Academic Senate: MINUTES 2/21/2006

Present: Ms. Rebekah Babiarz, Dr. Susan Baillet, Sr. Maria Ciriello, Dr. Carol Dempsey, Dr. Bruce Drake, Dr. Karen Eifler, Dr. Mark Eifler (for Dr. Gary Malecha), Dr. Jeff Gauthier, Dr. Chris Hallstrom, Ms. Ashley Hartmeier, Sr. Angela Hoffman, Dr. Lora Looney, Dr. Marlene Moore, Dr. Katie O’Reilly, Dr. John Orr, Dr. Peter Osterberg, Dr. Bart Rylander, Ms. Diane Sotak, Dr. Peter Thacker, Dr. Anita Wynne

Absent: Fr. William Beauchamp, Dr. Michael Connolly, Dr. Louis Masson, Br. Donald Stabrowski, Dr. Zia Yamayee

Invocation: The invocation was given by Sr. Angela Hoffman.

Minutes of the January senate meeting were accepted.

The Senate voted to move Heidi Senior’s presentation to the beginning of the meeting.

Heidi Senior, Library: Heidi summarized the faculty and student LibQUAL survey responses. LibQUAL is an online survey instrument administered by the Association of Research Libraries. The library conducts surveys every five years and will use LibQUAL again. Respondents rated 22 statements in three areas. 

Affective – emotional perception of library and service;

Information Control – perception of collections and access to them; and

Library as Place – perceptions about the facility.

An additional five statements were added to see what people thought about library marketing, media collections, and library instruction. Associate and full professors were well-represented, with less response from adjuncts and assistant professors. Overall, faculty were most positive about library service and Interlibrary Loan. They were less positive about information control, but the score was still higher than faculty responses at peer institutions. A caveat is that when survey was administered the in-library computers were old and there was a proxy server problem resulting in slow connections to databases from on and off-campus. Both issues have been resolved, so perception of access may have improved. However, faculty responses indicated desire for stronger print and electronic collections. Another less positive area for faculty and students was the library facility (quiet study space, modern equipment, comfortable and inviting space, etc.).

All of the clientele groups have concerns about the library facility, but the library continues to do well with customer service. There was a question about whether a difference was seen in library use from 2000 to 2005. LibQUAL did not measure that, but the library collects other data showing that use of the library and study rooms has increased over the past five years to an all time high this year. Heidi also has LibQUAL survey results broken out by discipline. Contact her if you would like to see those or have her meet with your school/department <senior@up.edu or x8037).

Standing Committee Reports

Executive Committee: Sr. Hoffman gave the report. Senate website probably won’t be up until the end of Spring semester. Materials on the Lewis server will be migrating, so Senators should be thinking about what might need to be moved for their departments. Finally, Senators that are ending 3-yr. and 1-yr. terms need to be re-elected or find replacements. Send that information to Kathleen Staten (staten@up.edu).

Committee on Committees: Dr. Jeff Gauthier gave the report. The committee has not met.

Committee on Rank & Tenure: No report.

Committee on Teaching & Scholarship: Dr. Carol Dempsey gave the report. The ad-hoc committee looking at the Butine has met twice and Carol also met multiple times with Br. Donald. This led to clarification that the original 1993 guidelines were fused together with the criteria and approved at the Oct. 21, 2001 Senate meeting. Br. Donald said this should not have passed, as it no longer represented the original guidelines (which are endowed) and has led to the confusion over which were the correct guidelines. The original guidelines say the fund is administered out of the VP (now Provost) office and TAS handles its management. Carol passed out all the versions of the guidelines. In the committee’s view the 1993 original guidelines are the official guidelines. Then they have created internal criteria, that are in line with the guidelines, for the committee to use in determining awards. Some obsolete wording in the original guidelines does need updating (e.g., changing Vice President to Provost). This led to a discussion over whether the Senate will need to vote to approve the guidelines, essentially undoing the 2001 version. Ultimately, the discussion was tabled until a time when Br. Donald is present to provide his insight.

Proposals for the spring Butines have been submitted and review will begin tomorrow, with recipients announced in early March. The committee will review faculty award applications on March 22^nd, and winners will be announced at graduation.

Br. Donald asked the committee to take on the responsibility of planning Faculty Development Day (May 9^th). The committee put out a call asking for faculty to participate and inviting 04-05 Butine awardees, faculty teaching and scholarship award winners, those who have had sabbaticals, those who have engaged in interdisciplinary teaching, and those participating in overseas programs to present.

Br. Donald’s letter had reminded the committee to look at teaching evaluations (student evaluations of faculty, which are included in rank & tenure review). The concern is that there are no standardized questions across units. Carol and Tom Faller will be working on this and will start the conversation with Marlene Moore.

Committee on Faculty Welfare: Dr. Susan Baillet gave the report. The committee heard Roy Heynderickx’s financial report, which he will be presenting at the March Senate meeting.

Committee on Curriculum & Academic Regulations: Dr. Karen Eifler gave the report. The committee met and had four action items. Two were “point of information” items and two were minor curriculum changes. These will be presented under New Business.

Presidential Advisory Committee Reports

Committee on Student Media: Dr. Jeff Gauthier gave the report. The committee met and recommended that Jana Jorgensen be the interim Beacon editor and Heidi Jensen be the Log editor.

Committee on Athletics: Dr. Peter Thacker gave the report. Athletics has hired a certified dietician to work with student athletes. Regarding academics, 27% of athletes are on the Dean’s list with an average GPA of 3.175. There are 235 student athletes. A question was raised about stopping holds on student athlete accounts so they can utilize priority registration for classes. Otherwise they can’t register for the classes they need to fit into their very constrained schedules. A conversation was also started about more oversight of university expenditures on athletics.

Committee on Health & Safety: Dr. Anita Wynne gave the report, which she received from the committee Chair, Thomas Blume. They are revising committee bylaws and asking Fr. Beauchamp to sign off on changes. They are reviewing building access key policies to make sure they are being applied uniformly. They looked over the OSHA injury logs and found that there were 10 cases in 2000-2005 when people actually had to miss work because of injuries, which isn’t a bad record. They looked over some repairs that were needed on campus, and what the priorities were, including the off-campus housing and rental units (have been receiving complaints). There will be a pre-inspection for the fire marshal in March (possibly March 12^th), of several of the buildings.

Committee on Information Technology: Ms. Diane Sotak gave the report. Bryon Fessler briefed the committee on a huge summer project, the Network Forklift Upgrade, which will start immediately after May graduation. It’s a hardware upgrade to the campus network backbone and will require a lot of rewiring in EngineeringBuilding and BuckleyCenter, as well as various communication closets scattered throughout campus buildings. They will be scheduling aspects of the project with faculty in affected areas to minimize impact, but there will be some time when the network will be unavailable. More information is available at: http://www.up.edu/is/default.aspx?cid=5286&pid=254

Paul Krull visited the committee and discussed the Banner 7 upgrade, which overall went well.

Each of the newly established subcommittees reported back for the first time about the priorities they will focus on. The Communication subcommittee has chosen to look at the campus communication, such as campus calendar use, campus announcements, and updating the mass email policy. They will be looking at  establishing procedures and protocol for getting announcements out, what format, etc. There is still strong interest in moving to an electronic directory, so they will be investigating that more in order to make a proposal. 

The Web subcommittee reviewed six areas, but felt that two required more investigation. One is the turning off of Lewis - making sure the information migrates, what kind of support is there for faculty to help them migrate information or store information that they may not want to migrate over. Jenny Walsh will speak to us further about this at a future Senate meeting. The other is preparing a “State of the Web” report for the university, including reviewing Sherpa superuser job descriptions. 

The Infrastructure subcommittee is going to be the conduit between different constituents on campus for the forklift project and making sure that communication channels are open (when things are happening, who its affecting, etc.). The upgrade is being partially funded by deferring this year’s “technical refresh” of equipment. However, new faculty will still receive new computers as they arrive. The following year they will try to ramp up the technical refresh to keep everyone on a five year cycle of new equipment. The subcommittee is also looking at finding a fair way to determine where to put technology-enabled classrooms and wireless access points (more wireless access points are going in as part of this big network upgrade). 

Student & Faculty Court: Dr. Dann Pierce gave the report. They have not met.

Other Reports

Fr. William Beauchamp: No report.

Dean’s Report: No report.

ASUP: Ashley Hartmeier gave the report. Student elections are being held for the 2006-2007 executive board, as well as three constitutional amendment resolutions. Two of them are minor wording changes, such as they use university probation rather than disciplinary probation. The bigger amendment is to stipulate that in the Spring semester of senior year, an executive board member does not need to be a full time undergraduate any longer, but will still pay a student government fee. And the last one is just some other changes within the constitution, to make it more accurate to the practice of today. 

 ASUP used the excess funds to purchase three advertising tickers and two televisions to put on campus. They are still identifying places for cable-access TVs, which will have a newschannel on at all times. The wiring for the electronic tickers is done, so the next step is to put them in place and turn them on. The tickers will help advertise different campus events and will be handled by ASUP’s advertising unit (Advantage).

New Business

i.                     SOEMiddle School endorsements in Language Arts, Social Studies and Science:  Karen Eifler presented the proposal which codifies current School of Education advising for students who want a middle school endorsement and need to take additional subject-specific courses to meet federal requirements. The proposal was voted on and accepted.

ii.                   Changes to language in CAR Procedures document: Karen Eifler presented changes to update language, add a program assessment component, and establish a deadline for submitting materials to CAR. The proposal was voted on and accepted.

iii.                  Results of faculty vote on Constitution changes: Angela Hoffman reported that 57 faculty voted. 56 were in favor of changes and 1 was not. This will now go to the Board of Regents in May for their approval.

Adjournment: Meeting adjourned at 5:28 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,Diane Sotak, Secretary to the Senate