College Senate
Minutes of the Meeting of February 12, 2001
Chair Swansinger called the meeting to order at 4:04PM in 105 Fenton Hall.
1. Swansinger: Let me start off with item one. (Motion to accept agenda) Is there a second, thank you. If you don't mind, I'd like to keep to the same rules as in the past as much as possible, identify yourselves before you speak. Because, of course the tape recorder will just not let me remember who it is! (laughter) Could we have a motion for the approval of the minutes? (mumbling) Oh, I'm sorry. In case you have not guessed, Dick Reddy is the parliamentarian, we are all going to have to rely on him greatly. Can we have a vote for an approval of the agenda? All those in favor please say "I."
The vote was unanimous.
2. Swansinger: Any opposed? Now, that I have motion for approval of the minutes
Mac Nelson motioned for the approval of the minutes.
Swansinger: We have a second? All those in favor please say "I." (mumbling) Any nays? Let me make a small change to the agenda, Melinda Karnes just called and she was traveling this weekend by plane and has suffered the usual consequences of such activity. She now has a cold and will not be able to make a report. However you do have a handout, and should you have any questions she will answer them in March.
3. a) Since this is my first time, I figured I would take some of your time to try and set up a little bit of what I hope to do this year. And in that sense I am going to continue with what has already been mentioned by George Browder, my predecessor and Nancy Gee, my predecessor, which is to talk very much about the effectiveness of governance on this campus.
I basically handed out a little organizational chart, which you may have seen. And that little chart is to show you the basic organization based on the preference list, which we hand out to faculty and college senate members, and faculty and professionals all through the campus- usually in October of each year. The reason I handed this out is because I would like to raise the issue of whether big is effective. Or whether there is a possibility of rethinking governance a little bit. If you bother to add up all the numbers on this chart, you will find that the basic standing committees, without the subcommittees, require approximately 60 faculty positions. Naturally some faculty serve on more than one committee. But since our total full time faculty positions is 229, and that number is from an Albany source, so there may be some disagreement (with the Fredonia number). But, the proportion remains true. You have 229 full time faculty; I don't at this moment have a total professional number. But, what we do have is that at all times approximately one fourth of professional and faculty has to be involved in governance in order to maintain at this point. And that's without any involvement in administrative governance, or committees, or searches, or departmental stuff, or anything else that you may be involved in on campus. So, I would like to propose, that a task force be created. And my vice chair, Patrick Jones, who would very happily be here, except that he committed to a musical performance about three months back--would chair that task force. And what we would like to look at is the question of what size is effective faculty governance? And how can these committees, subcommittees be tailored in such a way, as to make faculty governance a little less onerous for faculty and professionals who serve. Um, another example of this is simply we still do not have a secretary for College Senate. We also frequently when calling people do not get the best of responses to serving. Our preference list is a little shallow not so much because people don't offer to serve, but because volunteers can only serve on so many committees at a time. And after a certain maxima is reached, volunteers simply do not want to commit to anything more. So over and over we face the same problem, and I think the simple fact that one fourth of all faculty are involved in some kind of committee at one time or another, over a period of two years, may be defining some of the problem right there. So I would very much like to have volunteers to serve on the task force to take a look at this issue. And naturally I am trying to collect names. You can either contact me either after this meeting or email me, if you care to be involved on this task force. I am hoping to have them report back in March with suggestions regarding the structure and size of faculty governance. We could discuss it as well as vote on it later during the semester. Additionally, using the number of 229, the fact that fifty percent are junior faculty who have been hired in the last 3 or 4 years, reduces your effective personnel to about 115 to 118 faculty that are associate or full professors that can serve on these committees. So you really do have quite a...
Chilberg: I was wondering if in the spirit of dealing with downsizing and implications to the senate, that maybe instead of adding a committee to examine all this...would it be possible or reasonable to have the governance committee do so? It's already established with liaisons to champion its cost and maybe if we need other sorts of representation then that can be added as an ad hoc membership for this project.
Swansinger: One of the problems......Governance is one of the areas where we have a lack of people willing to serve. And one of the things that has happened is we have, I believe....I should let Charlie speak to this more than I ... but I know he's short of personnel.
Charles Davis: Well we did what you were suggesting last year on governance looking at all the committees on this side of the house. We finished our report and sent it to Jacky, and we looked at all committees and asked their purpose of the chair people in terms of viability. And we gave a report to the executive committee, Dennis has acted to eliminate committees on the administrative side. Jacky is looking at sponsoring a similar move on the side of faculty governance. There are a lot of reasons as to why, its not so much downsizing because a lot of committees and subcommittees are duplicating activities, so it is not simply downsizing... it makes sense if you look at it. Whether duplication or some subcommittee actually goes and reports to the parent committees for whatever reasons and/or reporting to the administration.
Swansinger: Sure
Chilberg: It seems that I sense there is a wealth of knowledge already about this here. And I am wondering how that may not help guide us into reconsidering because this is already here. It looks like some research has been done, and maybe the meat and potatoes of this investigation is there. Is it?
Davis: Yes.
Swansinger: A lot of it is.
Chilberg: So, basically, if this task force does get formed , this previous research would be the basis for which they would be continuing the effort.
Swansinger: And at this point they have qualitative comments from the chairs of various standing committees, who also have numbers we can plug in. And we also have other offices that we can pull in a few more numbers from. And that needs to be done. Right.
Davis: A lot of the faculty are saying that I think the task force would be a good idea, in the sense that the governance committee would be in a position to say certain issues exist, or don't exist. Someone else should take that data and look at it and see whether or not there's a reason to streamline. Where there is evidence of duplication it makes sense to cut if there are two calendar committees or if there's nine award committees.
Swansinger: And this is not an attempt to eliminate governance but to the contrary; to make it more efficient. Because one of the difficulties is when you have 60 faculty spread over five or six committees, and they are all stressed out you don't necessarily get the follow through that you need to make effective decision making. So please, do feel free to contact me about serving on this task force, and letting other people know as well.
b) The second item I wanted to mention is simply one that you're probably already familiar with - simply the fact Vice President of Student Affairs, Michael Dimitri , has decided to retire, and his retirement will be effective this summer. It's a very difficult thing to thank someone or to state clearly the qualities of someone who has been so much a part of an institution. For a number of people here, many years have been logged with Vice President Dimitri. In my case, my whole career has been marked by his term as Vice President of Student Affairs. And so on one hand, I didn't want to let this moment go by without at least saying how much we appreciate his time, his service, and his loyalty to the institution. But of course the job of this particular body is to put together a committee to search for the new position of Vice President of Student Affairs. And, you have picked up a sheet which basically outlines most of the people that I have talked to and who are willing to serve, the only people that are not mentioned there are two students. The Student Association President does know that we are looking for two students to add to this list, and they will make recommendations for that effect. But we didn't have the names at the time, and I wanted to make sure I got this to you before the next College Senate meeting.
(Reddy): Yes, right here. You've made the motion , this is a motion to present this slate, including the ...two students to be named.
Swansinger: Students will be added on this list.
(Reddy): Right. So it's subject to discussion at this point.
Swansinger: No discussion... ok, then. I guess we'll...sure. (motion to accept the slate) Can I have a second for that motion?
(Reddy): You don't need it.
Swansinger: I don't need it?
(Reddy) This is an executive committee motion, and there is no need for it under the circumstances.
Swansinger: Then we need a vote. Could I have um, people who are in favor of this motion say Aye? People who are against this motion say nay?
(Reddy): It passes.
The vote was unanimously passed.
Swansinger: The motion passes. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting this long, the floor is now belongs to the President.
4. Hefner: Thank you. Just as a follow up on the governance issue, as we went through all of the committees or a number of administrative committees you probably noticed the preference list has about fifty some odd committees that exist on campus, half of those were administrative committees. And we went through in the last nine months and the net result is we eliminated ten of those committees. Some of the functions we rolled in some other committees, some functions we did away with. I didn't think they were terribly critical as we got rid of some committees. And in a few cases we took a few committees and merged them together. But the net result was a reduction of ten total committees. And we have sent a note to the executive committee, and if anybody's interested in which committees we've done away with you can call my office and we'll send you a copy of the memo which we sent to the executive committee. I think it just makes it more efficient and we just had too many committees working on too many small things and we need people working on broader issues. I wanted to give you a quick update, especially on some issues related to the state. We have a board of trustees meeting looks even more and more likely that it will occur on our campus on April 24. We don't have the absolute final word, but I'd say its about ninety nine percent certain now. And that will be good, we haven't had the board of trustees here, people have told me in fifteen years or so. Anybody remember when they last were here? It has been a long time since they were here, it would be good to get them out here and let them see a real good campus.
The second item relating to the trustees, is this Thursday we do have one of our trustees who will be on campus in the morning and we will be setting up a few meetings. I know some individuals in fact governance would be invited to come have the chance to meet with him. He'll just be here for a short time, and its always good to have a trustee to come on campus for a period of time. Meeting with some students, uh student groups and get a tour of the campus and then he's got the head off to some other meeting. But it will be good to have him here. On this Thursday, also February 15, we will be going out to bid for the Mason Hall renovation. And so, our hope is the contract will be met the first week in April, that's the time frame that we have, this is about a nine million dollar project that involves renovating the old part of Mason and then building a new five hundred seat recital hall. So, we'll still have Diers, but it will be upgraded a little bit. The new five hundred seat recital hall and then we have King that holds twelve hundred. And, I brought a visual with me. This is the artist rendering, its a computer artist rendering of what the new recital hall will look like, the five hundred seat recital hall. You're standing in the back at the top of the balcony looking down towards the stage and I'll pass this around so that if people would like to see it. It is a glass front, so be careful with it.
On the budget scene at the state level, there's um, there's some some good news, and then some news that could improve. On the good side, is that when the governor came out with the administrative budget, the governor's budget provided for all of the collective bargaining dollars that were negotiated. Provided for the moneys to be needed for growth- that's hope for enrollment growth. And for research related growth funds. And provided a mechanism for addressing the teaching hospital issue. Which has been the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads for the last three years, and its nice that that one has at least been addressed and it should take it off the table as soon as the legislature goes along with what the governor has proposed. The needs improvement area is, ... we did not get anything in the governors budget for non personnel inflation. We happen to have one really big non-personnel inflation right now and that's the energy cost. Energy costs are more than sixty percent of...in fact is it sixty eight percent? Oh its seventy five now, each month it keeps getting worse in terms of what it was in the previous year. And this will only give us three percent on all non-personnel, and this wouldn't be enough to totally cover energy increases, but would at least, at least help. Also the academic quality initiative, which would be a real shot in the arm for all the campus' in the SUNY system that's not in the governors budget. And is one that we need to keep pushing to see if we can get through. And the governor closed the door on a tuition increase for this year. Next year is an election year, we know we have to go two years without a tuition increase. We do have a meeting this Friday with the Western New York Delegation. All of the presidents in Western New York are meeting with the Western New York Legislative Delegation and we will be going through these issue, especially working hard on the fact that we need the non-personnel inflation earned money, and we need the academic quality initiative. And also, to voice our opposition to a bill that's just been introduced invoked in December in the Senate that would actually cause us to have to role back on fees. And the roll back for our campus would be such that we would need to: close the entire health center, and close down about half of our computer labs, and cut back on most of our T1 lines on campus, and still be scrounging for a few more dollars in order to keep those services going. It's not a very well conceived bill, it does have some very strong backers. The heads of both legislative communities, and both assemblies in Senate, have put their names to this particular bill. You'll be pleased to know that college council has met last week, reviewed that particular bill were appalled by what was being suggested by the legislature. And in fact, asked a resolution opposing that bill and that resolution is being sent all over the state even as we speak. So this will be a major discussion at the meeting with the Western New York Legislative Delegation on Friday.
Getting a little closer to home I thought I'd give you a quick update on enrollment. We now have all the census figures for the year, remember our annualized target is 4950 full-time equivalent. Well, we came in 15 full time equivalent above target. We're at 4965 for the year. That's fifteen ahead of the census figure and so we are ahead of target, again this year, which is good news for all of us.
You may have noticed that on the front materials I had placed a copy of the advertisement for the Vice President of Student Affairs. If you haven't had a chance to see it, you can pick it up on your way out. That will be in the Chronicle of Higher Education that comes out this Friday and then we'll be advertising two weeks after that. It will also be in more specialized publications. I too would like to thank Vice President Dimitri for his 35 years of outstanding service at this institution. It is not very often that someone, that is more than a third of a century at one institution, (laughter) and I think that's a testament to his fortitude (laughter) It really is a labor of love to be on one campus for such a long period of time.
And then finally. I promised the committee that I would review this; just a reminder that a letter went out last week letting you know that a group of faculty and staff came forward to assist with a relief fund for India. If you saw the poster this morning, you'll know that more than 30,000 people dies in the earth quake and there are several million who are homeless at the moment. As to this relief fund, they will be contacting you shortly, if you don't want to wait, you can certainly send a check over to Fredonia College Foundation, they're just receiving money and all the money will be going to the Red Cross, and the Red Cross has assured us that the money will be utilized to assist with that. But, I do appreciate this faculty and staff stepping forward, and I know that you do to. With that, I guess I can take questions if there are any questions.
Kraus: Yes, Jon Kraus. Dennis what inspired this move by the legislature to induce a roll back in fees. Has there been a high tuition increase in the last three, four, or five years?
Hefner: Well, there certainly over, over the last eight to nine years, there has been an increase. There's no doubt about it. In the descriptive materials that go along with the bill, there's a specific reference to one of our neighboring campus', UB, which has come in with very high fees, uh, much higher than ours are and I think the legislature wants to in a sense control both tuition and fees. Before they did have control over fees, but I think that's they want control over both tuition and fees. To make sure that they both political angles. We're going to fight like crazy to keep from that happening. I think, this state needs a tuition policy, we don't need a legislature to dabble in tuition, we don't need to live up to (?). These have gone up because it was an only source of funds. And we've had flat tuition for six years, since I've been here the state has yet to totally fund us. We've lost money just in inflation every year. Some years we've at least had collective bargaining, but we've never had non-personnel inflation heavier than the time I've been here. So we keep sliding back each year. And, its an issue that I think needs to be addressed at the state level. So, I'm not disappointed for doing it, I just don't want to tax it(?).
Swansinger: Any other questions? Turning to the report of the Vice President of Academic Affairs.
5. a) Reck: Thank you. The first thing I'd like to do, is give you an update on the status of the Associate Vice President of Information Technology search. That search has been concluded, and I want to thank Dr. Steven Stahl and members on that committee. The information from the search committee was given to me last week. We had four candidates that you were probably aware, that were interviewed on our campus, three external, and one internal. And, references were called and so I am proud to announce that Karen Klose will take the permanent position and I hope that you will support her in future endeavors in improving technology on our campus.
The second item is dealing with the School of Business and Political Economy. And in your attachment there is a proposal. So this proposal is for the first reading. Hopefully, in April or May we will come with this proposal for a second reading. So I am going to ask dean Stahl to give you a brief overview of this proposal.
Stahl: Give him my initials. Ok, I won't belabor you with the materials in the packet, I'll let you read that. Um, let me say where we are in the process. We have created, a leadership team if you will of core members from, each of the perspective departments. Jon Krauss, Political Science, Arlene Hibschweiler from Accounting, Frank Kronh from Business and Administration, and Amin Sakar from Economics. We've had discussions throughout the fall semester, and have brought the discussions now to create a series of subcommittees, chaired by each of the four mentioned people. Talking about specific components of what would be necessary to make this school into a reality. The time table that we expect is that around spring break we will have the reports back from the subcommittees, and that throughout the semester we will be having meetings of the faculty of the proposed school. We'll wait until we have a subcommittee at a point where they can talk about things. And, then have the meetings at that particular moment. And I guess that's about all the time I really want to take up at this moment? Are there any questions that you all might have? Dr. Boynton...
Boynton: Ah, is this something that has to be sent out immediately?
Stahl: No. This is purely administrative. Thank you.
b) Reck: Two other quick items. I want to announce that the P.S. Parker middle Childhood mathematics has been approved by for registrations for teacher education. By the state education department, and so I say congratulations to the faculty and the department of math, and also the school of education for that accomplishment.
c) The last item is dealing with the Library Advisement Committee. As you recall the College Senate has asked for that committee to report twice a semester. Randy Gadikian will report.
d) Gadikian: Thank you. I'll be very brief. We've had a lot of activity going on in the library. As you know, we have a new catalogue system that has been installed. It has been a labor of love. And is () now up and functioning. Its not perfect at this time, but it gets better and better every day. We've processed orders through it, we're buying materials, we're doing course reserves. Um, look forward to some interesting changes. BY the way there is a training session tomorrow morning and Wednesday morning. Sessions last fifteen minutes. They start at 8:00 and run for fifteen minutes, every half hour until 10:00, at 10:30, cleaning up shop and going away. Please come over if you have an opportunity. One of the topics that we've been discussing as a committee is the effect of inflation on the library budget. Inflation has been very mean to us, in the last decade. Inflation in the cost of periodicals has been running over ten percent per year. As a case in point, we had one particular science journal and it cost $2800.00 in 1987. Today it costs just over $16,000.00 for the entire series. If you worked the formulas, that's about fifteen percent inflation per year. Obviously that is something that we have to deal with and we will be. Online periodicals are becoming more and more prevalent. Right now we receive about a thousand periodicals in print, and about five thousand online. So, you're getting access to a tremendous volume of materials. Lastly, we've been putting the money into a project called SUNY Connect. And this is an effort to get all of the libraries in SUNY to work together on issues such as electronics subscriptions and purchasing. If you look at the library web page you will notice a series of online tools one of which is AP Photo Archive. Another one is Health Reference Center and we have a database called Search Fact. These are all purchased SUNY wide and they receive a tremendous amount of use. Search Fact, for example, contains indexing and abstracting for two thousand periodicals a thousand, which are available for full text. Its in very high demand for social sciences. It is not very good for the hard sciences. For the hard sciences, we have a product called Elsevier Science Direct. Again, it's going to be a university wide purchase and hopefully by the end of March we will have access to 700 Elsevier Periodical titles in science, technology and medicine. By next year, I am hoping in September, we will have access to the full Elsevier catalogue of 1200 titles. Thank you.
Kraus: Can I ask what the charges are for the Elsevier online?
Gadikian: Certainly. That's very interesting. 3.8 million dollars. But, this is spread out all over SUNY. Remember that we have 64 campuses. University centers themselves spend, I'd say, 3.6 million dollars on Elsevier titles. It's a very expensive tool and the University centers pick up the bulk of the subscription at this time. Our campus for example, has less than $30,000 to allocate towards Elsevier. In the past we've had additional titles but they've been cancelled over the years. Elsevier is like a blob. It keeps on growing and swallowing other publishing companies. So, it has grown from a reasonably sized publishing house to one that now has 12,000 titles. 1200 titles. The objective here, the deal that we're negotiating with Elsevier will give us rights to as much of their catalogue as we can pay for with out current SUNY subscription dollars. The one caveat is we drop print and accept only online. If we want to go print and online we have to put additional funds into the pot. Elsevier is willing to make this deal. University centers are willing to buy into it. For a school such a Fredonia, Geneseo, and other four year colleges, this is a tremendous boom. It's something that we simply can't do as an individual campus. But we can do it with the collective purchasing power of 64 SUNY campuses. Any other questions? Thank you.
6. Swansinger: As I mentioned, the next item is Melinda Karnes' SUNY University Senator report. You have a handout and a number of motions were passed. In case you take then home, read them and bring them in for March.
7. a) The next item is, of course, the Standing Committee Reports starting with the College Core Curriculum Committee resolution. You have that as one of your attachments following the School of Business and Political Economy. Should we talk about that? Present it?
Faulk: First of all Ray Belliotti, Director Of the CCC couldn't be here today, so I am going to take his place. The CCC committee meets normally on a weekly basis and at this time they are looking at courses in preparation for the Fall 2001 catalogues. They have been working hard on reviewing those courses. This is the resolution and we partially discussed this last week. There is a formal resolution. The CCC Committee is giving this piece as a formal resolution and essentially the purpose is to place into the catalogues that we will be developing an upper level requirement and the fact that the development will occur between now and May () 2002. During that time the CCC Committee would be collaborating with groups across campus and then coming to this group to propose an upper level requirement. And I guess during this time its also good to realize some of the impact of the lower level requirements, requirements that are believed to support courses that are ...So, I open up to questions.
Palumbos: If you look into the other proposal they were, I think it was for 6 credits for foreign language. So is that down 3 and is it staying at 3?
Faulk: It has not been decided whether it is 3 or 6.
Palumbos: Ok, ok.
Faulk: That will be part of the decision to be made this week.
Antosh: I was curious about that too. If I understand this right, it would go in the catalogue that we meet our language requirement through groups of three. Is that what would happen?
Faulk: The language requirement of the original CCC that was passed was a 6 credit hour requirement. The president has stated that that would be incrementally adjusted to 6 hours. A date certain as to when that happens is not part of this resolution per say. So I guess the answer it is presently intended to be a 3 credit as the first experience, and our ability to meet that, and come back at a later time to implement the six credit experiment. So there's not a date firmly set.
Hefner: What I did is that I asked that after this is implemented that the committee come back prior to any deadline to the next catalogue to see if we can then implement it in the next catalogue. That was the date that I put in.
Kraus: Jon Kraus. Question regarding the meaning of capstone. I think its good to just resolve this CCC upper level course requirement issue. Is upper-level used to indicate capstone.
Faulk: But ...(papers shuffling...noises...uncertain as to what he is saying) this includes both I guess, its just a reference to a requirement for an upper level course.
Chilberg: So that means that whether this upper level is a cap-stone or not, whatever that is. That it is still uh negotiable of, of a decision. The whole thing is so that you don't just have an upper level that is which there is a cap-stone, but we're going to have something upper level that meets...
Faulk: Right, right, and we can look at a range of options that we will work out.
Chilberg: Or just an upper level advance structure for certain.
Swansinger: Dick Reddy would like to say something to this issue.
Reddy: I had, I'd like to make a substitute motion which was put forward on the prof talk, but basically is a conditional statement that supports this idea. Let me read what the resolution would say. What it is conditioned on is that we may not accomplish this by this specific period of time. We may not have agreement, and so it is simply modifying the statements so that it is clear that we are thinking about it, but that we may not be actually be able to pull it off. It would read that in the new 2001-2003 College Catalogue, a statement be made that a CCC upper level cap-stone requirement is under consideration. The specifics of this requirement are being developed by the CCC committee and if adopted will be adopted by the College Senate no later than May 2002. This upper level requirement would apply to freshman entering Fredonia in Fall 2001 and transfers entering in Fall 2003. The catalogue entry would be as follows: 11 upper level requirement capstone and then in quote...in brackets, under consideration. If required guidelines and number of credits to be determined by May 2002. Beginning in the Fall 2001 for Freshman and Fall 2003 for transfers. So I retained as much as possible what was in the proposal put forward by the committee. But altering it in case we don't come up with something along these lines. Their proposal is that we will, and that we're going to be happy with it. I have some doubts on the basis of sitting here for the past year that we will and that we will be happy with it. Uh, so that the warning is there for people if indeed we do it they will know that it's under consideration and that work is being done. But in fact we don't end up with something, they won't be surprised, we won't be surprised. So that's a motion, a substitute motion for this proposal that I am making. We require a second?
Swansinger: Yeah, it would require a second. Can we have a discussion on the second motion? Dr. Byrne?
Byrne: I have trouble putting anything into a catalogue that is so tentatively phrased. Maybe we'll do this, maybe we won't. The incoming student involved in 2001, here's your catalogue. Who can't really tell you that there is going to be an upper level requirement? I'm just concerned, I guess its just a concern that the catalogue which is the contract the students will have this kind of language.
Chilberg: Uh, I guess in view of the alternative, about the iffy motion, is the other motion regarding a sealed time limit, if we approve this. We wouldn't have to actually develop something to put in the catalogue. Because there does seem to be, it will be inserted into the catalog that seems to be more definitive, obviously. I guess that's what you were saying here. It would be alternative, substitute motion. And, my feeling is that this is up in the air as far as I'm concerned. And it has questionable merit as far as I'm concerned. I would rather go with the motion that allows us to not do it. Than one that seems to be more specific, and we will do something. So, I will speak in favor of this motion. The substitute motion.
Swansinger: Ruth Antosh?
Antosh: I wish someone could reassure me that that this GCP isn't totally, or this CCC isn't totally horizontal. That the student seems to be a student could well end up taking all introductory type courses, or am I not seeing something here? Don't we need a general education program that has some upper level requirements to it? Seems pretty strange. And I'm not sure how we compare to the other SUNY campuses, but I would think it would be unusual to have no upper level requirement.
Faulk: Let me just, I guess in terms of reviewing categories one through ten, the introductory are in fact mostly one and two hundred levels. The courses in Western Civilization and Non-Western Civilization, most of those are upper level. And there are some courses scattered throughout the upper level. Required, it could if the student forgot to take the lower level, perhaps they could. Chances probably aren't good because most of the courses in Western Civilization are upper level.
Swansinger: Dr. Byrne?
Byrne: Um, Is it not also true, however that all candidates and transfer students coming in, with an associates degree are waved from taking any of these parts one through ten?
Faulk: At this point, the community colleges per say are only required to supply seven of the ten. So most of these students will not have the ten, and...
Byrne: Will we require them to take the other three?
Faulk: Uh, yes, at this point. They need to have all ten in order to graduate.
Chilberg: Yeah it used to be an associates wasn't accepted as filling all the general requirements. This is no longer the case.
Swansinger: Ok, I was going to let Ted, but go ahead with your point first.
Chilberg: I wanted to see if we could have a discussion focusing on the merits of the substitute motion, which deals with making a more conditional acceptance of the discussion of this upper level or cap-stone, versus discussing the issues specific to the approved GCP, and potential courses that would be...
Kraus: I'm not certain of that's what the motion is supposed to be addressing.
Swansinger: Right, yeah, right now the discussion is to focus first on the substitution motion, and then we can call the question to vote on that, and then decide on the second motion. Ted Schwalbe had a comment....
Schwalbe: I have just been silenced by spirit of the last point. (laughter)
Kraus: John Kraus. I'd like to propose substitute motion of the motion that Faulk offered as a minimalist version of what was tried , tried to improve in that last several meetings. And I sense that at the last meeting there was substantially more support for Byrne's recommendation and others were offering that the dispute would be over. Some aspects of it still unclear and I have a sense that there is substantial support for an upper division course, at least one. And I think what this motion represents is a agreement that we will put one in there, and that there is certainly support that we do need some further upper division work. And in that sense, I support it, I sense that the substitute motion essentially waters down any will to do that.
Chilberg: For your information, I asked the CCC committee if the college senate approved the upper level, I may have missed something. But that we approve that we were going to definitely put something in.
Swansinger: It was approved, last spring of 2000. Last sessions were...
Faulk: It was changed again in fall 2000.
(tape change)
Chilberg: ...put something in, if we don't, we don't. The present motion that this substitutes for, basically is more definitive then the substitute motion. And it assumes in its language, of what I can tell, that there is going to be an upper level. Whether you call it a pass over or not. And I guess I don't believe we've debated this issue quite where there is agreement in this senate that there is going to be. And this motion in a sense ends and starts sealing that. And uh, without being the debate, that's an issue in its own right. That's why I put a substitute motion at this point in time. If we have to get something going in the future.
Swansinger: Chuck, did you want to say something?
Telly: Yes, I've been listening to all these discussions that we've had before, and I thought we were mostly, I thought most of the faculty agreed with Kraus, that we were in favor of having some sort of capstone course. I know we argued about the words, and, I agree with Kraus again. If we wouldn't have worried about last time when we discussed this, I still worry about it. That once, its better to have it iffy, because then there'll still be sort of, still be as a part of this body that we want to have a capstone, we just couldn't agree on what the capstone meant. But rather than, if we put the substitute motion it'll be forgotten. And that's what I think will happen.
Swansinger: Dick Reddy.
Reddy: I would disagree about it being forgotten, I wasn't on the CCC committee when this put forward, uh in December. I am now, I honestly don't think that Ray Belliotti is going to forget. I am pretty sure that Len Faulk is not going to forget or Mae Reck is going to forget, or that president Hefner is going to forget. This issue really is one of whether we are certain of what, of being able to do this. Ok, and that's why I put forward the substitute. It strikes me that we debate it a lot about six credit hours at the upper level. Initially, going back to uh about this time last year, we were talking about a cap-stone course, or courses of some kind. And then that slid into six hours at the upper level by the time that we were here in the fall. We couldn't resolve this issue of whether we wanted to have six hours at the upper level and if we did what it was going to look like. And there were discussions about uh whether it was going to be a lot like the current part three in the current kind of general college program for those students who were in the process, who have been here for a while. So, its not clear to me that we are going to be able to agree on something, and in addition I am not certain that if we understand cap-stone in a narrow sense, which is the phraseology that is here. Or cap-stone's if there are two courses that are going to be doing that. I am not sure that we have ever come to the point of saying that we agreed to that. I don't think that there's an issue about having the possibility an additional course or courses. I'm not sure about whether we will be able to agree on what that course or courses are going to be. The motion is put forward by the committee requires us to have that resolved at a date certain. And I'm not certain we're going to be able to do that. I feel that's the reason for this motion. I feel a lot more comfortable in saying its something we're working on. And it will be resolved at least as far as this catalogue is concerned by a particular time. If we have it resolved, one way or another, that'll be fine. Otherwise we are committing ourselves to something, three credit hours, or six credit hours, or maybe more than that, of something that is not defined at this stage. And I don't think that that's a wise thing to do, based on out past experience.
Huber: But on the other hand, to play Devils advocate, maybe its not such a bad thing to have a set time frame to force us to come to some sort of consensus. We talked about problems with, you know, from a new faculty perspective , we talked about how well governments works and some issue with it. Um, one of the problems that I see is that these open ended discussions where we spend months and months and months debating and then we forget what we even came to the conclusion of. So its not such a bad thing to force ourselves to come to some sort of consensus.
Reddy: And both motions do that. Each of them has the same, same time certain. The only difference between the two of them is whether one is committing us to a decision to do something that will be required by all students by a particular time, and say we're going to do it by the time. The other one is saying we may not. The time certain is the same.
Swansinger: John had a comment, and then its....
Kraus: For your information Len ,they asked me, repeatedly what you mean by it. I understood one upper division course can meet three hours. Is that what you mean? Or is that expansive notion on your motion?
Faulk: Um, it was not confined as one one course. Its actually two courses () and no course hours earned.
Steinberg: Ted Steinberg. To support um Nick's motion and uh what he just said, it doesn't matter if we have () meetings two years hence, and don't come to any agreement. We'll simply be saying what we said here, and what's in the catalogue won't matter and it'll be even more deceptive than if we put in the in clause to start. We always have that option, so we might as well be honest about it.
Chilberg: For your information, maybe President Hefner can help with this one. If we put in the college catalogue that we are going to have something and a student comes here. One of the reasons is that I wanted to have the general college experience and we don't know....(mumbling among senate) I, I you know obviously I'm being devils advocate here...But, you know if we don't do it and the student says well I'm filing for damages because the college doesn't provide what is offered...I know its probably not going to happen....(mumbling among senate).
Antosh: Ruth Antosh. Well I'm still just not convinced that if, if we leave it iffy it will look very good on the catalogue. And I think in terms of quality, general education program, we would be well advised to make it clear that we require something upper level of our students. And I think it can only enhance our appeal to good students, if there's something in there that looks like a requirement above the intro level. So I would support the version that's in our packet here.
Swansinger: Any further discussion? Then should we have a vote on the substitute motion first? Those of you who are in favor of it, please say Aye. Those of you opposed to it please say nay. Indefinite! Can we have a hand count? Could the Aye's please raise their hands? (I think that's 16) And the nays please (I think that's 11) The Aye's have it, I have a 16 to 11 vote. We don't need to vote? We'd like to vote on the second motion.
The substitute motion was passed.
Reddy: Because it is a substitute for the first, there is no need to vote on the first.
Swansinger: b) Ok, the next item of business is the Academic Affairs Report, and I don't believe Dave Ludlam is here. The report is attached to your minutes, so you can read through it and as you will notice as you finish reading the minutes Dave Ludlam has resigned from the position of Academic Affairs Chair, due to health reasons. And I have not yet approached anybody on the full committee to find out if anybody wishes to become chair of the committee.
Steinberg: Can I just say that this body should express its gratitude to David because he has done a fantastic job over the past several years as chair.
Swansinger: Yes, indeed, one of the hardest parts here is the fact that Dave himself was in the process of helping to train people to take over for that committee. But his health reasons have occasioned him to retire a little faster, resign from the committee a little faster than anticipated. And that leaves us in a bit of a lurch. But, his report is attached and you can read it.
c) The elections report from the chair of Governance, Charlie Davis.
Davis: We held elections, for numerous positions... candidates. As a result of those, and we've already had this discussion this afternoon. My ability, one of the things that has becomes more and more of an issue in the last two years that I've dealt with Governance as chair is that I've had more people retire, leave and we have more people on sabbatical. And we have a lot of new people. We really end up having people returning the preference sheet with a limited number of choices in terms of committees. That seems to be coming on as more of a pattern. Also, when we don't have a preference sheet to go on, to come up with a candidate we ask for calls for nominations. And the last election we had, we called for nominations, and we didn't get any nominees. And this is a very troublesome, but I think some of the things that we talked about here in terms of making things more efficient. One of the things that we found out in our study with committees is that often times current committees were unaware of what their subcommittees were doing only in that it took so long to communicate one group met another group met. And the chair of the parent committee would communicate with us, or the chair of the subcommittee, that took an exorbitant amount of time. Another thing we talked about was more than a few committees that subcommittees that were actually more active than the parent committees. And making their own recommendations. And there communication would fall apart between subcommittees and parent committees. This isn't something I think that's happened in a short period of time, it has probably happened over a number of years. And as people change, this sort of pattern replays. There are committees where there are repetitive tasks and its probably a good idea to take a look at combining functions of committees, that do similar tasks, especially with those committees we found out that meet once or twice a year. So they could take on the work of another subcommittee. So that kind of boils down to the fact that its really a positive good thing, at least from my point of view, that we'll take a look at what we're doing with our staying committees, parents committees and also subcommittees. And come up with a little more efficient, perhaps a better system that will make Governance a lot stronger. And I think that this is the connection between what Dr. Hefner, and also Jackie, were talking about earlier with the task force.
Kraus: Could I ask if the vote that you had in December whether your number of people that were voting was higher than when you had written ballots.
Davis: Yeah actually, this last election we had a little questionnaire in there and about ninety percent of the people who responded to that little questionnaire said that it was very convenient and would increase their will to participate in the Governance process. So, probably one of the more frequent comments is that it seems to be a very positive thing. Vocal votes passed in not only the December election, but the first time we did it, overall we got about twenty percent more total people who voted, as well as committee votes. The biggest problem is computers work as long as you don't try to use them. (Laughter from the senate) And I guess one of the little things that I should address, we've never denied the right for anyone to vote, if you have a problem, we tried to insure that every vote was counted. A little information, when we first discussed the possibility of doing this list electronically, the concern that was raised by the senate was, making sure that the vote was anonymous, etcetera etcetera. And in order to do that, we had to insure the voting booth was secure. Once you remain in a voting booth whether it's in real life, or pulled curtains, you only have one chance. Once you go out, some people were going in, going out try to go back in. And creating their own little problems. And if you look at real life, with a voting booth, if you go in and vote and say whoops, I voted for the wrong person. I don't think anyone would let you back in. So we need to deal with this issue... it is very effective and as long as the service doesn't go down, and things like that. It happened to us the first few times and....it's becoming more and more efficient. Hopefully, it's long overdue not only on this campus but regarding voting and things like that. It seems to be quite common, at a number of institutions of higher education. So we, it seems to be a good thing.
Swansinger: Any other questions?
8. Then we move on to new business. Before we adjourn, let me just say one thing, one please do come see me if you care to serve on the task force. But the second one, I'd like you all to help me thank Dick Reddy for serving here today, without him, I would have had to be secretary, vice-chair, and chair, run the tape recorder, get all the papers, I wouldn't have done it. So (clapping from senate). Thank you very much.
9. Now can I have motion for adjournment? Second? Thank you very much.
Meeting was adjourned at 5:15PM.
Attendance:
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Ruth Antosh
[ ] Joan Burke
[x] Joseph Chilberg
[x] Scott Johnston
[x] Karen Mills-Courts
[x] Elizabeth Nelson
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Ted Schwalbe
[x] Theodore Steinberg
[ ] Markus Vink
Ex. Officio:
[x] Tracy Bennett
[x] Charles Davis
[x] Michael Dimitri
[x] Len Faulk
[x] Dennis Hefner
[ ] Patrick Jones
[ ] Melinda Karnes
[x] Jean Malinoski
[x] Mae Reck
[ ] Paul Schwartz
[x] Stephen Stahl
[x] Jacky Swansinger
Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies:
[x] Ziya Arnavut
[x] Nancy Boynton
[ ] Adam Brown
[x] Roger Byrne
[x] Penny Chiappe
[x] Mara Huber
[x] Michael Grady
[x] Jon Kraus
[ ] David Ludlam
[ ] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Richard Reddy
[ ] Amin Sarkar
[x] Cynthia Smith
[x] Charles Telly
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[ ] Jean Branicky
[x] Mike Conley
[x] Sandra Colvenback
[x] Jeremy Corrente
[ ] Vince Courtney
[x] Marianne Eimer
[ ] William Jardin
[x] Karen Klose
[ ] Patrick Mandia
[x] Charlotte Morse
[x] Lynda Pleszewski
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Soteris Tzitzis
Student Association:
[x] Amanda Ferger
[x] Emily Palumbos
[x] Kristen Beilman
[ ] _____________
[ ] _____________
[ ] _____________
Guests:
Anna Zarcynski
Bob Rogers
Bruce Simon
+ 2 illegible names