Conference
For the opening Dr. Timothy Mottet made an interesting point “the
degree is not just a sum of classes a student completes, but the sum of skills
that they can than apply to their chosen field.” He also made sure to point out
the meta-major and Guided Pathway approach and made sure to mention Community
College of Colorado directly. The opening also had a lot of talk about trying
to stop students from taking extra classes or having taken the wrong class at
the 2 year level.
Open Educational Resources was another big buzz. They talked how there
were even free text books through this, but the important thing was what are
departments and faculty thinking about when they pick the required material for
their courses. Schools can have a direct impact on how these costs impact
students and can take action to change this. I was so happy when they talked
about this. I have no idea how much money I have lost to the text book racket
over the years (21 years and counting as a college student). This is something
very simple that can be done to help students, but from my experience most
faculty don’t care. I don’t know also how many classes I have taken where I had
to buy a book my professor had written…. My most recent course had loose leaf
books that could not be sold back to the book store and because of this
students are forced to buy new books if they cannot get a used copy from
another student. When I asked the book store about this the manager said that
publisher were switching to the loose leaf format to cut down the used book
market. This is a serious issue that schools need to start taking more
seriously. I could go on and on about this topic, but let’s get back to the
conference.
Engineering
I choose to sit in on the discussions because of how much of a mess it
has been and the trouble that one of the local universities have given on this.
Over this past summer there was a working group to try and develop a degree
with designation. The current form of the degree with designation is stuck on
the elective section. Apparently the GT pathways matrix can be modified with
reasoning. One option relating to this would be to remove the second English
requirement from it since some schools do not feel like there is any room in
their 4 year degree for a second English course. There was a lot of back and
forth between the schools and I recommended that they try to match the
structure of the ECE because it gives each school more freedom as to what
classes they require. This got shot down as soon as I mentioned it and was told
that they had been told to move away from this. They say that this will cause
issues for students who change what school they want to get to. That is a
possibility, but it has been working for 2 other degrees with designation. I’m
not sure who directed them from this option, but they are slowing down the
process and creating more hard feelings between the schools by doing this. One
person recommended trying to do a bridge program to help students catch up with
certain courses, but that would be up to each 4 year to deal with. Right now
they are trying to get the base engineering dwd to focus on mechanical
engineering and then later maybe add dwds for the other types of engineering.
Chemistry
This group was also looking to possible go above the 60 credit
requirement in order to make both the 2 year and 4 year schools happy. The
current Chemistry degree is out of compliance. Some of the four years had been
accepting O-Chem for some chemistry degrees and not for others. At present
there is talk to remove the reverse transfer part of this degree to remove the
road block for students that are currently in place for this degree.
Business
One person in this group said that he was a strong supporter of the
schools having different electives because most of the students he interacts
with knows or has an idea of where they want to transfer into. This is in stark
contrast with what the science groups were saying. The schools were having a
hard time deciding what math to require. One of the reps from a major
university felt that based on all of the disagreement that doing individual
agreements
Facilities/Food
Getting to CSU Pueblo can be frustrating if you do not know how to get
there to say the least. I had to do several U-turns and even one dirt road to
get there. The map they provided was little help. They had a very light
breakfast which did not seem like much to people like myself that had been on
the roads for hours that also had not had time to eat due to trying to get all
the sleep we could before making the long trek. Then lunch really sucked. They
didn’t have enough of the ‘normal’ sandwiches and way too many vegie ones. The
vegie sandwich I got stuck with was slimy and gross. The food for this event
really needs to be improved.
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