The meeting was called to order by Chair Mary Carney at 4:01 PM in Fenton 105.
Chair Carney asked for a motion to amend the agenda to move “Old Business” to follow the report of the VPAA, and have the e-mail policy be considered in that portion of the meeting. Sen. Tom Taylor moved, and Sen. [??] seconded. The motion passed by unanimous voice vote.
The Chair asked that the agenda be approved as amended. This passed by unanimous voice vote.
The Chair asked for a motion to approve the minutes of the meeting of March 6, 2006. Sen. Dick Reddy moved, and Sen. Bruce Simon seconded. The motion passed by unanimous voice vote.
The Executive Committee nominated Reneta Barneva to be Vice-Chair. No further nominations were received from the floor. Dr. Barneva was elected by unanimous voice vote.
The Executive Committee nominated Vincent Courtney to be Faculty Secretary. No further nominations were received from the floor. Mr. Courtney was elected by unanimous voice vote.
The Chair then informed the group that two individuals wished to run for Governance Officer, Dr. Richard Reddy and Dr. Khalid Siddiqui. Nominations from the floor brought no additional nominees. The chair asked for volunteers for two tellers to count the ballots. The vote was taken, and the tellers reported that Dr. Reddy had been elected.
The tabled resolution of Sen. Reddy to delete Action Item 6 from the Fredonia Plan was brought back to the floor. Sen. Reddy offered a substitute motion (“Substitute Motion proposed by Richard Reddy—April 3, 2006 University Senate Meeting / Action Item 6: Capstone Experience Initiative” appended to these minutes.) with language changed in the third paragraph (must be laid as students arrive) to “must be initiated as students arrive” at David Herman’s suggestion.
Sen. Ted Steinberg rose to speak against the motion saying that we have been removing content from the curriculum and now we are being asked to require students to have a course reflecting on their experience. Students have little enough time for learning, and we should not take away even more time for them to have the chance to obtain content. He asked members to recall their years as students, when most of us did this kind of reflection outside of our classes, not as part of our programs.
Sen. Reddy responded arguing that while some of us did reflect on our own experiences and growth as students, most students don’t. Having a capstone experience is a well-proven opportunity at many excellent schools. The language allows a great deal of flexibility. We do not necessarily have to add another 3-hour course; just build in this kind of experience in some fashion.
Sen. Amy Cuhel-Schuckers asked how students in interdisciplinary degrees or having more than one major might find it difficult to have one meaningful capstone. How would this work
Sen. Reddy suggested that dual majors would probably have a capstone in each major.
Sen. Simon offered that students might not be doing the same kind of thing as a capstone in the various programs if they were involved in more than one area.
Sen. Cuhel-Schuckers then suggested that perhaps we could create capstones that work across majors for such students.
Sen. Charles Telly indicated that he felt that would be a very hard thing to achieve.
Chair Carney said there is no real answer to the interdisciplinary part of this question yet.
Sen. David Herman offered that the NSSE survey shows that Fredonia is well behind its peer institutions as being seen as having some sort of capstone. He feels that lots of students do have such a capstone already, but they don’t realize what they are doing is a capstone. Parents ask about the opportunities for capstone experiences.
Sen. Reddy said that Jillian Kinsey, from NSSE, will be here later this week.
Sen. Steinberg suggested that we explain to students and their parents that they actually are having capstone experiences.
Sen. Herman added that not all do.
SUNY Sen. Robert Rogers asked is the whole point so that students who apply (and their parents) will realize that we have capstone experiences.
Sen. Neil Feit offered that a capstone experience in subject X is not necessarily a course in subject X. This might be counter-productive in the long run.
Sen. Ziya Arnavut raised an objection to the omission of internships in the list of possible capstone experiences. Senior seminars and internships are not necessarily the same thing.
Chair Carney used the social work program as an example. They consider the social work field practicum as a capstone experience, and those field experiences are often internships.
Sen. Harry Jacobson said that some disciplines have a very natural means of having a capstone, while others do not. For these others, such a capstone can seem rather contrived. This decision should be left to the departments, not required.
Sen. Cuhel-Schuckers suggested that perhaps it would be better to allow a phased-in approach. Let those departments who have capstones continue with them, and allow those departments that currently do not to look at the issue, especially with regard to the resources needed, so they could come up with something that wasn’t so contrived.
Sen. Simon reminded the body that the timeline in the Fredonia Plan allows for this to happen in the final two years, so there is time to look at it already built in.
SUNY Sen. Rogers asked what department does not have some kind of capstone, even an informal one.
Sen. Reddy answered saying that Sociology currently does not have a capstone for the Sociology majors, because its senior seminar has not been a requirement for the degree, but it is going to become required. Sociology is also developing a student portfolio approach. He went on to say that calling capstones in some areas “contrived” is unfair. A capstone comes down to having people in your department who seek to bring together the totality of the learning that has been accomplished in such a way that it is meaningful to the students.
Sen. Simon said that if American Studies and Women’s Studies have been doing this with their limited resources, departments with more resources certainly could.
Sen. Jamar Pickreign asked is it possible to look at this as a list of examples, and not exhaustive.
Sen. Julia Wilson indicated that some departments are using exit surveys. Couldn’t that be morphed into some type of capstone that would work?
Chair Carney said any capstone would be the department’s decision.
Sen. Wilson asked about evaluation of these capstones.
Sen. Simon responded saying the departments and the Deans do it in the current plan.
Sen. Michael Grady suggested that a department that has a course with some type of project in it could possibly morph that into a capstone, as well.
Sen. Telly offered that all the good business schools require a capstone course, but wouldn’t it be very difficult to bring all the different aspects of philosophy into a capstone course in that department? Some philosophy departments offer a senior course that covers one major philosopher (such as Kant), bringing in all the learning that is done in philosophical reasoning and analysis into use in such a course.
SUNY Sen. Rogers suggested that there is no law that says that even inside a department that every student would have to have the same capstone experience.
Sen. Christine Givner has a lot of concern in the form of what a course at its very heart can provide students with them making sense of the connections and what they’ve learned. Every department can find some modality to get this to work. The NSSE data is troubling. We need to make this experience much more explicit.
Chair Carney suggested the wording suggests that a capstone can be a variety of activities.
Sen. Joni Milgram-Luterman asked if the NSSE survey defined what a capstone was when asking the question.
Sen. Arnavut offered that every CS major needs to go through an internship. This makes it better for their future, and prepares them for the job market.
Sen. Jan McVicker said that English has many, too. She suggested that the language added to the original in the next to last paragraph adding assessment to the mix needs a lot more discussion. However, she does favor the spirit of having a capstone experience. We need to communicate this more clearly. Are we going to assess it, must we? Who will do that? What is the penalty for if you don’t have a great assessment?
Sen. Reddy responded that the language was more than anything else to instruct our faculty as to what these capstone experiences are about, since few of the members at the last meeting seemed to have any real idea. Within departments we must assess our programs. We assess the CCC courses on a regular basis. So why not take into account how well your capstone is doing?
Sen. Wilson agreed with Sen. McVicker. She likes the idea of a capstone in spirit, but the paragraph that concerns her most is the one about assessment. Few requirements are given without consequences, and those consequences are not spoken to. Could we jettison that paragraph?
Sen. Glen Spielmans spoke to concur with Sen. Wilson.
Sen. Simon suggested that the original Action Item 6 language seems to have everything that is here without the assessment issues.
Sen. Reddy offered that assessment is something we have to live with, and is not intrinsically a bad thing. But if the assessment language is problematic, he would be willing to take it out.
Sen. McVicker suggested to Sen. Reddy that she would have marked him down as being too wordy in the first part of his motion. The original motion (the first Action Item 6) captures the essence of what you say. This language is too prescriptive. The short version already does what this does without any [??
Sen. Simon suggested that if we changed “emphasizes” to “includes” in the original action item 6 motion, we could have it. He offered this version as a substitute for the substitute motion. (Some parliamentary discussion then took place, which eventually deemed this action to not be proper at the time.
Sen. Telly spoke in favor of Sen. Reddy’s motion, with the dropping of the assessment language. He also said that he liked the first paragraphs, and didn’t find them verbose
Sen. Milgram-Luterman asked what happens if we vote this current substitute motion down
Dr. Joseph Straight spoke, saying that he feels capstones are good in his experience, but this language imposes rather than allows a department to discover the need for a capstone. He would rather see encouragement of departments to look at their programs to see if a capstone might improve them.
Sen. Spielmans asked doesn’t the third paragraph mandate other changes. It is very prescriptive.
Sen. Milgram-Luterman asked isn’t it implied in the Fredonia Plan that we’re going to be assessing everything.
Sen. Jacobson reiterated his view that capstones should not be mandated for all departments.
Sen. Simon said that this language is markedly different from the tone of the rest of the Plan. Most of the difference from the original is that the actual motion is now two paragraphs.
Sen. Reddy said that was what he was trying to do, split the original single paragraph into two separate paragraphs.
At this point Sen. Reddy agreed to remove his substitute, and accept a slightly revised version of the original Action Item 6 (appended to the minutes as “Action Item 6: Capstone Experience Initiative (amended)”) The changes to the original include:
-changing “should be charged with developing or revising” to “should be charged with developing, revising, or identifying”
-“emphasizes” changed to “includes”
-the splitting of the two-sentence paragraph into two separate paragraphs of one sentence eac
The vote was called for. The motion carried by voice vote
Chair Carney reported the President apologized for not being at this meeting, but he is serving on an accreditation team visit in Maryland. She offered a letter from Pres. Hefner for discussion and possible action (appended to these minutes as “March 31, 2006… Proposed Policy on Time-Shortened Courses”)
Sen. Wilson asked how this differs from the existing policy.
Sen. Jacobson suggested that the Departmental Curriculum Committee and the Academic Affairs Committee weren’t specifically included in the original policy.
Sen. Feit disagreed with the President’s assertion that this was an unintended consequence.
Chair Carney offered that Pres. Hefner’s concern was that evaluation or approval of teaching methods was not appropriate outside of the discipline, and has not been campus practice.
Sen. Feit said that the language of the recently passed policy was for course approval, not teaching methods approval.
Sen. Antosh expressed her surprise that review of a severely time-shortened course could not involve teaching methodology. We did debate that in some depth, noting that there were some courses that did not receive scrutiny. This was not an unintentional inclusion.
Sen. Telly spoke to the Phoenix University type courses. Giving degrees at 3,000 miles distance over the internet is problematic in his view. Now we have J-Term courses… are we heading to be pushed into a Phoenix University type of program?
SUNY Sen. Rogers rose to argue that this recently passed policy got rushed through in the final five minutes of the last meeting. He feels it is pompous of everyone to say how a course should be taught outside of their discipline. The President is saying maybe you’d want to think about this more.
Sen. Grady rose to support Pres. Hefner’s wording. It still has some teeth. The best place to pick apart a syllabus is within the Department.
Sen. Arnavut rose to agree with SUNY Sen. Roger’s statement.
Sen. Jacobson commented that presently a new course is proposed and reviewed, and a shortened course can be reviewed having nothing to do with teaching methodology.
Sen. Milgram-Luterman [indecipherable notes of the Secretary]
Sen. Wilson suggested that the subtext here is that some of us have heard of courses that are being offered that aren’t up to our usual standards. These courses are not receiving enough oversight. Maybe stating the problem will be enough to solve it, but I doubt it.
Registrar Bowser asked if the Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee thinks this is appropriate.
Dr. Straight (Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee) said that for severely time-shortened courses it is a different course and should be reviewed. Given that we have a history with an approval process, he didn’t see anything inconsistent with that process in the recently passed policy.
Sen. Simon spoke in favor of the original motion (the recently passed policy). It has more teeth. Perhaps the entire department [would?] not [need to] if it could be reviewed by the CCC Committee. Departments ought to think carefully about what they wish to offer in terms of severely-time-shortened courses.
Registrar Bowser reminded the body that the CCC Committee only looks at whether a course fits within the CCC and approval only means that the course carries CCC credit.
Sen. McKinney suggested that Psychology was very upset. Only if the course follows the same syllabus can it not be reviewed. In psychology, there is all kinds of variation. We don’t do this now. Any little deviation from the syllabus would require re-approval.
Sen. McVicker rose saying she still doesn’t like this policy (the recently passed policy), but she feels going through Academic Affairs is important. We need to find a way to offer integrity in a course and meet the students’ attempts to get more courses outside of the academic year.
Sen. Arnavut then said that students need to get an education, and we shouldn’t be controlled by their desires.
Sen. Feit said he supports the motion as it was passed at the March meeting.
Registrar Bowser said there may be legal ramifications as well: once a course has been approved for CCC credit, it is also approved by SUNY Central. That course then is approved for Gen. Ed., no matter how it is offered.
Sen. Reddy agreed with the Registrar. Once a course has been approved statewide, it is approved.
Sen. Givner suggested that the intent of the language concerning the syllabus was not that the assignments are the same, but that the course objectives can be met.
Sen. Simon withdrew his comments regarding the CCC, but departments do have the right to review articulation agreements and make decisions regarding transfer credits.
Sen. Telly said that J-Term was announced to the Senate, and the brochures were all ready before we ever heard of it. We were told as soon as the first year was over, we’d get some analysis. Then came the second year, and only after the second year did we get any information, and we began this debate. A University is not what the students want, it is what the professors think we need to do and expect of our students. We should not accept this change.
Sen. Wilson suggested that she would like to discuss this proposal with her colleagues. She moved to table action on Pres. Hefner’s proposal. Sen. McVicker seconded. The motion passed by unanimous voice vote.
The Chair asked for a motion to extend the meeting for 15 minutes. The motion was made, seconded, and was passed by unanimous voice vote.
Vice President Horvath informed the body that she had indeed met with Ted Steinberg and Dick Reddy, and they had an interesting and full conversation. As a result on Saturday, April 22, there will be an event which will be about how we teach the CCC. This is not an exclusive event. She asked all who have ideas on this to pass them on to any of the three in the initial conversation.
Dean Givner was then given the floor to share with the Senate ideas that are taking shape about restructuring the College of Education. Dean Givner presented scenarios describing what the structure was like when she arrived, how it was changed slightly into a “Distributed Leadership” model (which was determined to be too messy), and the newly-evolved idea of having two departments (Curriculum and Instruction; and Language, Learning, and Leadership). Beginning in fall 2006 budget lines will be created to enable clear lines of communication. The College wants input. Please send any comments to Givner@fredonia.edu .
Sen. Antosh asked what each of the departments will cover in the curriculum.
Dean Givner responded:
Curriculum and Instruction:
Childhood education
Early childhood education
[Indecipherable note of the Secretary]
Language, Learning and Leadership
Literacy (2 grad. programs and undergraduate, and 3 courses every [indecipherable]
TESOL (graduate, plus 3 tracks)
Ed. Leadership (right now “School Building Leadership”, but expect to add “School District Leadership”)
Ed. Foundations (undergraduate and graduate)
Sen. McVicker asked the Dean to send out a draft of the model to help with questions. She continued that this has real implications for the vacant graduate dean’s position. The more information you can send the better.
Dean Givner offered that the Graduate Dean is oversight for the total graduate program on campus. We need to have oversight of the education programs.
Sen. Simon asked what would the students’ major be
Dean Givner indicated the major is based on the credential they obtain from State Ed., as it is now. One student would be under one department. There will be no C&I or LLL degree. Support is lacking. Right now we have:
C&I 740 students
LLL 108 students
Early childhood 127 students
Childhood 540 students
Adolescent c. 1300 students
and 20 faculty, seven different majors, and all the processing for State Ed. Dept. requirements.
The Chair called for a motion extending the meeting for 10 minutes. The motion was made and seconded, and passed on unanimous voice vote.
Assoc. V.P. Karen Klose was introduced for an informational discussion of the proposed changes to the campus E-mail policy. This policy was first handed out at the Dec. meeting when a demonstration of the MS Exchange e-mail was presented. It has been revised. (Attached to these minutes as “Broad Email Policy”) She said the campus has never required a specific e-mail software in the past, but now we need to. She asked for feedback before this gets presented to the Cabinet.
Sen. Arnavut commented that you are restricting us to use Outlook. I am using a Unix box that can’t accept such e-mail. Ms. Klose asked if he used a PC client at all. If you have access to the web, you can get your e-mail.
Sen. Grady suggested that the problem is that Outlook isn’t being supported on computers at home. It is diff[icult?] if you have more than one e-mail account, and adjunct faculty might not be able to use this e-mail account.
Ms. Klose responded that we encourage use of Outlook web access from home because it resides on our servers. We will have instructions available on how to use Outlook 2003 from home.
Sen. McKinney said we no longer have dialup on campus. Those of us who use a 3rd party e-mail would like to be able to access our accounts on campus. Can we have access using dialup?
Ms. Klose said that the campus some time ago had made the decision to drop dialup use, for many reasons. We will not be going back on that decision.
Sen. McKinney said she has a Mac at home. I can’t use Outlook 2003 from home.
VP Horvath said that she is a Mac user too, at home. One can use secure file transfer from home.
Chair Carney asked all the Senators who wished to please e-mail Karen Klose. Ms. Klose added that she was especially interested in comments concerning numbers 4 & 5.
The Chair called for a motion to extend the meeting for 5 minutes. The motion was made and seconded, and passed by unanimous voice vote.
Chair Carney then asked Joe Straight if he’d like us to discuss the “Faculty Approval of Degree Candidates” portion of the Academic Affairs Committee report? He indicated yes. Option 1 from the Academic Affairs Committee report attached to the agenda was put on the floor for discussion.
Registrar Nan Bowser offered information. She said that at commencement, there may be 1000 degree candidates, of which 100 will not have everything required to be approved for their degrees for whatever reasons. By mid-June that 100 will have been reduced to perhaps 20. Any listing of student names will have serious legal problems. Mrs. Bowser stated that her office could not provide for the security of such a list if it were to be presented in either the Special Faculty Meeting or the Senate. Student privacy rights are critical to maintain under the law. She stated that numbers can be provided, but names most likely could not.
Sen. Reddy then moved the modern version (“Option II” in the Academic Affairs Committee attachment to the agenda) as a substitute motion. Sen. Ann Carden seconded. The motion passed by voice vote
Sen. Simon asked if this would be in the faculty bylaws. The answer was yes
A motion was made and seconded to table the motion on the floor. The motion to table passed by unanimous voice vote.
The meeting was adjourned at 6:00 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Vincent Courtney,
Faculty Secretary
Attendance Sheet
Reddy - Action item 6
Action Item 6 amended
E-mail policy Handout
Hefner Time-Shortened Courses