CCSU Faculty Senate

Minutes—November 26, 2012
 

VAC 105 3:05 PM
 

Present: Alewitz, M.; Antonucci, C.; Arena, J.; Beck, M.; Bernstein, S.; Best, F.; Bilisoly, R.; Boscarino, N.; Cappella, D.; Cohen, S.; Cox, S.; Diamond, C.; Durant, M.; Espelin, J.; Farhat, J.; Foster, P.; Fothergill, W.; Garcia-Bowen, M.; Greenfield, B.; Hoopengardner, B.; Horowitz, S.; Hou, X.; Jackson, M.; Johnson, D.; Karpuk, P.; Kean, K.; Kershner, B.; Kovel, J.; Kullgren, A.; Larsen, K.; Latour, F.; Mamed, O.; McGuire, M.; Mejia, G.; Pancsofar, E.; Paolino, J.; Pearson, F.; Poirier, K.; Ragusett, J.; Reasco, A.; Reska, J.; Santoro, K.; Sarisley, E.; Shen, X.; Slaga, S.; Snyder, J.; Tafrate, R.; Tully, J.; Walsh, S.; Wang, W.; White, C.; Williams, C.
Ex-Officio: Lemma, P.; Lovitt, C.; Shojai, S.
Parliamentarian: Dimmick, C.
President of the Senate: Mulrooney, J.
Guests: Eric Bergenn (SGA President); Jason Jones (CCSU-AAUP President); Laura Tordenti (VP Student Affairs); Linda Wagner (Nursing)
1. Approval of Minutes, October 22, 2012
Approved unanimously
2. Announcements
a. AAUP President (J. Jones)
There will be a CCSU-AAUP chapter meeting / holiday social on Wednesday, December 5 at 3pm in the Connecticut Room.
b. SUOAF-AFSCME President (E. Hicks absent; O. Mamed made announcements)
The SUOAF-AFSCME elections will be held soon.
The SUOAF-AFSCME bus trip to New York City will be on December 1.
c. SGA (E. Bergenn)
The SGA wishes to thank all of those who participated in "Competition for a Cause". The amount of food collected was at least double what was expected. As far as the competition is concerned, overall the City of New Britain defeated CCSU.
d. FAC to the BOR (S. Adair)
No announcements.
e. President of the Senate (J. Mulrooney)
The second Presidential Open Forum of the Fall semester will be held on Thursday, November 29, at 3:05pm, in the Connecticut Room.
The President of the Senate tracked all sabbatical leave applications at every stage of the process. Thus, he can confirm that all applications made it through all stages of the process and are currently with the Sabbatical Leave Committee (AAUP).
3. Committee Reports
a. Elections Committee (S. Bernstein)
Results of Fall 2012 elections
b. Curriculum Committee (M. Jackson)
Report FS 12.13.006B
Approved unanimously
Transfer and Articulation Policy - for information; vote planned for December 10
Curriculum Committee Chair Mark Jackson stated that, after a 5 hour meeting of the TAP Steering Committee, two changes were made to the proposed policy:
(1) the Quantitative Reasoning course has a prerequisite of or placement level above intermediate algebra
(2) 1 course in Scientific Reasoning and 1 course in Scientific Knowledge and Understanding are required, and at least one of these courses must include a lab; the previous proposal had a requirement of 2 courses in Scientific Knowledge/Understanding, with 1 lab science with Scientific Reasoning being required.
Highlights of the discussion:
- Senator Cohen asked if we will we have to change our general education requirements so as to meet the requirement of 2 courses in Written Communication? Answer: It's expected that the "competency areas" will be satisfied by the general education programs of all CSUs, not just by the community colleges. However, the TAP is designed to be flexible enough that the requirement can be met by a wide variety of courses, not just English "composition" courses. For example, it could be met by a "Writing Across the Curriculum"-type course, or perhaps by a critical thinking seminar, or maybe a literature course.
- Senator Cohen asked about the impact of this TAP on our Senate-approved, not-yet-implemented new general education program; President Mulrooney stated that the purpose of postponing the implementation of the new general education program was to wait until the TAP was finalized; once it is approved, the General Education implementation committee will start working.
- Curriculum Chair Jackson stated that once the TAP is approved, the next step will be the creation of the major pathways.
- Senator Horowitz asked about the use of the phrase "natural sciences" in the description of the Scientific Knowledge and Understanding goal. The phrase was left in place; some members of the TAP Steering Committee were adamant about including that work. However, the word "natural" is not included in the description of the "Scientific Reasoning" goal and outcomes, so it may be possible for a psychology course to meet the Scientific Reasoning competency.
- Senator Horowitz asked what happens if the TAP is not approved by the Senate. M. Jackson does not have an answer; no threshold for ratification was agreed upon in advance. The plan is for the votes to be held and for the results of the votes to be sent to the Board of Regents. Also, if we do not approve this proposed TAP, it is likely that the BOR will try to implement whatever they want, so this faculty-created TAP is preferable to the alternative.
- Curriculum Chair Jackson stated that a request has been made for the TAP Steering Committee to be made a standing committee of the Board of Regents, in order to provide for faculty input if the policy needs to be amended in the future.
- Senator White asked if the TAP will need to be taken into consideration if we want to modify our general education program in the future. M. Jackson answered in the affirmative, and stated that this is one reason why the TAP was made flexible.
- It appears that BOR has claimed that the TAP is "not curricular" and that it therefore does not need to be approved by the various faculty governance bodies, and that the fact that the TAP was designed by a committee of faculty is sufficient to meet the requirements of faculty governance. Has the BOR backed off this claim? Regardless of whether or not the claim is true to the letter of the law, it is certainly not true to the spirit of the law, and is certainly at odds with the spirit of shared governance. If the CCSU representative on the TAP steering committee is not present at the Faculty Senate to answer faculty questions, the faculty will never accept the TAP as legitimate.
- Senator Tully stated that issues of faculty governance, and claims by the BOR that faculty senate approval is not required for a policy that will clearly have an impact on the curriculum, are precisely the kind of "major issues" that need to be discussed in depth at the Faculty Senate.
- CCSU-AAUP President Jason Jones stated that he agrees, and mentions that the BOR's Academic Standards committee will meet on December 7 to discuss the TAP ratification threshold. FAC Chair S. Adair will be present at that meeting, and we should wait to see what the BOR says at that meeting.
c. Academic Standards (F. Latour)
i. Nursing Program Admission Standards FS 12.13.007B
The proposed admission standards were presented to the Faculty Senate. Academic Standards Vice Chair Latour stated that the two major changes are: (1) an increase in the minimum GPA required from 2.70 to 3.00 (which is made in order to be truthful to students; students with a GPA in the 2.70 to 3.00 range do not get admitted to the program because of the limited number of seats available, so they should not imagine that they have a chance); and (2) the inclusion of the TEAS V requirement (TEAS V is a standardized test specifically designed for nursing programs).
Nursing Department Chair Wagner was present to answer questions.
- The policy would be effective Fall 2013, and applies to all students admitted to the major, whether they are transfer students, pre-nursing students applying to the professional programs, or students in other programs who wish to transfer to nursing. Admissions to the nursing program occur in March.
- Senator Diamond asked what happens to pre-nursing majors who do not get admitted to the nursing program; there are many other majors available to them (many of them choose exercise science, psychology, biomolecular sciences, etc.)
- Senator Pancsofar asked whether or not there is a waiver process for students who may have had a bad initial college experience, and have increased their GPA substantially, but not enough to meet the 3.00 requirement. L. Wagner stated that the nursing department has never been confronted with such a situation.
- Will our nursing admission standards be essentially the same as Southern Connecticut State University's? Answer: Yes.
Nursing Program Admission Standards approved unanimously
ii. Midsemester Grades - Catalog Language
Item removed from agenda, pending approval by the Graduate Studies Committee
4. New Business
a. Creation of a Department of Journalism (S. Cohen) FS 12.13.008B
English Department Chair S. Cohen presented the proposal to create a Journalism program. This is both to increase the resources available to the program and to meet accrediting agency requirements. A discussion followed:
- Senator Best asked if this proposed department will need additional resources. Answer: No, it can sustain itself; that is why we waited until the program had 4 faculty members. If the number of majors and minors keeps increasing, then the program may need more faculty members; however, this is not related to whether or not the program becomes a separate department.
- The new department's chair will get some reassigned time for being chair, but that is not a problem because Ammon School of Arts and Sciences Dean Pease has stated that she can support the proposal.
b. Discussion of Personally Identifiable Information on Computers (K. Kean (Information Technology Committee) and A. Kullgren (Information Technology))
Senator Kean, who is a member of the Information Technology Committee, explained the nature of the Personally Identifiable Information scan, and the reason why we are asked to do it. Senator Kullgren of the Information Technology department was available to answer questions, which focused on the timing of the scan; early December is an extremely busy time on campus, and many faculty members do not have enough time to run a scan that can take 8 hours to complete after crashing 3 times. This is especially true because the December 3, 2012 deadline was not mentioned until November. The following motion was then made (Latour/Tully):
"The President of the Faculty Senate shall send to President Miller a request to postpone the date of the campus-wide scan of computers for PII from December 3, 2012 to the beginning of the Spring 2013 semester."
Motion approved unanimously
5. Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 4:40.