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University Senate Minutes

(If no additions or corrections are received by June 15, 2000, these minutes will be approved as submitted.)

UNIVERSITY SENATE MINUTES
UM-ST. LOUIS
April 25, 2000

3:15 p.m. 126 J. C. Penney 

Dr. Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi, Senate Chair, called the meeting to order at 3:20 p.m.

Minutes from the previous meeting (held March 14, 2000) were approved as submitted.

Report from the Senate Chair -- Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi

Dr. Zarucchi said she was very pleased to report that Dr. Lawrence Barton was elected Chairperson by acclamation and Dr. Lois Pierce was elected Secretary by acclamation for the 2000-2001 Faculty Senate. The 2000-2001 Faculty Senate Committee on Committees representatives are: Humanities, Paul Roth; Social Sciences, Mark Burkholder; Natural Sciences/Mathematics, Ray Balbes; Business Administration, Joe Martinich; Education, Therese Cristiani; Nursing, Jerry Durham; Optometry, Carl Bassi.

As the retiring chair of the 1999-2000 Senate, Dr. Zarucchi expressed her thanks to all of the dedicated Senators who will not be joining us next year, specifically the students and the administrators, who have helped to make 1999-2000 a record year for attendance and participation in the Senate.

Dr. Zarucchi presented Dr. Kohfeld, 1999-2000 Senate Secretary, with a gift and thanked her for her loyal service during the course of the year.

Report from the Chancellor -- Chancellor Blanche Touhill

(Attachment 1)

Dr. McBride asked the Chancellor if she had appointed a committee to conduct a job search for a Vice Chancellor of University Relations. Chancellor Touhill said she had started and has the advertisement from the last time.

Mr. Stegeman asked what the official name of the new University Center would be. Chancellor Touhill said the students have recommended Millenium Plaza Student Center. She had taken the building name to the central administration hoping to get it on the agenda for the March Board of Curators meeting, but it was not presented at the March meeting. She is working to receive approval at the May Board of Curators meeting. She has informed the appropriate individuals in central administration that this is the student's wish and that it has been endorsed by the administration at the UM-St. Louis campus. Mr. Bauer asked who authorized the present sign for the University Center. Chancellor Touhill said when the new name is approved it would be put on the building. Mr. Stegeman asked if there was anything the students could do to help with the passage of the new name. Chancellor Touhill said that it would be helpful if Mr. Stegeman wrote her a letter. Vice Chancellor Smith said the Honorary Awards Committee dealt with the naming of buildings and the official recommendation of the students was brought to that body and the name Millenium Plaza Student Center was approved.

Report from the Faculty Council Presiding Officer -- Dennis Judd

(Attachment 2)

Dr. Judd said he intended to respond to President Pacheco's letter and asked Senators for suggestions. Dr. Judd said the letter from President Pacheco would be on the Faculty Council's web page and said he would ask members of the Faculty Council to assist him with the response.

Report from Intercampus Faculty Council -- Joseph Martinich

(Attachment 3)

Report from the Curriculum and Instruction Committee -- David Ganz

(See the April Agenda Attachment)

All action items were approved.

Dr. Mushaben pointed out that the Change in Degree Requirement-Bachelor of Science-Revision to International Business Emphasis should have included Social Science requirements because the students would be traveling outside of their native country. Professor Ganz said that is addressed in the general education, language and international experience components.

(Attachment 4-Approved Proposal-Latin Honors)

Mr. Bauer said the assumption that college students only take 120 hours is just not the case anymore and asked if complaints initiated the resolution. Professor Ganz said yes, the articulation agreement had been on the books since 1987 and a sizable number of complaints had been brought to our attention. Mr. Stegeman said considering that if the resolution passes, more students would graduate with honors, he asked if there would be a restriction on the percentage of Latin Honors awarded. Professor Ganz said the resolution being presented to you was brought to the Curriculum and Instruction Committee through the office of the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs. In consultation with the deans a broader proposal was brought to the C & I Committee, including placing a limitation on the number of Latin Honors that would be granted by any academic unit based on percentages. Professor Ganz said the C & I Committee decided to bring just this portion of the recommendation to the April meeting and the broader recommendation would be carried forward as part of the agenda for C & I in the next academic year.

Dr. Roth said there were at least 2 good reasons not to approve the resolution at this time, one reason is because it is a part of a larger package and secondly the articulation agreement is a very good reason for not giving someone with 56 hours Latin Honors. Dr. Roth said one of the issues we have wrestled with in an ongoing way is the honorary fallout from the articulation agreement, which has consistently eroded our ability to control what it is people who walk away with our degrees actually have to take from us and what we could actually certify them as doing by our standards. He said this is getting worse rather than better because of pressure that even more hours be accepted by the CBHE, and it is a bad policy on the part of the institution. He said we give Latin Honors to people we could certify against our standards and we could certify that they have taken at least the majority of their courses with us. If people chose to take their courses elsewhere it's just the price they pay, and they don't qualify for Latin Honors from us.

Professor Ganz said the decision to split the broader issue was made by the Curriculum and Instruction Committee. Initially the C & I Committee talked about postponing the whole subject until it was brought forth in one package, the committee then reconsidered and said maybe this wasn't such a major item and decided to bring this resolution forward. Professor Ganz said the 60 hours or half a degree being from here is something that has been on the books from the inception of the campus, but it was altered some years ago to consider lesser numbers for students within the UM system, as long as the aggregate number of hours in the system was 80. So, maybe we have departed a little bit for one group already, they too are transfer students, but not from the Community College.

Dr. Martinich said he supported Dr. Roth's comments and added that this is a slippery slope. Once we go to 56 hours, given the changes in the articulation agreement, it now appears that students could transfer in with 75 or 80 hours and graduate with 30 hours at the UMSL campus. Dr. Martinich said he could see a person transfer in with 65 hours complaining and it would change again. Dr. Martinich said the bigger issue for C & I to consider next year, is that for years we have been discriminating against our native students. He said the statistics are quite clear that freshmen and sophomores see lower grades for a couple of reasons; one is the college adjustment, the other reason is typically lower division courses are graded more rigorously. What we are doing to our native students is really penalizing their grade point average, and the students transferring, who take 56 hours are taking courses primarily in their major. Dr. Martinich recommended that we have two tiers of honors with different requirements; one would be a student who took more than 75 hours on this campus, the other would be a student with less than 75 hours who should have to satisfy higher requirements. Professor Ganz said that is not a model that has been presented to the C & I Committee.

Vice Chancellor Smith said one of the 3 student speakers last fall at her scholarship donor reception was a non-traditional adult student who had taken her first two years at St. Charles Community College. She was in the School of Business Administration at UMSL; she made a 4.0 grade average all the way through and was caught with 2 hours. The student said she had understood that this was a closely articulated program between the UMSL and the Community College and she followed it by the book, but could not graduate with Latin Honors. Vice Chancellor Smith said this is the type of student we are trying to accommodate.

Dr. Mushaben suggested that exceptions be made for particular students. Professor Ganz said that in the College of Business, up until this year, there had never been an exception made because we felt it was a faculty regulation, not a School of Business regulation.

Vice Chancellor Nelson said this is an issue which you must be very careful about, with all due respect about the view of the CBHE, there is an articulation agreement which we are obligated to uphold. He said if you don't like that agreement we will have to go back to the CBHE rather than say we aren't going to propose a term limit. It has language in it that says we may not discriminate against transfer students. Also, remember that more than 50% of the transfer students come from a 4-year institution, not 2-year institution. A majority of our 75% transfer students come from a 4-year institution. It is a discrimination against our students to say, if you want Latin Honors you have to have 124 credits to graduate, when our students only need 120 credits to graduate. That is simply straightforward discrimination. He said if we think that the right is on their side, then we should take care of them by policy, if they are clearly an identifiable group. If they are not clearly identifiable then you can't predict, in advance, the confrontations. That's what exceptions are for.

A voice vote followed by a hand vote was taken on the proposed change in Latin Honors. The motion was approved.

Professor Ganz thanked Sue English and the Curriculum and Instruction Committee for their hard work during the past year.

Dr. Martinich said there were at least 2 courses in the College of Business, offered in the fall, encountering a problem, and he is teaching one of them. He said a course that has been on the books for a number of years is no longer listed in the catalog. Apparently it has been removed because it was not taught in the last five years. The second course that was removed, taught by a colleague of his, was taught in the summer about 2 years ago, and he wondered if that was the reason. In either case, he was concerned about removing courses in the catalog that might be taught in the future. Dr. Martinich said he did not agree with removing these courses from the catalog, and could understand the economic and environmental reasons for taking them out of the hard copy, but could not understand why the 2 courses were not on the web site. He is concerned with inbound and outbound transfer students finding these courses and descriptions. Dr. Martinich asked if the courses, at a minimum, should remain on the web site. Professor Ganz said the removal of the courses was not an action of C & I. Professor Ganz said about a year ago, Associate Vice Chancellor FitzGerald brought to the deans a suggestion that courses that had not been offered for some period of time be archived, or literally be removed from the bulletin, but not rescinded. Professor Ganz said the archiving process was never brought to C & I Committee or the faculty for their approval. He said the committee did take the position that this should have been done and transmitted that request to Vice Chancellor Nelson. Professor Ganz said the committee was concerned about this issue along with the issue of dropping prefixes in the bulletin.

Vice Chancellor Nelson said Professor Ganz's report is accurate and he was not aware of the deleted descriptions and that the deletions did not have faculty approval. He agreed this issue needed faculty approval. When trying to recruit students it is not a good thing to list a very rich array of courses and have a student show up and find that a course has not been taught in a number of years. Vice Chancellor Nelson said that there should be some relation between what is in the catalog and what the student can expect to be available within the 4 or 6 years they are here. He said his recommendation would be to include the courses in the catalog but flagged. He added, we do want the bulletin, both the electronic and hard copy, to represent the curriculum we offer. That's truth in advertising.

Dr. Martinich said the other point is how the courses were identified for removal. He said there might be a lot of courses offered only in the summer and not found in the catalog. Dr. Barton said that some catalogs list when courses are offered. Professor Ganz agreed with Dr. Barton's idea for each department to go back and mark the courses this way. Dr. Haywood said that they asked for some of their courses to be put back in the bulletin, and they were not. Professor Ganz said there are several problems with the current year's bulletin and Vice Chancellor Nelson is aware of them. Dr. Tierney said it sounded like the discussion was referring to 2 different publications, the bulletin and the catalog, and asked why it was called a bulletin. Professor Ganz said the traditional name is the bulletin.

Report from the Budget and Planning Committee -- Chancellor Blanche Touhill

Chancellor Touhill said at the last meeting of the Budget and Planning Committee we discussed Enrollment Management, the image campaign, and the budget for next year.

Report from the Bylaws and Rules Committee -- Lois Pierce

(Attachment 5)

Dr. Mushaben said the universal truth in politics is that the smaller and more powerful the body is the less chance for gender representation or gender balance accruing in that body. She asked if the new governance had any intention in monitoring proportions in the Faculty Senate and the larger University Assembly. Dr. Mushaben pointed out that the newly elected Committee on Committees was comprised of 1 women and 6 men and the proportions in the Faculty Senate were 5 women out of 18 (total College of Arts and Sciences Unit Representatives). Dr. Pierce said there is not a process right now and if the new Faculty Senate wanted to put that into a process, the Bylaws and Rules Committee would look at the issue.

Report from the Computing Committee -- Fred Willman

Dr. Willman announced that the Senate Computing Committee had awarded 7 upgrades for desktop systems and the total amount awarded was approximately $3,500.00. He added that letters would go out as soon as they were checked for accuracy by the Computer Center.

Report from the Student Publications Committee -- Jane Williamson

(Attachment 6)

Other Business

(Attachment 7)

A motion was made to approve the attached resolution on behalf of Dr. Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi, Senate Chair. Dr. Zarucchi relinquished the chair to the Senate Secretary, Dr. Kohfeld. The motion was seconded and approved with much applause.

Dr. Zarucchi said she truly appreciated the sentiment and quoted from the movie Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, at which point the villain said to the Queen: "I have the Senate bogged down in procedures". Dr. Zarucchi thanked everyone for their contributions to the 1999-2000 University Senate.

In Executive Session:

Report from the Honorary Awards Committee -- Cindy Vantine (University Relations)

Ms. Vantine distributed presentations from the Honorary Awards Committee. She explained that the presentations gave specifications of individuals being brought forward as potential recipients of Honorary Degrees. All nominations presented were approved.

(Attachment 8)

Dr. Long read and made a motion to pass the attached resolution, it was seconded. Vice Chancellor Smith, Chair of the Honorary Awards Committee, encouraged those submitting nominations to include background information. Dr. Korr pointed out that today's presentation is conspicuity lacking of women and minorities. Ms. Vantine added that there are presently 2 women in the pool of nominees and 2 would receive Honorary Degrees in May. A voice vote was taken on the motion and it was approved.

Completing the business at hand, the Senate adjourned at 4:50 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Carol Kohfeld
Senate Secretary

 

Attachments:
1) Report from the Chancellor
2) Report from Faculty Council Presiding Officer
3) Report from Intercampus Faculty Council
4) Approved Proposal-Latin Honors
5) Report from the Bylaws and Rules Committee
6) Report from the Student Publications Committee
7) Approved Resolution-Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi
8) Approved Resolution-Honorary Degree Awards