MINUTES OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE

October 13, 2000

KU 310, 3:00 p.m.

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Presiding: George Miner

Senators Present: Burrows, Conniff, Cox, Dandaneau, DeConnick, Doyle, Dries, Dunne, Eimermacher, Gerla, Geiger, Gould, Hary, Ilg, Korte, Miner, Mize, Mott, Pedrotti, Pestello, Weaver, Yungblut

Guests: Eloe, Herrelko, Lang, Melko, Palermo, Walker, Wilhoit

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1. Opening Prayer:  The meeting opened with a moment of silence and the Lord’s Prayer.

2. Roll Call:  Twenty-two of thirty-six senators were present.

3. Approval of Minutes:  The minutes of September 8, 2000 were approved with one typo correction.

4. Implementation of Writing Competency – Senate Document No. 00-12

When the Senate passed the Competency Program on December 3, 1999 (Senate Document 99-8), there was no specification for the implementation date of the writing general competency. The Competency Implementation Subcommittee has been working to start this competency in the fall of 2001. It anticipates no problems with that date. Therefore, a proposal was submitted to make the fall 2001 starting date official. There was no discussion on the starting date.

A vote was taken: For 19; Against 0; Abstain 2. The proposal passed.

Discussion relative to the general writing competency was directed to potential staffing problems for those students who must retake one of the English composition courses after receiving a D. A C in ENG 101, 102, 114, and 198 is required to pass general writing competency. Data were distributed showing that over the past five fall semesters 4 to 18 students received D’s in ENG 102 and 114 combined. During the last five winter semesters 25 to 51 students received D’s in ENG 102. Since most of these students will return to the university and will be required to retake the English composition course, extra staffing will be needed to accommodate them. This points out that early intervention is desired while these students are taking the course for the first time.

There are two other factors that will come into play, which may alleviate the problem of extra staffing. First, if students know that a C is required to pass general writing competency, they may improve their work during the semester. Second, if more student hours are actually taught, the new budget process (MMB), when fully implemented, will direct more monies to those departments.

5. Lecturer Representation on the Senate- Senate Document No. 00-11, Issue 1-98-11

At present there is no senate representation for full-time non-tenure-track faculty. A proposal was submitted to provide for such a representation. The representative will be elected in the fall semester, begin serving in the winter semester, and serve for one year.

A question was asked about the number of faculty involved. It was stated that in any given year it is typically fifty to sixty. A follow-up question concerned the number of these faculty in the various units. This year the allocation is: College 32, Business 7, Education 6, Engineering 2, and Law 6, for a total of 53. Except for Engineering the distribution is not significantly different from the distribution of full-time tenured and tenured-track faculty.

A question was asked about the temporary nature of these faculty appointments, specifically the possibility that an elected individual may leave at the end of the academic year, which is half way through the senate year. The response to this question was that there is a mechanism in place to substitute for senators who can not fulfill part of their term of office. The person with the second most votes would step in.

A vote was taken: For 21; Against 0; Abstain 0. The proposal passed.

It was pointed out that since this is an amendment to the Senate Constitution, open hearings and a vote by the full faculty must take place.

6. Quantitative Reasoning Competencies – Senate Document No. 00-10, Issue 1-00-10

When the Competency Program was passed by the Senate on December 3, 1999, it did not include the quantitative reasoning competencies. The APC has worked on this competency for ten months, seeking help from the mathematics department and math educator faculty. It is now ready for implementation. The proposal is broken into two parts: 1) the actual topics that will be required, and 2) the implementation process.

Part 1 was presented first.

There are still three modules: 1) Algebraic Modeling, 2) Growth Modeling, and 3) Probability and Statistic Modeling. Each module contains several specific mathematical topics. There was no discussion.

A vote was taken: For 21; Against 0; Abstain 0. The proposal passed.

Part 2 elicited several comments.

Will the math department have a course to cover all the topics in all three modules? The reply was that no plans are being made to provide such a course. It will be necessary to talk to the units first to determine the need. It was pointed out that MTH 114, which is presently the minimum requirement for the college, does not cover all of the topics.

It was mentioned that the proposal should be edited for grammar and spelling.

Should there be some type of assessment procedure or feedback mechanism? There is an assessment component to all of the competencies.

Will the math department have a staffing problem similar to English? Since the quantitative reasoning is not connected to any single set of courses, it would seem that the potential problem is not as great. Also, if a student receives a D in a math course that covers one of the modules, he or she may pass that module requirement by taking a test, rather than repeating a course.

What resources will be needed? The Competencies Implementation Subcommittee will be determining the resources necessary for all of the competencies.

Who will track the completion of the competencies? The deans’ offices will have responsibility.

It was suggested that the timeline to start in the fall of 2001 is too soon for departments to react. Curriculum changes will have to be finished in time to place them in the bulletin, which is due early in the winter semester. Many courses are in place, but agreement between academic departments, the math department and the General Education and Competencies Committee, as to what courses will satisfy the topics, will require significant discussions and time. The Competency Implementation Subcommittee will have to work with all of the departments, and specifically with the math department, to make sure all of the topics are covered for all of the students in one or more courses. This work should be completed during the 2000 – 2001 academic year, so that input to the 2002 Bulletin is ready. A friendly amendment was offered, and accepted, to extend the starting date for both the general and graduation competencies from fall of 2001 to fall of 2002.

It was noted that some departments have courses that will cover a module, but they are taught during the fifth semester. It was suggested that the General Education and Competencies Committee could consider exceptions such as this.

It was asked what would happen if a student did not complete the competencies by the end of sophomore year. The answer was that such a situation would be handled by the deans’ offices, similar to other such anomalies that occur in curriculum requirements.

A vote was taken: For 22; Against 0; Abstain 0. The proposal passed.

7. Policy on Fair, Responsible and Acceptable Use of Electronic Resources – Issue 1-98-17

This document was written and approved by the Provost and President’s Councils. It was put in effect for students starting the fall semester of 2000. The question before the senate is should it be put in effect for the entire UD community.

All three committees of the senate are expected to submit a written critique of the document. Human Resources has also been asked to comment. The critiques will go to the Provost and President’s Councils for editing as they see fit.

A number of points were made

1. On Page 4 under 6a, 2. It is routine for students to give their password and ID to faculty so that faculty can help the students.

2. On Page 5 under 6b,2c. Staff routinely collect data from the network, and some courses ask students to do it also.

3. Document should distinguish between faculty, staff and student users.

4. There are many examples given of actions that are prohibited by the document that faculty do routinely. But there is a disclaimer on page 3. But the term misuse is not defined well enough. We do not want to leave interpretations to people who are policing the policy. Correct problems now.

5. Should single document cover faculty, staff and students? Probably yes under a general umbrella policy. Then rules for different constituents could be broken out.

It was asked if the networking committee is involved in this document. The response was that the networking committee is not presently functioning.

8. Release of Student Assessment of Instruction Answers -- Senate Document 00-13

Two years ago SGA asked the Senate to support their effort to collect and display results from the Faculty Evaluation forms. Now SGA is asking the senate to support their collection of answers to the new assessment form. It is not required that SGA receive approval for this action. It is a courtesy request on their part, and they would like to have senate support.

The support is in the form that the senate agrees that it is reasonable for SGA members to ask the faculty to voluntarily release the averages of the twenty-three statements on the front page of the new instructional assessment forms. This is to be done on a course by course, semester by semester basis. SGA will coordinate all the efforts, working with ACTS to obtain the data. It will be placed on the SGA web page with a link to faculty web pages. The web page will be firewalled from outside the UD community.

It was asked what the experience was from the previous collection of data. It was reported that during the first semester in which data was collected, the response was 20 – 25% of the faculty. It fell to 5 – 10% during the second semester. It was thought that there were two likely reasons for the decrease: less action by SGA, and faculty just put it off. To that end it was suggested that SGA must find a procedure that is very easy for the faculty to react to. Email was suggested.

On a somewhat separate issue, it was asked if ACTS is saving the data from each semester. It was reported that ACTS has been asked to save all data from each semester.

A vote was taken: For 16; Against 1; Abstain 3. The proposal passed.

9. The meeting was adjourned at 4:35 p.m.