CCSU Faculty Senate
Minutes—March 14, 2011
VAC 105 3:05 PM
The next meeting of the Faculty Senate is on Monday 4/11/10 in Vance 105 at 3:05.
Note: Senate Constitution, Bylaws, Meeting Dates, Agenda and Minutes are posted on the CCSU Pipeline under Faculty Resources/Faculty Senate, or at http://web.ccsu.edu/facsenate.
Present: Alewitz. M., Anderson, C., Ayalon, A., Barr, B., Barrington, C., Bernstein, S., Best, F., Bigley, M.P., Blitz, D., Cappella, D., Christensen, S., Crespi, C., Diamond, C. , Dziuda, D., Farhat, J., Foster, P., Garcia-Bowen, M., Greenfield, B. , Halkin, S., Hensley, P., Horan, M., Hou, X, Jackson, A., Jarmoszko, A., Kapper, M., Karpuk, P., Kean, K., Kershner, B., Latour, F. , Lisi, P., Mahony, M., Mamed, O., Mejia, G., Mendez-Mendez, S., Mulcahy, C., Mulrooney, J., O'Connor, J., Osoba, B., Pancsofar, E., Percy, V., Pirog, K., Pope, C., Poppe, K., Ratansi, S., Reagan, T., Sadanand, N., Sikorski, J., Vogeler, R., Wang, W., Wood, R.
Ex-Officio: Lemma, P., Lovitt, C., Pease, S., Sakofs, M.
Parliamentarian: Dimmick, C.
Guests: Austed, C., Burkholder, T., Jones, J.
1. Approval of Minutes, February 14, 2011
Passed unanimously
2. Announcements
AAUP President (J. Jones)
- There will be chapter meeting on Wed 3/16 from 3-7 in the Nutmeg Room. The first 1 ½ hours will be business meeting, followed by a social.
- Nominations for the CCSU-AAUP executive committee close Fri at noon.
- More than 600 people turned out for the hearings on the reform of Higher Education in CT. This has been efficacious. One of the most damaging items of the reform plan has been removed. That was a direct result of pressure from faculty, staff and students.
- See the union website for talking points and priorities regarding aspects of the plan to reform higher education.
SUOAF-AFSCME (O. Mamed)
Tonight Governor Malloy will be at a town hall meeting at Bristol Eastern High School (one of several town hall meetings with the governor). People are encouraged to attend.
Human Resources (A. Alling)
- The university is converting to new time/attendance system. Payroll will no longer be mailing checks or stubs to your home. These will now go to departments and distributed from there. There may be a moment when our advice for direct deposit will be e-mailed to us as well.
- The conversion will begin with the first pay date for the first summer session.
President of the Senate (C. Barrington)
Because of the size of today’s agenda, there has been a request from the department of psychology to move their resolution, listed under unfinished business, ahead of the committee reports. Because the committee reports may be lengthy, and because they represent pressing Senate business, President Barrington suggested that such a motion can be considered only with time limits on the discussion of the resolution. She proposed a 10-minute limit and 90 second per speaker limit.
This revision of the agenda with time restrictions passed with
28 voting in favor, 2 against, with 2 abstentions.
A motion to add 5 minutes to the restricted time limit for the sole purpose of presentation of the resolution (leaving 10 minutes for debate) passed with 22 voting for, 2 against, with 8 abstentions.
4. Unfinished Business
Resolution on Internships and Independent Studies (R. Wood and J. Sikorski)
Resolution FS 10.11.002R and Supporting documents:
- Request to Senate from Psychology Department
- Summary of Issues from Psychology Department
- Full Narrative of Issues from Psychology Department
Senator Wood presented the revised motion, which included substantial textual revisions from the motion presented on Jan. 24, 2011.
Senator Wood reiterated many points made on January 24, stating that the issue was primarily one involving the academic freedom of departments. The limitation on internships/independent studies along with the Dean’s advocacy of a course-based teaching model for internships amounts to, according to the authors of the resolution, a violation of academic freedom.
Members of the psychology department argued that they are the best judges of what portion of our energies should be devoted to internships and independent studies, and that 10% (of their 625 majors) represented a reasonable amount of internships/independent study for their department. They stated that they aren’t near that number with the current restrictions. They also indicated that they need internships and independent studies to distinguish CCSU from Community Colleges.
During the Q & A, issues came up:
Is an official grievance being persued? No. Any grievance at this point is still being considered informally. J Jones indicated that there is nothing in the resolution that will effect arbitration.
There was some question about the numbers. Did the Psychology department want 10% of 625 over 2-3 years? Or in one year? The question of 10% of 625 existing majors might mean that they were closer to their desired number. Members of the psychology department indicated that that was not the case.
The general debate centered around whether or not the resolution focused on a question of resources or a question of academic freedom. Several members of the administration, including S. Pease and C. Lovitt indicated their support of the value of internships, but emphasized that this was a question of resources and how they affect academic priorities.
Senator Karpuk suggested that the resolution appeared to be asking the senate to intervene in a dispute between the CCSU administration and a single department, and that he had sympathy and support for both sides of the argument. He suggested that some senators may feel caught in the middle, and that it didn’t seem appropriate to be arbitrating the issue. He suggested sending the issue to the mediation committee and try to negotiate this outside of senate floor.
Others argued that the resolution is not just about one department but about academic freedom in general.
During this debate, a motion to call the question failed.
A motion to extend debate for 15 minutes passed with 22 voting in favor.
A motion to remand the issue to the mediation committee failed.
A motion to extend debate for 3 minutes passed.
A motion was made by Senator Wood for the vote to be conducted by secret ballot.
Motion for a secret ballot failed: 16 in favor, 18 against, and 1 abstention.
The resolution passed with 26 voting in favor, 4 voting against, and 7 abstentions.
Passed
3. Committee Reports
Curriculum (D. Adams) FS 10.11.018B
Passed unanimously
Academic Standards (K. McGrath)
K. McGrath proposed a 12 credit option for a certificate in WGSS (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies). Since many students don’t have the free credits available for the minor in WGSS, this certificate provides another option.
P. Lemma indicated a need to check the Department of Higher Education guidelines concerning certificates before proceeding with this proposal.
Discussion of the proposal was postponed pending this check.
Assessment (J. Mulrooney)
See attached Report from the Assessment Committee.
Information Technology (T. Burkholder)
- The IT committee proposed to establish a new announcement listserve to the CCSU community. This listserve would be refreshed every year, with all Teaching and Administrative Faculty (AAUP and SUOAF) automatically added on. Students would not be included on the list. Individuals would then have the option to opt out of the list.
A formal motion and discussion was delayed pending the creation and presentation of the guidelines under which the listerve would operate and how the listserve would be administered.
Sabbatical Leave Committee Report and Recommendations (I. Gotchev)
Report
- For this year there were 31 proposals for sabbatical leave.
- Every member of the committee read every proposal and gave rankings in 4 categories.
- The committee then ranked the proposals according to their merits in the four categories.
- The committee then invited faculty to meet with them if they wished to.
- The committee then ranked them again.
- Only 24 proposals were funded, so the committee made 24 recommendations.
- Then they learned one proposal was lost. So they evaluated it separately. Proposals were ranked through deliberation.
The committee asked the senate to consider their list of recommendations that include changes to by-laws as well as recommendations to departments.
They also suggested creating some kind of system of checks and balances in the event that an application was lost as it was this year. There need to be more elaborated practices to deal with this situation.
The senate voted unanimously to send to committee the recommendations to the Committee on Committees to consider the various recommendations.
5. New Business
After some discussion of the proposals and a motion made to separate the resolution into two parts, Senator Osoba asked if a quorum was still present. There being no quorum, discussion was suspended.
6. Adjournment at 5:30 pm