THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE
UNIVERSITY
T H E S E N A T E R E C O R D
Volume 36-----APRIL 22,
2003-----Number 7
The Senate Record is the official publication of the
University Faculty Senate of The Pennsylvania State University, as provided for
in Article I, Section 9 of the Standing Rules of the Senate and
contained in the Constitution, Bylaws,
and Standing Rules of the University Faculty Senate, The Pennsylvania State
University 2002-03.
The publication is issued by the Senate Office, 101
Kern Graduate Building, University Park, PA
16802 (Telephone 814-863-0221). The
Record is distributed to all Libraries across the Penn State system, and is
posted on the Web at http://www.psu.edu/ufs under publications. Copies are made available to faculty and
other University personnel on request.
Except for items specified in the applicable Standing
Rules, decisions on the responsibility for inclusion of matters in the
publication are those of the Chair of the University Faculty Senate.
When existing communication channels seem
inappropriate, Senators are encouraged to submit brief letters relevant to the
Senate's function as a legislative, advisory and forensic body to the Chair for
possible inclusion in The Senate Record.
Reports that have appeared in the Agenda of the
meeting are not included in The Record unless they have been changed
substantially during the meeting or are considered to be of major
importance. Remarks and discussion are
abbreviated in most instances. A
complete transcript and tape of the meeting is on file. Individuals with questions may contact Dr.
Susan C. Youtz, Executive Secretary, University Faculty Senate.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Final Agenda for
April 22, 2003
A. Summary of Agenda
Actions
B. Minutes and
Summaries of Remarks
II. Enumeration of Documents
A.
Documents
Distributed Prior to
April 22, 2003
Senate Calendar for
2003-2004
Results of Senate Elections
for 2003-2004
Senators Not Returning For
2003-2004
Attendance
FINAL AGENDA FOR APRIL 22,
2003
A. MINUTES
OF THE PRECEDING MEETING -
Minutes
of the March 25, 2003 Meeting in The Senate Record 36:6
[www.psu.edu/ufs/recordx.html]
B.
COMMUNICATIONS
TO THE SENATE - Senate Curriculum Report (Blue Sheets) of
of
April 8, 2003
[www.psu.edu/ufs/bluex.html]
C.
REPORT
OF SENATE COUNCIL - Meeting of April 8, 2003
D. ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR -
E. COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY -
F.
FORENSIC
BUSINESS -
G.
UNFINISHED
BUSINESS -
H.
LEGISLATIVE
REPORTS -
I.
ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE
REPORTS -
Faculty Affairs
Undergraduate Education
Defining Grading Standards
J.
INFORMATIONAL
REPORTS -
Curricular Affairs
Faculty Affairs
Time in Rank of Associate Professors
Research
Update on Graduate Education
Senate Council
Report on Spring 2003 College Visits
University Planning
Status of Construction
Parking Rate Structure
Report of Senate Elections
Senate Council
Senate Committee on Committees and Rules
University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee
Standing Joint Committee on Tenure
Faculty Rights and Responsibilities
Faculty Advisory Committee to the President
Senate Secretary for 2003-2004
Senate Chair-Elect for 2003-2004
Comments by Outgoing Chair Moore
Installation of Officers
Comments by Incoming Chair Bise
K. NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS -
L. COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE UNIVERSITY -
M. ADJOURNMENT -
SUMMARY OF AGENDA ACTIONS
The Senate held one forensic session, voted on two legislative reports, voted on two advisory/consultative reports, and heard six informational reports.
Senate Self Study Committee – “A Concept for Restructuring and for Improving the Operation and Procedures of the University Faculty Senate.” The Senate Self-Study committee presents several preliminary recommendations that will be debated. Considerations include the size of the Senate, length and number of meetings, organization of committees and new approaches for receiving reports. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 15-25 and Agenda Appendix “B.”)
Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid – “Change to Policy 34-68 (Auditing a Course).” This legislative report recommends the change of the Penn State definition of “full-time” to exclude audit credits. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 25-26 and Agenda Appendix “C.”)
Intercollegiate Athletics – “Revision of Senate Policy 67-00, Athletic Competition, Section 2, Eligibility of Athletes.” In this legislative report this policy change reaffirms an existing practice that does not permit provisional, non-degree regular, and non-degree conditional students to practice or compete. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 26-27 and Agenda Appendix “D.”)
Faculty Affairs – “Revision to Policy AD53, Privacy Statement.” In this advisory/consultative report the proposed policy revision clarifies that means of monitoring activities of employees and students with such technologies as video and sound may abridge privacy expectations and may not be used except when necessary to protect the security of the University and its employees and students. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 27-31 and Agenda Appendix “E.”)
Undergraduate Education – “Defining Grading Standards.” In this advisory/consultative report the Senate voted on three recommendations designed to halt the steady increase in GPAs over the past fifteen years. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 31-36 and Agenda Appendix “F.”)
Curricular Affairs – “Status of General Education Implementation: Certification/Recertification of New, Changed, and Existing Courses.” This informational report provides an up-date on the status of General Education implementation and course recertification, as legislated by the Senate in 1997. The use of ANGEL for collaborative reviews will be presented. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “G.”)
Faculty Affairs – “Time in Rank of Associate Professors.” This informational report provides information on the time that associate professors are spending in rank, beginning with appointment or promotion to that position. Analysis by gender, minority status and location is given. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “H.”)
Research – “Update on Graduate Education.” This informational report examines trends in graduate enrollment, diversity efforts, technology initiatives, and funding programs. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “I.”)
Senate Council – “Report on Spring 2003 College Visits.” The Senate Officers visit University Park colleges and other units each spring. This informational report summarizes those visits. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “J.”)
University Planning – “Status of Construction.” This annual informational report focuses on construction projects at campus locations. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “K.”)
University Planning – “Parking Rate Structure.” In this informational report, Parking Office representatives will present changes in the rate structure for parking at University Park as well as changes in the location of parking facilities. (See Senate Record, Page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “L.”)
The University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 112 Kern Graduate Building with John W. Moore, Chair, presiding. One hundred and ninety-six Senators signed the roster.
Chair Moore: It is time to begin.
Moving to the minutes of the preceding meeting, The Senate Record, providing a full transcription of the proceedings of the March 25, 2003, meeting has been sent to all University Libraries. In addition, it has been posted on the Faculty Senate web page. Are there any corrections or additions to this document? All those in favor of accepting the minutes, please signify by saying, "aye."
Senators: Aye.
Chair Moore: Opposed? The minutes are accepted. Thank you.
COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE
You have received the Senate Curriculum Report for April 8, 2003. This document is posted on the University Faculty Senate's web page.
REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL
Also, you should have received the Report of Senate Council for the meeting of April 8, 2003, which appears as an attachment to the Agenda for today’s meeting.
ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR
Chair Moore: At the end of each academic year, a number of Senators complete their term of office, and it is my sad duty to read the list of our valued Senators who will not be returning for next year.
ABINGTON COLLEGE
Stephen Stace
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL
SCIENCES
Leif Jensen
Dennis Scanlon
ALTOONA COLLEGE
Valerie Stratton
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND
ARCHITECTURE
Annette McGregor
BERKS-LEHIGH VALLEY
COLLEGE
LEHIGH VALLEY CAMPUS
Kathleen Lodwick
SMEAL COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
ADMINISTRATION
Hemant Bhargava
Robert Crum
Peter Everett
COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATIONS
Thomas Berner
COLLEGE OF EARTH AND
MINERAL SCIENCES
Robert Crane
William Frank
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Roger Geiger
Brandon Hunt
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Kultegin Aydin
Cheng Dong
Norman Harris
Ali Hurson
Elise Miller-Hooks
PENN STATE HARRISBURG
CAPITAL COLLEGE
Richard Ammon
Irwin Richman
COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Nancy Williams
COLLEGE OF THE LIBERAL
ARTS
Aida Beaupied
Julia Hewitt
Christopher Johnstone
John Kramer
Sandra Savignon
COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
Robert Bonneau
Laurence Demers
Fred Fedok
PENN STATE SCHUYLKILL
CAPITAL COLLEGE
Billie Jo Jones
EBERLY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE
James Anderson
Arkady Tempelman
FAYETTE CAMPUS
Sandra Smith
DICKINSON SCHOOL OF LAW
Katherine Pearson
GREAT VALLEY
Roy Clariana
MILITARY SCIENCES
Paul Neiheisel
IMMEDIATE PAST-CHAIR
John Nichols
EX OFFICIO SENATOR
Daniel Larson
APPOINTED SENATOR
Thomas Poole
Karen Sandler
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Jeremy Adlon
Lauren Applegate
Laura Beck
David Breslin
Meshawn Carter
Jeffrey Corbets
Eric Cowden
Amy Locke
Michael Ritter
Dawn Rupp
Kristen Seabright
Summer Spangler
Macklin Stanley
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Christopher Baker
Gwenn McCollum
We appreciate all that you have contributed to the Senate, and we will miss each one of you. Let’s show our thanks to these Senators for all their good work.
Senators: Applause.
Chair Moore: Last year, we began the practice of acknowledging by way of a certificate signed by the President of the University and the Chair of the Senate those departing Senators who have held positions of leadership or who have served twelve years or more. This year we are pleased to present certificates of appreciation today to Laurence Demers and Valerie Stratton. Will Larry and Valerie please come forward?
Laurence M. Demers is a Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine at the College of Medicine. Professor Demers has served four (4) four-year terms as a Senator from Hershey. During this time he has served primarily on the Senate Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics and the Committee on Intra-University Relations. Congratulations, Larry, for your years of service and commitment to the Faculty Senate!
Senators: Applause.
Chair Moore: Valerie N. Stratton is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Penn State Altoona College. She has served on the Senate for eight years. During that time she has been vice-chair of Faculty Affairs, been elected to Faculty Rights and Responsibilities and served as both vice chair and chair of the Senate Committee on Committees and Rules. At the present time, Valerie is chair of the Task Force to Review the First-Year Seminar Requirement, a position that will surely keep her connected with the Senate. Congratulations, Valerie, and thank you for your splendid leadership over the past eight years!
Senators: Applause.
Chair Moore: I want to remind you that you are all invited to attend a reception immediately following the Senate meeting in room 102 Kern Building.
On April 4, 2003, Laura Pauley, Chair of the Undergraduate Education Committee, and I charged a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education to undertake a long-overdue review of the Bachelor of Arts Requirements. The committee consists of senators, faculty, and students from Abington, Altoona, Behrend, Berks/Lehigh Valley, Capital, and Commonwealth College in addition to representatives from Arts & Architecture, Communications, and Liberal Arts. Jack Selzer, Liberal Arts, chairs the committee.
The Senate Officers visited the College of Agricultural Sciences on March 31, 2003; this visit concluded visits to 20 Penn State locations during this academic year. The officers will be meeting with Provost Erickson in early May to discuss the principal topics that emerged during those visits.
The seventh and last issue of the Senate Newsletter for 2002-2003 has been distributed.
The Senate Office has a new Administrative Assistant. Patty Poorman, will you please stand and remain standing. Patty Poorman recently joined the Senate Office as the Administrative Assistant. Patty worked for eleven years in the Commonwealth College office. During that time, she worked for the Associate Dean for Faculty and Research; the Associate Dean for Students and Academic Support; and the Associate Dean for Academic Programs. As a result, Patty brings many experiences and skills to the Senate Office. Patty will be working with the Senate Officers, Committee Chairs, and Executive Secretary. Please welcome Patty to the Senate Office.
Senators: Applause.
Chair Moore: The online Senate Election process, new this year, went very well. I wish to thank the Commonwealth College Royer Center and Senator Peter Georgopulos for their technological support in the design and implementation of the online ballot. Typically, 59-62 percent of Senators vote in an election. This year, 67 percent voted. Our thanks go to Susan Youtz for initiating this project and for seeing it through to the end. Thanks also go to the members of the Senate staff who worked hard to make it a success.
Let me also mention that usually 60 percent of Senators send back their Committee Preference Forms. The online system that we used this year yielded an 80 percent response. Once again congratulations and thanks to our technologically gifted staff.
Each year, the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Student Life recognizes outstanding undergraduate students who are graduating with highest distinction and who plan to enroll in graduate study. This year, there are five recipients of the John W. White Graduate Fellowship. Each student will receive a $1500 award. The John White Fellowship is one of the oldest continuing fellowships at Penn State. The award was established in 1902 by James Gilbert White to honor his father, Reverend John W. White of Milroy, Pennsylvania. The award recipients will be recognized at an awards banquet on April 28, 2003, at the Nittany Lion Inn.
Serving on this year’s review committee were Bill Ellis, chair of the Senate Committee on Student Life and a Hazleton Senator, Jennifer Tingo, Student Life committee member and vice president of the USG’s Academic Assembly, who I believe will be attending medical school in the fall, and Senate Executive Secretary Susan Youtz.
The 2003 Fellowship recipients are:
Nicole Dirling will graduate this spring from Penn State Erie with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in International Studies. Nicole was a member of the Behrend College Honor’s Program and a research assistant with today’s honoree John Gamble. Nicole will be attending the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She is interested in practicing family law.
Rebecca Lynn Page will graduate as a Schreyer Scholar with a B.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders and a minor in Natural Sciences. She will continue her studies here at Penn State in her department’s masters program; Rebecca eventually plans to earn a doctorate in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Ninad Pendharkar will graduate from Abington College with a B.S. in Science (Life Science Option) and a minor in Business Administration. Ninad has been accepted at several medical schools including Penn State, Iowa, and Pittsburgh; he will be making his decision soon and is interested in pediatrics and family medicine.
Laura Sander will graduate with a B.S. degree in pre-medicine and a minor in Mandarin Chinese. Laura will attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. Laura is interested in primary care and working with underserved populations.
Wendy Zimmerman will graduate from the Commonwealth College/Penn State Delaware County Campus with a B.A. degree in Speech Communication. She has been accepted at West Chester University’s Communications masters program. Wendy is a returning adult student with more than 20 years of experience in owning and operating a cooking school and catering business in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Congratulations to all these awardees!
Senators: Applause.
Chair Moore: I am pleased to announce that President Spanier has approved the Library Fines Policy that the Senate approved at its memorable February meeting.
A list of the topics discussed at the last meeting of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President may be found on page two of the minutes of the last meeting of Senate Council.
May I now ask John Gamble, Professor of Political Science and International Law at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, to join me at the podium?
At the recent Faculty/Staff Awards Recognition luncheon held on March 24, 2003, John King Gamble, Professor of Political Science and International Law at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, received the W. Lamarr Kopp International Achievement Award for Faculty. The award recognizes the recipient’s display of excellence in international education through research, teaching, and service. Professor Gamble well deserves this award for he is an internationally recognized expert in the law of the sea, dispute settlement, multilateral treaties, the teaching of international law, and the effects of new information technology on international law and international treaties. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books and more than fifty articles and eighty conference papers on these topics.
Law of the Sea deals with the use of ocean space and involves the need for international cooperation and agreement in regard to such topics as fisheries, pollution, the flow of merchant ships, marine insurance, offshore petroleum, and the special rules governing islands, semi-enclosed seas, superports, and artificial islands. From 1973-1976, he was Executive Director of the Law of the Sea Institute at the University of Rhode Island. There, he organized international meetings involving diplomats, businessmen, scholars, lawyers, bankers, and government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Geological Survey, and similar agencies from many nations. A proud advocate for the teaching of international law at universities and at law schools, he has served as a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School and as a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria and in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. His articles have appeared in such distinguished legal journals as the American Journal of International Law, the Michigan Journal of International Law, and the German Yearbook of International Law. He has lectured in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, India, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Portugal.
In his classes at Behrend College, he has opened the minds of his students to the world beyond the United States. To do this, he has developed a computer simulation game using country clusters so that each student views the world through the lens of one selected country. This approach makes them see that the worldview of China, for instance, is fundamentally different from that of the United States, and that Canada, however close, is just not the United States. In his Schreyer Honors Seminar on Treaties, each student dissects and reports on a multilateral treaty. This task requires understanding the provisions of the treaty as well as the complex matrix of country relations to the treaty. Some students in this course become involved in the Comprehensive Statistical Database of Multilateral Treaties. This project permits analysis of basic statistical information for all 6,050 multilateral treaties entering into force from 1648-1995. One can easily understand why his students move readily into posts in government, law, and international business.
As an expert in so many aspects of international law and comparative politics and as a professor dedicated to opening the eyes of his students to the many cultures that inhabit this globe, Professor Gamble well deserves the honors that he has received. Today, Professor Gamble, your colleagues in the University Faculty Senate, a body in which you served so ably from 1990-1994, take pleasure in applauding your achievements and your success. Congratulations!
Senators: Applause.
John K. Gamble: Since I sat where you are sitting, I know exactly what you are thinking. You are thinking, God I hope he is brief, and I will be. And you also probably have a suspicion that I am going to advocate for at least nine more internationally oriented credits for every Penn State undergraduate.
I spend perhaps three-quarters of my professional life on international things. It is not realistic to expect that many of you will devote that amount of your time. But it is important to understand that internationalization is essential and difficult. It is essential because it affects both how our students are able to do their jobs and how they are able to be good citizens. But it is difficult because it must compete with myriad other things for space in an overcrowded curriculum and because it ipso facto is multi-disciplinary.
Let me conclude with three very brief examples. The top of official Penn State letterhead does not have the words United States, or university, or Pennsylvania. I wonder how that looks to a bright high school student from Zambia.
I ask that we remember all of our graduates, with due respect to Cheryl Achterberg, I am less concerned about Schreyer Scholars than about, for example, a wood products graduate from Connellsville who is completing her curriculum now, has worked full-time for the last five years, and will graduate with a 2.85 grade point; I am afraid she might leave us without much understanding of the 190 other countries in the world.
As this group knows better than any other in Penn State, faculty can be pit bullish in the way we protect the curriculum. There is a wealth of internationalization in our blue catalog, but it is not just what is there. It is what students actually take, and we must make space for internationalization but we need to do so effectively and efficiently and understand that some of the best courses probably do not fit neatly in any one discipline. Thank you for listening.
Senators: Applause.
COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
FORENSIC BUSINESS
Chair Moore: Agenda Item F, Forensic Business. Today we have our first forensic session of the year, and it appears on today’s Agenda as Appendix “B.” It comes from the Senate Self Study Committee, and it is titled, A Concept for Restructuring and for Improving the Operation and Procedures of the University Faculty Senate. Senate Council has set aside thirty minutes for this forensic discussion. The purpose of this discussion is to provide all Senators with the opportunity to comment on the committee’s report so that the committee will be able to revise the report during the summer. If you have opinions but do not get the chance to express them today, send them at a later date to George Franz at gwf1@psu.edu. The more the committee hears from you, the better will be their final report.
Murry Nelson has requested permission to speak today. We will proceed by discussing first proposal number four, Size of Senate and Length of Office. George Franz, Chair of the Senate Self Study Committee, will lead the forensic discussion.
SENATE SELF STUDY COMMITTEE
A Concept for Restructuring and for Improving the Operation and Procedures of the University Faculty Senate
George W. Franz, Chair, Senate Self Study Committee
George W. Franz, Delaware County Campus: I have very little to say. The point of this forensic session is to hear from you so that the committee can go back this summer and come in with a report in the fall. I just want to explain two items that may be confusing in the report. In Appendix A some dotted boxes appeared that are not supposed to be there, so around the Executive Committee and the Graduate Council, Undergraduate Council, Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid and all the subcommittees of Faculty Affairs they are all supposed to be solid blocks. Something happened in the transmission that changed that. The only dotted line on that Organizational Chart should be the dotted line that goes from the Faculty Senate to the Graduate Council and that structure simply reflects the Graduate Council side--the current relationship and current structure. In Appendix B there was some question that some people are confused about the difference between the chart at the bottom and the numbers for Commonwealth College. What we have done is show two different ways of calculating multiple location organizations and the only one where there is any impact because of changes in representation based on rounding occurs in The Commonwealth College. It does not occur at Berks-Lehigh Valley or at Capital. So with that, the floor is open for discussion, and we are discussing item four, the size of the Senate and the length of the term.
Leonard J. Berkowitz, York Campus: With your permission I will address all of the major topics at once rather than jump up and down five times. I speak from the perspective of someone who has served as chair of the University Faculty Senate, an elected member of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President, and chair of three different Senate committees. I also speak on behalf of five other recent Senate chairs some of whom could not be here today. We have some serious reservations about a number of the proposals that have come from the Senate Self Study Committee. Perhaps our most serious concern is the proposal to include the Executive Secretary of the Senate in the new version of the Faculty Advisory Committee called the Executive Committee. The Executive Secretary of the Senate is a staff position, not an elected representative of the faculty. That person is selected by the Provost and serves at the pleasure of the Provost, and to make that position a permanent member of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President we find highly inappropriate.
A second concern is the proposed change in Senate Council. There may be some merit in considering changes to Senate Council. In some years it has seemed to be as dysfunctional as it has been useful, but we still have two concerns with the specific proposal. First, asking chairs of committees to serve on these councils is adding already to heavy loads especially for faculty who are not based at University Park. Second, having two of these chairs also serve as council chairs and as members of the new version of Faculty Advisory Committee is really adding to heavy service loads. Third, we worry that the drastic reduction in Senate size where we move from one in twenty to one for every thirty-five faculty will make it nearly impossible for the Senate to do its work in committees, and it will reduce our ability to make sure that important constituencies are represented on important committees. In this case, we are not concerned about people representing their constituencies in the power sense but in the sense of making sure that all perspectives are heard in committee discussions. It is a very bad thing if legislation and policy are shaped without careful attention to all aspects at the university that might be affected. It is even worse if those policies get implemented. I am afraid that both will happen under the proposed changes.
Finally, we have some concern about the legislative limit to the length of the Senate meeting to one and a half hours. Perhaps that is a good goal, but to make it legislation as is proposed by the Senate Self Study Committee would limit and in fact eliminate the flexibility of the chair to extend a meeting if we find the discussion merits continuation of the meeting. Much of our time is already taken up with non-Senate business. I timed today, which was not atypical; we began the Senate business after 50 minutes, so that would leave us 40 minutes for the entire business of the Senate if we were to accept the proposals here.
George W. Franz: Can I ask a follow-up question? If you think this cut in size from one to twenty to one to thirty-five is extreme, what would you suggest as the size for the representation.
Leonard J. Berkowitz: A small change might be reasonable. I think the Senate Self Study Committee identified the idea correctly: we need to make sure that representation on committees is done properly. As a start perhaps the cut to one for every twenty-five might be a nice, prudent, conservative way to reduce the size of the Senate, which has grown because the size of the faculty has grown, without jeopardizing things too much.
Murry R. Nelson, Non-Senator, College of Education: Thank you, I speak as a guest and former chair of the Senate, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak from Chairman Moore. I want to echo what Leonard just said; we have talked and I wanted to make sure that it was seen that his representation of five past chairs was indeed accurate. We know that Leonard has a tendency to stretch the truth, but in this case it is not the case.
I wanted to just speak then to two things that he said because I do not have anything to add on the others. The last one that George had just asked about, I think one to twenty-five is a more realistic attempt by this body to make something that would be workable and not run the risk of having committees that are very small. We already have some committees that are small and, having worked with trying to staff committees at the beginning of the year when we anticipate these people will actually show up for meetings, it is very difficult to fill some of the committees.
The second is the issue regarding the reformation of the Senate Council. I think this would be, as Leonard said, onerous for a small number of people rather than a great number of people. I think that, particularly for people, as Leonard said, from distance locations that come here, having to come more than once or having to represent a larger and different constituency at different meetings, I think, is very difficult, and I think one of the things that I have heard when we would go to different campuses is the lack of support at times for people who serve on the Senate. We have often said that it is important that Senate duty be recognized as more than just another committee. I think that I could support to some degree this change if there were an agreement by CEOs at each of the campuses that there would be a commensurate reduction in the load of a Senator who was in this kind of position. I think it is asking too much and at the same time it asks a Senator to essentially cut off his or her opportunities for the kind of teaching and research that they would like to do because of the tremendous amount of service that they would be required to do. I think it is always good to be doing this kind of self study, I think the Senate always gains but I hope that the changes that are anticipated and the changes that come about differ a bit from what we see in this report as discussed by both Leonard and me today and I thank you.
George W. Franz: Could we focus on the size of the Senate from now on? We will come back to Senate Council; we have demands on time, but I really would like to get a sense of what people think about the size of the Senate and in particular the length of term.
Timothy N. Gray, Student Senator, Penn State Abington: My concern is that the student representation which hovers around ten percent, if you drop it to even one to twenty-five, the students will lose at least four representatives, and how will that be decided on which colleges lose their student representation?
George W. Franz: You want me to answer? I am trying to avoid monopolizing the discussion. I will be happy to respond to people individually if you want in email. The philosophy through most of the history of the Senate has been that the student representation and the administrative representation on the Senate is ten percent of the elected faculty Senators. Currently, that is still the case for administrators; it is not quite the same for students. Four or five years ago student representation was assigned by college, in fact students currently have less than ten percent representation. So, if we were to cut the size of the Senate, the number of students would have to be cut. How that would be apportioned I cannot answer you that. The only comments that we have gotten from students in the way of representation to the Senate Self Study Committee was that we got a letter from the officers of Academic Assembly indicating that they thought that the President of Undergraduate Student Government and the president and vice president of Academic Assembly should be ex officio members. We have not addressed the question, though, of how you would allocate the other seats. I think that becomes a question once we know the sense of the Senate in terms of the size; then we can come back with some suggestions on how we would do that. But, if you cut the size of the Senate, you are not going to get student representation of one student from every college unless the Senate is prepared to give students more representation.
P. Peter Rebane, Penn State Abington: I wanted to echo my concern about the size and how it is tied in with student representation. While we recognize that faculty also exist at non-University Park locations, we tend to forget that students at non-University Park locations--now four-year colleges--also need the same proportional input, and, therefore, I would agree with my colleagues Leonard Berkowitz and Murry Nelson that perhaps the cut to one for thirty-five is drastic, especially as it also impacts on student representation. Because, if we go to the current proposal, there would be 14 student Senators there are already 11 colleges up here, and I would assume the remaining three would have to be somehow proportioned out in the state, and I would strongly urge you to reconsider that.
I also think that from a different point of view I see the Senate’s effectiveness being undermined also by the fact that we have moved from, when I started, believe it or not, in 1970, when we had twelve meetings a year, to ten, to seven and we are down to six meetings a year. If we also put an hour and a half time limit on the Senate deliberations, it seems to me that the Senate has less and less time to deal with the issues that are important. I applaud the change of the length of service to three years. I think for many people four years is a long time. On the other hand, if I was thinking about running for the Senate and there was an hour and a half time limit on the Senate meeting out of which perhaps half consisted of announcements I would find it difficult perhaps to motivate myself to driving in the winter from Abington or Berks up here for an hour or an hour and a half meeting, especially as Murry pointed out, since there seems to be still a question about how much rewards there are for it. So I would appreciate you looking at the size, the student representation and certainly not legislate the length of the Senate meeting. It has always been our hallmark that the one freedom we have is to talk as long as we want, and, as you know, I am a man of few words, but I think that putting a legislative limit on the time of the Senate meetings would be contrary to our best interest. Thank you.
George W. Franz: I would love to comment on that, but I think I will let it go. Peter and I have been in the Senate together since 1971.
Anthony Ambrose, College of Medicine: I would like to bring up for discussion something that was mentioned very quickly and then seemed to disappear, and that is the concept of term limits. I submit that term limits could in fact allow what it says here, frequent opportunities for faculty to become involved in faculty governance without sacrificing experience. If it is done in the way for example of allowing two consecutive terms and then a mandatory sit out for a full term, this accomplishes a number of things, and I think you pretty much know what they are. Number one, it avoids a Faculty Senate that is top heavy, dominated by full professors. Number two, it avoids an institution that has the same old people making the same old decisions year after year. Number three, it allows a Senate that would be more representative of the faculty as a whole; it would look more like the faculty as a whole. An added bonus is that we return to the colleges and campuses valuable faculty members who have to spend great periods of time doing the work of the Faculty Senate, so that every two terms they could return and work for their chairs, and finally, it is the right thing to do.
Gordon F. De Jong, College of the Liberal Arts: I support one in thirty-five representation. I think that things like cost in benefit, in terms of teaching, and in terms of research need to be also figured into what you are talking about not to mention the dollar cost in benefit of a very large Senate. The committees are not small, most committees are very large and are attended about 50 percent. So you figure it out. I support three-year terms. I also support only being able to serve for a couple of terms, then a mandatory sit out. I think all of these are wonderful ideas.
David W. Russell, York Campus: I rise in support of my colleague Leonard Berkowitz and the others who have spoken to a one to twenty-five ratio. I am opposed to term limits. Term limits to me are inherently undemocratic. People at the individual units or campuses or wherever should be allowed to vote for whomever they wish. Term limits also seem to me to be solving the problem that is created by reducing the population in the first place. For example, in our case I serve with two very distinguished members of the Senate--Leonard Berkowitz and Mark Casteel, who is a committee chair. If we are reduced from three to two, it makes perfect sense to me that my colleagues on campus are going to say we want our most experienced people in the Senate because after all we need their voice and their experience. So what we are doing in effect is cutting out the possibility of nurturing young Senators, bringing them along, allowing them to understand the way that the Senate works. My first two years in the Senate--I am finishing my second year now--have been an apprenticeship. I have had a chance to understand the way that things work and, of course, sometimes do not work. So I strongly support the idea of a one to twenty-five ratio at the maximum, one to thirty-five seems to me to be too onerous, three year terms are just fine, term limits to my way of thinking are undemocratic, and I would not support such a thing.
W. Travis DeCastro, College of Arts and Architecture: I am not really sure what I want to say. There are many good things inherent in doing a self-study--kind of a self-analysis to figure out what might need to be changed to make things work better. You first have to determine whether things are broken, and I am not sure things are broken. Having been a member of Senate Council for a couple of years now, there are times when I will agree it does seem dysfunctional, but it does actually do its job on occasion, and I think it does a valuable job. The one thing I like about Senate Council is the fact that there is equal representation across the board and, by limiting the size of the Senate, by limiting the size of representation, I do not know that some of the smaller units will feel like they have an equal voice. We have some units that have 31 Senators, we have some units that have one, so we will go to a unit that may now have only 25 Senators but the one unit will still only have one. One of the things about a Senate that is really nice is we get to have these long discourses, and I do not know that I am in favor of making it smaller even by what standard it is now. The issue that seems to loom in my head is how do we make the Senate service more valuable. I know in Arts and Architecture we have attacked the issue as something that needs to go to the Dean and the unit heads to recognize service in the Senate. I do not know how all the other units do it. I do not know how Engineering, or Agriculture, or Abington deal with Senate service. It seems to me that, at least in my own unit, the larger issue is not the size but the recognition for what it is you are doing.
Chair Moore: George do you want to respond?
George W. Franz: No, if you are going to hold to a time limit, we have got ten minutes left for the rest of the report.
None
Senators: Aye.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS
Senators: Aye.
ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS
Chair Moore: Agenda
Item I, Advisory/Consultative Reports.
Today we have two Advisory/Consultative Reports. The first comes from the Senate Committee on
Faculty Affairs. It appears on today’s Agenda
as Appendix “E” and is titled, Revision to Policy AD53, Privacy Statement. Kim Steiner, Chair of the Senate Committee
on Faculty Affairs, and Jamie Myers, Chair of the Subcommittee on Faculty
Rights and Privacy Issues, will present this report.
Kim C. Steiner, College of Agricultural Sciences: I draw your attention to Appendix “E,” where we propose a revision to the language of AD53 which deals with privacy. The revision would extend that language to explicitly cover the subject of video surveillance within academic work spaces. I have been on the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs for four years. I think we talked about this three years ago. I know we talked about it two years ago. Last year our committee took this up with great vigor, but ultimately fruitlessly, and this year under the able leadership of Jamie Myers on that subcommittee we have been able to bring this document to you. It is not, in my opinion, a perfect document, as are no such documents in my opinion that are the result of a collaborative effort, but we think it is one that will work. The language is in front of you. I assume you have had a chance to read it so we will entertain any questions.
Peter Deines, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: I have a question on the point C, Accountability, the last sentence. I wonder about who the custodian of that information is? And it says it will be kept for how long?
Jamie M. Myers, College of Education: Both of those are good questions. I suspect there will be multiple custodians. The policy puts in place a consultative process by which administrative units can work with Police Services following the guidelines to install these surveillance cameras, so there is not going to be one place on campus in which this material might be kept. I guess all are charged with keeping the materials secure, and I am sorry: we did not address the length of time, though I think the university counsel would be receptive to a suggestion. I do not want to put an amendment on here regarding a length of time because of the infinitesimal number of negotiations we went through to arrive at this particular language.
Peter Deines: I guess I am concerned that there be some review of the time when the information really is not relevant any more.
Kim C. Steiner: Peter, I think you have raised a good question and obviously this is a question that was exactly addressed by the State College Borough Council action last night, and I think it is one that our committee would probably want to take up in the future but not as an amendment to this.
Peter Deines: No, I am not prepared to suggest any amendment to this because I think I understand so well the tricky question to formulate something that would address the concern that I suppose some of my colleagues would have that no information is kept indefinitely. I must say I speak a little bit from experience having been on a committee that had to review files from a faculty member and all of a sudden information appeared about that faculty member that was rather old, and the faculty member really had no knowledge about that but it was pulled out.
Kim C. Steiner: I think that I should point out that this proposed policy does not create something that does not now exist. What it does is put limits on what is currently happening, and I think real restrictions--not just punitive restrictions, but real restrictions.
Jean Landa Pytel: One of the things that struck me when I read this proposal was something that really is not directly related to the intent of this, but it is the change in the terminology. And I wondered what brought this about: rather than being referred to as faculty or staff, we are referred to now as employees?
Kim C. Steiner: Well, it was not a change that was proposed by a member of our committee or subcommittee, but when it was proposed it actually made things a little bit cleaner because it encompasses faculty and staff and perhaps other people who we may have left out in putting together a list. So it seemed easier and I understand.
Jacqueline R. Esposito, University Libraries: The university already has an existing policy that identifies retention periods for materials. It falls under AD35, and the retention period for audio and visual materials is based on federal and state legal requirements for those materials.
Kim C. Steiner: Thanks, Jackie.
John P. Cancro, New Kensington Campus: What does this policy do to security cameras that might be running in computer labs and facilities like that that are taped? Does that affect this in any way?
Kim C. Steiner: It does. I guess your question is what does it do to existing cameras. It would be prohibited without permission under this policy, and I think it means that the use of those has to be reviewed.
John P. Cancro: What about when the labs and the campus are closed, and you have one security guard and the computer facilities may be remote from the guard’s location? Can those tapes be made or what will happen there?
Jamie M. Myers: I suspect because there are dual purpose labs that, in a sense, are open university spaces, that are used by faculty for academic courses and become kind of academic spaces because perhaps of recent security problems in that lab like a theft, that cameras may be installed in those spaces. But the policy says clearly that any faculty who would be using that space for a class should be notified ahead of time that a surveillance camera exists there. I do not know if that answers your question, but I suspect you will continue to see surveillance cameras in computer facilities that are open lab facilities. But if you are a faculty member you should know ahead of time if you are going to use it.
Jeffrey B. Corbets, Student Senator, College of Engineering: I have a couple of questions. In classrooms where video cameras are already installed to ensure the security of class equipment, but also tape what is going on in the classroom, will it be required that students be notified that the video surveillance is occurring and will this notification be just a sign outside the door? Will they have to be told specifically by their instructor? Will they have to sign anything?
Jamie M. Myers: I can answer that the same way. The policy states that people who are going to use that space for academic reasons should be notified ahead of time, so that should extend to the students as well as the employees. And, no, there is no signing of anything.
Jeffrey B. Corbets: Okay, then my second question is, in computer labs where cameras exist, where students might be doing something, say, file sharing, could the tapes be used against the student in a legal case?
Kim C. Steiner: That is one of the reasons that surveillance is done.
Jeffrey B. Corbets: Okay, I can just say the students will be most unhappy about this.
Kim C. Steiner: One of the difficulties in writing this policy was to arrive at a wording that would permit freedom of thought and expression within the university and academic spaces but also provide for legitimate security and safety functions and that was really the tight-wire that we had to walk.
John S. Nichols, Immediate Past-Chair: I think the previous Senator misunderstands the legislation. This does not constrict the range of privacy, it expands the range of privacy so that I cannot imagine why students would be upset by expanding the area of privacy at this university in an area where it does not currently exist.
Kathleen L. Lodwick: I do not want to be funny, but restrooms are not listed here. Are they considered to be public spaces?
Jamie M. Myers: I think a restroom is a private space.
Kim C. Steiner: I think that is a good question, and, man, I have something on the tip of my tongue and I think I will refrain from saying it. I think so, and Bob has his hand up. I think we have talked about this.
Robert Secor, Vice Provost: They are protected by state law, Kathleen, you do not need to worry.
Senators: Aye.
Chair Moore: Any opposed, "nay"? The aye’s have it. The motion passes. The Senate has approved the proposal, and it will now be sent to the President for his approval and subsequent implementation. Thank you, Chair Steiner and Chair Myers, and thanks to all members of Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs.
The second Advisory/Consultative Report comes from the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education, and it appears in the Agenda as Appendix “F” and is titled Defining Grading Standards. Laura Pauley, Chair of the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education will present this report.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
Laura L. Pauley, Chair, Senate Committee on
Undergraduate Education
Laura L. Pauley,
College of Engineering: Thank you.
Last month we presented an information report on the Annual Grade
Distribution. In that report the
Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education had several recommendations. Those recommendations are now being brought
forward this month for a vote and support by the full Senate.
Leonard J. Berkowitz: I note that we are now 16
minutes past the time we would have had to adjourn, which may have been a good
thing. I am concerned that these three
recommendations seem to be in conflict with each other. The first recommendation simply repeats
current policy on grades, which says essentially that faculty determine
grades. They are the sole person who
determines grades, and they are to be based on the faculty determination of
student achievement. On the other hand,
the second recommendation says that the administration from the President and
Provost through the Deans, through the Division Heads and Department Heads,
shall encourage faculty to shape their grades in a particular way. That may not be quite a logical
contradiction, but it is pretty darn close to a conflict in principle. And when you add it to number three, which
says that units should, when they find these things do not fit one of the
preordained models, should do something about it, I assume it is not the
faculty that are to do something because they are already doing what they
thought was right. Now I think we have
a full-fledged contradiction, and I urge my colleagues to reject this.
Laura L. Pauley: We
have discussed this many times in the committee, including this morning. What we intended to write in the
recommendations and what we still feel the recommendations say is yes, the
instructor does assign grades in the course, and they make the final
decision. However, those instructors
cannot make a decision in a vacuum; they have to know the university that they
are working with. They need to
understand the student body, and the best way to do that is to understand what
other instructors have assigned for grades and discuss it within the department
or in the college level of what the expectations are for different grades. So there needs to be a communication. The faculty member should not just be
assigning grades without having those discussions. We feel those discussions are really all that is needed to
monitor grade inflation and to have a more uniform standard across the
university. These types of things are
not happening right now.
Jamie M. Myers: I am ambivalent about this
particular Advisory and Consultative Report.
Although I agree with Senator Berkowitz that you have some severe
problems with it, I doubt that anything will come of charging the Deans to
charge their faculty to change the way they grade, so overall I am not sure
that the particular vision that this report hopes to enact will happen
anyway. What I would like to ask: did you discuss the difference between
criteria in grading and norm reference grading? I am not sure that you have spent a sufficient amount of time
exploring the various factors that might underlie grading in particular units,
such as class size or the nature of the courses and experiences that the
students undertake that the grades are associated with. I say this as the College of Education is
always maligned for being at the top of the grade inflation ladder, but all of
you know that they have a 15-credit student-teaching practicum in which they
receive one grade for 15 credits, and there is a lot of recognition of
diversity. We do not expect every university
faculty to teach the same. Likewise we
do not expect every high school teacher or elementary teacher to teach the
same, and so it is highly possible that many of them receive very high grades
for that 15-credit practicum.
Laura L. Pauley:
Right, and we are not just saying that there needs to be a fixed
distribution or that we all need to grade on a curve or grade on some standard
for all students. What we are concerned
with is that faculty and instructors are aware of how they are grading. Why they are giving different grades, and
how it compares with other instructors within that department or within that
college. We have looked at grades on a
university level but we recognize that grades and the expectations and what
those grades mean may vary from college to college, and so we have not
specified any grade distribution or any curve that everybody must fit. Instead, we want people to be aware--the
instructors to be aware, the Department Heads, the college--to be aware of what
grades are being distributed, and we are encouraging that communication.
Howard G. Sachs:
I want to second what Senator Berkowitz said, but I go a little
bit further. I found recommendation one
to be problematic. It is an inappropriate
paraphrasing of 47-20 and, having recently spent an afternoon in court having
been subpoenaed to testify in regard to 47-20 in the absence of published and
approved standards at any level, I think this tinkers with the notion of 47-20
and faculty rights and prerogatives in assigning grades. Either leave recommendation one out or
clarify what you really meant.
Laura L. Pauley: It
is a restatement of the current procedure that instructors do assign grades.
Winston A. Richards,
Penn State Harrisburg: In light of what we heard from the President
of the increasing quality of students that we are getting, would not that
suggest the greater coincident grade improvement also? What I am saying is we are getting better
students so we should be getting better grades so is there a problem?
Laura L. Pauley: We
are not saying we need to drop the grade point average. We are saying that instructors and
Department Heads and college level should be aware of the grades and decide if these
are appropriate grades for the student population.
Richard A. Carlson,
College of the Liberal Arts: In number two it is not clear to me whether,
in the phrase “the standards they deem most appropriate,” whether “they” refers
to the President and the Provost or to the faculty and undergraduate heads, and
to me that makes a tremendous difference in the nature of the recommendation.
Laura L. Pauley: I
think it is clear that the faculty and undergraduate program heads will define,
implement, and maintain the standard, so it seems that they would be that
second group.
P. Peter Rebane: I would like to approach this from a
different end. We all talk about grade
inflation. On the other hand, there are
occasions when many of our classes do not measure up to the standards, and
there are a great number of perhaps failures and “Ds.” Does this also fall into adjustment on the
part of the departments and units? And
it concerns me that if younger faculty members perhaps apply rigorous standards
as opposed to perhaps some older ones who take life a little easier, that the
Dean or the Department Head may say you are failing too many students. You have too many “Ds.” Why don’t you be more lenient? We would then compromise our standards in
the other direction, but we usually do not talk about that because that is
embarrassing. And if you look at number
three…number two talks about President and Provost, Dean and Division Heads;
number three says units shall actively monitor grades. What is the unit here? Is it a faculty council, or the local
Faculty Senate? Then it says very clearly,
and I wish Carey Eckhardt could correct me on this, but it says and remedy the
situation. I wonder what remedy my Dean
would bring to me if I did not fall into that particular standard. I urge the body here to reject this. I think it has pitfalls in it that we have
not thought about and that the committee might look at 47-20 and the rest of
the material in it. Thank you.
Laura L. Pauley:
Units was used as a generic term because looking at the grade
distributions can be done at many different levels, so it was intentionally
left vague. I think the comment that
you made about starting faculty giving too low grades is really one of the
important issues that we do want to address.
It is difficult for starting faculty who are coming out of graduate
courses and study to understand what might be expected at the undergraduate
level, and just to be aware of what typical distribution is or what the
expectations are within the department or colleges I think is important.
W. Travis DeCastro: I find this, kind of, more of a
separation of church and state issue.
There is little comparison to me in how you would grade calculus as to
how you would grade figure drawing. And
I believe that is the prerogative of the faculty member, not the President, not
the Provost, and in many cases not even the unit head, who might not have any
experience in figure drawing whatsoever.
I think it is okay to make people aware that, “Oh gee, everyone in your
class got ‘As’ for six years in a row, what’s up with that?” I think it is okay to make people aware of
it. I think it is okay to publish
statistics about it. I think to make it
any sort of action by the Provost or the unit head or the Dean or however you
may want to do it, it is inappropriate to the faculty who is teaching that
class who may have a very narrow specialization that other people might not
understand. So I think we should reject
the proposal.
Laura L. Pauley: I
have stated basically the same thing before that we made the unit vague because
it may be a department that would look at what appropriate grading or
expectations are and maybe even a subgroup of that department, but there should
hopefully not be just one person who can judge the performance in a course.
Terry Engelder,
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: As you know, I stood before you
last month and showed some data that indicated that the trend in grades here at
Penn State was headed upward, and has been for a long time. The question really was what to do about it,
and so the three recommendations are just that. The first recommendation is the way that we originally wrote
it--just a statement of an Advisory/Consultative Report that this body passed
in 1987. It may well be that Senate
Council tinkered with some of the words, but, if you go back to the Senate
Record, the Senate has passed that so that, in fact, all we are doing is
reaffirming that. The question about
what you do with this long-term upward trend…I think that this really is a
matter of belief as much as anything.
Let me draw your attention to the fourth sentence down in the
introduction. Really what we are all
about here is examining this issue of whether or not the present trends are
gradually muting use of grades to designate gradations of achievement in
student performance. The question
really is whether or not we want these standards gradually muted. If we think not, then we have to do
something about it, and the question is how we bring about that change. Now there are several recommendations on the
back page, four graphs that indicate how various units can behave in trying to
bring about some rectification of this particular upward trend. That does not mean that all of Penn State
has to follow one particular model; they are a set of models, though, that
should at some point correct this muting.
Roger A. Egolf, Berks-Lehigh Valley College: A
couple of points, if we are going to go with this the recommendation in figure
one actually is four separate recommendations and which one are we voting
for? Secondly, in recommendation three
about units monitoring grade changes over time, what unit if we are at a
non-University Park location but we are within a disciplinary unit that we are
tenured in at University Park and our tenure home has one expectation of
grading and our location has another, who are we to follow?
Laura L. Pauley: Your
pointing out of figure one really emphasizes the point that our committee was
making also, that we are not telling any group, any unit, any department
whatever unit it might be what the vision is, what grade point average is the
norm, what would be expected for that group of courses or instructors. These are different options, up, down,
level, are basically your different options of what the grade point average
could do from this point on. This
legislation is not specifying any of those.
What we are trying to communicate to the university is that this needs
to be discussed, and we as individual instructors need to understand why we
gave a particular grade. How it matches
up with your campus, with a typical course at other campuses as well, those
would be different interesting intersections to look at of those different
groups. And, as to that, individual
faculty who still are people who are assigning these courses solely responsible
for assigning grades do it within a known environment. They know how their grades compare and they
know what appropriate grades are and what appropriate performance is, so it is
communication; it is not mandating any distribution or any particular curve
that is on the second page.
Roger A. Egolf: But compared to who? If we are in both University Park units and
location units?
Laura L. Pauley: As I
said, the intersection looking at those campuses, looking at English 15 across
the university gives you as an instructor more information so that you
understand how your grades compare, and you understand better how the
performance of your students compares.
Jean Landa Pytel: I think the underlying
philosophy here about a review in context is good, but I am wondering if this
particular report is not actually extraneous in the sense. We have a mandated grade report at regular
intervals; I cannot remember if it is annual or semi-annual…
Laura L. Pauley:
Every year…
Jean Landa Pytel: Could we perhaps as part of that
report when it comes out, have some recommendation as part of that report that
units, however they define themselves for whatever is relevant review their
philosophies and approaches to grading in light of the report. Just incorporate that as an annual way of
checking up on ourselves.
Laura L. Pauley:
These recommendations were in our Informational Report, and from the
discussion at last month’s Senate meeting it was felt that these should be
brought forward so that the Senate as a whole can voice this more strongly than
a committee can.
Tramble T. Turner: Actually, what I hoped to do was
call the question after noting that the phrase “remedy the situation” had not
been clarified; nevertheless, I would like to call the question.
Laura L. Pauley: We
had discussed the word remedy this morning, and one committee member pointed
out there might be informal remedy setting and defining standards and that is
really what we had envisioned, and by remedy it is not inflicting any commands
or enforcing any mandated distribution.
Senators: Aye.
Chair Moore: That
means we are now going to vote on the proposal from the Senate Committee on
Undergraduate Education as found in Appendix “F”; all those in favor, please
signify by saying, “aye.”
Senators: Aye.
Chair Moore: Any opposed, "nay"?
Senators: Nay.
Chair Moore: The nay’s have it. The motion does not pass.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON CURRICULAR AFFAIRS
Status of General Education Implementation: Certification/ Recertification of New, Changed, and Existing Courses. This report was presented by Committee Chair, Shelley Stoffels.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS
Time in Rank of Associate Professors. This report was introduced by Committee Chair Kim Steiner and presented by Mila Su, Chair of the Subcommittee on Faculty Development.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON RESEARCH
Update on Graduate Education. Eva Pell, Vice-President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, presented this report.
SENATE COUNCIL
Report on Spring 2003 College Visits. Senate Secretary, Melvin Blumberg presented this report.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON UNIVERSITY PLANNING
Status of Construction at Locations Away from University Park. Mark Bodenschatz, Director of Commonwealth Services for the Office of Physical Plant presented this report.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON UNIVERSITY PLANNING
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES AND RULES
Report of Senate
Elections
Melvin Blumberg, Chair, Elections Commission
Melvin Blumberg, Penn
State Harrisburg: Thank you,
John. I have a number of election
results to report, but, before I do, I would like to thank very much the
members of the Senate Staff and the members of the election committee who
helped with the recent elections.
The first is the election for Senate Council 2003-2004. Connie Baggett, College of Agricultural
Sciences; Kristin Sommese, College of Arts and Architecture; John Spychalski,
Smeal College of Business Administration; Alan Scaroni, College of Earth and
Mineral Sciences; Dorothy Evensen, College of Education; Jean Landa Pytel,
College of Engineering; Robert Burgess, College of Health and Human
Development; Dennis Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts; Peter Jurs, Eberly
College of Science; Jacqueline Esposito, University Libraries, Combined
Departments of Military Science, College of Communications, School of
Information Sciences and Technology, Dickinson School of Law and Penn State
Great Valley; James Smith, Abington College; Mila Su, Altoona College; Ronald
McCarty, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College; Louis Milakofsky, Berks-Lehigh
Valley College; Thomas Glumac, Commonwealth College; Howard Sachs, Penn State
Harrisburg, The Capital College; Alphonse E. Leure-duPree, College of Medicine.
Next is the Committee on Committees and Rules:
Joseph Cecere, Travis DeCastro, Joanna Floros, George Franz, and Robert
Pangborn are the five members elected to serve a two-year term.
The University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee: Eliza Pennypacker, Arts and Architecture,
UP; Michael Cardamone, Science and Engineering Technology, Capital College,
Penn State Schuylkill; Richard Barshinger, College of Science, Penn State
Worthington Scranton; and Lourdes Dias Soto, College of Education, UP. These faculty have been elected for two-year
terms.
The new members of the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure elected for three-year terms: Jill Findeis, College of Agricultural
Sciences, UP, Member; Richard Kopley, College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State
DuBois, Alternate.
For the Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities we
have three categories. All positions
are for three-year terms. Faculty from University Park: Joan Thomson, College of Agricultural
Sciences, Member; Paul Cohen, College of Engineering, Member; and Gita Talmage,
College of Engineering, Alternate.
Faculty Other than University Park: Patricia Hinchey,
Commonwealth College, Penn State Worthington Scranton, Alternate.
Deans: David Wormley, College of Engineering,
University Park, Member; and Raymond
Coward, College of Health and Human Development, University Park, Alternate.
Elected member of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President
for a three-year term is: Renata Engel, College of Engineering,
University Park.
For the office of Secretary of the Senate:
Jamie Myers, College of Education, University Park.
For Chair-Elect of the Senate: Kim Steiner, College of Agricultural
Sciences, University Park.
Thank you. Congratulations to all of them.
COMMENTS BY OUTGOING CHAIR MOORE
COMMENTS BY INCOMING CHAIR BISE
Thank you, John. It just goes to show you what happens to you when you have one split second of weakness, and you are going to pay for it for the rest of your life. Everybody thinks I am a donut freak.
I would like to say the same things this past year with the Senate staff and Susan. It has been a pleasure working with you this year, and I am looking forward to working with you next year.
Mel, it has been a pleasure working with you, your sense of humor, your insight and anybody who has spent more time in a coal mine working on his Ph.D. thesis than me deserves my high regards, since he did his Ph.D. on management in a coal mine.
Kim and Jamie, looking forward to working with you next year, and I am sure we are going to have a good time.
John, paybacks are tough. A little over twenty-two years ago a mutual friend of ours said that, “I hope one of these days you get to meet a guy by the name of John Moore. My husband was very instrumental in bringing him to Penn State University. I think you will really like him.” I did not realize a couple of years later we were going to serve together as University Marshals. We have known each other for over fifteen years or so, and we got to know each other really well this past year, so she was definitely right and I really value your friendship, and with all the pleasantries aside now comes paybacks.
When I was thinking of what to give John as a gift I just drew a list of characteristics of John, things I knew about John. One thing I know is he has a great sense of humor, so that is good. He is a Shakespearean scholar and a lover of all things British. I have been over to his house a few times for dinner; he has art work from England and whatnot so I know he likes that. His dinners are very nice and has nice bottles of wine--I thought I would like to get him something to reflect that, but I am a coal miner and any wine that does not come in a cardboard box is a fine wine. So I figured rather than getting you something like that I saw this. This is a wine bottle holder stylized after a British nobleman who seems to like his wine a little bit too much.
Outgoing Chair Moore: I am speechless.
Incoming Chair Bise: One more thing. You people all think he is a Shakespearean scholar. Let me tell you he is a budding engineer because two years ago he did not mention but we like to go to baseball games together, and we drove down to a Phillies game in a driving rain storm, and I had the roof off of my car and I told him if I keep the pedal on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to 55 mph we will not get wet, and was I right?
Outgoing Chair Moore: You were right.
Incoming Chair Bise: Aerodynamics, he learned that so I am always trying to introduce him to engineering things. So I thought, well, why not get him an engineering book, and I have a book that is coming out at the end of this month and I thought I would give him a copy of my book. But then I realized he goes around to all these Commonwealth Campuses and locations here at University Park and in his spiel he says, “I do not read books that were written after 1670,” so that made that tough. But as a Stanford graduate, I have the right thing for him. I have a copy of the first mining book ever written in 1556, translated out of the original Latin by a Stanford graduate and his wife, a mining engineer, Herbert Hoover. So if you read up on this that will at least get you within 500 years, and we will gradually get you up there.
Senators: Applause.
Incoming Chair Bise: When I was handed my script for today, I was kind of shocked because it was blank so I guess they are trying to tell me do not say anything, so carrying on with the Agenda.
NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS
None
COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE
GOOD OF THE UNIVERSITY
None
ADJOURNMENT
The April 22, 2003, meeting of the University Faculty Senate was adjourned at 4:43 PM.
The next meeting of the University Faculty Senate will be on September 16, 2003.
DOCUMENTS DISTRIBUTED PRIOR TO APRIL 22, 2003
Senate Self Study – A Concept for Restructuring and for Improving the Operation and Procedures of the University Faculty Senate (Forensic)
Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid – Change to Policy 34-68 (Auditing a
Course) (Legislative)
Intercollegiate Athletics – Revision of Senate Policy 67-00, Athletic Competition, Section 2, Eligibility of Athletes (Legislative)
Faculty Affairs – Revision to Policy AD53, Privacy Statement (Advisory/Consultative)
Undergraduate Education – Defining Grading Standards (Advisory/Consultative)
Curricular Affairs – Status of General Education Implementation: Certification/Recertification of New, Changed, and Existing Courses (Informational)
Faculty Affairs – Time in Rank of Associate Professors (Informational)
Research – Update on Graduate Education (Informational)
Senate Council – Spring 2003 College Visits (Informational)
University Planning – Status of Construction (Informational)
University Planning – Parking Rate Structure (Informational)
University Faculty Senate
Senate Calendar
2003-2004
REPORTS DUE SENATE COUNCIL SENATE
August 19, 2003 September 2, 2003 September 16, 2003
September 30, 2003 October 14, 2003 October 28, 2003
November 11, 2003 November 25, 2003 December 9, 2003
January 6, 2004 January 20, 2004 February 3, 2004
February 17, 2004 March 2, 2004 March 16, 2004
March 30, 2004 April 13, 2004 April 27, 2004
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES AND RULES
Report of Senate
Elections
Melvin Blumberg, Chair, Elections Commission
Melvin Blumberg, Penn
State Harrisburg: Thank you,
John. I have a number of election
results to report, but, before I do, I would like to thank very much the
members of the Senate Staff and the members of the election committee who
helped with the recent elections.
The first is the election for Senate Council 2003-2004. Connie Baggett, College of Agricultural
Sciences; Kristin Sommese, College of Arts and Architecture; John Spychalski,
Smeal College of Business Administration; Alan Scaroni, College of Earth and
Mineral Sciences; Dorothy Evensen, College of Education; Jean Landa Pytel,
College of Engineering; Robert Burgess, College of Health and Human
Development; Dennis Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts; Peter Jurs, Eberly
College of Science; Jacqueline Esposito, University Libraries, Combined
Departments of Military Science, College of Communications, School of
Information Sciences and Technology, Dickinson School of Law and Penn State
Great Valley; James Smith, Abington College; Mila Su, Altoona College; Ronald
McCarty, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College; Louis Milakofsky, Berks-Lehigh
Valley College; Thomas Glumac, Commonwealth College; Howard Sachs, Penn State
Harrisburg, The Capital College; Alphonse E. Leure-duPree, College of Medicine.
Next is the Committee on Committees and Rules:
Joseph Cecere, Travis DeCastro, Joanna Floros, George Franz, and Robert
Pangborn are the five members elected to serve a two-year term.
The University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee: Eliza Pennypacker, Arts and Architecture,
UP; Michael Cardamone, Science and Engineering Technology, Capital College,
Penn State Schuylkill; Richard Barshinger, College of Science, Penn State
Worthington Scranton; and Lourdes Dias Soto, College of Education, UP. These faculty have been elected for two-year
terms.
The new members of the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure elected for three-year terms: Jill Findeis, College of Agricultural
Sciences, UP, Member; Richard Kopley, College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State
DuBois, Alternate.
For the Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities we
have three categories. All positions
are for three-year terms. Faculty from University Park: Joan Thomson, College of Agricultural
Sciences, Member; Paul Cohen, College of Engineering, Member; and Gita Talmage,
College of Engineering, Alternate.
Faculty Other than University Park: Patricia Hinchey,
Commonwealth College, Penn State Worthington Scranton, Alternate.
Deans: David Wormley, College of Engineering,
University Park, Member; and Raymond
Coward, College of Health and Human Development, University Park, Alternate.
Elected member of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President
for a three-year term is: Renata Engel, College of Engineering,
University Park.
For the office of Secretary of the Senate:
Jamie Myers, College of Education, University Park.
For Chair-Elect of the Senate: Kim Steiner, College of Agricultural
Sciences, University Park.
Thank you. Congratulations to all of them.
SENATORS NOT RETURNING FOR THE 2003-2004 SENATE YEAR
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ABINGTON COLLEGE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL ALTOONA COLLEGE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND BERKS-LEHIGH VALLEY COLLEGE SMEAL COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATIONS COLLEGE OF EARTH AND MINERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING PENN STATE HARRISBURG COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT COLLEGE OF THE LIBERAL ARTS |
COLLEGE OF MEDICINE PENN STATE SCHUYLKILL EBERLY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE FAYETTE CAMPUS DICKINSON SCHOOL OF LAW GREAT VALLEY MILITARY SCIENCES IMMEDIATE PAST-CHAIR EX OFFICIO SENATOR APPOINTED SENATOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS GRADUATE STUDENTS
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