Faculty
Senate Minutes
2/14/01
Present: P. Hajela, M. Hanna, K. Anderson, B. Peterson, L.
Kammerer, S. Anderson-Gold, J. Erickson,
R. Leifer, L. Caporael, P. Boyce, G. Korenowski, B. Parson,
Absent: S. Derby, M.
Embrechts, C. Breneman, R. Gutmann, K. Craig, K. Fortun, A. Dyson, P. Quinn,
J. Mitchell, G. Belfort,
Guests: M. Staniszewski,
G. Gabriele
Original Minutes of 2/14/01
Agenda
Approval of the Minutes from the January 17,
2001 Meeting
Curriculum Committee Report – MaryAnn
Staniszewski
Senate Representation for Clinical Faculty
on Troy Campus – Linnda Caporael
Adjournment
Approval
of the Minutes from the January 17, 2001 Meeting
President Prabhat Hajela called the meeting to order and asked for
the approval of the Minutes from the January 17, 2001 Meeting. The Minutes were unanimously approved. He announced that that next scheduled Faculty
Senate Meeting for February
28, 2001 will be a joint meeting with the Student Senate and will
be in Sage 5711 from 3-5pm. The meeting schedule for March 14, 2001is
canceled due to spring break. A meeting
has been scheduled for March 7, 2001in CII 5003 from 3-5pm since going four weeks without a meeting
was too long.
Curriculum
Committee Report – MaryAnn Staniszewski
(see
attached)
Prabhat asked if the writing requirement extends to graduate
students or if it is primarily for the undergraduate students. MaryAnn believes it is just for the
undergraduates but the graduate issue as a requirement should be
addressed. She added that many students
have scores that are acceptable, yet they can barely write a sentence. Prabhat suggested that a formal writing
program be in place so that if an advisor feels his/her student needs such a
writing course, one is available. Gary
Gabriele, Dean of Undergraduate Education, stated that this
type of course currently exists for the undergraduate students and that
graduate students could certainly take them.
However, he is not sure if he would want to count those kinds of courses
towards a degree requirement. There is a
pretty extensive array of different writing courses/communication courses that
LLC offer.
Chair, Mike Hanna, asked if there would be a 6000 equivalent
to technical and professional communication and whether there are or could
there be one that is geared towards technical writing by a graduate student. Gary Gabriele
was not sure if there is one currently.
MaryAnn added that that would be a department question, unless LLC would
be providing such a course. Mike Hanna
asked if LLC would provide such a course.
He agrees with Prabhat that if a graduate student is doing a technical
paper, the academic advisor should be able to help to some extent, but sometimes
it is more than just helping, it is actually rewriting the paper.
Gary stated that
the discussion started with the question of whether there is a writing
requirement at the graduate level. The
answer was No. However the question of
whether there should be an opportunity for a graduate student to take a writing
course, the answer was yes. A writing
course already exists. Graduate students
can take this writing course and probably should if the academic advisor feels
they need it.
Prabhat asked why there is no writing requirement for
graduate students. Gary
responded that it is an issue that the curriculum committee should review. The question is if a requirement were added
for graduate students, where would it fall in terms of their graduate
degree. Secretary of the Faculty, Bob
Parsons, said if a graduate student takes an undergraduate course, where does
the credit fall in terms of their degree, it ends up being a credit they can not
put towards their degree. Gary
said that leads to the issue of whether these kinds of credits should be
counted towards degree completion. That
becomes perhaps a department issue or a graduate school issue. One could argue those are the kinds of skills a
student should come to graduate school with, so why should those credits be
used towards a degree. The graduate
degree requirements are becoming a much broader issue, which have been being considered
in the Curriculum Committee. Actually
this would be best served when a graduate Dean is in place to help organize
this issue, and then bring it to the Curriculum Committee for review.
MaryAnn asked if there is any idea how long it is going to
take before there is a graduate Dean.
Provost Peterson stated that as soon as the decision to hire a graduate
Dean is finalized, a search will be initiated with hopes to have someone in
place by Summer, and certainly by Fall.
Linnda stated that the writing and communication problem has
come up year after year and her question is whether it is possible to resolve
any of the issues without money and whether there is any new money. Lastly, she asked what the Faculty
Senate can do or what the Provost’s office does
to actually make a difference in the communication problem. Gary
said he is first trying to see if he can better understand what the problem
is. He does not know where things stand
at this point because he does not know what the communication problem is. He wonders if it is any worse here than any
place else or whether it is a real issue on this campus. He had a discussion with J. Watt and he has
promised him that his department would do a proposal on how to investigate the issue
and then bring it forward to the faculty for feedback. He thinks the first issue is to do an
assessment on the most critical problems.
He funded an initial program by LLC to create what is being called the Virtual
Writing Center. This will try to create a program that will
provide students help via the computer.
LLC has actually done some prototyping on that and it is being tested
this semester. There are many
alternatives to solve this problem but before it is moved forward, he would
like to know more about where the most problems lie.
Gerald Korenowski, Senator, asked
if anyone has reviewed what has been done in the past and compared to what is
being done now. He suggests that the
same procedure not be repeated twice. Gary
responded, no, and that they are aware of writing courses from the past, but
they were not the solution. What is
being done now is talking to experts in the communication field and finding out
what the communications issues are. The
feedback being received is that just a writing course is not enough. They do not solve all the issues surrounding
the required core communications problems.
MaryAnn said they are in the process of electing a
committee, hopefully by the summer, to review the core. In doing this past review of the core will be
looked at as well as the issues discussed today. She suggested that any Faculty
Senate Member of other faculty or staff have comments, they
should be emailed to her at stanim@rpi.edu
as they welcome the feedback. Basically
all the issues voiced today will be addressed as part of the core curriculum
review. There are a lot of issues that
demand a review; these include schools requirements, 4 X 4, and laptops.
Prabhat asked what the specific plans are for reviewing the
core and if they have established the guidelines. MaryAnn said the subject of reviewing the
core has just been approached at the last meeting, so there are no specific
plans or guidelines as of yet for conducting the review process. Gary
added that the Curriculum Committee has discussed how to format this process,
and over the next part of the current semester a charge will be developed to
review past documents and existing programs.
A decision will then be made on what the committee will undertake. Once this has been accomplished, the question
“What should no student leave RPI without?” should be able to be fundamentally
answered.
Gerald Korenowski asked what kind
of review is being planned on the impact of 4X4. He stated that since the 4x4 was put into
place it has been his experience that everybody has become more territorial
about the number of credits for their curriculum because of restrictions placed
on schools due to 4x4. Gary
responded that the Committee has not yet discussed how to look at what impact
the 4x4 has had and how to measure it.
Senate
Representation for Clinical Faculty on Troy
Campus – Linnda Caporael
Linnda Caporael distributed
a review of the amendments brought forth at last meeting (see
attached)
Senator Sharon
Anderson-Gold said that we keep assuming that if Clinical faculty participates
they fully participate, except for the P & T Committee. She believes the reasoning is that Clinical
faculty does not go through a tenure process so it is assumed that they do not understand
the standards of tenure. Given that Rensselaer might have a full professor who is a Clinical
faculty member then it is not clear to her that they do not belong on the P
& T Committee. If they are going to
fully participate, why not let them participate on the P & T Committee?
Richard Leifer asked if a librarian can
participate in P & T, as they are part of the faculty. Sharon asked if
librarians are full professors. The Senate is looking at rank because the P
& T Committee composition is
based on faculty rank. Richard responded that Rensselaer has classes of faculty now (librarian,
researchers,
archivist), who don't participate in P &
T. There are instances where parts of the faculty are excluded from
some aspect of functions throughout the
university.
Sharon said this has been done presumable because
they do not understand the standard of evaluation that is needed. People seem to feel that Clinical faculty
should not be involved in the P & T. Maybe there is a core reasoning for that, but it is not obvious by the way the Senate is going
at this. If they are to be called faculty,
then they should fully participate and do all the things we do. She asked why they should be excluded from P
& T.
Senator Peter Boyce asked what the different
interests of clinical faculty and tenure line faculty are. Sharon
Thinks it is the commitment to the
University. It is a career commitment, a
life long commitment. Gerald
Said he is still not clear on where the term
clinical faculty came from. In the past,
they were called
lecturers.
Prabhat said there are a few minor differences in definition of lecturer
and clinical faculty. Peer
review is mandatory for clinical faculty by the regular
tenure track faculty within the department, but for a
lecturer it is recommended but not mandatory. For a lecturer, the length of appointment is
a term to an
academic year, but the term is not spelled out for clinical
faculty.
Richard said that when
the experience base was connected with commitment for Hartford faculty, and traditional titles were put on
those people, it did not work. He thinks
this is where the term clinical faculty came from. It is in fact a long-term commitment, a
commitment to the Institution, a commitment to all the goals except that their
background does not usually make them interested in doing traditional academic
research.
Sharon said the argument is not against hiring
clinical faculty, instead trying to straighten out why they
should be included in the Faculty Senate.
Richard responded they should be included because they are part
of the Faculty.
Mike thought there
would be less of a problem with this issue if there was only one category of
clinical faculty, and that would be clinical professor. That would give a person with the skills from
the outside, which is recognized as an expert in their field, with the title
clinical professor. This as opposed to
someone in his/her first job being called clinical professor, as they would not
have the experience that should go with the title clinical.
Linnda asked if the
discussion should be held off until the description of clinical faculty is
resolved. Prabhat does not know how long
it will take to come up with a definition.
He thinks some sort of representation should be given in the interim to
clinical faculty on campus.
Peter Boyce,
Senator, said that if there is approximately 20% of the faculty working full
time on campus that are not represented he thinks something needs to be done
about that. He agrees there is a
difference in a faculty with a long-term commitment and a faculty with a
short-term contract. He feels that
amendment 2b is more appropriate representation then 2a. He thinks it needs to be dealt with now. By waiting until the committee’s work is
done, it could be another two years that some faculty would go without
representation.
Prabhat said that
when the new definitions are in place the Senate will have to revisit the same
arguments again as several titles could possibly be rolled into one title,
creating a new title that is not listed as faculty in the Handbook. It will then need to be decided whether they are
part of the small "f" or the big "F" faculty. Linnda agreed that these issues will have to
be revisited but she feels when this happens, there will be more confidence in
what the terms really mean.
J. Erickson believes
that faculty are going to think that (2b) means if a
clinical professor can now be on the Faculty Senate then that means they can be on the P & T
committee. This is not correct and it leaves it up to the Senate to explain,
especially the distinction between little "f" and big
"F". Mike Hanna said that P&T membership will
probably always have to be explained.
Membership is strictly for full professor tenure track components of the
faculty and someone who is not a full professor cannot be on the P & T
committee.
Sharon Anderson-Gold
made a motion that the Faculty Senate endorses Amendment #2b and that it should be taken to the general
faculty. Motion Passed: 5 in favor, 4
opposed, 1 abstaining
Richard Leifer made
a motion for Amendment #2a that the Faculty Senate endorses this amendment and takes it to the
general faculty. Motion Failed: 3 in
favor, 7 opposed
Sharon would argue that per the vote, the Faculty Senate has decided to take (2b) forward and has to get
the ten signatures. Richard Leifer
disagrees. He feels both amendments
should go before the general faculty and let them decide on which amendment to
adopt. If the Faculty Senate picks one amendment by implication, it is
saying the Faculty
Senate supports
this amendment. If both amendments are brought forward, the Faculty Senate is saying that there is a majority but there
is also discussion on another option.
All Minutes are available for their review. He suggested that they read the amendments and
make their decision. Provost Peterson
told Richard that all he needs to do is get ten signatures and he could bring
2a forward as well which would then allow the faculty to review both and make
the decision.
Linnda Caporael
stated the Faculty
Senate will
take 2b to the faculty. Richard Leifer
will get ten votes and bring 2a to the general faculty as well. Richard should prepare a position statement
for 2a and Sharon Anderson-Gold should prepare a position statement for
2b.
J. Erickson asked if
the general faculty will have a chance to review and discuss the amendment
before voting on it. Prabhat responded
that they would and that an explanation and implications of both amendments
will be distributed to all faculty for their review
before the meeting. Provost Peterson
added that all changes to the Constitution must be distributed at least 30 days
in writing before the meeting. Mike
Hanna added that it might be a good idea to post the details of both amendments
and arguments (pros & cons) on the Senate web page.
Prabhat concluded
that the Senate, by vote, has a preference for 2b and a minority request to
bring the second amendment 2a to the general faculty.
Linnda added two
other amendments. She wants to allow the
voting to be done by electronic mail.
The motion passed, 10 in favor, 1 abstention. She also made a motion for the purchasing of
new policy and procedure book for the Senate.
President Hajela said the Senate will purchase a few copies of the book
for reviewing before voting on the amendment.
Adjournment
Meeting was
adjourned at 5:00 pm.