Approved Minutes of the Faculty Senate Meeting

April 2, 2008

http://www.scsu.ctstateu.edu/organizations/facultysenate

________________________________________________________________________

The twelfth meeting of the 2007-2008 year was called to order at 12:10 PM.

Members Present: Emenyonu (Accounting); Selvaggio (Anthropology); Vu (Art); Lavin (Art); Pang (Chemistry); Petroski (Communication); DaPonte (Computer Science); Lawler (Counseling); Smith (Couns/Sch Psych); Fleming (Earth Science); Mills (Ecom/Finance); Diamantis (Education); Madonia (Ed Leadership); Larocco (English); Shea (English); Johnson (English); Troy (English); Swartz (Exercise Science); Davie (Exercise Science); Pelayo (Foreign Language); Paddock (History); Metaxas (History); Dunklee (Journalism); Clerc (Library Services); Toce (Library Services);  Prince (Marketing); Dennis (Mathematics); O’Brien (Media Studies); Bochain (Nursing); Rebeschi (Nursing); Goldblatt (Part-Time Faculty); Gilliland (Philosophy); Horch (Physics); Buterbaugh (Political Science); Sherman (Psychology); Colwell (Psychology); Faraclas (Public Health); Cusato (Science Ed/Env Stud); Bloch (Sociology); Brucker (Special Ed/Reading); Nye (Theater); Weiss (UCF).

Members Absent: Maloney (Athletics); Feng (Biology); Jirsa (Com Disorders/MFT); Olson (Foreign Language); Sakalowsky (Geography); McGinn (Library Science); Page (Management); Gubitose (Mathematics); Kuss (Music); Carrano (Part-Time Faculty); Roman (Part-Time Faculty); Capone (Part-Time Faculty); Smith D. (Recreation/Leisure); Cameron (Social Work); Keenan (Social Work); Tamura (Special Education/Reading).

The minutes of March 12, 2008, were approved.

Announcements: 

• Senator Clerc announced that the library director announced to the library faculty in an email that the library faculty would no longer get compensation time for one-on-one instruction sessions with students held outside of "regular working hours." Library faculty are not consulted before this announcement, which was made right after the meeting with the Provost, Steve Larocco, the director, and the faculty.  The Library faculty is concerned about the impact on the students, particularly part-time and graduate students who are unable to come to campus during standard office hours. Students in the School of Business, School of Education, and departments such as History, Political Science, Social Work, Public Health, and Nursing are most likely to be affected by this change in policy.  If your students run into this problem, please call the director (2-5760) or Provost (2-5350) and let them know about it.
• Senator DaPonte announced that Saturday, April 5^th, Central Connecticut State University is hosting the 22^nd Academic Computing Conference.
• Senator Diamantis announced that on Wednesday April 23^rd, 2008 the SCSU Police Department along with Beta Mu Sigma fraternity will hold its 2^nd Annual Jail ‘N’ Bail charity event to raise money for the athletes of Special Olympics Connecticut.  Please participate to support the charity event.

General Education Guests:  Jim Tait and Winnie Yu

President Johnson distributed a copy of the letter of support for the General Education proposal from President Norton and Provost Williams.

The next steps for the proposal will be: discussions with departments, students, and Town Hall Meetings open to all faculty, UCF vote to accept the proposed program, and finally a Faculty Senate referendum most likely happen in the beginning of Fall 2008.

Concerns and praises, from the senate floor: 

a) The physics department faculty strongly supports this proposal.

b) The one course per department requirement, how will that affect students choices’ and course content (i.e. will it be challenging or just another easy course?)

c) The program is missing visual arts competencies.

d) Oversight committee, what will their latitude be?

e) The proposed program a) lacks the required  traditional fine arts courses and b) lacks visual literacy competencies.

f) UIC will approve courses for UCF as the departments revise courses to be offered as general education courses.

g) The mathematics department concerns are the offerings of the developmental level courses, the number of students that are placing in the developmental level, and the university policy that these courses are to be done in the first two years of students’ studies.  How will this be coordinated with the general education proposal?

h) There is a Summer Academy reference in the proposal, how will this unfold with resources and number of students needing developmental mathematics courses?

At this time, the discussion of the General Education proposal ended and President Johnson asked for a motion to postpone Committee reports and to move to New Business.  With no objections, motion was accepted unanimously.

New Business

Grade Appeal Process ~ ~ Senator Bloch introduced the draft document on the revised Grade Appeal Process.  Lengthy discussion followed.

There was a motion to accept the following amendment to the document:

            The grade change procedure doesn’t include the Provost and the Dean tiers, therefore the DGAC decision or a chair’s decision not to convene a DGAC, can be appealed directly to the UGAC.  Thus, all language for other levels are eliminated.

The motion for the amendment was seconded and after some discussion, there was a call of the question, which passed with no objection.

The motion of the amendment above was accepted by majority (20 yes and 3 no).

The grade appeal process will be revised to reflect the appropriate language for the above amendment.

The Senate adjourned at 2:05 pm.    

Respectfully submitted,

Dr. Maria Diamantis

Secretary of the Senate