November 17, 2010

FACULTY SENATE MINUTES

NOVEMBER 17, 2010

Present: Steve Abbott, Joe Carr, Bob Dana, David Dvorak, Michael Eckardt, Cynthia Erdley, Susan Erich, Janet Fairman, Robert Franzosa, Todd Gabe, John Gregory, Michael Grillo, Robert Gundersen, Dan Harrison, Sam Helmke, Sue Hunter, Kirsten Jacobson, Mel Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Deborah Killam, Dennis King, Kurt Klappenbach, Irv Kornfield, Bill Livingston, Stuart Marrs, James McClymer, David Morrison, Harlan Onsrud, Anne Pooler, Paul Rawson, Andrew Reeve, Robert Rice, Joyce Rumery, Thomas Sandford, Dan Sandweiss, Michael Scott, Scott See, Howard Segal, Phillip Silver, Kathryn Slott, Touradj Solouki, Shihfen Tu, Janet Waldron, James Warhola.

Absent: Douglas Bousfield, Ian Bricknell, Tony Brinkley, Chris Campbell, Eric Gallandt, Gordon Hamilton, Duane Hanselman, Clarissa Henry, Judy Kuhns-Hastings, David Marcincowski, Sid Mitchell, Tina Passman, Howard Patterson, Justin Poland, Claire Sullivan, Roy Turner, Chuck Wallace, Mark Wells, Vivian Wu, Huijie Xue.

The meeting opened at 3:15

President Grillo announced that UMaine is in the black financially, but there are still cuts to the budget in the future. The Finance Committee will meet with Janet Waldron for an update on the budget; there are still serious implications for our campus. Allyson Handley and Curt Madison will be here for a special meeting of the senate on December 8 to discuss the system’s new plan for E-Learning: On-line Maine. Chancellor Pattenaude will be a guest speaker at the full Faculty Senate meeting on December 15.

The Minutes from October 20, 2010 were approved.

Committee Reports:

BOT Representative – Bob Rice
At the November 14-15, 2010 meeting, the BOT approved $3.75 million in improvements to Nutting Hall to begin in the summer of 2011. The Alfond Arena renovation has been approved: $4.8 million in private donations, 3.5 million from the Alfond Foundation and another 1 million from private donations, and another $300,000 from the MEIF fund will be used for these renovations. The Alfond is in definite need of updating.

The Role and Scope document is under review by the BOT. UMaine’s Mission Statement has been approved by the board as well as those received from other system campuses.

Jim Breece talked about losing quality in some academic programs which suffered because of lack of faculty.

Enrollment numbers are flat, there will be many challenges in the future to increase enrollment.

The Presidential Search committee has formed teams to check references of candidates. Sometime in January the committee will be conducting airport interviews with chosen candidates.

A question was asked if all campuses balanced their budgets. Two campuses received help from the Chancellor’s office. USM has paid back the money that bailed them out of their budget deficit.

Academic Affairs – Cynthia Erdley (for Judy Kuhns-Hastings)
The committee is looking at the parameters for student classroom scheduling. Classroom scheduling is more than size and technology. The committee is getting more information to make recommendations. They would like to make an inventory of classrooms on campus. What is the process of assigning classrooms and what is the advantage of the new software being used?

Constitution & Bylaws – James Warhola
There is a motion for a few changes to the Constitution and the Bylaws on the agenda.

Research & Scholarship – Janet Fairman
President Kennedy met last week with the committee. The committee is hoping to arrange for in-house reviews of grant proposals. They will also be meeting with members of the University Research Council.

Finance & Institutional Planning – Jim McClymer
The committee will meet on November 23 to look at data generated by UMS.

University Environment – Mike Scott
The committee is discussing parking on campus.

Library Advisory – Howard Segal
The committee had its first meeting two weeks ago with Joyce Rumery. They discussed e-books; it was an extremely informative meeting. There are over 90,000 e-books currently available at Fogler Library which was a revelation to the committee.

Service & Outreach – Deborah Killam
The committee is promoting and supporting a service learning workshop with CETA.

Committee on Committees – Roy Turner
No Report.

Program Creation & Reorganization Review – Harlan Onsrud
Please check the senate web-site for updated information about program suspensions. The committee is providing advice to the administration regarding these actions. Please try to attend the public hearings the committee is holding. The committee will meet again next week.

General Education – Dennis King (for Tina Passman)
The committee has not met recently, but has been communicating by e-mail. There is a motion on Quantitative Literacy on the agenda.

Ad Hoc IT Advisory – Irv Kornfield
The committee met last Monday to discuss trends in distance education and what we can anticipate in the future.

Sam Helmke was introduced as the new student rep from the General Student Senate.

Questions and Discussion with Administrators:
Provost Hunter was asked about the practice of the administration taking back vacated salary lines from colleges. The practice started in the mid 1990s. There are programmatic and curricular issues with this practice. What is the role of the senate in these practices?

She stated that she would be glad to open a dialogue about these issues. Obviously we have been more challenged due to the budget but the decisions involved the chairs and deans and her office usually follows the deans’ recommendations.

Did the Deans used to keep the lines to distribute to different departments?

She replied that the deans identify which lines are to be part of the cuts.

Someone stated that some of the colleges lost many positions that were never replaced.

Anne Pooler, Dean’s Rep from the College of Education and Human Development, said that some lines were not pulled from the college by the President and Provost but have been lost to budget cuts but that most of the positions that do not go toward budget cuts have been retained by the deans.

Michael Grillo said that a percentage of E&G funds go into the classroom. Here at UMaine that number is 26-28% for instruction. Is that low for an institution?

Janet Waldron replied that the Academic Affairs Committee, Finance and Institutional Planning Committee and Environment Committee reps are to meet with administrators about this issue.

Michael said that from his perspective his department lost 3 lines in his department that have been pulled centrally. The department cannot hire replacements because of this.

Jim McClymer asked when proposals for the Strategic Investment Fund are due. Preproposals should be done by early December and then the proposals should be submitted to your Deans by mid-December. The first proposal should be brief. The final due date is January 7, 2011. There is $3.5 million available for FY12 for the whole system. Renewal of last year’s awards will take $1 million from this amount. The areas covered by the fund are 1) Student Success, 2) Enrollment Management, and 3) the Public Agenda (Advancing Maine).

Old Business:
There was no Old Business.

New Business:
Motion from the General Education Committee

A Resolution affirming the student learning outcomes for the General Education category of Quantitative Literacy

General Education represents a cross-college set of requirements for successful completion of any undergraduate major at the University of Maine. As such, oversight of the general Education curriculum, by designated categories, falls within the purview of the Faculty Senate.
The NEASC action letter of November 2009 mandates assessment results for General Education, with two interim reports, in 2012 and 2014, showing movement toward this goal. In order to accomplish this,
the establishment of assessment criteria for each General Education category, based upon Student Learning Outcomes for each category, is an essential first step. Since the faculty has not reviewed the Student Learning Outcomes for each category since the inception of General Education in 1994 and 1996, the Faculty Senate, through the General Education Committee has commenced this first step.
A group of faculty have reviewed and made recommendations for the Student Learning Outcomes for Quantitative Literacy, which has been expanded to more clearly address the integration of the use of computers and computational mathematics in many areas, which was nascent when the general education category of mathematics was first configured. This process is in keeping with the iterative policy used to assure faculty ownership of General Education.
Resolution: The Faculty Senate, in keeping with its responsibility for oversight of General Education, hereby accepts the following Student Learning Outcomes for the General Education category, Quantitative Literacy (Mathematics).
General Education Student Learning Outcomes – Quantitative Literacy Preamble
Quantitative literacy is the ability to formulate, evaluate, and communicate conclusions and inferences from quantitative information. Students will develop their quantitative literacy during their undergraduate experience through courses targeted at quantitative literacy and through frequent exposure to quantitative problems and analyses both inside and outside their major.
Student Learning Outcomes Upon completion of general education study in quantitative literacy, students will understand the role that mathematics and quantitative thinking plays in solving and communicating information about real world problems and relationships. Students will be able to:
1. Translate problems from everyday spoken and written language to appropriate quantitative questions.
2. Interpret quantitative information from formulas, graphs, tables, schematics, simulations, and visualizations, and draw inferences from that information.
3. Solve problems using arithmetical, algebraic, geometrical, statistical, or computational methods.
4. Analyze answers to quantitative problems in order to determine reasonableness. Suggest alternative approaches if necessary.
5. Represent quantitative information symbolically, visually, and numerically.
6. Present quantitative results in context using everyday spoken and written language as well as using formulas, graphs, tables, schematics, simulations, and visualizations.

Instructors of courses offering General Education credit in the area of Quantitative Literacy will indicate how the Student Learning Outcomes will be achieved on their syllabi. Assessment practices are, for the most part, embedded within the courses awarding general education credit and are appropriate to the content and goals of each course and program.

The motion passed 34 in favor, none against, no abstentions.

Motion from the Constitution & Bylaws Committee:

Faculty Senate
Motion to Amend the Constitution, and the Bylaws
November 17, 2010

The C&BL Committee and the Executive Committee recommend the following corrections and changes to the Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws.
Constitution:
1. Article III, section 6: change “Faculty Assembly” to “Faculty Senate”
2. Article IV: paragraph C, section 3: change “Vice Provost for Research and Graduate
Studies” to “Vice President for Research”.
3. Article VI, section 4: “Agenda”, paragraph B: change the wording so that it reads:
“The Secretary shall distribute the agenda at least 72 hours prior to each regular meeting.”
Bylaws:
1. Article II: Committee Membership: omit the sentence: “Except in unusual circumstances, a faculty member may serve concurrently on only one standing committee.”
Commentary: If this Bylaw requirement were strictly followed, the Senate could not function, nor is it possible, arithmetically, to fulfill this requirement because the number of standing committees now exceeds the capacity of the colleges’ distribution of Senators to enable each committee to have representatives from each college, while having each Senator serve on only one committee. The Executive Committee and C&BL Committee reviewed this issue and unanimously recommend the above action.
2. Article IV., Section 8, paragraph B: correct “Committee on Program Creation, Review and
Reorganization” to read “Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee”.
3. Article V.: replace “Center of Teaching Excellence” with “CETA (Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment)”
4. Article IV. STANDING COMMITTEES, “paragraph B: Membership” : Two corrections are needed in this paragraph:
(1) lines 4/5: present wording “Program Creation, Review, and Reorganization” should be changed to “Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee”;
(2) in the list of standing committees whose chairs are entitled to Executive Committee membership, the General Education Committee should be listed. It should be listed immediately prior to “Parliamentarian.”
5. Article V. SPECIAL COMMITTEES: Section 1 of the Bylaws currently indicates the existence of an “ AD HOC GENERAL EDUCATION COMMITTEE ….” . This is now incorrect, because the General Education Committee was changed to a Standing Committee (see Faculty Senate minutes, March 31, 2010). The following three corrections thus need to be made to the Bylaws, to correctly designate the General Education Committee as a standing committee, and re-numbering the concluding Articles:
a. move the content of present Article V. Section 1. to Article IV, Section 11: General Education Committee.
b. the present content of Article VI., “Other Ad Hoc Committees may be created for time limited periods as voted on by the full Senate”, should be moved to Article V. SPECIAL COMMITTEES.
c. the present content of Article VII.,” AMENDMENT …..”, should be moved to Article VI. There will now, thus, be no “Article VII”

The motion passed 34 in favor, none against, no abstentions.

Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Slott, Secretary