Transcript Senate Meeting
January 18, 2011
Claire Crutchley, chair: I call this meeting to order.
Good afternoon. I am Claire Crutchley, Chair of the University Senate. I welcome you to the January Senate meeting. Senate membership for this meeting is 88 Senators. Please click in to see if we have a quorum (requires 45 senators). A quorum has been established.
A short review of the rules of the Senate: Senators and substitutes for Senators, please sign in the back and get a clicker so you can vote. If you would like to speak about an issue, go to the microphone; state your name, whether you are a Senator and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that senators be allowed to speak first; after all comments by Senators on an issue, guests are welcome to speak.
The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the November meeting. Russ Muntifering posted the minutes and sent a link to all Senators. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions to these minutes? …. Hearing none, the minutes will stand as approved as written.
I now invite Dr. Large, executive vice president to come forward to present the remarks from the President’s Office.
Don Large, executive vice president: Good afternoon, the president apologizes, he intended to be here but it turned out he had to leave earlier for an engagement with some concern for weather, so he left around noon. He did write out several comments he wanted me to share with you and let me go through those.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Large.
I invite Dr. Mazey forward to present remarks from the Provost’s office.
Dr. Mazey, Provost: Just wanted to let you know that I want to say a special thank you to Dr. Patricia Duffy, who has been working in our office as the Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Studies. Many of you probably know that when Dr. Linda Glaze retired last year we did not replace her position per se, we took Dr. Duffy from a 50% to 75% position in order to reallocate those funds to one in particular was the biology department because it had such a large number of students it needed to accommodate and also to create the director of undergraduate research position. Dr. Duffy, after talking with her, as we know the faculty’s first love is in their own department and teaching those courses and the students that they have always been a part of so instead of trying to divide her time between our office and her department she’s decided to in August to return to her department, and I decided after talking with her that that position is not a 75% position it is more like 100% position plus, but we will see how we can allocate some of those duties to other individuals that report to the Provost’s Office. We now have an internal search in the institution, Dr. Margaret Marshall, director of our university writing programs will be chairing that search. It will be an Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies and I hope that we will have that position appointed by mid-March or a little later, the closing for the applications is in early February and the search committee will be reviewing those. We will have 3 candidates and will hold public forums for their interviews, so I hope you all participate in that because it is a very important position for the entire institution.
Another search I need to update you on: we are to our final candidates and they look like outstanding candidates for the Dean of Architecture, Design, & Construction, and they will be on campus starting next week and for the first week of February. They too will be holding open forums.
Last, I’d like to mention that at the APLU meetings, which is our higher education national association, one of the talks around the country would be efficiency taskforces and how that we all look at our internal operations and ways to improve our own efficiency. We have looked at some of those reports. Certainly the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has done a very nice job on their efficiency taskforce as has the University of Colorado, Bolder. So we are establishing an efficiency taskforce it’s got a broad-based representation from faculty and administration and we will have our first meeting this week. In thinking about that I was thinking about ways that we’ve already increased our efficiency, efficiency doesn’t always mean cutting cost, it is also saving time and being more productive with our time. One of those, by the end of spring semester we hope to have degree works implemented which is a degree audit system that will help our students in terms of advising. We hope to have at the end of spring semester thanks to Dr. Winn and all those that have worked with him to implement Adastra which is an electronic technology software system for classroom prioritization and scheduling. As we know it’s useful to use blackboard as a classroom management tool when you can.
And then finally I was talking to Drew Clark and he asked me to announce and we are so pleased that we are using digital measures now as the university has purchased that software system, because we do need an electronic version of annual evaluations for 2011 that we’re currently in and we have been offering training sessions, some started today at 10:00 a.m. in 202 Dunstan Hall every other Tuesday morning. Another reason that we need this is that we have to have a roster of our faculty for the SACS reaffirmation visit that will show the credentials of the faculty for each course that they teach. And by having it all on digital measures it will benefit all of us. Any questions that you have for me?
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Mazey.
I’d like to welcome all of you to the new year. We had a slow start to the semester, but all of you should have received the information on making up the missed days of class. The Senate executive committee worked to come up with those ideas in consultation with the Provost’s office on the memo you received about making up classes. Hopefully everyone is happy with how we did the make up days.
The Senate Officer nominating committee is doing well with an almost full slate of officers. However, if you have a nomination or are interested in running for office please contact Laura Plexico, chair of the nominating committee.
At the February Senate meeting, there will be nominations for Rules committee members for the 2011–2012 academic year the term doesn’t begin until July but nominations are in February with the election in March. The Rules committee is the committee that nominates members for Senate and University committees. You must be a sitting Senator to be nominated. If you have an interest in running for Rules or would like to nominate another senator, you can contact the Secretary, Russell Muntifering, or the chair, or simply nominate yourself or another interested Senator at the next meeting.
The University Research Council has formed a Steering committee to determine the agenda of the University Research Council (similar to the Senate Steering committee). Faculty are represented on the Steering committee by the Chair of the Senate and the Chair of the Faculty Research Committee.
Also Kathy McClelland of IMG asked me to make the following announcement:
Effective January, 2013, Blackboard will discontinue the licensing and support of Blackboard Vista, Auburn University's current learning management system. We will no longer be able to use it. The Learning Management System Working Group (LMSWG), made up of 12 faculty (including the chair of Academic Computing) and IT personnel, has been formed to recommend a replacement.
On Monday, Jan. 24, 2011, the LMSWG will issue an invitation to participate in a very brief survey of faculty use of and reaction to Blackboard Vista. The invitation will arrive by 1) Campus Announcement in Blackboard; 2) announcement in Auburn Daily; and 3) email from IMG. The 5-question survey will take less that 3 minutes to complete, and there will be an invitation at the end to share more detailed feedback by participating in a longer survey. The more information we can gather, the better recommendation the LMSWG will be able to make. We encourage everyone to respond to both surveys.
Again, a few reminders about the Senate: All Senators, whether ex-officio or not, have a vote and should attend every Senate meeting. If you cannot attend, please send a substitute (who is not a sitting Senator); the substitute has full voting rights. Each Senator or substitute Senator should have already signed in and picked up a clicker to vote.
Are there any questions or comments for the chair?
Today we have three action items and two information items. The action items are from the Academic Standards Committee. DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards will present all three items. Each item will have a separate vote.
First Dr. Searcy will present the New U-SN-SA grading policy.
DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards: Thank you. You received this information with the agenda so hopefully you’ve had a chance to read this, but let me spend a couple of minutes and give you some background information on this new 3-tier grading policy. It basically came to us from the College Architecture, Design, and Construction. Some of their courses are very competitive and there are limited slots and they were currently doing the S-U Policy, so there were students that were doing satisfactory work that were receiving a U. That does not affect your GPA, however we’ve come to find out that when you get a U you do not get credits earned for that, so at other schools or colleges it could calculate as an F. What they propose and we agreed to is a 3-tier system specifically for these students that are taking these summer courses that does satisfactory work, but not to the level that gets them in to the coveted slots. So they will receive the SN and get credit for the course, it allows them to move on to other programs and disciplines.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Since this is a recommendation from a Senate committee the chair will entertain a motion to adopt a recommendation from, a senator.
Robin Jaffe, senator, steering committee: I move for the adoption of the recommendation as presented
Claire Crutchley, chair: Since this is a recommendation from a Senate committee it does not require a second . At this time I open the floor for comments.
Vicky Van Santen, senator pathobiology: Will the current S-U still be available?
DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards: Yes.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Other questions? We will now vote on the motion.
Check to make sure your clickers are turned on. All those in favor press A, all opposed press B, Abstain C. If you do not get a green light, turn it off and back on. Once you vote, your clicker should show a green light; this means your vote has been cast. If there is a red light, vote again. If you are not sure that you voted, please vote again. Only your last vote will be recorded.
Results: A=92%, B=3%, C=5%
It looks like 62 people voted. The motion carries.
Second, Dr. Searcy will present modification of the Undergraduate Distance Learning policy.
DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards: Thank you. [22:21] The second item, we have 3 substantive changes here. Basically the first one is the Distance Education Courses, which will now follow the university policy including residential requirements and additional fees for that. Historically there’s been the same fee paid when you took Distance Education, in-state if you are typically in-state student you are paying more than you would your in-state tuition, if you were out-of-state you didn’t have to pay the out-of-state differential so it’s a little bit in favor for out-of-state students to take tuition and it did not favor in-state students take the distance courses. This would eliminate that so they would go under university tuition policy.
The second major change is now on campus traditional students would be allowed to take distance courses. And the third major change is there was a 25% limit on the amount of distance courses you could take and the amount of credits you could take via distance was 25% that is also being removed.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Since this is a recommendation from a Senate committee the chair will entertain a motion to adopt the recommendation as presented, it does not require a second.
Stuart Pope from Nursing, senator: I move for the adoption of the recommendation as presented.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Since it is coming from a Senate committee it does not require a second. At this time I open the floor for comments or questions.
Andy McLelland, senator from accounting: We polled our faculty in our department. We started a graduate program in I think 2000 and an undergraduate in 2005, and as we read the first sentence we think this would result in a tuition increase for the majority of our students and possibly affect us doing more programs in the future at the undergraduate level. And then in the third sentence a lot of the faculty had concerns on student behavior, academic honesty, six year graduation rates were the things that they had concerns about. So my faculty was a no.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Other comments or questions?
Scott McElroy, dept. of agronomy and soils, senator: This action item has required much more of my time than I really wanted to give it over the past 6 days since we received the e-mail on January 12. Our faculty have discussed this at add nausea. We do see a couple of positive points here in that it does limit the total credits limitation with distance education it does limit the limitations on graduating seniors in allowing them, however in following up on the comments that were just made it seems like an alternative tuition model is definitely going to be needed because this could also harm our distance education program as well in the future if we develop distance only degree programs and right now it seems that the model really sets up a situation of not really distance education but more of convenience education for our current undergraduate students. We would like to see the development of an alternative tuition model as well because just simply distance only students are not included in this. I would like to continue hearing the rest of the comments.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Bill Sauser, senator, management: As the previous two speakers have pointed out, there are concerns that those of us who favor distance education as a possible option for the future are concerned about one certainly is the tuition policy. Whereas following the tuition policy as listed there would probably put us out of the market in terms of any potential undergraduate degrees and also I’m concerned about the idea of asking for a new application each year from those who have been enrolled in a distance education program. I think both of those would be damaging to distance education programs in the future.
And Like Dr. McLelland I’ve heard from many people from the College of Business, the college in which I work, that are opposed to this so I’ll be following their wishes to vote no unless changes are made.
I will make one comment. We at Academic Standards Committee and our goal and objective when looking at this policy was from a scholastic-standards perspective. We talked about the funding and tuition policy, we decided that was out of our domain, that that is a separate issue so we are recommending this based on we felt there would be no deviation from the standards that are currently applicable. Just want to make my point clear on the funding.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Herb Rotfeld, dept. of marketing, senator: Maybe I’m being unduly thick here, but the language to be replaced is strange and difficult to wade through, but I don’t understand what the problem is including with the tuition levels. It just says we’re going to follow university policy including registration and residency, what do you do now make it up? I don’t understand what the problem is? People are saying it’s going to raise prices it’s going to make things more difficult. It’s making things a heck of a lot more straight-forward. I don’t know what the problem is, would somebody please explain that, people are saying they are opposed to it, I don’t know why.
Shelly McKee, poultry science, senator: The tone, especially in the first paragraph is very non-friendly towards non-traditional type students and I want to echo what Bill had said earlier. It’s really onerous having to put in a new application each year to maintain that program. I made some calls before coming here to talk to other people about how they manage their program and there is a wide variety, but I don’t think that we have a particular tone that is friendly to non-traditional students, especially those that may not be seeking a degree.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Only the first paragraph is what is being voted on, it’s replacing the paragraphs underneath.
Dan Gropper, substitute senator for the department of finance: I am also the Associate Dean for MBA Programs. We have been doing a lot of programs in distance ed and I understand that this is undergraduate and so the graduate programs are grandfathered in and this doesn’t directly affect them. What we are concerned because there have been some discussion about trying to potentially start some undergraduate business programs and we’re concerned that this tuition would make it harder for us to do this rather than easier. And we understand that the university’s interested in promoting more distance education programs and we think this would go the wrong way.
Secondly and this is kind of to Herb’s question, I think, what is the problem with this? I may have missed something big but I’m holding a policy here from the Board of Trustees and David Wilson who was then vice president for outreach October 1, 1997, new policy concerning distance education program tuition rates. And it outlines tuition establishment process and then an amended policy when we switched to semesters, which was passed in 2000-2001 and it went through a differential tuition process that this looks like goes in a different direction. So what I was a little surprised at particularly after getting a lengthy set of e-mails from lots of other people on campus was that we appear to be changing the language in the bulletin but accomplishing policy changes within that, and so if some how this whole board policy was set aside, I’m not sure when that happened or what the repercussions are, but it looks like you are going to write something in the bulletin that switches the policy. Does that make sense? And that’s part of what’s wrong with this.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Dan I believe that the procedure would be (Provost’s Office check me if I’m wrong) that if it was adopted it would have to go through the Board of Trustees, I mean if it was voted upon by the Senate it would have to go through the Board of Trustees and therefore the Board of Trustees would be changing policy if they accepted this. So this is a policy decision.
Mary Ellen Mazey, provost: I thought that last year when we restructured tuition that we really took the fees, there were many different fees on of which was the distance ed fees and we encompassed it into it and we made those units whole on that. So I think that was taken care of when the Board actually passed tuition restructuring last year. I can’t remember which meeting but the March meeting of last year. So I think that has been taken care of. [33:43] I think this is sort of what Herb says, as I read it, it is just to follow what university policy is.
Guy Rohrbaugh, senator from philosophy: I just want to not speak in favor or against it but say that at this point I don’t have a clear sense of why we were looking at this policy or why these changes should or shouldn’t be made in contrast with the first proposal where the justification is very clear, I feel a little bit at sea and if an when I suspect this will come back, but more needs to be explained why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Patricia Duffy, not a senator, assistant provost for undergraduate studies and professor of agricultural economics: What this is doing is two things. The first sentence basically says we will follow our own policies that’s all. The second part is we currently have a 25% cap, 25% of the total credits required for the baccalaureate degree is the most you can take, so it’s removing that 25% cap. That’s an academic standard that’s why it’s coming out of Academic Standards. There is some other odd language in here if you scroll down a little bit about if a student is going to graduate and is taking a distance ed course they have to have their grade in at mid-semester or such thing and that would also be removed. I don’t know if anyone ever follows that, it’s in the bulletin, I don’t know if anyone has a student who is graduating that’s taking a distance ed that demands that the grades be in by mid-semester, but probably not. So it’s to allow more than 25% of the degree credits from distance ed if we want to grow our distance program that cap has to come off and it also removes some of the other language. There is also a lot of this language that is very old, asynchronous, nobody really knows what that means, I had to call Monica and ask what’s asynchronous mean, well it means out of time, so other things about extended options and things like that are old and maybe were not doing that anymore so it’s to try to bring our bulletin language in line with practice and also to remove that cap, that’s the main thing to get that 25% cap off.
DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards: I will just say those are the two things we looked at was removing the cap and allowing campus traditional students to take distance course, so that are the 2 things Academic Standards looked at not the funding or tuition issue.
Werner Bergen, animal science, senator: The question I have is that are we saying that if you take a significant hours in distance education for a regular undergraduate degree you would be paying less than students that choose to go to class at Auburn University? I can understand distance education as a cash cow and soft money for people in the department for certificate programs or outreach programs, we can do all of that, but I cannot see why a student can take a course for less just because they live 100 miles away if they are regular Auburn students. If they are not regular Auburn students then they are not in a degree seeking program. Anyway you might have discussed all of this before.
Monica Detour, outreach senator, director of distance ed: I will try to give a real brief background overview of what we are doing here that might address some of these questions. Prior to this what was happening with the undergraduate distance, outside of accounting, which were separate. I think those courses were created to serve students going into the graduate distance programs and they are set up and will continue to be set up such that they can be charged the graduate program rate. Other than those courses what was happening is our traditional campus based students were paying, in addition to their full tuition, $112 per credit hour for distance tuition and another $67 per hour in a distance learning fee. That’s what we were trying to remove when we went through the Board of Trustees with the tuition restructuring. On the flip side, non-traditional student, a truly distant external student was paying the same $112 per credit hour plus $67 in fees per credit hour and so they were paying less than our traditional students per credit hour and avoiding the registration fees etc. So what we were trying to do was balance the equation, we certainly want to create undergraduate distance programs, but we don’t want to inadvertently draw away out-of–state students from campus courses based solely on a lower cost and we don’t want to really penalize our traditional campus student by charging them extra for distance courses.
Scott McElroy, agronomy and soils, senator: Based on the number of comments and a lot of the concerns that people have, a lot of this information is difficult to digest this time. I would like to make a motion that we table this discussion or we postpone definitely depending upon what the chair would like to do.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are you asking to postpone this to a later meeting?
Scott McElroy, agronomy and soils, senator: I would like to postpone for a later meeting so we can have further discussion within our department and our college as well.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Do you have specific date that you are postponing it to the February meeting?
Scott McElroy, agronomy and soils, senator: That would be fine. So postpone definitely to February if you think that is doable.
Claire Crutchley, chair: We have a motion to postpone this until the February meeting, do we have a second? (Dr. McLelland seconds.)
We are voting now on postponing, if you vote A that means you want to postpone until the February meeting, if you vote B that means you do not want to postpone you want to vote on it, and C is abstention.
A= 51, B=11, C=1 the motion passes we will postpone this until the February meeting. [40:54]
The third, Dr. Searcy will present modification of the Retroactive Withdrawal policy.
DeWayne Searcy, chair of Academic Standards: Thank you and with that postponement maybe I can make it to class this afternoon, so I’m excited.
One more to go. We were given this, Academic Standards received this policy just to review, when it was adopted it was meant to be reviewed in one year, so we did that. Most of the policies were fine there were just a few changes related to personal withdrawals and resignations, non-medical. The medical withdrawals and resignations, there is not a big issue with those. So the changes are highlighted in yellow in the document that you received previously. The four changes, 1. In the current policy is says students may withdraw without penalty of failure if they resign no later than mid-term; expanded the language to have a little bit more responsibilities on the students of what to do with that. And you can read what’s going on there.
The second change is adding this language to the current policy the policy does not have this language, there is a different bullet point under “All Other Withdrawals/Resignations Non-medical after Midterm:” this basically let’s the student understand that just because you did bad in the courses and now you want to resign is not an option, that these are for documented legitimate excuses and rare circumstance.
Third change is basically add a time limit to when the student can begin these non-medical withdrawals/resignations and that is no later than the student’s next term in residence at Auburn. We are trying to give a cut off so these things do not go in indefinitely.
The last change is changing the language to replace “Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies” with “Provost’s Designee” throughout the document.
Claire Crutchley, chair: The chair entertains a motion to adopt the recommendation from a senator.
Andy McLelland from accounting, senator: I move for the adoption of the recommendation as presented.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Since this is a recommendation from a Senate committee, it does not require a second. At this time I open the floor for comments or questions.
Since there appear to be no comments or questions we will now vote on the motion.
Check to make sure your clickers are turned on. All those in favor press A, all opposed press B, Abstain C.
A=60, B=2, C=2 The motion passes.
The first information item is an update on the Core Curriculum and General Education committee, it is presented by Michelle Sidler and Pamela Ulrich, co-chairs of the Core Curriculum and General Education committee.
Pamela Ulrich, co-chair of the Core Curriculum and General Education committee: Good afternoon, the last time we were here was a year ago for this meeting so we are here to tell you what has happened in the timeframe since then, and it’s been a lot. To bring you up to date on how we got where we were a year ago and where we are today, just a very quick summary of how the Core Curriculum (and Oversight) became the CCGEC and got to the point of revising the Core.
From 2003 to 2008 the Core Curriculum Oversight committee worked on developing student learning outcomes starting from the existing core and looking more broadly at Auburn University’s general education needs and came up with Student Learning Outcomes that were approved by the University Senate in May 2008. In the following year the General Education Taskforce looked at the topic of general education as the committee looked at how the student learning outcomes were being met within the existing core courses.
In September 2009 as a result of the General Education Taskforce, the committee was expanded to become the Core Curriculum and General Education Committee, which is why we always use the acronym because it is so long, which effectively meant that every college and school on campus is represented, before there was a formula representation of core and non-core programs. A year ago we came to you with some recommendations for some changes in the core and you approved them. One of the things that the General Education Taskforce suggested was that we align ourselves more closely with the state requirements that were developed and passed after our core went into place in the quarter system in 1991. So some of the adjustments that you voted positively on were that we move from requiring a sequence in both literature and history to allowing students to choose a sequence in either literature or history and then they must have as well one course in the opposite area. That gives students a little bit more flexibility and aligns with state and the general goal is to let the student make that choice.
We also allowed for philosophy to be in the core, but it would no longer be a specific core requirement and we will come back to that in terms of changes in the core in just a minute. It does lie within the fine arts and humanities area. The other thing that we did because of alignment study that we did in 2008 to 2009 recommend that the groupings of social science one and social science two be eliminated because it didn’t make a lot of sense in terms of learning outcomes. So you approved those and since then we’ve had the committee has had a very busy year and some committee members are here.
Immediately following your passage of our recommendations we called for proposals from all existing core courses or sequences as well as any courses or programs that wanted to offer new additions to the core. We called for proposals that laid out how the course or sequence aligned with the eleven student learning outcomes that were adopted and how they would assess it. That goes back to one of the reasons for developing student learning outcomes, coming from SACS a little less than 10 years ago that we design our own learning outcomes and then assess the degree to which our students achieve them. So that was the 2 parts of the proposal was that programs existing and new had to document how they aligned and how they would assess going forward.
From early March through October the committee worked a lot. We received proposals throughout that time, mostly in spring and sort of a gap in the summer, Michelle and I worked in the summer but the committee did not meet, and then worked intensively beginning in the fall to make a deadline possible for implementing the new core this coming fall 2011. When I say met a lot we met for 1.5–2 hours weekly with a marathon session at the end to get all spring proposals completed and we met weekly in the fall up until the very end. So what happened is that by November we had a list of courses that would be part of the revised core and we had their assessment general outline of how they would assess approved and then the committee proceeded to adopt plans for implementation and reviewing assessment plans to document the degree to which students achieve learning outcomes.
Some highlights of the changes that were made given the fact that this had to be revenue neutral, there weren’t lots of new courses proposed, there were some, so there are some adjustments. We do have more literature series, American and British so it’s not just World Literature any more. Philosophy got very creative and offered us several more philosophy courses to be in the menu with the humanities area to meet some specific learning outcomes (Comm 1000, and Michelle will come back to that) look forward to a proposal to meet the oral communication learning outcome, we have the new honor’s series that actually went into place this fall, two new honor’s series, and we have a new foreign language course. Most of those courses have been approved at the state level because they do, but not all them, some of the new courses are on the agenda very soon. We are going forward basically on the assumption that they will be approved because we need to. Existing courses like econ 2030 has been approved, I’m looking at Patricia…it’s on the agenda. We have an additional fine arts choice and that is in film studies, and we have a new political science course that’s been offered up and also social sciences and as I mentioned Econ 2030. Michelle is going to talk about implementation. [52:35]
Michelle Sidler, co-chair of the Core Curriculum and General Education committee: So that brings us up to the end of the fall semester. Although what we initiated at the end of the fall semester is the plans for implementation, both implementing these courses into the core, getting major programs knowledgeable about the changes, working with advisors, and also the implementation of the assessment in preparation for SACS visit and ongoing curriculum improvement.
The first thing we decided was the new core will be initiated in fall 2011, meaning entering freshmen in fall 2011 will be required to follow under the new core. Other students, students who’ve been here, have the option to opt in up until the end of fall 2011. If they opt in to the new core, it’s all or nothing. If you opt in you cannot opt back out again. Students following the new core are required to take courses that align with each of the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). She talked about what that means too, we have eleven student learning outcomes, all students starting fall 2011 will have to have those outcomes represented in their curriculum, but in addition we talked at length about transfer agreements. Would we need to look at any transfers that come in for not only what we’ve done in the past for traditional transfers, but also look to see if it satisfies the measures of the student learning outcomes for that course. And we decided that we’re going to take that on faith that if it is already a transfer course then presumably it would cover that SLO as well.
Most of the SLOs are all ready represented in what we have in an existing required core. The core we have adopted through the state agreement, roughly 8 or 9 are there, so the core doesn’t change that much to satisfy the SLO. The remaining SLOs are addressed primarily in humanities or social science courses. That’s really where students will see more choices, in those areas and that’s also where they are a little more complicated in terms of aligning the SLO with the class.
There is a little asterisk there by oral communication, that’s our ongoing challenge. Currently oral communication (Comm 1000) is the only course in the core that satisfies the oral communication SLO and there are not enough seats to accommodate all students. Because it needs to be revenue neutral we have no more extra seats in Comm 1000. As such major programs now requiring comm. 1000 will have to determine a course in the major that all students take where that student learning outcome will be represented. Or courses, it can be multiple courses.
Next implementation. At the end of this week Pam, Julie, and I are hosting workshops for all those who are in charge of major programs. This is an important information item to take back to your department. We met with associate deans, we’re hoping this word has gotten out that Thursday and Friday of this week anybody in charge of a major program whether it be a department head or a program coordinator, we’re having workshops to talk about what the new core looks like and for those coordinators to look at their current core curriculum models and determine any revisions that need to be made. Workshops are the 20 and 21, the deadline to submit those revised models is February 4. And those will be looked at by the CCGEC and the UCC, which is why we are on kind of a tight timeline because there are quite a few committees that this material has to go through.
In February/March we plan to have workshops for advisors, so advisors in your colleges and departments are wondering when they are going to learn this material, as so as we get the models finalized, then we will have multiple workshops with advisors.
This coming summer to support the comm. 1000 challenge the oral communication component, we are going to be offering workshops. The provost has agreed to sponsor workshops for programs that will need to integrate oral communication into a major course or courses.
So that sort of solidifying curriculum and getting it in place. The other component is the assessment timeline that we have in the next 3 years. First of all this spring, by the end of January, we’re asking all existing core courses that were approved for the core, I think most if not all of them we approved by last May, to be in the new core and are asking for a progress report by the end of this month on where they are at with assessment. They may not be done with their assessment for the year they may still be collecting but we’d like to know where they are at. This is the first time through and we want to make sure folks know what they are doing with their data collection is coming in an what instruments they are using.
By May we hope that those same programs will have collected the data and began any assessment number crunching and that sort of thing in preparation for next fall. Next fall existing core courses must submit their assessment report from this academic year. So you have to have done the assessment, run the numbers, and have a report to give to us next fall, that’s for existing core courses that were here before we revised the core. Those that are new courses they will start collecting and assessing next year so we are rolling them in next year. All of that is to say that in 2012–13 all core courses should be collecting data and performing assessment and we will continue to have rolling reports on that data collection too.
Finally we wanted to end with just a slide of our committee members, we have quite a few. Many of these folks have put in countless hours in the last 12 months looking at roughly 50 proposals that we got in, each proposal was looked at by 3 committee members so you can do the math and think about how many personnel hours that took, it was a tremendous amount of time they have been very dedicated and vey committed to seeing this process work. And we would not be as far along if we had not had such great folks so we wanted to honor them here too. Multiple drafts of proposals.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any questions or comments for Dr. Sidler and Dr. Ulrich?
I’d like to also thank the CCGEC, they’ve worked very hard. Thank you.
The second information item is from the Office of the Program for Students with Disabilities, and is presented by Tracy Donald, Director Disability Services. [1:00:47]
Tracy Donald, Director Disability Services: Thanks for inviting me. This will be my 18th year working at Auburn in Disability Services and faculty have played a huge role in making the transition for the student with a disability be successful here at Auburn University. What I would like to talk about today is to give you an overview of our program, talk a little bit about our services, and some of the services that we are going to offer to faculty also.
A lot has changed in the last 2 years. We’ve had a change in the ADA, 2008 congress passed amendments to the ADA and the president signed it into law and then they became effective in 2009, so that spurred a lot of litigation in the U.S. and it’s caused advocacy groups to form and work on the behalf of students. What we’ve seen that comes from the Department of Justice that it is unacceptable for a university to use emergent technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students. We formed a committee to look at the technology that we are using on campus to make sure that we stay in compliance. Earlier last year Penn State a suite was filed against them for similar things.
In our office we fall under the rehab act of 1973, the ADA of 1990, and the amendments of 2008, but we also look at the Justice Department of Regulations, which new regulations came out in October that gave us some more details of what they expect of ADA amendments. We also look at the civil rights and other rulings. We also fall under ADAG which helps us with the building, construction, and things along that line. Section 504 has been around since 1973 and it states that if a person qualifies to meet you minimum standard at the university then we cannot discriminate against them.
In ADA, they just define what a disability is, it affects a major life activity, and what the ADA amendments did was to expand on those, they added learning, concentrating, and thinking to the list of major life activities. Our accommodations are sort of based on that. We look at a student’s functional-limitations and how their major life activities are affected. We also get some guidance from the Office of Civil Rights, this is from their Web page and they list what kind of accommodations may be appropriate for students with disabilities. Many of these things you see on the accommodation letters that you receive from us substituting some courses, note takers recording devices, extended time, etc.
These are some stats from our office. This is from this semester. We serve approximately 855 students with disabilities campus, 303 have multiple disabilities. All this is attached to your handouts and things you can link to later.
This is our typical approach to eligibility. You have to be accepted to the University, we do not get involved until the student is actually accepted. Once they are accepted they usually make contact with us, submit some sort of documentation to support their accommodations, then we determine what accommodations are reasonable and then we develop and accommodation letter that is sent to faculty. Here is some of the technology that we have available for students.
What I’d like to focus on today is the kind of services we have available for you. One thing we’re going to start doing this semester is…we have already proctored a lot of exams, last year we proctored 1,203 exams in our office and what we want to do starting this semester is work with you to begin to offer a service where we will help you proctor exams that are make-ups, not just for students with disabilities but for students that just need a make-up exam. So we through that out to you, so if you have a student that needs to make up an exam and you don’t have a space available, we will offer that when it’s available, there could be times during finals and mid-term where it is not feasible at our office. We can proctor about 30 exams in each hour. Just know that’s available to you starting this semester, just make a contact to our office and we will arrange for the person to come to our office, most of it are private rooms and we also have a big classroom with cubicles where a student can take the exam.
If you happen to show videos and have a deaf student in your classroom, we have capability to caption your video online and provide transcripts for that. We also provide technology training for you. If you are a faculty member with a disability, loosing your vision, mobility issues, we also have people available to work with you to help with technology to help do your job.
We also provide alternate formats. We work with several faculty with this already with faculty members who may be loosing their vision we work to get your materials converted into a format that can be used, especially with textbooks. If that’s a need of yours just contact our office and we can work to get you textbook put into an accessible format.
We also do Web site analysis. Some of the grants we write for Federal now have a section 508 component to it. Our office will work to make sure whatever materials and Web sites that you are developing for that grant, we are here to help with that.
The new thing we are going to offer this spring, it’s probably about a month away, we call it Jaunt, it’s a door-to-door delivery. We purchased some golf carts and will be available to faculty, staff, and students with physical and health impairments to get from building to building. If you happen to have a meeting in Funchass and you are coming from Lowder, you would just schedule a time with us and we would make sure a cart is there to make the delivery. We approximately have 88 students with physical disabilities that could benefit from this. Hopefully by February this will be available and we are opening it up to faculty and staff, so if you know staff members that need transportation we can help with that.
Also we are organizing some sports and recreation. We’re trying to increase opportunities for students and for faculty and staff to participate in recreation activities. Currently we started our first wheelchair basketball team. We are continuing to expand on what we offer in terms of recreational opportunities for faculty and staff.
These are an example of a syllabus statement. This kind of just helps facilitate the process of accommodations in your classroom, this is just an example and if you visit our Web site you can see a guide to this. You need to offer it out to a student who may need special accommodations, then come see me. Some things to realize that when you are meeting with students, make sure that it is in a private location, discuss the accommodations requested and develop a mutually agreeable plan with the student regarding the facilitation of those accommodations. Accommodations can be talked out, don’t be afraid to do that. After meeting with a student with our new online system, go ahead and record that meeting that way if anything occurs we have a record that a meeting did occur. And you have no responsibility to accommodate students that do not follow the procedures of the university.
Some things to avoid: Please do not as a student the nature of his/her disability, try not to suggest what a student’s disability is, if you are uncomfortable with an accommodation then contact our office and allow us to work through the process. What we don’t want to do is deny an accommodation and not give a student due process. [1:10:26] Sometimes we can negotiate the matter and come up with different solutions, because we know with all accommodations, we are limited by how we word the accommodations, because one student could take 5 classes and 5 or 6 hundred professors a semester are getting these accommodation letters so we have to write them somewhat generically, but we are willing to work with you to negotiate and look at other ways to accommodate a student. [1:10:55] and too not tell a student he/she requested an accommodation too late. Some students may always be in a process of getting their accommodations, they may not learn about our service until the middle of the semester or they may wait for a certain amount, but once you receive that letter or that online notification that’s when it begins. Everything prior to that is retroactive so you have no obligation to go back and make up an exam prior to this, but it’s just never too late. When we talk about extended time you need to call my office and we’ll work with the student and you and figure out what’s reasonable.
And medical resignations, we do do those and we just ask that when we send you the e-mails, respond in a timely manner so that we can get these processed. Here are some stats, last year 2010 we did 524 requests, 192 were medical, 31 medical withdrawals were approved, 63 were still pending, 238 requests were not approved. And you can see on the right the different reasons why.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any questions or comments for Mr. Donald?
James Goldstein, senator from English: I was recently told by a colleague that an accommodations memo was now being transmitted through AU Access. Is that true and does that replace the student presenting you with a hard copy of the memo?
Tracy Donald: Yes that took effect this semester and the student still has the obligation to meet with the faculty member. Accommodations do not become in effect until they actually meet with the faculty member to discuss those accommodations. Everything will be electronic from this point forward.
James Goldstein, senator from English: It might lead to some logistical confusions if the student comes but doesn’t have the memo and the faculty member maybe hasn’t seen or printed a copy of the memo in advance with the meeting with the student.
Tracy Donald: What we’re actually working on is the student has the opportunity to print the accommodations, right now I will be meeting with OIT rep tomorrow to give the faculty member the opportunity to print that too. You can print the screen, but we are working to get something that is a little more formal.
James Goldstein, senator from English: In the department of English there are a lot of non-tenure track faculty who have very limited access to printing facilities.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Other questions or comments? Thank you.
That is the last item on the agenda.
Does anybody have any unfinished business? New business?
If there is no other business, then the meeting is now adjourned. Be sure to return the clickers on your way out. Thank you.