The Council on Academic Affairs is meeting at 2 p.m. Thursday in Room 4440 of Booth Library to discuss upcoming course revisions.

Marita Gronnvoll, chair of the CAA, agrees there will be many changes made by the council, most of which include giving students the option of taking more online courses.

“It was officially accepted about two years ago; we have these undergraduate learning goals,” Gronnvoll said. “This was something that CAA had a subcommittee on that had developed these learning goals. What we want is to make sure that a freshman coming in at EIU achieves a certain level by the time they leave.”

Gronnvoll said some students need to learn skills such as critical thinking, speaking, listening, and critical writing before graduating.

Since the CAA has these learning goals in place, every department is trying to revise their curriculum to include such skill achievement.

For the CAA, the past two years have been busy because of this.

“Whether you are taking a class in math or you’re taking a class in (communication studies) or in biology there should be a critical thinking component to that,” Gronnvoll said. “But clearly math isn’t going to have maybe a speaking component or a writing component. They’re going to have different goals that they’re trying to achieve. But overall, once someone graduates, they should have gotten a certain level of speaking, listening, writing, and reading.”

Gronnvoll said the CAA is going to make a more concentrated effort to teach critical thinking, such as teaching how students can critique media messages, and how they can critique political messages.

Critiquing these messages is something the communication studies department focuses on, but each department has its own role to play for the overall goal of making sure someone who leaves Eastern has a solid education, Gronnvoll said.

The CAA will focus its attention this week on revisions being made for three different psychological classes, which include courses 2610 Statistical Methods of PSY, 4274 Orientation of Internship, and 4590 Psychology Seminar.

The CAA will also be voting on a proposal change the name of “Mathematics and Computer Sciences” to “Computer Science and Mathematics.”

This will also cause prefix changes for several courses to “CSM.”

The CAA will also be accepting nominations for designation of faculty laureate.

Jeff Coy can be reached at 581-2812 or jrcoy@eiu.edu

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