Ithaca College’s Committee on College-Wide Requirements (CCR) has finalized its faculty vote on the final proposal for the Integrative Core Curriculum (ICC) Revision and submitted it to the Academic Policies Committee (APC) August 27.
The finalized proposal recommends six revisions to the current ICC curriculum: eliminating the current e-portfolio and complementary liberal arts (CLA) requirements; adding a new one-course integrative engagement (IE) requirement; allowing departments and degree programs the option to specify one of the perspectives — creative arts, humanities, social sciences or natural sciences — as being covered within a major; separating themes from perspectives, a separation that allows students to take courses outside their designated themes and have them count for the themes and perspectives requirements; and adjusting requirements for courses to be designated as an ICC capstone course.
The proposal for revising the ICC has been an ongoing process –– the Provost’s Task Force on ICC Revision was created in 2019 and submitted its draft proposal of changes to the CCR Nov. 9, 2020, after being delayed because of COVID-19 pandemic.
The task force received feedback throughout November and early December. Groups that provided feedback include curriculum committees at all five schools, the Student Governance Council, Academic Advising Center, Ithaca Seminar Steering Committee, Deans’ offices and the Faculty Council. The CCR assembled feedback and returned it to the task force Dec. 6, 2020. The task force then made revisions based on the feedback and submitted the final proposal to the CCR on April 6, 2021.
According to an Intercom post, the CCR took two weeks to review the proposal and then conducted an online faculty advisory vote on the proposed revisions from April 22 to April 30.
Kari Smoker, assistant professor in the Department of Accounting and Business Law and chair of the CCR said that the online survey was distributed to 607 faculty members and 273 faculty members responded at all or part of the survey.
“In addition to casting an advisory vote on the proposal as a whole and on each of the six proposed changes, faculty members were given the opportunity to provide feedback and/or comments,” Smoker said via email.
Results from the survey showed that 87.2% of faculty surveyed were supportive of the proposal as a whole. Smoker said that CCR’s support for the proposal was unanimously in favor. The proposed change of eliminating the e-portfolio and replacing it with the course-based program assessment and ‘Integrative Engagement’ (IE) received 97% of faculty support. The change of decoupling the Perspectives requirements from Themes received 92.2% of faculty support. The proposed change of allowing departments and degree programs the option to specify one of the perspectives as being covered within a major received 87.4% of faculty support. The elimination of the CLA received 76.3% of faculty support, while the adjustment of the capstone requirement received 91.4% and the addition of a one–course IE Requirement received 53.2%.
Smoker said that if the proposed revisions are accepted by the APC, the changes to the ICC would be effective for freshmen in Fall 2022 or 2023.
“Further communication on the process, going forward, is expected shortly,” Smoker said.
