International and Domestic Off Campus Studies Committee

IDOCS meeting minutes November 8 th, 2006

Meeting came to order at 3:00 in Buntrock 146

Present: Jeane DeLaney (chair), Eric Lund (IOS), Solveig Zempel (IGS Dean), Bruce Hanson (NS/Math), Dona Freeman (FA), Katherine Baker (Registrar Rep), Cate Redman (Student), Maura DeChant (Student)

Approval of minutes of Oct. 25th

IOS Report (Eric Lund):

  1. Constructive conversation with Peter Hill, BORSC Senator. The information for the report was discarded, so they could not reconstruct the survey. BORSC will send a clarifying report to the Regents in December, as well as a letter of apology to the IOS staff. Nevertheless, there are still issues of interest for BORSC, such as a broader mix of programs for all majors and summer programs. Eric supplied Peter with more information on these topics. BORSC will present reports to relevant committees for review in the future.

  2. After orientation for interims this week, letters of intent are due.

    - Discussion by committee on letters of intent, indicating that looking under IDOCS is not obvious to most faculty and a link should be provided under the “faculty documents” section of the website.

  3. Orientation for interims Thursday (11/8)

  4. Interim proposals due Friday (11/9)

  5. Open house previous Wednesday (11/1)

    - Discussion of how to better advertise open houses. Suggestions included all-campus emails, notifying advisors, signs by the post office and in the caf.

Wrap-up of discussion on first-year off-campus interims:

Points addressed:

  1. The numbers of first-years want to go off campus are very small, so changes wouldn’t affect very many students.

  2. While part of the purpose of keeping students on campus is to provide introductory classes, many students come to St. Olaf with these completed.

  3. History – in 1980, the discussion happened between CEPC and a special studies committees, specifically mentioned in a memo from Lee Swan to Bill Nelson. This policy came into effect in the 1981 catalogue. IDOCS will investigate this conversation further – minutes in the archives.

  4. Continuing orientation and integration of first-years during interim. There is some concern that most first-years students wouldn’t attend, and therefore it is not necessary that first-years remain on campus.

  5. If the policy was changed, those students desiring to go off campus wouldn’t be allowed to register first, as first-years currently do.

  6. IOS should allow professors to decide who should be accepted into their classes, as they do for on-campus classes, but IOS could possibly require this decision before any students sign up to avoid inappropriate class-student matches because of lack of interest.

  7. Allowing first-year students to leave would require a different system of evaluation, possibly a sheet for current professors to sign.

  8. More information is needed on this topic, including why first-years were excluded in the first place, and who needs to approve such a change if we were to go forward to change the policy.

Continuing discussion of focus groups conducted by IOS:

  1. These focus groups may be too anecdotal, and it might be best to rely on statistical data

  2. IOS is also running out of time to conduct focus groups, as department reviews are Dec. 7 th.

Meeting adjourned.