EPAG Minutes
December 11, 2006
2:45-4:15, Campus Center 214

Kendrick Brown, Natalia Espejo, Terri Fishel,  Ellen Guyer,  Diane Michelfelder, Jayne Niemi, Joan Ostrove, Wang Ping, Michael Schneider, Peter Weisensel (co-chair), Karl Wirth (co-chair)

• The minutes from the December 4th meeting were approved.
• General education requirement applications:  Karl shared his summary of courses submitted so far, sorted by a number of variables.  We have a variety of worries about the number of classes submitted for approval.  There are several departments that have not submitted anything.  Some chairs may be contacted personally to see if they had particular issues that held them up.   Karl will share this information at the faculty meeting, and will encourage people to submit proposals no later than March, so that they can be included in the registration materials that will be sent to new students.  We reviewed details that each subcommittee might encounter:  missing instructor names, missing the semester in which the course will be offered, multiple instructor names.  The approvals, subject to circulation to the full faculty, will be emailed to each chair.  Jayne will get the spreadsheet of approvals.   If a subcommittee denies approval, we hope that there will be a conversation about what the person can do to gain approval, but we need to remind ourselves what other appeal might be available. 
• Endowed chairs:  The Provost requested a discussion about EPAG’s role in approving allocation requests that involve an endowed chair.  The existing example of the Mitau chair is the kind of thing that the Advancement staff would like to encourage.  This chair is currently empty, and the Provost and President feel it appropriate that it go to a new position.    Now, in recent history a particular donor wanted to make a gift to honor a family member.   In these cases, can EPAG really say no, or is their role to endorse and offer enhancements to the way the position fits the curriculum?  We think it is the latter.  Diane is going to email department chairs requesting ideas for endowed chairs, which might be for their department, or “for the good of the whole”, or perhaps the suggestion would be thematic, and therefore not restricted to a single discipline. 
• Calendar:   We reviewed the various options, including a week-long fall break, and a 2-day fall break with a week off at Thanksgiving.  The negatives of a week-long fall break include the difference among ACTC schools, limited library hours, quiet campus for a busy visit week in Admissions, loss of momentum for FY students, difficulty of traveling home or elsewhere twice in the semester, loss of a programming weekend in a busy semester .  Positives included the re-charging possibilities for students & faculty, more time available for field trips, possibility of considering it a “reading” week.  Some expressed a preference for a week-long break at Thanksgiving, and keeping the fall break at 2 days.  Others thought that a week at Thanksgiving was too late in the semester.   We deliberated about whether to attempt to make this a permanent change or just propose it to solve the 08-09 problem.  We decided to go the one-year route, since the decision needs to be made with relative speed and a permanent change would cause longer debate and deliberation.   Jayne will work on a document that shows the various options, also extending the semester a little further into December. 
• Course changes and requests for diversity status were approved as circulated by email. 
• We confirmed that in cases where students contact EPAG directly about a course counting toward the current diversity requirement, we will advise the student to speak to the department.  If the department wishes to propose the course for diversity status, they may fill out the appropriate form, and seek approval to benefit all of the students enrolled.    

Adjourned 4:05 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Jayne Niemi, Registrar