Approved bachelor's degree programs
- Astronomy
- Business analytics
- Chinese
- Chinese teaching
Approved master's degree programs
- Quantitative psychology
- Postsecondary foundational mathematics teaching
The potential addition of new majors to Ball State will bring the university on trend with the economic state of the world, said chairperson of the department of modern languages and classics Guohe Zheng.
The Board of Trustees approved the addition of four new bachelor’s degree programs and two master’s degree programs at its May 1 meeting.
The master’s programs are quantitative psychology and postsecondary foundational mathematics teaching. The bachelor’s programs are astronomy, business analytics, Chinese and Chinese teaching. Adding Chinese and Chinese teaching to Ball State’s offerings follows the trend of increasing business with China, Zheng said.
“The emerging power of China and increased influence of China, that’s the big picture,” Zheng said. “Commerce, personnel exchanges … visitors from the U.S. to China, because of that, there is an increase in demand also in the industry, demand for educated people who can fill those positions so the United States can do business with China.”
Marilyn Buck, associate provost and dean of university college, said the programs were added because of new employment opportunities and the hope of attracting more students to campus. She said the university adds one or two programs a year, and it was unusual for her to work on six at one time.
“Typically we look at new programs, situations where we see some needs in society for some people trained in new ways … it’s also a matter of taking advantage of the expertise that the university has,” Buck said. “We hope that there are markets of students who will be interested in Ball State that may not have been otherwise interested that will come here and get an outstanding education in one of these programs.”
Zheng said he anticipates an uptick in enrollment in the Chinese program in the coming years. He said he’s already seen an increase of students in recent years, and the number of under-enrolled classes in the program has dropped.
“We are confident our Chinese program will continue to grow, to attract more students,” Zheng said. “And the students who are enrolled in our Chinese program will be better off because they choose to major in Chinese in terms of their prospects for employment, in terms of a personal sense of fulfillment, and also this means down the road they will appreciate the education they received at Ball State.”
While the programs have been approved on the university level, they still have to obtain state approval, which is a two-month minimum process. Ball State has to submit the major proposals, which are reviewed by an academic affairs and quality committee from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. That committee either recommends direct approval of the proposals or further discussion, which is performed by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. Buck said one or two of the majors could be in place by this Fall Semester, but there are no guarantees on how fast a proposal is accepted.
Board of Trustees approves Senate proposals
The Board of Trustees also approved three Senate proposals at its meeting. These were the installation of a chronic dissatisfaction policy, an update to the anti-nepotism policy and updates to the student code of conduct.
The chronic dissatisfaction policy is in place to improve faculty performance in the classroom. If a faculty member’s performance is regarded as unsatisfactory two years in a row or in three out of five years, a committee will assist them in improving their performance.
Amy Harden, assistant professor of family and consumer sciences and a chairperson of the University Senate, said this policy was put in place to clarify in writing how to deal with faculty who aren’t doing their job, but she doesn’t foresee it being needed.
“I don’t think there will be a big impact. The amount of the faculty that this would affect is very, very small,” Harden said. “But it does put into place some accountability statements.”
As for the anti-nepotism policy, the update deals with nepotism in an academic setting, which had not been addressed before, Buck said. She said the policy mainly addresses nepotism in a workplace situation, and didn’t relate as much to the students.
“What hadn’t been in the policy before is what happens if the faculty member has a family member in their class or has a professional personnel member who is in a position where they’re making decisions that impact family members, such as admission to campus ... anything that’s related to educational decisions,” Buck said. “This is looking very specifically in education matters, within classes, not just within an employment situation.”
With the student code of conduct, there were three changes.
The first involved wording changes. The term “academic dishonesty” is changing to “academic misconduct,” “punishment” is changing to “consequences” and “innocent” to “not responsible.”
Another change is the transfer of grade appeals from the Office of Student Rights and Community Standards to the Buck’s office. Buck said the only effect the transfer will have on students is whom they communicate with.
The final change is, for both grade appeals and student academic ethics matters, juries by peers will be provided by each college, instead of by the Student Government Association alone.
The next Board of Trustees meeting will take place at the beginning of June. The board will go over the budget for the upcoming school year, including salary increases and tuition costs.
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