FROM: Office of the Provost

DATE: 6/29/2015

RE: Academic Alerts:AA#2015-17 through AA#2015-22

The following academic alerts have been posted. Please read for details.

Academic Alert(s):

AA#2015-17 Elimination of School Library Information Specialist (LIS) Courses
RATIONALE: The School Library Information Specialist (LIS) course sequence offers 24 content area semester hours for candidates seeking possible Illinois State Board of Education endorsement as a School Library Information Specialist to be added to a Professional Educators License. Endorsements can only be approved through transcript review by ISBE. Only Illinois licensed teachers could qualify for the endorsement. Students did not have to be admitted to an NLU program to take these courses. These courses may no longer be used as elective credit toward the Language and Literacy (M.Ed. and C.A.S.) as per Academic Alert #2014-33.

The rationale for program elimination in 2015 relates to absence of an adequate enrollment base to sustain the program. The revenue pattern reveals a program that did not build momentum or growth across nine academic years. Reductions in employment demand for Library Information Specialists further underscored NLU's need to add LIS to the list of under-enrolled programs that are drawing more resources than they are adding value to the NCE portfolio. Thus, NCE started a final offering of the 6 RLS course sequence with nine participating students in the Summer 2014 term with the last class scheduled for completion in Summer 2015.

AA#2015-18 Educational Leadership EDD Writing/Research Course Addition and Hours Adjustment
RATIONALE: The Ed.D. in Educational Leadership was revised in 2010 creating a three part dissertation in which candidates begin writing their dissertations in Term 3 of the program. The faculty have identified a need for candidates to have additional writing and research support earlier in the program with support continuing throughout their three year program. Therefore a new course has been created, Scholarly Writing for Practitioners, in which candidates will develop and strengthen their academic writing.

AA#2015-19 GRE Requirement Elimination
RATIONALE: The purpose of this academic alert is to remove the GRE as a requirement for admission to the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and the Ed.S. in Educational Leadership with a major in District Level Leadership. The admission requirements without the GRE component provide sufficient data on the candidate's potential for success in the program, and a precedent for this change has already been established for three other NCE doctoral programs; see Academic Alert #2005-16 and #2014-10.

AA#2015-20 Elimination of the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) Special Education Program
RATIONALE: The elimination of the CAS SPE program has been scheduled for elimination by the National College of Education Special Education program due to a lack of applications and enrollment inquiries over the last five years. In addition, it was not included last year in the Academic Alert #2014-14, when the MAT, RTP, and MEd programs were revised.

AA#2015-21 Revised Graduate NCE Admission Requirement
RATIONALE: Admission requirements have been revised for graduate NCE applicants.

The 2015 Academic Alert site is located at: http://www.nl.edu/about/leadership/provost/academicalerts/2015/

If you want to view alerts from previous years they may be accessed here<http://www.nl.edu/about/leadership/provost/academicalerts/>. You will see academic alerts going back to 2001.