Proposal to create a new minor

A minor represents a clearly defined set of courses identifying a secondary area of expertise. Minors are offered through a department, program, or curriculum; some are interdisciplinary.

INSTRUCTIONS

Please submit to the CAS Registrar and Chair of the Curriculum Committee a document addressing the following:

1. Rationale for adding the proposed minor to our curriculum
2. Learning objectives
3. Requirements and courses
4. Staffing and resources
5. Program comparisons

More details on these components and key questions to answer follow.

Rationale

Please provide a rationale for why this subject is necessary to be taught at Lewis & Clark in concentration as a minor program.

• • What evidence is there that Lewis & Clark students are interested in pursuing this subject to the level of a minor?
  • How is this subject in keeping with the institutional mission and the liberal arts?
  • Why is it appropriate for undergraduate study?

Explain how this minor fits within the CAS’s current curricular ecosystem.

• • Is this minor a smaller form of an existing major? Is it an interdisciplinary minor bringing together subjects and/or methods that are usually taught in separate majors?
  • What existing programs does it have a family resemblance to? How is it significantly different from existing programs, majors and minors?
  • How might this minor contribute to general education? What lower-level courses would be open to all students? Are there distribution requirements that a minor might double-dip?

Learning Objectives

Please clearly state the learning objectives for this minor and how objectives will be assessed for curricular improvement and accreditation.

Requirements and Courses

Provide a list of minor requirements and courses, approximating what you anticipate will be included in the Overview and Requirements sections of the catalogue for this minor.

Please include confirmation from relevant departments that they agree to allow their course(s) to count to the new program. For some departments or courses this may include confirmation of the staffing obligations discussed below. Confirmation can be made through the inclusion of a copy of an email to the proposers.

Minors consist of a group of required and elective courses, usually totaling 24 credits. At least 12 semester credits for the minor must be taken at Lewis & Clark. If proposing a minor that departs from these conventions, please explain why your minor does so. For the purposes of the vetting process with CC, when calculating how many credits your proposed minor requires, please also include any prerequisites, even if you are not counting them to the minor. If the addition of prerequisites expands your minor beyond 24 credits, please explain why your minor requires additional coursework.

• • Example – The Latin American and Latino Studies minor requires participation in a Latin American study abroad program. Because most programs have a language requirement of SPAN 202 or SPAN 321 to participate, this may potentially add 8 credits to the minor. (All students must complete the 201 level for the WLL general education requirement.) However, this should not cause an undue burden, since up to 12 credits from the overseas experience will count to the minor and there is one option–Ecuador–which requires participants to have completed only through SPAN 201.
  • Example – Because the Physics minor requires PHYS 151 and PHYS 152, the minor also has 8 additional credits to the required 24 (MATH 131 and MATH 132). However, some students may test out of MATH 131, and all students may take the MATH courses concurrently with the PHYS courses, so that there is not a bottleneck in completing requirements.

Some overlap with a major is permitted, but a minimum of 12 semester credits must be exclusive to the minor (i.e., may not be used in any other set of major or minor requirements). Where requirements for minors overlap, a student must complete at least 12 discrete semester credits in each minor. Identify what combinations of major and minor may create challenges for this proposed minor.

• • Example – A student majoring in Hispanic Studies and minoring in Latin American Studies needs to ensure that 12 credits of their minor are independent from their major. This can sometimes be difficult to achieve given current offerings.
  • Example – A student majoring in Biology and minoring in Earth System Sciences needs to ensure that 12 credits of their minor are independent from their major, even though courses totaling at least 18 credits that contribute to the Biology major would also otherwise satisfy both the Foundational Natural Science and Elective requirements of the minor. The student may take an additional Biology course beyond what is required for the major or satisfy the ESS elective requirement with courses from Math, Physics, Data Science and others that do not apply to the Biology major.

A minor should demonstrate a progression in a subject. Requirements generally should include

• • Lower-level course(s) to establish a foundation
  • Upper-level courses to provide more in-depth study of different aspects, methods, or subfields
  • Some minors include a capstone, either unique to the minor or shared with a major. However, a capstone is not required.

Questions to answer

• • How many credits will this minor be?
  • What is the justification for the progression in coursework for your minor? Why have the proposers identified these particular requirements?
  • How does the proposed structure aim to accomplish the learning objectives for this new minor? How will the minor be regularly assessed?
  • How many of the proposed courses already exist in the catalogue?
  • For existing courses, is the currently scheduled offering sufficient, or will creating this minor require some existing courses to be offered more frequently than they are currently? You are encouraged to consult enrollment data to confirm historically how many empty seats have existed in these courses that could accommodate future minors.
  • How many new courses will need to be created?
  • How many departments are involved in contributing to this new minor?
  • How will contributing departments absorb these new minors? Will creating this new minor create difficulties for students of different majors/minors to complete their studies?
  • Are there concerns that creating this minor will drain students from any existing programs? Have there been discussions with the potentially affected program(s) on how they might mitigate or adjust to this challenge?
    • If this minor is intended to be a smaller version of an existing major, are there concerns that this minor may undermine the health of the major, i.e., the staffing of courses to accommodate majors + minors + general education will make it more difficult to staff courses intended solely for majors?
    • If this minor is intended to be interdisciplinary, how is coherence created in such compact space as a minor?
    • Does completion of this proposed minor depend upon study abroad? If so, how frequently is/are the program/s offered? Are there on-campus alternatives for completing this minor should a student be unable to study abroad?

Staffing and Resources

Please explain what anticipated effects the introduction of this new minor will have on existing staffing and resources:

• • Where will the faculty come from to teach any new courses?
  • If a contributing faculty member needs to adjust their teaching offerings in order to meet the needs of this new minor (either through creating new courses or offering existing courses more frequently), how will this happen? What courses will no longer or less frequently be offered?
    • Please explain for each faculty member how this new commitment will affect their contributions to existing majors, minors, and general education.
  • If the development of this new program requires the addition of new faculty, has funding for permanent faculty already been secured?
  • Will the delivery of this minor require access to certain facilities on campus (e.g., labs, performance spaces)? If so, please include correspondence from the chairs of departments that already use those facilities for instruction and research, indicating their agreement.
  • Will new equipment or resources need to be acquired?
  • Will the new minor require additional support from Watzek Library?
  • Are there other non-faculty staff whose contributions are necessary for the delivery and support of the minor? How will their current workload adjust or else how will they receive additional compensation?

Program Comparisons

Please provide context for the study of this subject in comparable schools, providing at least five comparisons. If there are not five identifiable comparison programs from appropriate peers (see below), please address why you believe that is: Is this a new growing field? Is our ability to offer this subject a unique situation due to Lewis & Clark’s current makeup of faculty expertise? (If so, how dependent is the health of this minor on a single person?) Is this subject sometimes taught under the guise of a different disciplinary name or as a concentration in a different department? Is this a field that has commonly been taught at the graduate level or for a different kind of undergraduate degree?

Appropriate peer comparisons include

• • Northwest Five
  • Other schools included in our Carnegie Classification
  • Other liberal arts colleges – the context being how undergraduates in liberal arts settings encounter this subject
  • PNW schools – the context being where else in the region is this subject offered

Less valuable comparisons are with

• • Universities not in the PNW
  • Programs that are for degrees we do not offer (e.g., BS, B.F.A.)