May 14, 2024

AGENDA MATERIALS

Institutional Reports

• Faculty Senate President’s Report (PDF) (Steve Scheck)
• University President’s Report (PDF) (Jesse Peters) 
• Provost’s Report (PDF) (Jose Coll) The Provost has requested that an update on conditional admit students be given (Leanne Merrill)
• Interinstitutional Faculty Senate (no report)  (Cheryl Beaver/Tad Shannon)   

Old Business

1. No old business

New Business 

1. Executive Committee puts forth the following slate of candidates for Faculty Senate Executive Committee at-large positions:

Dr. Matthew Ciancetta (Natural Sciences & Mathematics)

Dr. Mary Pettenger (Social Science Division)

Also, see item 2 in the Open Discussion section.

Informational Presentations 

1.  The curriculum development and proposal work group will update senators on recent work and solicit input. This will be done in item 3 of the  Open Discussion section.

2.  Since the last Senate meeting, the university resolved possible issues with HECC criteria for BA/BS degrees, et al.  See Provost Coll’s email notice.

3.  Executive Committee will be releasing the annual faculty service survey. (Stewart Baker)

2. New Senators join current Senators at the 2nd Senate meeting in May  (May 28)

Open Discussion 

1. Executive Committee wishes to bring to Senate’s attention the unique situation re. representation of faculty members in Occupational Therapy on the Senate.  Calculations for distribution of Faculty Senate seats in 2024-2025 (Stewart Baker)

2. Executive Committee members Katherine Schmidt and Leanne Merrill will report in on their experiences in recruiting for building a slate of candidates for executive officers of Faculty Senate for the 2024-25 year.  As of this posting – no faculty members are willing to serve in the President or Vice President roles.  Discussion and next steps.

3. The curriculum work group is still engaged in degree program development and approval policy/procedures work. However; today, the work group wishes to engage the Senate in providing input and endorsement at a future Senate meeting of a new approach to the routine maintenance of existing course and program curricular changes. (Judith Sylva, Amanda Smith, Amy Clark, Camila Gabaldón, Leanne Merrill, Thaddeus Shannon, Melanie Landon-Hays, Stephen Scheck)

Continuing discussion initiated at April 9 Senate meeting:

4. The Executive Committee would like to continue discussion on what is essential for fulfilling degree requirements; specifically, credits vs learning outcomes for major and minor requirements. How firm are minimum credit counts in the major and minor?

5. The Executive Committee would like to continue discussion on how Faculty Senate can be a valuable source of shared governance as we support defining and implementing the new university strategic plan.

•   Call for future business items
•   Closing discussion items from the floor

Announcements 

Commencement June 15: https://wou.edu/commencement/

 Supplemental documents

Considerations for Equity for post-traditional students presentation December 12. 2023 

College Restructure Taskforce Final Report December 14, 2022