Minors Minutes: Thursday, July 2nd

Minors Workgroup

7/2/2015

In Attendance:

Overview:

• Discussed timeline of minors/certificates in terms colleges, students, and reporting. 
• Discussed limiting number of minors/certificates a student can apply for. 
• Discussion of graduating seniors and emergency situations that may need to be addressed when a student needs to declare a minor to gratuate and it is after the 12th class day of the last semester.
• Review certificate questions.

Decisions:

• Minors and majors will follow the same timeline. Students will have until the 8^th class day to apply for minors and colleges will have until the 12^th class day to approve them. After the 12^th class day, any minor applications and approvals will show up as “proposed”.  These will be available to add to the student porfile records the next CCYYS.
• If a student is changing their minor within the same school as the major it is pair with (i.e. History major, English minor changing to French minor), this change can happen after 12^th class day as long as the minor is approved.  
• Students should be able to select minors/certificates and have it approved for the current CCYYS after the 12th class day as long as the student is enrolled in the same college as the minor/certificate.
• Limit the number of minors a student can be approved for and have their spot held.  The suggestion was that students can only have 5 approved minors/certificates at one time.  If students have not used the minor/major within their major degree plan, then the approved minor/certificate will expire in one year.  The student will be removed from the minor/certificate program.  This may have to be implemented in phase 2 of the system.
• The current certificate system will include an audit that will not allow any certificate to be added for the 2016-2018 catalog and beyond.  It will remain active since students will still be pursuing certificates from earlier catalogs.  
• Certificates coded in IDA will allow for non course components (ex. proficiencies).  They will have the same requirements as the exisiting degree plans.  

Questions/Concerns/Issues:

• Policy should be set with the limit on the number of minors/certificate students be approved? This should be sent to the Policy Implementation Group for further review. 
• Advisors will be able to see all minors that they student has applied and approved for and will be the one to inform them about the limit; one minor with one major.  This may be a link to another webpage. 
• There needs to be a universal policy across the university in regard to the minor/certificate timeline. It is too late to change the legislation for the 2016-2018 catalog but we will change it for the catalogs after it.  It was agreed that we will use the same as the major timelines to streamline the processes and make them consistent.
•  Will the application process be uniform for everyone or can it be adjusted?  It will be uniform across the board.
• Will we code certificates like we code minors? Yes, it will be the same type of coding process.
• Concern: the word “minor” in the 2016-2018 catalog having a different meaning than “minor” in prior catalogs.   There was discussion of finding a way to distinguish between the two different “minors”.  It was suggested to add text to the minor header on earlier catalogs that indicates that the minor will not show up on the student's transcript or to make the minor header a link to the catalog definition.  It is still being discussed and will be addressed in the upcoming meetings.
• An exception or emergency process for graduating seniors should be considered.  If a graduating senior did not select a minor/certificate or selects after the 12th class day on their last semester, advisors will need a way to mark a purposed minor as current and make it available to select and add to the student's profile record.  Update capablity to the VO screen in *NRRECS was discussed as an option.  This is a phase 2 project and will need to be fully vetted after the initial release.   
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Next Steps:

• Next week we will start demoing the minors system with the application process.
• We need to discuss how to communicate all of this new information to students and talk through issues with them. They will also need to know where to go if they need help or have further questions.