Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1992 [PAGE 544]

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532

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[May 12

President's Report on Actions of the Senates Revision of the General Education Requirements for the Sciences and Letters Curriculum, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Urbana

(35) The Urbana-Champaign Senate has approved a proposal from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to revise the General Education requirements for the Sciences and Letters Curriculum in LAS. Current requirements include: in Area I (the humanities and social sciences), students are required to complete 1-2 courses in the categories of Literature and the Arts, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, and Social Perspectives, and 1 course in the category of Non-Western Cultures and Traditions; in Area II (the sciences and mathematics), students are required to complete 1-2 courses in the categories of Physical Science, Biological Science, and Behavioral Science, and to complete 0-2 courses in Mathematics, and 0-1 course in Science and Society. Proposed changes are: the addition of a category, "U.S. Minority Cultures," to Area I; at least one course required in the category "Mathematics" in Area II, which will satisfy the campus "Quantitative Reasoning" requirement, and deletion of the category "Science and Society" from Area II. It is expected that courses now in "Science and Society" will be recommended for inclusion in one of the other categories. There are no budgetary implications for other colleges or the library.

Revision to the Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum, College of Nursing, Chicago

The Chicago Senate has approved curricular changes to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree program. The College of Nursing is changing the BSN program, currently upper division, to both a lower and upper division program. The college will begin to admit, for the first time in fall 1994, new beginning freshmen and transfer sophomore students, as well as transfer juniors and seniors. In so doing, the college has developed admissions criteria for beginning freshmen, including minimum acceptable scores on the ACT/SAT test, completion of specific high school subjects (Pattern II), including three years of mathematics and one year of chemistry with laboratory, and acceptable high school rank in class. Transfer students are required to have a minimum of 3.50 (A = 5.00) cumulative transfer grade point average and a 3.00 natural science grade point average in order to qualify for admission, in addition to satisfying all other campus transfer admission criteria. Total hours for the BSN degree increased from 122 to 133 semester hours in order to include additional content in nursing. Total hours for general education decreased from 60 to 55 semester hours, with the humanities general education requirement reduced from 9 to 6 semester hours and the social science requirement cut from 9 to 7 semester hours. Some content material previously listed under general education has been moved to the nursing core (e.g., human growth and development and cultural diversity). Total hours for nursing requirements have increased from 62 to 78 hours and include additional content to prepare students to practice nursing in current and future health care environments. The increase in the nursing core hours in both theory and clinical skills is to enable students to practice in the community, care for people of all ages, and make clinical decisions in any practical setting. New course work will cover orientation to the nursing profession; promotion of health, nutrition, and gerontology; cross-cultural perspectives on health issues; current trends in health