteenth to become a non-instructional day had the support of UConn President Radenka Maric and Provost Anne D’Alleva.
The senator said that they were able to maintain the amount of instructional time when adding Juneteenth as a holiday.
Laura Burton, chair of the Senate Executive Committee, said that constituency ballots for faculty and staff to vote for senators would be released soon. Burton reminded people to check their emails.
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