Faculty Senate Minutes, January 14, 2022

February 3, 2022

Minutes

Determination of quorum.
- Quorum determined at 10:04
Call to order.
Approval of the agenda.
- Correction: Welcome new SGA representative
- Motioned for approval by T. Elmendorf
- Seconded by B. Kramer
- Approved by voice vote
Approval of the minutes from December 10, 2021.
- Motioned for approval by T. Elmendorf
- Seconded by T. Sindone
- Approved by voice vote
Remarks by the Senate Chair (K. Scipes).
- Senate Parliamentarian needed.
- Welcome new SGA Representative, M. Granados.
- College of Nursing and Campus Police are holding a child abuse seminar in the coming months.
- Congratulations to K. Bishop Morris, D. Majumdar, and others for their Race, Racism, Anti-Racism Series receiving the Martin Luther King Jr. Dreamers Award.
- Explanation of formal report by the Chancellor and Provost.
Remarks by the Chancellor (T. Keon)
- The Chancellor passed the floor to the Provost for announcements.
  1. Provost Holford recognized K. Bishop Morris, D. Majumdar and others for their participation in the Race, Racism, Anti-Racism series.
  2. Announcement of 27^th Annual MLK event
  3. Faculty 180 Reporting Tool in Interfolio.
  4. COVID dashboard updates
    1. 54 students, 1 faculty, and 8 staff recently tested positive

Chancellor/Provost Formal presentation of enrollment data.
1. Questions
  1. Where is the track going to be?
    1. The university will contract with a local high school for indoor/outdoor track locations. The indoor facilities will be contracted with a group in Illinois.
  2. Where is the money coming from for scholarships?
    1. Money was set aside and a strategic priority was made to add to that pool of money.
  3. Two of the colleges were merged and at least one applied doctoral program was implemented despite being voted down by faculty. With that said, what is the definition of “collaboration” on the part of the faculty?
    1. The merge was withdrawn last year and a faculty task force has been assembled. The Provost said he and the Senate Chair have been in discussion in order to have better informed conversations with faculty.
    2. Both the College of Nursing and the College of Technology were interested in doctoral program initiatives.
  4. Have you considered using faculty to encourage high school students that college is a good option?
    1. The admissions team is now meeting department by department and is willing to work as closely as possible with each department to facilitate faculty engagement with that process.
  5. In terms of the merger with the College of Technology, some of people on the committee said they were told that their job wasn’t to look at options with two different colleges, but more how to merge the colleges. Also, a curriculum was put together for the Applied Doctorate of Engineering, but the amount of resources required would not be beneficial. We might be in a better position providing available resources for bachelor’s and master’s students.
  6. Is there any thought put into making sure that students get campus experience in terms of scheduling so that they can take courses online and in person? Also, how will graduate programs be funded under the current IBBM model?
    1. Bishop Noll students have been participating in college experience programs on campus and we are looking at ways to clarify how we can mix in person instruction with online instruction to make it more transparent to our student body across both locations.
    2. The Provost encouraged looking at the proposal put together for finding creative ways in which this particular program is funded.
    3. The Chancellor said he believes the best way to impact the adult market would be to come up with a degree completion program to help them have an on-campus experience and do it at a place in time that is convenient for working adults.
    4. The Chancellor said that, in the budget model, you can find ways and opportunities to help it become self-funded.
  7. Where do you see faculty fitting into the Impact Lab?
    1. The Chancellor said faculty who have an interest can play as much of a role in that lab, as they might like to play. They can meet with people who think they have a good concept, help them develop their concept. The Chancellor said we’ve already had 14 launches from our commercialization center, many of which have worked with faculty either developing a business plan, or on a particular item that they needed, say a prototype, or needed additional knowledge from a faculty member.
  8. The Chair thanks the Chancellor and Provost for their presentation. The Chair pointed out that there needs to be more focus on Westville than was presented and that they look forward to addressing some of the problems going on there.
2. New Business:
  - Curriculum Documents Approval
    1. 32 proposals committee approved
    2. Ending of concentration in Cybersecurity is contingent upon approval of BS in Cybersecurity by BOT and appropriate state institutions.
    3. All CHESS documents are in relation to revisions to their plan of study. CHESS has changed its core so that now there are four themed sections that are cross disciplinary.
    4. Math and Stats documents are in relation to prerequisites and requisites that the department was trying to justify and clean up so that everything was consistent across the board and meet the needs of their programs and their students.
    5. Motion for approval
    6. Seconded by T. Elmendorf
    7. Approved
  - Power of Department Chairs to bypass Senate
    1. The Chair explained that the curriculum process should not be interrupted or otherwise changed by department chairs. They emphasized that the Senate is in control of the curriculum process.
    2. A Senator clarified that part of their research is to find a pattern of this happening if one exists, and not to impute blame on any particular individuals.
    3. The Provost clarified that department chairs cannot waive graduation requirements. They can substitute courses.

Old Business
- COVID-19
  1. The Safe Return Committee will be meeting on January 24 to decide what the appropriate measures should be going forward.
- Senate Budget
  1. The Senate was able to fund course releases for Fall 2022 but will need to assess the budget for the future.
- Tobin report on Civics requirements
  1. American Government and US History faculty members have had several conversations over the months, looking at what was doable at our institution based on what our students are like, what their lives are like, and what might be required of them. Keep in mind that all of the degree programs in place that might be affected by this. They came up with something very similar to what West Lafayette is doing.
  2. Every Purdue Northwest student, starting this fall, will be required by the time of graduation to pass a civics literacy exam. That’s the requirement for everyone. In addition to that, they need to complete one of three options:
    1. Attend six civics events that are approved.
    2. Complete the series of podcasts designed by C-Span.
    3. Take a course that’s on a list.
  3. The PUWL Civics Literacy Proficiency website provides a link for civics event proposals, so we can set up a process to do that.
  4. Our current catalog contains most of the exact same classes or comparable classes listed by PUWL as possibilities. A list has been put together of PNW courses students can choose from. There is a taskforce in place to implement all of this. Professors Yang, Connolly, and Colucci have remained in contact with K. Tobin. Professor Yang is probably the most well versed in what our requirements would be according to what West Lafayette has handed down.
  5. Questions:
    1. What happens when students fail the test?
      1. Students can take the test until they pass.
    2. A question was asked about the possibility of requiring students to take the exam in their second or third semester, so that they will have passed by their senior year.
      1. Tobin confirmed this was a good idea.
    3. What’s the timeline for submitting a document to the Senate because this is a curriculum issue, and so it will need to go through the Senate before it is implemented.
      1. Tobin said they do not think that it falls under the category of a curriculum document, because taking a course is only one of the options. They said they looked at degree programs, plans of study, and Gen Ed enrollment which showed that a lot of students are already taking POL101, American Gov’t. as a social science, and HIST151 and 152 as a humanities requirement. Those courses are all taught through dual credit, so we have a lot of students already coming in with the requirement. The test requirement is what is being mandated.
    4. What is the objective of the specific requirements? Why do students need this even though we have additional Gen Ed curriculums already?
      1. This was decided by PUWL BOT. We are not sure what the objective is, we are following what we were asked to do.
      2. The Chair added that the idea is to ensure that our students know how the government works, whether that is formally or otherwise we have yet to see.
    5. CON has no room to add a civics course. Where can we find that list of classes? Can we incorporate, hypothetically, two podcasts as an assignment and three different courses over a year and a half to meet the requirement?
      1. Dean Hopp reached out to K. Tobin because of upcoming curriculum changes including this one, and it depends on what happens to Gen Ed or future plans of study. We’re not mandating a course. K. Tobin said they can send the list out.
    6. Provost Holford said all of the resources for completing the requirement are free except for the usual course fees. They said that K. Tobin has developed a white paper on this. They said this is a curricular issue, it does require our faculty to weigh in on how PNW will meet the graduation requirement. The board decided it would be a graduation requirement and have left it to the respective faculties, for example, what courses would satisfy the requirement. They said K. Tobin’s white paper mentions that it would be the Faculty of Political Science that would decide which events would satisfy the requirement. And implementation group would find a way to ticket those to the faculty for approval for which events would meet. The Provost said they hope the faculty will review that and move it to approval so that they can et the implementation committee started with how we’re going to track monitor and document all this. T. Elmendorf said this was an item for Senate debate, the Chair said this will be discussed at the Executive Meeting.
  6. For Action:
    - None
  7. Discussion Items:
    - FSD 22-01: General Education Course List Update
      1. Moved for action by T. Elmendorf
      2. Seconded by J. Rogers
      3. Moved for approval by D. Pratt pending a correction that Social Studies has changed to Social Sciences.
      4. Seconded by J. Rogers
      5. Approved show of hands

Reports from Senate Standing Committee Chairs
- Curriculum
  1. No updates
- Ed Policy
  1. Committee has been working on ACT/SAT requirements with some consensus. They are examining GPA requirements further today.
- Faculty Affairs
  1. Continuing to work on P&T document. Quality control is being discussed. How do we go about making sure the people who are on committees and who are chairing committees are following the procedures, as written. We also discovered that not all areas and units have written documentation as to what the promotion criteria is, such as the definition of terms, what it means by discovery, engagement, learning those sorts of things. They are trying to craft a document that will address those issues.
  2. Faculty review of administrators survey has been written and unanimously approved by the committee. The Chair will be providing a link to the Qualtrics survey to all faculty. The data, once it is compiled will be sent to the Chair of Faculty Affairs, and Faculty Affairs Committee will select two additional people to summarize the data and write the reports for distribution. All members of Faculty Affairs will sign off on all reports prior to these reports being distributed. We want to make sure that that the report is reflective of the data, and not necessarily of personal opinions.
  3. Faculty awards list has been compiled. The committee feels that the Nominations & Awards Committee should oversee recognition of faculty who have left the university.
- Gen Ed
  1. Committee is working on piloting a new Gen Ed program. New courses are being added and courses that are no longer needed are being deleted.
  2. Stankowski has been working with different faculty to be responsible for adding data in Task Stream. The role of the Gen Ed & Assessment Committee is to validate courses and, in particular, this semester, we’re looking at those that qualify as meeting the composition and sciences categories. B. Stankowski has reminded some people to make sure that the information is complete so that we could do our due diligence and our job at revalidating those courses.
- Nominations & Elections
  1. Reminder that Senators to elect Vice Chair Elect in its April meeting. The qualifications for that office are that you must be a current senator. There are three exceptions to that, namely, T. Elmendorf, K. Scipes, and T. Roach. Other than that everybody is qualified. Even if your term is expiring, that doesn’t matter, because you will then be in a new position and you your old position will need to be refilled. No current nominations for that current job. Nomination submissions should be sent to both T. Elmendorf and K. Scipes. There was considerable and useful discussion at the December meeting about the protocol for carrying out that election. The desire of the Senate is that that election should be carried out online. The committee will be drafting a document to be brought to the Senate floor in February that will make that official Senate policy. And so you can look for that document next month.
  2. There are 14 Senators whose terms are expiring at the end of the semester. Those senators will have to be by and large replaced. There are a few exceptions due to attrition. T. Elmendorf will be contacting the department chairs of those senators to ask for either election or reelection.
- Student Affairs
  1. Absence policy resolution to be presented next meeting.
  2. Some issues with syllabus template.
  3. Development of Student of the Month.
  4. Creating club evaluations.
  5. Creating faculty advisor evaluations.

Report from SGA
- Granados introduced themselves and clarified that they are the SGA Vice President, and that O. White is still SGA President.
- White announced that applications for the next session of SGA can be found on the university website and encouraged faculty to encourage students to apply.
- Multicultural lounges on campus are now open.
  1. SGA would like to continue discussions about turning the multicultural lounge into a multicultural center. SGA will be holding bi-weekly meetings via Zoom and in person for this discussion.
- A nursing Senator is creating a Mental Health Club for all students as resource for student-to-student conversations.
- Seeds have been picked out for the Community Garden with the help of J. Bachman.
Open discussion (as time permits).
- A reminder was provided about the Chancellor’s Food Drive.
Adjournment