Ex officio members present. President Carol Cartwright; Provost Paul Gaston; Vice Presidents David Creamer, Dale Richards for Charles Greene, Ron Kirksey for Mark Lindemood, Nancy Scott, Don Tolliver; Vice Provosts Walter Adams, Gordon Keller, Terry Kuhn; Deans Larry Andrews, Shirley Barton, A. Raj Chowdhury, Joseph Danks, Barbara Hanniford for Marlene Dorsey, Davina Gosnell, Joanne Schwartz, George Stevens, Scott Sullivan, Mark Weber; Observer Myra West (Professors Emeriti).
Guests present. Mary Lou Holly (FPDC), Cornell Morton (Enrollment Management), Laura Davis (A&S), Michelle Hoversten (Physics), Margaret Payne (President's Office), Roy Jenkins (ROTC), Carlos Vargas-Aburto (Technology).
Senators absent. Richard E. Brown, Suzy Campbell (excused), Paul Farrell, Jack McWhorter, Kazadi Mukuna, Nancy Padak (excused).
Ex officio members absent. Observers Megan Brickman (UGSS), Leondra Mitchell (GSS).
The meeting was convened at 3:20 pm.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
The minutes of the November 8, 1999 Faculty Senate
meeting were approved (Sosnowski, Hassler) as distributed. Senator Robert
Johnson requested that more information be included of the discussion that
occurred regarding the report of the Commission on Doctoral Subsidy and
Academic Freedom. The Secretary will prepare an addendum of the discussion,
which will be distributed with the minutes of the December 6, 1999 meeting
(see Appendix A).
CHAIR'S REMARKS
Chair Casper's remarks are attached in Appendix B.
PRESIDENT'S REMARKS
President Cartwright's remarks are attached in Appendix C.
PROVOST'S REMARKS
Provost Gaston reported the following:
1. A search committee for Dean of Libraries and Media Services, headed by Diedre Badejo, is well into the search process, and is working toward the objective of forwarding candidates before the end of the spring semester.
2. A presentation of budget priorities within Academic Affairs, which will be open to the university community, will be all day Monday, January 24; Wednesday morning , January 26; and Friday morning, January 28. These will be opportunities for deans and unit directors to present the most compelling priorities in their respective units.
3. The continuing effort to implement the University Strategic Plan within Academic Affairs is well underway. In the eighth draft of that plan the team leaders were identified, and they now are engaged in or have finished the process of creating the teams that will be addressing the various objectives of the strategic plan. Part of the evolution of this plan has been to consider the process for reaching the objective of reinventing the public service outreach function under strategic direction #8. Associate Provost Lois Muir has been designated the team leader for this objective. The team leaders will be making progress reports at the monthly meetings of the Academic Administrative Council (AAC), and an update of activities will be given at FS meetings.
In response to a question from Senator Glazer, Provost Gaston stated that the Senate will be provided a list of team members when the roster is complete.
REPORT FROM EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COUNCIL (EPC)
Establishment of Three Pre-majors Within the College of Arts and Sciences: Pre-humanities, Pre-social Science, and Pre-natural Science and Math
Dean Joseph Danks reported that a purpose of these pre-majors is essentially for them to be "advising majors" for students who have indicated an interest in one of the three areas in the College, but are still undecided as to which specific major within those areas they would like to pursue. Students would declare pre-majors either at the time of admission or at a later point so that they could receive more specific advising about curriculum requirements, particularly those regarding LER courses. Another purpose of pre-majors is to provide the College a better opportunity to track enrollment and predict what courses students will need. A third purpose is for pre-majors to be a retention measure. The literature confirms that if students identify early with an academic program or academic major, they are more likely to be retained by the institution. Dean Danks moved (Frank Smith second) establishment of three pre-majors (pre-humanities, pre-social sciences, and pre-natural sciences and math) within the College of Arts and Sciences.
In the lengthy discussion period, Senators made several general comments and also asked many specific questions, to which responses were made primarily by Dean Danks. Senator Hassler commented that the issue of pre-majors raised the question of whether the focus of the university should be on individual accomplishment, or whether it should be on a sense of community. Dean Danks responded that while certainly some students wish to be very independent in their course of study, others want to be associated with a program, not so much for community-type reasons, but rather for a sense of security that identification with a program provides. Senators Fulghum and Frank Smith commented that pre-major advising was in fact supportive of individualistic motivations, and Senator Feinberg stated that this proposal seemed to be a straightforward tool to help bring better advising to some students.
Among the many questions asked and answered were:
1. Question: How does a student "get into" and "get out" of a pre-major?
Answer: Getting in would be accomplished in the same way that is used for declaring a major; and exploratory students would receive the same advising they do now. Getting out would be accomplished by monitoring students more closely and providing advising to encourage them to declare a regular major at the earliest possible time.
2. Question: What is the plan for regional campuses?
Answer: The plan is to institute effective pre-major advising of regional campus students.
3. Question: How will exploratory majors know what kind of courses should be taken each semester in each pre-major?
Answer: There will be program sheets of suggested LER courses for each of the pre-majors that will be available at pre-major scheduling.
4. Question: Will every Arts and Sciences student have to be approved as either a major or a pre-major?
Answer: Yes. The pre-major is an opportunity for students who know they are interested in a particular area of Arts and Sciences to receive extra advising and information about the curriculum they should follow in the early stages of their time at Kent. As it is now, the two options with respect to Arts and Sciences are to declare either a regular major or the exploratory major. The pre-major will be in between the two, and be more specific for the students who know they want to be Arts and Sciences majors but do not know yet which specific degree.
5. Question: What will be the process of approval for the suggested curriculum for these pre-majors?
Answer: Each will be reviewed through the College Curriculum Committee, just as a major is now.
The motion carried.
NEW BUSINESS
Report from the University Teaching Council
A written report was distributed from Professor Gunning who was unable to be present due to illness.
University Undergraduate Retention Plan
Vice Provost Terry Kuhn and Cornell Morton, Vice President for Enrollment Management, presented the report. The Undergraduate Retention Plan is considered to be a work in progress, not as something that was done once and is finished forever. The hope is the plan will encourage discussion, debate and consideration of the many factors that go into retention such as instruction, services, and the treatment of students as people. In regard to the latter, attention was drawn to the quote on the title page made by Edward Anderson of UCLA that "the single most powerful retention strategy is when at least one person takes a personal interest in a student and relates with that student as a total person." The most current version of the plan, which addresses undergraduate retention at the Kent campus, can be found at
http://www.kent.edu/retention/urp.htm. In the future, documents will be produced that address specific elements of retention at regional campuses.
Vice Provost Kuhn distributed and reviewed a spreadsheet that displayed data for the five colleges in regard to enrollment, bachelor degrees awarded, one and five year retention rates, and six-year graduation rates for 1996 and 1997. Summary tables of retention rates by college and department can be accessed at http://www.kent.edu/ksuinstitutional_Research/retention. A request for proposals has been issued, and a proposal review -process is underway to determine how many of the more than 25 proposals received will be supported this year. Criteria for evaluation includes whether or not the proposal is measurable, different from current practice, and has potential for significant improvement in retention.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Vice Chair Feezel stated the FS Committee on Committees is hoping to broaden the pool of faculty to be selected for committees, and he asked Senators to complete the committee questionnaires and to encourage colleagues to do the same.
2. Senator Walker reminded the FS of the Gospel Choir concert that evening, and enlisted the supportive presence of FS colleagues for Provost Gaston as he made his university debut.
STATEMENTS FOR THE RECORD
Senator Frank Smith read the following statement:
At the last meeting of the Faculty Senate Dean Danks presented a statement concerning the events leading up to the consideration by the Senate of a computer science course in the Basic Science section of the LER. He stated that 'the memoranda on both sides of the controversy were available to the senators and had been for approximately three weeks prior to the Faculty Senate meeting. ' Unfortunately the information that the College of Arts and Sciences Curriculum committee had voted 10 to 8 against approving this course for the Basic Science category was not included in either the information that went to the Senate or in the information that went to EPC. As a result of this, the Senators were unaware of this vote. I stand by my statement that I believe administrators and other committee chairs have an obligation to disclose pertinent information about items being considered by the Senate.
The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Karen W. Budd, Secretary
Faculty Senate
The shaded area in the following paragraph has been added:
Report of the Faculty Senate Commission on Doctoral Subsidy and Doctoral Freedom.
Senator Budd, chair of the Commission,
and Professor Edwin Gould, member of the commission, gave a brief overview
of the report and the process of the commission's work. A motion
(Budd, Sosnowski) was made to approve the report. Professor Bose, Chair
of the Chemistry Department, reflected on the process of the doctoral program
review as it affected the Chemistry department, and stated in his view
academic freedom has not been denied in that department although Chemistry
did decide to restrict doctoral study to areas of special strength (i.e.,
Separation Science and Liquid Crystals). Among several comments and questions
by senators, Senator Robert Johnson stated he believed that due to the
generality of the recommendations, he was unclear as to what they were
designed to accomplish, and in fact, they seemed to contain contradictions.
For example, with regard to recommendation E related to implementing approved
governance procedures, would it be permissible for an FAC to decide to
restrict academic freedom in the same way that occurred as a result of
OBR actions? Professor Gould responded, "The viewpoint of the commission
is that academic freedom should not be restricted." Senator Frank
Smith asked if recommendation C meant that all doctoral students should
be supported when the period of external funding ends. Dean Danks responded
that his interpretation was that students who had been admitted to work
with a faculty member on an external grant would be given the opportunity
to be considered for support when the external funding ended, but such
support was not automatic. Senator Glazer offered an amendment that the
words "and future" be added to the first recommendation so that it would
read: All faculty shall have equal opportunity to access existing and future
university resources. There was no objection to the amendment, and the
words will be added. The motion carried.
First, looking back, I would like to thank
the panelists, Dave Alien (Trumbull Campus), Ray Craig English), Suzette
Tardif (Biological Sciences), and Terry Kuhn (Undergraduate Studies), and
the
participants at last week's faculty
forum on Professing in the Twenty-first Century. I think this was
the best of the three forums that we have
held to date--with just the right amount of interaction and
audience participation interspersed throughout
the discussion. Now we need to get more colleagues
involved in and attending the forum series.
A key University project this semester
has been the re-drafting of the University Mission Statement.
Thanks to those of you who sent me comments
or suggestions. I've included with today's mailing a copy
of the recommendations sent to the President
Cartwright regarding the language of the revised draft that
was circulated. The Strategic Planning
Steering Committee met right before Thanksgiving to review
several different versions of the revised
statement based upon the numerous comments and, in some
cases, recommendations for total rewriting
of the revised draft. While I haven't yet seen the final draft
based upon this committee's work prior
to the holiday , I think it is fair to predict that the version that will
next be reviewed will be a shorter, better-crafted
document. We can anticipate that this new draft will
be reviewed for action by the Educational
Policies Council and the Faculty Senate some time during this
coming spring semester.
At our October Senate meeting, we approved
a proposal to change the composition and selection
process for the University Priorities
and Budget Advisory Committee. That proposal has now been
implemented with new faculty representatives
being selected by appropriate faculty advisory bodies in
academic units. There has been one meeting
of UPBAC since it was re-constituted, with the bulk of the
meetings planned for spring semester.
Whether the new UPBAC will indeed be a new, improved
UPBAC remains to be determined but it
is off to a somewhat promising start.
Following our discussion of Academic
Affairs' Implementation Items for the new University Strategic
Plan, Provost Gaston has been keeping
the Executive Committee well informed about the Division of
Academic Affairs' progress in implementing
the various objectives we discussed earlier in the fall. He
will be giving you a brief update later
in today's agenda. For each of the objectives, he has designated
a team leader who will be putting together
a team of administrators, faculty, and staff members to
implement specific strategic initiatives.
One of the most important of these teams-or committees-is the
one to develop the so-called value-driven
5 year academic staffing plan. Dean Scott Sullivan is in charge of
this effort and, as I posted on our listserv, wants to include faculty
on this important committee.
If you are interesting in serving-or know of faculty colleagues who would be good choices for this committee-please let me or another member of the Executive Committee know as soon as possible. We will be meeting later this week so there are only a couple days left to get names to us.
Since we last met, Kent State's Board of
Trustees met on November 17th. One of the action items at that
meeting was a salary adjustment for President
Carol Cartwright. As I reported to you in October, prior to
making its determination, the Board of
Trustees subcommittee on Presidential Review did meet with four
faculty representatives to discuss the
president's performance. Whether or not we agree with the Board's specific
actions, their willingness to listen to faculty perspectives should be
commended. We need now to build on the progress that has been made. One
of my goals for spring semester is to work closely with the Committee on
Administrative Officers in determining what are the appropriate next steps.
As promised at our last meeting, enclosed
with today's agenda materials is a copy of the Faculty
Senate Status Report summarizing
the actions of the Faculty Senate for the 1998-99 academic year.
This status report is now also available
on the web. Now that we are caught up, hopefully this Report
can be updated at the end of each semester.
I anticipate that a new Faculty Senate Digest will be in
faculty mailboxes the first week of spring
semester.
In addition to getting caught up on various
communication items, this is also the time of year when
Senate initiates its election cycle. The
major academic units to hold elections for next year are:
Education (2); Fine and Professional Arts
(4); the Ashtabula and Geauga Campuses combined (1);
Tuscarawas (1); and, for the first time,
representatives of the new Non-tenure Track Faculty Unit (3).
Please assist by identifying and encouraging
colleagues in these units to run for Senate, or colleagues in
other units that might run at-large. While
I do not want to discourage any incumbent senators from
standing for re-election, it is also important
that we continue to strive for greater diversity among our
membership. Toward that end, I will be
calling upon some of you to help with this goal.
Hopefully, my reflections on some of this
fall's accomplishments have given you some clues as what to
anticipate in the spring: the new University
Mission Statement, progress reports on the Strategic Plan,
and, of course, reports from some of Senate's
standing committees. One non-Senate committee in the
Daily Kent Stater these days is
the so-called University Parking Committee. You should know that we
have been raising questions about the
role of this committee vis-a-vis the University Parking Services
Advisory Committee, which is a University
standing committee, ever since this new committee was first
announced last year. The Executive Committee
will be meeting with the Mike Schwartz, chair of the ad
hoc parking committee, in the near future
and we will report what we learn. Please don't interpret my
comments about this special committee
as necessarily negative-any committee that can come up with
answers to the intractable issues associated
with parking will deservedly earn praise from us all!
Let me now turn to this afternoon's agenda:
The last item under New Business on the published agenda is the Kent State University Undergraduate Retention Plan. This report represents several years of effort on the part of the Enrollment Planning Steering Committee and its two subcommittees--the Student Academic Retention subcommittee and the Student Life Retention subcommittee.
There was a lively discussion of the plan at EPC and I anticipate that Senators will be equally interested.
Before concluding, let me take just a few
moments to wish you all happy holidays and best wishes for a
new year which, giving in to the popular
press, is being billed as the start of a new millennium. We will
not meet again as a Senate until the second
week of February-Valentine's Day to be exact. So, please
stay in touch via the listserv, or feel
free to call or email me if issues of concern come up during the
intercession.
Now, moving into this afternoon's agenda,
let me invite President Cartwright and Provost Gaston to share their remarks.
Cheryl A. Casper
Professor of Economics
I know that this is a busy time for all of us and I also know that you have an important discussion item on the agenda today related to undergraduate retention. Therefore, I will keep my comments very brief and use this time to quickly update you on three topics that I believe are of special interest to you.
First, I want to report that the University Priority and Budget Advisory Committee has now been constituted under the new guidelines approved by the Faculty Senate. As you'll recall, these changes were worked out between Provost Gaston and myself and
your Faculty Senate Executive committee.
The "new" committee is already meeting and Provost Gaston reports that the discussion has been very productive and that the committee has identified broad priorities that will guide budget discussions related to the University's budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2000.
Second, you were alerted earlier that a discussion about a possible restatement of the University's mission occurred during the late stages of development of our new Strategic Plan. The steering committee elected not to bring the new statement to the University Community as a part of the discussion of the draft Strategic Plan. Instead, they agreed to take up this issue during Fall semester 1999. This decision was based on our belief that there had not been adequate time to consult.
The strategic planning steering committee has been engaged in this consultation this Fall semester and is nearing the end of their deliberations about a proposed new statement of the University's mission. I want to emphasize that the committee will not be proposing a new mission. They believe there is a more succinct way to state our mission, and that is what they are working to do. I expect that a proposed new statement will be ready for your review early in the next semester.
Finally, as an action item to follow-up on a directive under the Strategic Plan, Provost Gaston has been working with the Deans to consider reinventing outreach and public service for the University. We have now determined that this conversation needs to be even broader and we will be bringing a suggested process for review of our outreach functions to your executive committee before the end of this semester.
The goal of this review will be to determine how partnership and outreach activities for our eight campus network should be coordinated. As conversations about the review process unfold, we will keep you posted. At this time, I simply want to note that we have determined that the conversation needs to be very broad-based and needs to modeled on the inclusive approach we used last year to develop the Strategic Plan.
Let me close by wishing you the very best
of the Holiday Season and peace and happiness in the New Year.