ACADEMIC SENATE MINUTES

(Approved)

 

February 20, 2002                                                                                                                                          Volume XXXIII, No. 12

                                                                                                                                                           

Call to Order

Chairperson Curt White called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.                                                         

 

Roll Call

Senator Crothers called the roll and declared a quorum.

 

Approval of Minutes of February 6, 2002

 

Motion XXXIII-90: By Senator Fowles, second by Senator Brown, to approve the Senate minutes of February 6, 2002. The minutes were unanimously approved.

 

Chairperson's Remarks:

Senator White:  I have a few announcements. There will be a speaker for a Black History Cultural Dinner on Monday, February 25, 2002, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m., Bone Student Center Ballroom. Mayor Lee Brown of Houston, Texas will be the speaker. Tomorrow is Founder's Day. In addition to the ringing of the bell, there will be a procession with everyone in regalia. We have received from Sharon Stanford the apportionment for Senate representation next year. The representation is unchanged in terms of distribution among colleges. I would like to welcome a new senator to the Senate, Senator Matthew Anderson, a graduate student representative.

 

The Council of Illinois University Senates (CIUS), as you recall that with the assistance of this group I helped to organize last year, had its second meeting here on campus last Wednesday, February 13. We had a good turnout for it. It has not been easy getting this group off the ground. There hasn't been a lot of time for senate chairs to participate, even by e-mail, in some of the conversations we have tried to get going. Seven of the twelve universities were represented and three had to cancel at the last minute. They are very interested and eager that we continue our work. With Senator Crothers' help, we worked on a resolution that will be the first action of this group. It is a resolution concerning the relationship of public monies to private institutions, specifically IMAP grants to students. We will bring this as a Sense of the Senate Resolution at our next meeting. All of the senates in the state will be working from this same resolution and hopefully we will be able to go public with it in late March. This is also an organization that I hope the next Senate chair will take a keen interest in because, given the current political climate, the public universities in the state urgently need some form of representation that really looks to their needs and interests.

 

Vice Chairperson/Student Government Association President's Remarks:

Senator Kording: The student elections for 2002 fast approaching. The voting will be on line from 6:00 a.m. on March 5th to 6:00 p.m. on March 6th. We will also have paper balloting available in two locations. Our current plans are for those to be located in the Bone Student Center on the second floor and at the bottom of the large set of stairs in Watterson Food Court. On March 4th, we plan to have a candidates forum for students who are interested in hearing about each of the candidates. SGA has three major objectives for the remainder of the year. The first is the student participation in the Comprehensive Campaign. We have some senators who are working to coordinate that and our goal is to secure contributions from at least 40% of the student body. The second item that we are working on with Dr. Mamarchev's office is the appropriation of the student fees for the next fiscal year. Our biggest priority is the recreation and wellness center referendum. Students will be able to vote on that issue on line. If you have questions about the referendum, please call the SGA office or visit the referendum site on line linked to the SGA home page.

 

 

 

Administrators' Remarks:

·        President Boschini: Tomorrow is Founder's Day. It is the 145th anniversary of Illinois State University. At 10:00 a.m., we ring the bell that used to be on top of Old Main. At noon, there is a luncheon and presentation of awards for faculty and staff members. The most important award is the Honorary Degree, which will be presented at that time to Dr. Dave Edmunds. He is an award-winning author and his main area of interest is Native American History. At 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, there will be a Heritage Academy, which involves a presentation by Professor Emeritus Jo Rayfield about the history of ISU. At 3:00 p.m., the actual convocation will be held. At 4:15, there will be ceremony at the convocation to again recognize the winners of the awards.

 

There is now a new Executive Director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, Dr. Daniel Lavista. I would be glad to share his biography with you. Interestingly, Dr. Lavista at one time was a professor at ISU in the Theatre Department in the 70s. Since then, he has served as the president of two community colleges and also as president of the community college system.

 

Governor Ryan gave his combined State of the State Address and his budget message. In all likelihood, fiscal year 2003 will be a lean budget year for the entire state. The IBHE will not make its allocation known for about another week. It does appear that the 2003 fiscal year budget will look very much like this year's budget after the cut back in general revenue funds and the payment from all funding sources for group health insurance. Therefore, our base budget will actually be lower than this year's budget. Public higher education in Illinois is better off than a lot of other state agencies and we are certainly better off than public higher education in many other states. The governor did commit to fully funding the State University Retirement System. Illinois State has benefited from its increasing popularity, so enrollment numbers continue to be strong. My first priority will continue to be improvement of faculty and staff salaries, though providing for modest increases will cause us do some internal resource allocation. Next year, we will not have a 3 + 2 + 1 system or anything such as that. I do not anticipate the layoff of any continuing line faculty or staff members at this point.

 

The remodeling projects for both Turner and Stevenson Halls were not funded under the governor's recommendation. This was not a surprise to us because we received $17 million for a project last year. The Turner and Stevenson Hall projects will, however, move up on the list for the following fiscal year. As the process moves forward, ISU will be working closely with the General Assembly and the entire University community to provide the best educational experience possible with the dollars that are available. This budget underscores the need to aggressively seek private funds through efforts like "Redefining Normal", the capital campaign for ISU. On Monday, March 4, 2002, we will have another announcement of a very large gift to the University.

 

Senator Reid: The Pantagraph reported that Dr. Lavista left his job as head of the system of community colleges in part because of disagreements over shared governance with the faculty. Do you have an idea of what those differences were?

 

Senator Boschini: No, I don't, but I have made several inquiries to find out.

 

·        Provost Al Goldfarb:  I want to underscore how important the bell ringing ceremony is tomorrow at Founder's Day.  We will make our Educating Illinois presentation to the Board of Trustees on Friday and later to the AP Council. We have already done so for the Civil Service Council. In terms of enrollment, we are trying to hold to our goal of 3,000 freshmen. Our overall enrollment will hopefully stay the same because of our strong retention rate, which would mean that we would not suffer budgetarily because of reduced enrollment. One of the exciting things in terms of enrollment is that we have added an enrollment deposit required of students by May 1 and already almost 1,000 students have submitted deposits. I think that shows that Illinois State is an institution of choice.

 

Senator Razaki: When enrollment goes up, is it monetarily beneficial for Illinois State or does it cost us?

 

Senator Goldfarb: I would argue that in the long run it becomes more difficult when enrollment goes up beyond our goals because then we are scrambling to pay for additional sections and to maintain the way in which we structure our first year experience. We are not funded at the level for each student, so in a sense, we are underwriting those costs.

 

Senator Reid: I looked at the list of students who have been accepted into the French program. Suddenly, all of the ACTs are between 25 and 30. My major worry is that a lot of these people are not going to come. Is it possible that enrollment is going to go down?

 

Senator Goldfarb: The percentage increases in 25 and above ACT scores in terms of admitted students is a remarkable increase. There is a new process now to make personal contact with our students. I will ask Steve Adams to come in again to address this body. We are making five personal contacts with students admitted in the 25 and above ACT range and we are getting very positive responses. We have to work very hard to convert those admitted students to enrolled students.

 

Senator Lindblom: As the ACT scores are rising, is the profile of the students staying the same? Are we getting just as diverse a class racially and in terms of socioeconomic backgrounds?

 

Senator Goldfarb: As part of our goal, we have asked for things like personal statements as part of the admission process to try to make certain we are looking at the overall student. Clearly, we will also admit students who may not have met the average ACT score. Our application numbers are slightly down in terms of minority students, but last year our applications were down, but we had more minority students in the freshman class because we had done a better job of converting applications into enrollment. We are going to continue to use some of the strategies this year. We have expanded the "First Look Program" and have tripled the number of minority students that we are bringing onto campus through that program. Also, we are diversifying the program geographically into East St. Louis and Peoria as well as continuing in Chicago. As part of our goal, we want to keep the sense of accessibility.

 

·        Vice President of Student Affairs:

Senator Mamarchev: Thank you for mentioning that Mayor Lee Brown is coming to help us celebrate on Monday, February 25th. I also want to thank Scott Kording and all of the SGA leadership who have been involved in putting the student referendum together. I would encourage you to look at the web site. They have done an outstanding job (http://www.sga.ilstu.edu/referendum).

 

·        Vice President of Finance and Planning: Excused Absence

 

Committee Reports

·        Academic Affairs Committee

Senator Borg: The Academic Affairs Committee discussed the policy items on the regular review cycle and should have those to forward to the Senate for the next meeting. We received copies of the proposed Student Code of Conduct and the Academic Affairs Committee and SGA will be reviewing that over the next couple of weeks.

 

·        Administrative Affairs and Budget Committee

Senator Wells: Administrative Affairs met briefly to finalize our Presidential Commentary Report.

 

 

·        Faculty Affairs Committee

Senator Deutsch: Faculty Affairs discussed the non-tenure track faculty report it has been putting together.

 

·        Planning and Finance Committee

Senator Kurtz:  Planning and Finance is bringing its final report on collegiate restructuring, otherwise known as creating intellectual communities, forward this evening as an Advisory Item.

 

·        Rules Committee

Senator Reid: The Rules Committee continues to work on the Academic Freedom/Ethics and Grievance proposed document. We hope to finish that next week. We also discussed the proposed Policy and Procedures on Integrity in Research and Scholarly Activities.

 

Action Items:

Honorary Degree Committee Elections (Rules Committee)

Election of Faculty and Student Senate Members:

There were two nominations for the Senate faculty representative for the Honorary Degree Committee, Senator Landau and Senator Razaki. Senator Landau withdrew his name. Senator Ryan McNaught was nominated as the student senator to serve on the Honorary Degree Committee. Both Senators Razaki and McNaught were elected by acclamation.

 

Ratification of SGA Election of Student Member

The Senate ratified the election by SGA of Kenneth Burger to the Honorary Degree Committee.

 

01.28.01.02     Student Elections Code (SGA) (In Senate Packets of 2/6/02)

(This item was tabled per a motion approved by the Senate at its meeting of 02/06/02. A motion approved by a majority of the Senate is necessary to reopen the issue.)

 

Senator White: We do seem to have conflicting documents concerning the approval of student election procedures. My recommendation is that if the Senate is not to have a role in the future oversight of the Student Elections Code that it be allowed to at least vote itself out of that role. That is essentially what we are doing tonight. You will notice in the proposed Student Elections Code that it provides for no oversight by the Senate. I would say that this is particularly appropriate because students are no longer directly elected to the Senate, rather they are elected as members of SGA and then those members are automatically members of the Senate, so the necessity for the Senate to have this oversight I don't think is apparent any longer.

 

Motion XXXIII-91: By Senator Kording, second by Senator Crothers, to remove from the table the motion for the approval of the new Student Elections Code. The motion was unanimously approved.

 

Motion XXXIII-84: (Previous Motion of 2/6/02) By Senator Crothers, seconded by Senator Bathauer, to approve the Student Elections Code. The Senate unanimously approved the Student Elections Code.

 

Information Items:

03.16.01.04A  Graduate School Bylaws Revisions (Rules Committee)

Senator White: Can you clarify the significance of the items in bold, underlined and in red in the revisions to the Graduate School Bylaws?

 

Senator Reid: The items in red are additions that came from the Rules Committee and the items in bold came from the Graduate faculty. Only a few additions were recommended by the Rules Committee and were approved by a two-thirds majority of the Graduate faculty.

 

Dr. Sandra Little, Director of Graduate Studies: The principal part of the changes was to try to get new faculty on the Graduate faculty much quicker than we do now, so the essential things here are that when a new faculty comes on board, they are able to be put on the Graduate faculty upon hire. We also would like to re-institute the Associate status that we had a number of years ago in order that faculty who are new to the system are able serve on thesis and dissertation committees without having to do it by exception.

 

Senator Reid: The new Associate members would not have the full rights of full members. They will not be able to chair dissertation committees. They can co-chair a thesis committee. They will not vote as a member of the Graduate faculty at the University level.

 

Senator Armstrong: Section 2 allows for a number of ex-officio members, but no where does it indicate that ex-officio members can chair committees.

 

Dr. Little: We did not change any of the existing bylaws in regard to that. They could as ex-officio members chair dissertations or theses. Most of these members are already members of the Graduate faculty.

 

Senator Thomas: On the first page between the last and the next to the last sentence, is there something missing? The sentence just stops after "description of the procedures employed in".

 

Dr. Little: It appears that the word "determining" is missing.

 

Senator Nur-Awaleh: When will these go into effect?

 

Dr. Little: As soon as they are approved by this body.

 

Senator White: Pending the approval of the President.

 

Information Items:

06.08.01.14          Extent of Student Teaching Policy (Academic Affairs Committee)

Senator Borg: The Academic Affairs Committee received three revised policies that were approved by the Council for Teacher Education (CTE). We were asked to review them. The committee agreed wholeheartedly with the changes that were made. I remain confused as to whether these ought to be information and action or advisory items. The CTE has jurisdiction over policy making having to do with education affairs. I do agree that the Senate should be notified of changes of this importance, but the body responsible for approval is the CTE.

 

Senator White: It is a gray area, but the Senate needs to approve any changes to academic criteria. Insofar as this is a policy related to something that is required for graduation, I think we could appropriately say that this is something that we need to approve. Can you say something about the changes that were made?

 

Senator Borg: Both the former policy and the new policy are contained on the same page.

 

Senator Landau: From my experience, most training and supervision requirements that lead to professional credentialing specify the amount of supervision either in terms of clock hours or number of days. I am a little uncomfortable with the document left as a "full semester experience". If there were some attempt to define that with more precision, I think it may reduce any ambiguity.

 

Senator Borg: We will look at that.

 

 

 

 

 

Senator White: The committee can take that into consideration when it comes back as an action item. My inclination at this point is to bring it back as an action item. We need to be clear about that. Unless there is an objection to this ruling by the chair, this is something that will come back as an action item.

 

Senator  Bathauer: Some students are concerned about elementary education admissions. If there is a shortage of faculty in elementary education, can they extend the number of hours that people h