Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Browsing Room, Knight Library
Agenda | Watch Live
Old business note: Last meeting the Senate spent a lot of time on IT policies, over concerns that there was no clear campus policy governing when administrators could access faculty and staff email. The GCO has now approved a “procedure” for this, here:
https://it.uoregon.edu/is/information-security links to https://it.uoregon.edu/system/files/UO%20IS%20Electronic%20Records%20Access%20Procedures.pdf
And while procedures can be changed without notice, this new procedure seems to have satisfied everyone involved as a practical and expedient solution.
DRAFT Senate Meeting Agenda – February 10, 2016
Browsing Room, Knight Library; 3:00-5:00 pm
3:00 pm Introductory Remarks, Senate President Randy Sullivan
3:05 pm 1. Call to Order
3:05 pm 2. Approval of Minutes 2.1 January 27, 2016
3:15 pm 4. New Business
4.1 Motion (Policy Proposal): US15/16-15: Course Repeat Policy; Frances White (Anthropology),Academic Council
Great idea, passes unanimously, thanks Frances!
4.2 Motion: Policy Proposal): US15/16-16: Revision of the Membership of the Committee on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence; Randy Sullivan (Chemistry & Biochemistry), Senate President
Passes unanimously.
3:50 pm 5. Open Discussion
5.1 Reallocation of Resources Process and Budget Model; Brad Shelton (Interim Vice President for Research) and Jamie Moffitt (Vice President of Finance &Administration and Chief Financial Officer) – tentative
Sorry, I”m mostly listening not blogging.
Statement from Gina Psaki, from Romance Languages (I’ll post when I get a copy).
Marcus’s 2014 budget memo to Scott, here, from the Presidential Archives https://uomatters.com/2016/02/schill-and-marcus-lance-gottfredson-and-coltranes-festering-cas-budget-boil.html
And here’s some national info on this, courtesy of a reader: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/11/mla-report-shows-declines-enrollment-most-foreign-languages
At least this time the faculty didn’t have to do anything unlawful to find out what’s up – Schill has some of it posted on the IR website, here. But not everything. Meanwhile, it’s been a week, still no response, for the MOU’s showing where the money has gone:
This is a public records request for copies of any MOUs or other agreements between the UO Provost and UO Deans regarding financial commitments or obligations regarding transfers to or from college budgets.
5.2 US15/16-12: New Program Approval, M.S. Sports Product Design
To be discussed at the next meeting, 2/24.
5.3 US15/16-13: New Program Approval, B.A./B.S. Arts Management
I wanted this held over for 2 weeks so the Academic Council could look at the grade distributions in the AAD courses and the online quality and cheating issues, and the TTF/NTTF imbalance. Here are my notes:
Not in any way disparaging the intellectual quality of the department or the importance of its work.
1) This proposal is at odds with the new emphasis on increasing TTF. Courses will be taught in part by NTTF.
2) Online classes: AAD’s current online classes have very high grades, very popular. AAD has no systems to detect on-line cheating, verify identity.
The budget model gives strong incentives for these classes and adding a major: $141 per SCH, $1660 per major, $1559 per degree.
The fact that these are classified as Gen Ed 1 and MC classes takes students away from Hum – part of the strong incentives from the budget model – too strong.
Summarizing: AAD should deal with these online course issues and the TTF/NTTF imbalance before adding a new major.
And I put up the data on the grade distributions for the 75 largest UO classes,
More later, but the AAD major proposal passed overwhelmingly
5.4 Confidentiality of Student Health Care and Survivors’ Services Information policy
No time.
4:45 pm 6. Reports
4:45 pm 7. Notice(s) of Motion
7.1 US15/16-xx: Confidentiality of Student Health Care and Survivors’ Services Information policy
7.2 US15/15-xx: Change membership of Graduate Council to include member from the Committee on
Courses
4:45 pm 8. Other Business
5:00 pm 9. Adjournment
In my view, the old policy on course repeat-ability is the single dumbest UO policy ever in my entire time here. Its about time it got changed to something far more sensible.
We have/had a course repeat policy? News to me!
Prior to my tenure as DH, I taught a big undergraduate service course for over a decade. I would have “repeat customers” every year. Some showed marked improvement (D+ to A-), most barely eeked out a “pass” (F to C-). The worst offenders were members of the now-defunct (and should stay defunct) wrestling team. One kid took my course THREE times, “improving” from F to D to D+. The third time I pulled him aside the first week of class and asked him point blank, “What are you doing?” His response was that between practice, classes and more practice, he was exhausted by 7-8PM and usually fell asleep while trying to studying. Poor kid…..
I have had an opposite experience
students getting an A then retaking the class again for obvious GPA padding. There is a correlation between this student profile and some other attributes, too polite to say here …
So, yet another humanities-oriented major that is offered as a BS. Why are we even wondering at the lower enrollments in languages?
AAD should not be a major — BA or otherwise — in my opinion. Where is the commitment to Liberal Arts education to be followed by a professional degree? AAD is a professional program. And frankly, to be involved in the Arts or Art Administration and not speak ANY second language is a joke.
Well this is just like getting a Degree in CAS in ESCI (environmental science) without needing to take a single Physics or Geology course … cool, sign me up!
Hippo