Regular meeting of the BLS Committee held at 3:07 pm on Monday, September 12, 2016 in Lee Hall 414.
Voting members, Ana Chichester (Director, BLS Program), Shumona Dasgupta (chair), Jackie Gallagher, Leanna Giancarlo (secretary), Nora Kim, Cristina Turdean, and ex-officio members, Sarah Lindberg (Admissions), and Jessica McGraw (Registrar’s Office), were in attendance.
Minutes were approved electronically.
Reports:
Sarah Lindberg (Admissions) reported that her office had received 95 BLS applications for fall 2016; of these, 64 students were admitted, 51 have enrolled and 7 are still in offer status. Students who aren’t offered admission are usually denied due to low grade point average. A suggestion was made to invite students in this category to enroll as nondegree seeking in order to show that their grades can be brought up. This will be explored further with Admissions; however, one issue of concern is that nondegree seeking students cannot receive financial aid or use GI bill benefits to pay for tuition.
Sarah also noted that there are 17 applicants for spring 2017 admission: 1 is a paid deferral from fall and another is in offer status also from this semester. Recruitment visits started last week and will continue throughout the semester.
Jessica McGraw (Registrar’s Office) reported that her office has purchased the complete CLEP test book in order to provide BLS students with information from CLEP on what the test does, how to register for it and to give students a copy of the test for practice.
Jessica also informed the committee that we have a BLS student who has declared the criminal justice special major for BLS (approved last year). Ana Chichester will bring the template created for this special major to the next meeting so the committee can see how it is now running in Banner.
Finally, Jessica is working on welcome folders and student checksheets for incoming BLS students.
Items of Business:
The committee unanimously approved a revision in Ryan Hastings’ History and Communications special major to include HIST 300A3 Cultural Crisis in Modern America instead of HIST 314 African American History Since Slavery.
Ana Chichester (Director, BLS Program) along with Dean Finkelstein, Steven Davies, Mukesh Srivastava and other stakeholders, have been exploring a template for a special BLS major in cyber security. The initial template had two tracks that the Provost’s office thought should be reduced to one.
In reviewing the provided template of course offerings for this BLS major, the committee found sufficient overlap in the tracks among three of the courses to suggest moving them into the previously proposed foundation courses, expanding the number of credits constituting the foundational coursework from 14 to 20. The foundation courses would now include CPSC 220 (4 cred), CPSC 225 (1), CIST 229 (3), CPSC 302 (3), CIST 406 (3), MIST 411/CPSC 345 or CIST 440 (3), and CIST 441 (3). Students would choose two elective courses from CPSC 414 (4), CPSC 445 (3), CIST 442 (3) or MIST 444 (3) that would enable them to focus on technical or management aspects of cyber security. A required capstone course of CIST 471 (4-5 cred) would complete the major. The committee unanimously approved the revised template, and Ana will present this to the Dean and the Provost for approval.
Announcements:
The next meeting will be held on Monday, October 10, 2016 at 3 pm. The location will be announced via email.
Adjourned at 3:59 pm.
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