2015-2016 Motions

October 21, 2015

Faculty Senate Executive Committee
October 21, 2015

Syllabus Language

Background: The syllabus has been selected by the administration as a vehicle for a wide range of institutional communications to students about rights [aka e.g., disability services], faculty responsibilities [aka e.g., mandatory reporting], and needs for rescheduling classes in case of emergencies and unplanned closures. While the faculty recognizes that these communications are important to the functioning of the university the syllabus is a tool that is not well suited to communicating legalistic disclaimers and instead should be focused on the educational goals of the class and communication between the faculty member and the students. Clarifying the source of the text and maintaining consistency in these legal documents will both serve to protect the institution while clarifying the function of the syllabus.

Motion: The faculty senate asks that the administration provide to all faculty at least one month prior to the start of each term a legal statement from the administration to the students which includes any disclaimers or required language for the syllabus. This section of the syllabus will be included at the end of each syllabus and will be clearly identified as “legal and administrative syllabus required language”. Each section will be clearly marked with supporting contact information for the students. Content of the class and topics to be covered will be the sole responsibility of the faculty and independent of administrative language and will be related to pedagogical rather than legal requirements.

Vote: Approved – Amendment 1 change aka to e.g.,
Vote: Approved – Amendment 2 chang “legal and administrative syllabus required language”. to University of Maine policies
Vote: Approved

 

Academic Affairs Committee
October 21, 2015

Academic Calendar

Motion: Whereas, three models of calendar have been offered by the administration (attached), and whereas, the student government has endorsed calendar 2 with two weeks in March for break the main difference, we, the Faculty Senate are in favor of calendar 2 for pedagogical reasons, e.g. related to student participation in research, and in support of our students’ preference.

Vote: Approved

 

UMaine Faculty Senate Motion
2015-10-21

Pedagogical Innovation and Information Technology

Whereas information technology is an important component of the pedagogical design of a class.

Whereas pedagogical innovations using information technology have potentially transformative impacts on education, both in the small and in the large.

Whereas information technology is notoriously difficult to forecast and a poor candidate for long term commitments based on a top-down decision-making.

Whereas the faculty teaching a class are in the best position to determine the needs of that class, and effective means of meeting those needs, for tasks such as course data management, messaging among students and instructors, homework submissions, online and hybrid testing, and many others.

Whereas the faculty must have the freedom of pedagogical design as it pertains to information technology used in courses in order to continue innovating in educational matters.

Whereas the selection of information technology resources is very similar to the selection of other pedagogical resources, such as textbooks, reference material, and testing instruments, and should be done by faculty for many of the same reasons.

Therefore, be it resolved moved that the decisions on which information technologies and systems to use for a class, based on pedagogical needs and the overall class design, must be made by the faculty teaching the class.

Vote: Approved – Amendment change resolved to moved

Vote: Approved

 

Resolution

October 21, 2015

Dear President Hunter and Provost Hecker,

The Unified Online Report contains recommendations for structural changes system-wide which could have momentous effect on the curricula, courses, online environment, and means of delivery.  For the faculty of the University of Maine, who offer the largest percentage of online courses and curricula, to review the document carefully, assess its possible impacts on our numerous programs, and work in unity with the administration to offer meaningful input to the system-wide initiative, we need a full month for discussions to coordinate what will best serve students here and across the system.  We need your leadership in asking the Chancellor’s Office to agree to a more tenable dead-line, 30 November.

The Senate

Vote: Approved

 

April 6, 2016

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
Proposed UMSystem Academic Quality Indicators
6 April, 2016

Introduction

As the University of Maine System considers its One University initiative, which depends on a concerted coordination among the faculty within each discipline of each mission differentiated campus, we need a set of Academic Quality metrics that will help us assess what each campus has to offer potential multi-campus programmes as well as shared curricular and equivalent courses in general.

Motion

The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine endorses the general concept of the University of Maine System’s development, collection, tracking, and analysis of Academic Quality Indicators, for particularly with the many proposals for changes within the UMSystem, we need metrics to monitor their effects on academic quality.

We call upon our President and Provost to request supportively the Chancellor’s Office adopt the metrics below so that the UMSystem can assess the effects of any changes on the academic qualities of the seven campuses. Having reviewed a November, 2015, draft document of indicators proposed by Chief Academic Officers of the campuses, we ask that indicators stay sharply focused on Academic Qualities alone. While the CAO’s proposal notes many laudable measures, it includes far broader scopes, viz., finances, living environments, student perceptions of academic challenge, employment placement, etc., all of which lie outside of measurable Academic Quality. For instance, measuring job placements and median salaries has no relationship to many disciplines, and looks in a limited way to graduates’ first jobs, but not the positions they’ll hold over the arc of their careers. Likewise, student retention, while an important metric, depends on a broad variety of factors well beyond the scopes of Academic Quality. Should the CAOs want to track other data beyond Academic Quality metrics, we encourage them to do so, but not to confound them with these clear measures. The Faculty Senate recommends that we stay focused on clear academic measures, tracking numbers, in the areas noted below. Most of these data are readily available through IPEDS, each institution’s annual reports, and various accrediting organizations.

1. A) Tenured Faculty, tenure-track Faculty working to tenure, full-time non-tenure stream Faculty, and Adjuncts per degree granting college
2. B) Number of Faculty with terminal degrees in the subject they teach by degree granting college
3. C) Faculty numbers at each rank by degree granting college
4. D) Percentage of Student Credit Hours taught by tenure-track Faculty, by full-time Instructors, by Adjuncts, and by Graduate Students
5. E) Ratio of Students to Faculty
6. F) Juried publications, exhibitions, presentations, and other peer evidence of scholarly activity by degree granting college
7. G) Competitive research grants, recorded in dollar figures and actual numbers of grants
8. H) Number of significant awards and honours by degree granting college, as measured by external evaluators, including accreditors and honour societies
9. I) Student research successes and professional advancement
10. J) Student performance measured according to discipline by suitable accrediting agencies, GREs, LEAP metrics, and other appropriate metrics, etc.
11. K) Peer and student evaluations of Faculty
12. L) Discipline-specific accreditation
13. M) Academic Resource Support, in Libraries, Research Facilities, and Classrooms, measured according to the standards of NEASC and each discipline’s accrediting agency

The Faculty Senate asks that these metrics be recorded each year and made public, so that as the UMSystem makes significant changes, we can track their effects on Academic Quality at all seven campuses.

Vote: Approved

 

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
Undergraduate Degree Residency Requirements
6 April, 2014

Introduction

At the 13 November, 2013 Faculty Senate meeting, the Senate revised the University of Maine Degree Residency Requirements. The requirements posted by the Office of Student Records at http://catalog.umaine.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=67&poid=8907 currently state that for graduation with an undergraduate University of Maine degree, students must:

earn a minimum of 30 credits originating from the University of Maine campus at the 300 level or higher over any year of study.*  There are two exceptions to this policy:

Students who have already completed three or more years at the University of Maine (minimum of 90 credits of University of Maine courses) when, in the opinion of the student’s academic program faculty in consultation with the student’s dean, there is sufficient and valid reason to complete the senior year elsewhere

Students who have completed a minimum of three years of work at the University of Maine and who have been admitted to an accredited professional school of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, or divinity.  With the approval of the academic program faculty in consultation with the student’s dean, these students may qualify for the appropriate bachelor’s degree at the University of Maine upon receipt of the professional degree.

*An academic department may require that some minimum number of courses be completed within that department to earn a University of Maine degree in that discipline.  These departmental residency requirements are noted in the description of each academic program elsewhere in this catalog.

Since these requirements were implemented, the Division of Life Long Learning has asked for an exception for the Bachelor of University Studies degree because several of their students have transferred in prior learning experience at the three- or four-hundred level. According to their administrators, these students would find the need to take typically around fifteen extra credits to meet our current requirements discouraging, leading them to not complete their UMaine degree.

Motion

The Faculty Senate adds a third exception to the current University of Maine Degree Residency Requirements.

With the unanimous approval of their tenure-stream Faculty members, approval by their Department Chair, their College’s Academic Council, and the Undergraduate Program Curriculum Committee, degree granting programs may design and implement exceptions to the minimum of thirty credits originating from the University of Maine campus at the three-hundred level or higher over any year of study. These exceptions must be established as stated departmental policy, published in the University of Maine catalog.

Vote: Approved

 

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
University of Maine System Multi-Campus Degree Programs
6 April, 2016

Introduction

The University of Maine System has encouraged Multi-Campus Degree Programs in which participating campuses would issue their individual degrees using shared curricular requirements. For example, at their May 2015 meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the creation of a Bachelor of Science degree in Cybersecurity at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, the University of Maine at Augusta, and the University of Southern Maine. Given the vision of the UMSystem One University initiative, we should expect more of these collaborative programs to evolve.

Motion

The Faculty Senate at the University of Maine welcomes the expanded possibilities that Multi-Campus Degree Programs offer students across the UMSystem. To ensure academic quality, the Senate requires that the University of Maine have tenure-stream Faculty or full-time, on-going appointment Instructors and Lecturers in the specific discipline in which this campus participates in these shared degrees. Should the University of Maine cease to have any of these Faculty members in the core discipline of the multi-campus degree, it needs to develop a plan to invest in the on-going faculty positions needed to support these programs, or develop a schedule for withdrawing from the arrangement. Without tenure-stream Faculty or full-time, on-going appointment Instructors in each participating discipline, we cannot in any meaningful manner develop, implement, and assess the curriculum and degree which would bear the University of Maine’s name.

Vote: Approved with amendment (in bold)

 

Unified On-Line Response Motion
Faculty Senate Academic Affairs
6 April, 2016

Introduction

On 17 November, 2015, The UMSystem Board of Trustees gave “conceptual approval of the institutional collaborative model” of the October iteration of the Unified On-Line Report. They also directed “the Chief Academic Officers to seek further input from the faculties of the seven universities and provide recommendations to the Presidents’ Council on the implementation of academic oversight and a process for honouring campus-based shared governance of online programs.” (http://staticweb.maine.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/November-2015-Board-Actions.pdf?846a82 , accessed 10 March, 2016) The Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Committee had previously responded to the United On-Line Report identifying a series of problematic issues at the 4 November, 2015 meeting. Several other UMS campus Senates have responded, as have the Chief Academic Officers across the UMSystem. The Chancellor’s Office will accept comments through our Administrators through mid-April.

Motion

The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine asks our President, Dr Susan Hunter, and Provost, Dr Jeffrey Hecker, to represent supportively the Faculty Senate’s concerns about the Unified On-Line Report to the Chancellor’s Office, and underscore to them the need for willing Faculty participation for any academic offerings. We ask that our President and Provost then communicate back to the Faculty Senate the responses they receive in their dialogues with the Chancellor’s Office, and how these concerns will be acceptably addressed.

The Unified On-Line Report raises many concerns, primarily in its recommendations that would usurp Faculty control of curricula and any sense of Shared Governance at the individual campuses and across the UMSystem. It also creates costly, redundant administrative structures at a time when the UMSystem can least afford them, and has no means of assessment in terms of its cost effectiveness, maintenance of academic quality, and improving success in serving our students. Specifically, the Faculty Senate notes:

• The Center of Excellence in Digitally Enhanced Teaching and Learning would create a new entity that by-passes the established shared governance of each campus in its control of its curriculum. Particularly, empowering a proposed Associate VCAA for Distance Learning to “oversee and manage the collective online assets of the seven universities” would undermine the Faculty control of their curricula, diluting programs to serve an unfocused, general constituency at the expense of those whom the different universities specifically serve according to their campus’ unique mission. Seeking to “Collaborate with the campus Chief Academic Officers, the System Chief Information Officer, and the System Chief Financial Officer to make needed changes to System policy, technology, and budget in order to support the success of online programs” makes no effort to balance on-line learning with traditional classroom learning, including hybridized courses, and research.
• We do not need a new fleet of administrators, especially a new cadre who would operate outside of current lines of reporting. Creating multiple reporting lines for the Executive Director of Lifelong Learning at UMaine, the Executive Director of University College at UMA, and the Director of Online Teaching and Learning at USM, and their units would only cause entanglement, confusion, and tensioned dynamics, which would undermine the necessary willingness for Faculty to participate in on-line learning. Empowering a new Associate VCAA for Distance Learning who would only seek “the advice and counsel of the Chief Academic Officers and the Distance Learning Advisory Council” undermines each campus’ shared governance in academic affairs. Even if the proposed Distance Learning Advisory Council were to include Faculty in its “cross-functional representation of stakeholders”, it would divide campus Faculty into two camps, those invested in on-line learning and those dedicated to hybridized and traditional in-class learning, which would undermine departmental and campus curricula control, and weaken our abilities to serve our seven unique missions.
• Any attempt to “streamline the governance process for development of new online programs ensuring an appropriate balance of governance for online with traditional campus-based governance” usurps the shared governance between Faculty and their Administrators on each campus, in UMaine’s case, our College Academic Councils and the UPCC.
• The report empowers a new VCAA for Distance Learning to “Eliminate unnecessary duplicate online programs” with no mention of the role of Faculty and Shared Governance in how duplications would be identified, and how decisions would be made on eliminations. Any such winnowing would prevent campuses from serving their unique missions with their specific student constituencies. It would also create a climate of competition, most likely on the basis of cost-competitiveness, which would prevent the healthy collaborations among Faculty members from different campuses that the UMSystem has otherwise sought to support.
• Discipline specific accreditation does not extend to multi-campus offerings as described by the United On-line document. This proposal will endanger the standing of many strong, well-focused, accredited programs at the University of Maine.
• The document continually emphasizes the need for a common platform, with only once considering that different disciplines necessitate different pedagogies, which should drive platform choices. Rather than following the expediencies of the UMSystem’s IT Center, on-line learning needs focus on the best platforms appropriate to each discipline. Arguments that diverse platforms frustrate students seem particularly suspect in an era when students routinely engage in very diverse social connectivity platforms without any problems.
• In its focus on on-line teaching alone, the proposed structure fails to consider how new digital tools have created new research possibilities. This compartmentalization dangerously separates teaching from research, undermining particularly our successes of increasingly engaging undergraduates in academic research.
• While creating cross-campus teams for Faculty development, instructional design, library services, and all might sound efficient at first blush, it fails to take realities into account, of the very different needs of campuses highly differentiated by their unique missions, academic cultures, and student constituencies.
• The proposal mentions assessment only in terms of courses and general practices, with no consideration of how the UMSystem would evaluate the success of the Unified On-Line structure itself. We have distinct concerns that the proposal would dismantle proven models, with no means of assessment of its having provided improved on-line learning and any cost savings.

We ask for your timely response in addressing these critical issues.

Vote: Approved

 

May 4, 2016

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
Multi-Campus Degree Program Curricula

Introduction
The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine supports the University of Maine System’s efforts to increase access to high-quality, affordable university education for all in Maine. In a thinly populated state with seven UMSystem campuses, we believe that we can strengthen our academic offerings and research capacities state-wide through programmatic collaboration developed through the stabilizing processes of shared governance. Working to these goals, the Chief Academic Officers of the seven campuses have begun to develop Multi-Campus Degree Programs, in which the campuses share courses and faculty in a shared curriculum, with students in the program receiving their degree from their participating home campus. Accompanying this motion, please find the Proposed Model for Faculty Governance from the UMSystem CAOs which has been given to the Senate by the Provost’s Office.

We look forwards to working with our faculty, professional, administrative colleagues here and at other campuses to build sustainable academic programs that improve the educational and research opportunities for all while strengthening our academic quality in as effective, efficient, and responsible a manner possible.

Motion
The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine can support developing Multi-Campus Degree Programs only if all multi-campus agreements use courses and curricula approved through established protocols that have been approved through each individual campus’ shared governance processes. Developing new multi-campus programs and partnerships need engage the Chief Academic Officers and representative Faculty Senates to establish a sponsoring campus, with the approvals from each of the academic departments involved in the proposed partnership.

Any multi-campus degrees needing new programs developed at the campus level here need follow the established fourteen step approval processes honouring our shared governance agreements. For us to work collaboratively with the other campuses, we need them to follow their equivalent established processes for any Multi-Campus Degrees originating from their campus.

The structure of Multi-Campus Degree Programs needs approval through each participating campus’ established processes of shared-governance.

All new Faculty hires that stem from the needs of a Multi-Campus Degree Program need be weighed in terms of the programmatic priorities at the Department level of the participating campus identified as the appropriate home for the possible hire.

Where each participating campus issues its own degree to students in Multi-Campus Degree Programs, students at UMaine need meet established degree residency requirements.

Motion on Multi-Campus Degree Programme Curricula 2016.04.2

Vote: Approved

 

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
Committee Memberships and Lines of Reporting

Introduction
As the University of Maine System has pursued centralization, its direct representatives have increasingly been included as active members on Committees of the Administration of the University of Maine. This mix of membership has the potential to confuse committee foci and reporting, for it conflates the UMSystem and the University of Maine as being one and the same.

Motion
The University of Maine Faculty Senate asks that Committees of the Administration include only members from the University of Maine community as voting participants. Committees may, of course, include non-University of Maine community members at the discretion of the Administrator who has formed the committee, but these members would be non-voting. Similarly, the committee may invite in specialists from across the community and the UMSystem as non-voting discussants. Where the UMSystem has changed the reporting lines of several University of Maine Administrators to answer directly to the UMSystem, this motion asks that we define the University of Maine community as including administrators and professionals whose purview remains focused on University of Maine responsibilities.

Vote: Approved

 

University of Maine Faculty Senate Resolution on the UMSystem’s
Chief Academic Officers’ Council Recommendations on Unified On-Line

Introduction
In response to a request from the University of Maine System’s Board of Trustees, the Chief Academic Officers’ of the seven UMSystem campuses have written a draft recommendation to the Presidents’ Council responding to the Unified On-Line proposal from October, 2015, approved as a concept by the BoT in November, 2016. The CAOs’ recommendations, accompanying this resolution, reiterate strongly the need for any UMSystem proposal to include significant Faculty participation in the spirit of shared governance.

Resolution
The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine supports the collaborative intent of the Chief Academic Officers of the UMSystem proposed recommendations to the Presidents’ Council and will continue to work very willingly with our Administration to participate in an effective, responsible, accessible, supported, and efficient on-line coordination of our courses and programs with other UMSystem campuses, as appropriate to the responsible teaching, research, and community outreach in our fields. We agree fully with the Chief Academic Officers that: “As the Unified Online, Portfolio Review, and Program Integration initiatives advance, new challenges with respect to academic oversight and shared governance will undoubtedly arise. It will be the responsibility of the Chief Academic Officers to assure that these issues are appropriately processed with their campus faculty governance bodies.”

Resolution on UMSystem CAOs’ Recommendations United On-Line

Vote: Approved

 

University of Maine Faculty Senate Motion on
UMSystem – MCCS General Education Block Transfer Approval

Introduction/Background
In 2014, the seven University of Maine System (UMS) campuses approved a General Education block transfer agreement, written by an ad hoc committee with representation from each campus. The agreement became operative in the Fall of 2015. Since then, the UMSystem ad hoc committee has worked with representatives from the Maine Community College System (MCCS) to create a similar General Education block transfer agreement between MCCS and UMS, based on a general framework articulated by the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes https://www.aacu.org/leap and their VALUE rubrics, https://www.aacu.org/value, and based on the UMSystem Block Transfer Agreement agreed upon by the seven universities.

As stated in the accompanying document “UMS-MCCS General Education Transfer Block”, as revised on 18 January, 2016, by the UMSystem ad hoc committee, “Students who have completed the UMS-MCCS General Education Transfer Block at any UMS or MCCS institution currently accredited by NEASC will be regarded as having completed the General Education requirements at every other UMS or MCCS institution, except for up to eleven credits of additional General Education coursework to be specified by the receiving institution.” The document acknowledges that each campus’ Faculty Senate or their designee shall determine which additional credits students would need for transferring the General Education Transfer Block successfully. The document also points out that: “Thus, the MCCS has adopted the same block of general education requirements that formed the basis of the UMS block transfer agreement approved by all UMS campuses in 2014.”

For the UMS-MCCS General Education Transfer Block agreement to take effect, the accompanying document needs to be approved by each UMS campus’ Faculty Senate.

Motion
The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine recommends approval in principle the UMS-MCCS General Education Transfer Block Agreement document dated January 18, 2016 (the “Agreement”), given the following assumptions: 1) As the Community Colleges assemble their lists of classes that meet each of the eight General Education content areas (identified in the Agreement as: “Creative/Arts; Natural Science; Writing; Quantitative Literacy; Diversity/Cultural Knowledge; Humanities; Social Sciences; and, Ethical Reasoning”), those lists will be distributed to the Chief Academic Officers of each UMS campus and in turn be forwarded to each Faculty Senate to review and approve prior to implementation of the Agreement; 2) The General Education ad hoc UMS committee (authors of the Agreement) and representatives from the MCCS will clarify details in that draft document, including, but not limited to, the timeline for implementation and review; 3) UMS and MCCS faculty will be directly involved in the assessment process and the third-year review of the Agreement; and 4) we reiterate the statement in the January 18, 2016, draft Agreement, that “By the end of the third year, each faculty senate or other governing body will vote regarding whether to continue, revise, or terminate the block transfer agreement. If any faculty senate does not vote on this issue, that senate will be regarded as having voted for termination of the agreement at their campus.”

REVISED-MCCS-UMSystem General Education Block Approval Moti 2

Vote: Approved (1 against)

 

Final Resolution of the 2015-2016 University of Maine Faculty Senate

Whereas it is customary and fitting that on this day of the last meeting of the University of Maine Faculty Senate this academic year, that we the Members of the Faculty Senate acknowledge the exceptional services of certain individuals.

And, Whereas today one of our distinguished members of this Faculty Senate will, upon adjournment of this meeting, be concluding his membership on the Senate, and indeed, will shortly be concluding his career as a regular member of the Faculty of the University of Maine (he’s retiring!) we take this moment to acknowledge and express in a formal manner, our gratitude to this individual for his wisdom, his leadership, his friendship, and his selfless service to this body by way of three terms as a Faculty Senator in recent years (there may have been more ─ we don’t have records that go that far back).

Therefore be it Resolved and recorded in the minutes of this meeting, that this proclamation be preserved, that we, the Faculty Senate of the University of Maine formally extend our sincerest thanks and admiration for this Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who has been a member of our faculty since 1981, Professor Thomas C. Sandford.