Senate Academic Program Committee November 20, 2009 To: Senate From: Peter Ricketts, Provost and Chair of SAPC RE: Major Curriculum changes for 2010 2011 Curriculum Approval Process Changes to our curriculum are subject to review and approval in many stages by departmental committees and boards, Faculty committees and boards and finally Senate committees. The Senate Curriculum Committee approves minor changes. The Senate Academic Program Committee considers Major curriculum changes and makes recommendations to Senate on their approval. Major Curriculum Changes for 2010-2011 At its meetings of October 22, November 5 and 19, 2009, the Senate Academic Program Committee (SAPC) considered and approved the following proposals. Senate is now asked to consider the proposals and provide approval. The motions are gathered here and the following pages present rationales and details of the changes. Further information is presented in Appendices A C. More information is available on request for many of these changes. There will be a subsequent SAPC report at the January 2010 meeting of Senate to present the remaining major curriculum changes for 2010-11. MOTION 1: That Senate approves the MA program in Women s and Gender Studies subject to approval by the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies (OCGS); and that upon approval by OCGS without substantive changes to the program, that the MA program in Women s and Gender Studies be deemed to be given final approval by this motion. MOTION 2: That Senate approves the change of name for one stream in the Bachelor of Computer Science from BCS Honours Mobility and Community to BCS Honours Mobile and Social Networking Applications. MOTION 3: That Senate approves the program changes for the BA Combined Honours and the BA General in Canadian Studies. MOTION 4: That Senate approves the name change of the Minor in Aboriginal Studies to the Minor in Indigenous Studies.
MOTION 5: That Senate approves the modification the program requirements for the Concentration in Financial Economics for the BA Honours Economics and the BA Honours Applied Economics MOTION 6: That Senate approves, in the context of the BA programs in Political Science, the change of name for two concentrations From: Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Industrialized States) Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Development and Underdevelopment) To: Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Global North) Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Global South) MOTION 7: That Senate approves, within the context of the Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Electrical and Computer Engineering, the replacement of the master s program: M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering by course work with two programs: M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering by course work; M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering by project. MOTION 8: That Senate approves the new 12-month Master Degree in French. MOTION 9: That Senate approves, in the list of field names for the Cultural Mediations PhD, the change of the New Technologies to Technology and Culture. MOTION 10: That Senate approves, in the context of the School of Public Policy and Administration, the name change of the graduate diploma from Policy and Program Evaluation to Public Policy and Evaluation.
Rationales and Details 1: Women and Gender Studies: Proposal for a new MA: (See Appendix A for the complete brief.) Program Synopsis (excerpt from OCGS brief) The Master of Arts program in Women s and Gender Studies will provide advanced training in feminist scholarship. It will be addressed to students seeking to acquire the critical skills to explore gender as a social relation of power, to conduct advanced feminist research and to those students who require the foundational graduate degree upon which to build their expertise in order to pursue research at the PhD level. The proposed degree program requires the completion of 5.0 credits. Students will be required to take two half-credit courses: WGST 5906 (Feminist Theories), WGST 5907 (Researching Women s and Gender Issues) and a full credit Program Seminar WGST 5905. Students will be expected to complete a thesis (2.0 credits) or Major Research Project (1.0 credit). They will choose their remaining credits (with consultation) from a selection of additional courses in Women s and Gender Studies for a total of 5 credits. 2:School of Computer Science At the May 29, 2009 Senate meeting the BCS Honours Mobility and Community program stream received approval to begin September 2010. Subsequent to the approval, additional discussions took place with senior administrators, recruitment staff and the academic unit with respect to the program name. The name of the program was reconsidered and the new name of Mobile and Social Networking Applications was recommended to and approved by SAPC. It is expected that the new name will make a better connection with prospective students. 3:Canadian Studies (See Appendix B) In response to recommendations from the Undergraduate Program Review, our goals in redesigning the program are 1) to create a vertically-integrated pedagogical progression for students, 2) to provide students with greater coherence in their education through the development of shared sets of concepts, structures of knowledge and intellectual vocabulary and 3) to address some of the UPR assessors concerns about the lack of community in our department by creating a more robust sense of cohort as students will progress together through their program. Note: Appropriate programs changes have also been made to the general degree in terms of new courses and changes to degree requirements.
4: Indigenous Studies (See Appendix C) 5: Economics In keeping with the Institute s plan to make Indigenous-topic courses more visible and move towards a stand-alone undergraduate program in Indigenous Studies, it is proposed to transform the Minor in Aboriginal studies into a Minor in Indigenous Studies that would be vertically integrated at every level of the undergraduate program. The creation of core courses for the minor will ensure pedagogical coherence and a logical progression from year to year. Concentration in Financial Economics Old Version: Concentration in Financial Economics a) 3.0 credits in BUSI 1001, BUSI 1002, ECON 2504 (or BUSI 2504), ECON 2505 (or BUSI 2505), ECON 3500 (or BUSI 3500), ECON 3502 (or BUSI 3502); b) 1.0 credit from ECON 4500 (or BUSI 4500), ECON 4502 (or BUSI 4502), ECON 4504; New Version: Concentration in Financial Economics a) 1.0 credit in BUSI 1001 and BUSI 1002; b) 1.5 credits in: i) ECON 3050, ECON 4051 and ECON 4052, or ii) BUSI 2505, BUSI 3500 and BUSI 3502; c) 1.5 credits from ECON 3602 or ECON 4602, ECON 3607, ECON 4053, ECON 4056, ECON 4057, BUSI 2504 and BUSI 4500 and/or BUSI 4502. Note: In Item a), BUSI 1004 may replace BUSI 1001 and BUSI 1005 may replace BUSI 1002. Rationale: To respond to the likely impact of a proposed change by the School of Business that would raise further the prerequisites for BUSI 2505 and all 3000- and 4000-level finance courses. Absent modification of the Department s Concentration in Financial Economics so as to make it considerably more distinct from the School s Concentration in Finance, student success in the former would be predicted to decline substantially. Moreover, such modification will increase the attractiveness to students of the Concentration in Financial Economics thereby allowing it to get back on the growth track that it was on a couple of years ago. The present proposal would replace the five existing 3000- and 4000-level financial economics courses four of which are cross-listings of corresponding BUSI courses with three new 4000-level ECON courses covering the three main branches of financial economics viz., asset pricing, corporate finance, and mathematical finance and two new 4000-level ECON courses covering insurance economics and the emerging field of
behavioural financial economics. The first two of these new courses would be allowed to substitute for the currently required pair of 3000-level BUSI courses in the Concentration, and any three of the third, fourth, and fifth together with three existing 3000- or 4000-level Economics electives would be allowed to substitute for the pair of 4000-level BUSI finance courses together with BUSI 2504. In addition, the proposal would replace the two existing 2000-level financial economics courses both of which are cross-listings of corresponding BUSI courses with one new 3000-level ECON course, which would provide an introduction to the field of financial economics. This course would be allowed to substitute for the currently required BUSI 2505 in the Concentration. The structure of the proposed concentration is: (a) an accounting core, (b) a financial economics or finance core, and (c) financial economics electives. Students who choose the financial economics core would normally complete any three of ECON 3/4602, ECON 3607, ECON 4053, ECON 4056, and ECON 4057 as well; students who choose the finance core would normally complete BUSI 2504 and BUSI 4500/2 together with one of six of the other seven financial economics electives. The latter stream is equivalent to the existing concentration augmented with four additional elective possibilities (thereby admitting eight additional combinations of electives). A third stream would comprise students who complete the finance core together with any three of ECON 3/4602, ECON 3607, ECON 4053, and ECON 4056. Such students would also have to complete BUSI 2504 (since it is a prerequisite for BUSI 2505), which would count among their credits not included in the Major CGPA. 6: Political Science Political Science proposes the change of name for two concentrations From: Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Industrialized States) Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Development and Underdevelopment) To: Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Global North) Comparative Politics and Area Studies (Global South) Rationale for change: These terms (Global North and Global South) better reflect the current usage in the discipline. The new terminology also promises to be more meaningful to students. 7: Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Electrical and Computer Engineering The changes will replace an existing master s program with two programs. The program by course work requires 5.0 credits of course work while the program by project requires the student to complete a project course along with additional course work.
M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering by course work; 5.0 credits in approved courses M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering by project 4.5 credits in approved courses and 0.5 credit in a project course 8: French That Senate approves the new 12-month Master Degree in French. It is proposed to reduce the program requirements from 5.0 credits to 4.5 in order to make a twelve-month M.A. possible. In recent years, the Department has received numerous requests about the possibility of a one-year M.A. This option is available at other institutions, so introducing it at Carleton will make our program more competitive. For those students wishing to complete a thesis, this option is still available. The reduction in credit requirements is offset by adding FREN 5301, thus reinforcing the foundation Research Methods course, FREN 5300 Old Version: Normally, all full-time students are expected to fulfill the requirements of the M.A. program by the end of the fifth term of study. Generally, students should be able to complete their program within four terms. New version: Full-time students in the comprehensive examination and research essay options should be able to complete their program within three terms. Full-time students in the thesis option should be able to complete their program within five terms. 9: Cultural Mediations In the list of field names for the Cultural Mediations PhD, it is proposed to change New Technologies to Technology and Culture as a more appropriate description of the field. 10: School of Public Policy and Administration The name of the graduate diploma from Policy and Program Evaluation will change to Public Policy and Evaluation reflecting the name and focus of the School.