April 22nd, 2003 –Faculty Senate minutes

Senate Members Present: Anderson, Andrews (for Bliss), Brownbridge, Cardinal (for Muscato) Caster, Coker (for Grim), Fung, Hargreaves, Holmquist, Hoobler, Jensen, Kelly, Lincicium, Poston, Perlman, Rhoads, Shay, Tarter, Trevino, Turner (for Haberman), VanSteeter, Winningham, Zygmont, Conn

At 3:35 p.m. the meeting was called to order.

Minutes from last meeting were approved with a couple of stylistic corrections suggested by Senator Shay.

Senate President Caster reminded the Senators that elections have to be completed at the Division level and the new Senators have to be present at the May 13^th Meeting. He also reported that the newly formed Professional Programs Committee had its first meeting organized by Senator Zygmont.

President Conn congratulated the faculty as a whole on doing an excellent job at hosting the Board of Higher Education. He applauded the efforts of the entire university body at presenting Western Oregon University in a positive light. At the moment we are waiting to see how the legislature in Salem will proceed with the budget. The President also pointed out that since WOU had the lowest surcharge within the OUS system, it will have the highest increase in tuition for the 2003-2004 academic year.

ASWOU president Gregg Magnus was not present.

Bob Turner gave a report on the IFS meeting of April 4-5 2003 in Salem. He reported on individual meetings of IFS Senators with legislators from the Ways and Means and Revenue Committees on Friday. It was interesting to note that ideas about taking action on restructuring the tax code and in particular introducing a sales tax are endorsed by some of the legislators now with the introduction of the "defibrillator" budget. The restructuring of PERS and the future of PEBB were also discussed. On Saturday there was an academic counseling meeting and a report on diversity and standards within the OUS. From 55 different categories, the three highest priorities identified were undergraduate education, then graduate education, and then small school funding.

Reports of Committees:

1. There was a motion to pass the document distributed by the Ad Hoc Textbook Committee onto the Administration (Deans' and Provost Office) as a set of recommendations. It was unanimously passed.

2. The recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on 4 credit course scheduling are going to be distributed at the May 13^th Meeting.

3. There were two proposals from the ARC. The first one concerns challenging a course. Currently only full-time students are eligible to do so but with the weakened economy and with the increase of part-time students it seems reasonable to allow part-time students registered for a minimum of 6 credit hours to challenge a course. The second proposal has to do with the introduction of one mathematics course and one computer science course in the graduation requirement of the Associate of Arts degree at WOU. Currently this degree has 93 credit hours and no math/CS graduation requirement. ARC proposed that MTH 105 and CS 101 be used within the 93 credit hours.

Both of these proposals are to be discussed in the divisions.

4. There is a proposal from the Graduate Committee regarding Incompletes in graduate courses. The proposed policy will require all students to clear all Incompletes within 12 months (if at all possible) and they will not be allowed to sit for their graduate comprehensive exams before all incompletes are taken care of. Also, no graduate student is to have more than 9 hours of Incomplete work, and in order to be granted an Incomplete, only less than 20% of the course work has to be left for that student to finish.

Again, this proposal is to be discussed within divisions.

Old Business: There was a motion to vote on the geography curriculum proposal to change to 4-credit courses. It passed with one abstention and everyone else voting in favor of it.

New Business:

1. There is a proposal from the School of Education to institute a 5-institution OUS program (CREAD) for reading certificate/endorsement. The goal of this program is to increase the number of Reading Specialists in the public schools of Oregon while making courses accessible to teachers statewide through long-distance courses and more diverse offerings. More information can be obtained at http://www.ous.edu/aca/CREADE/reading.htm .

2. The Bachelor of Music Degree General Education Proposal is back from the Curriculum Committee. The proposed and accepted model by CC involves 42 credit hours with 10 credits under Skills Heading (one writing, one music and technology, and one health and fitness class), with 32 credits in Distribution Requirements (8 credits each in non-music creative arts, humanities, natural science, and one of social science or foreign language), and with 6 credits of Writing Intensive or Diversity Classes.

A short discussion followed mainly revolving around the issue of the choice between social science and foreign language and why these two are grouped together and why foreign languages are not grouped within the humanities requirements.

A motion to adjourn was approved around 5:15 p.m.