Academic Senate Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio  44555

April 3, 2002

Note 1: Please submit agenda items and cover sheets for the May 1, 2002, Senate meeting to Bege Bowers, A&S Dean's Office, by noon on Friday, April 19.  Provide both a hard copy and a disk or electronic copy of your report and cover sheet in Word or rich text format. A downloadable cover sheet is available at the Academic Senate web site:

Note 2: If you want to read or print the pdf version of these minutes and don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may download the program at the following link: <http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html>.

Note 3: Many thanks to Joan Bevan, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, for taking minutes and providing a transcript of the April 3 Senate meeting.

To save paper, use the Acrobat Reader menus or toolbar to print the file, not the menus or toolbar in your web browser. 

Major topics presented/discussed: Report of the Senate chair; Ad Hoc Ethics Committee report and Ethics Policy motion.

Jim Morrison, chair of the Academic Senate, called the meeting to order at 4:11 p.m.

Minutes of the Previous Meeting:

Minutes of the 6 February 2002 and 6 March 2002 meetings were approved as posted.  (Minutes of the 6 February 2002 meeting were not approved at the 6 March 2002 meeting due to the absence of a quorum.)

To view the February minutes, click here; to view the March minutes, click here; click your “Back” button as necessary to return to the April minutes.

Senate Executive Committee (SEC) / Report from the Chair: Jim Morrison reported:

• The Senate Executive Committee will meet soon. The next item of business will be to begin the process of filling faculty appointments to standing committees and to review the status of ad hoc committees and whether they will be continued on to the next year.  The committee is also being asked to sponsor and coordinate another series of presidential campus conversations; information about that will be distributed shortly.

Ohio Faculty Council (OFC): The OFC has not met, so there was no report.

Charter and Bylaws Committee; Elections and Balloting Committee; Academic Standards Committee; Academic Programs Committee: No reports.

 University Curriculum Committee:  No additional report. The committee appended a list of approved courses to the agenda for the April 3 meeting; no action is required.

Academic Planning Committee; General Education Committee (GEC); Integrated Technologies Committee; University Outreach Committee; Library Committee; Academic Research Committee; Student Academic Affairs Committee; Student Academic Grievance Committee; Honors Committee; and Academic Events Committee:  No reports.

Ad Hoc Ethics Committee: 

J-C. Smith, chair of the committee, reported.  [Full discussion is included in the transcript of the April 3 Senate meeting, prepared by Joan Bevan, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and available at <http://www.ysu.edu/acad-senate/transcript_040302.pdf>.  Because the sound and taping system were not functioning properly at the April 3 meeting, the transcript contains ellipses where comments were not clear or audible.]

Tom Shipka, Philosophy and Religious Studies, moved adoption of the Youngstown State University Ethics Policy as recommended by the Ad Hoc Ethics Committee. [The proposed policy, Attachment 1 to these minutes, appears in a separate pdf file at <http://www.ysu.edu/acad-senate/proposed_final_ethics_policy.pdf>.] 

The motion was seconded, and discussion followed. 

The existing Youngstown State University Ethics Statement, which was passed by the Academic Senate on June 4, 1997, and accepted by the Board of Trustees on March 13, 1998--referred to in the discussion--is posted on the Senate web site at <http://www.ysu.edu/acad-senate/ethics_statement.htm>.

Charles Singler, Geology, moved to amend [the document referred to in] the main motion, inserting “with the concurrence of a majority of the Ethics Committee” into the last sentence on Page 7 (section IV.F.5.a of the policy), so that it would read, “The Chairperson with the concurrence of a majority of the Ethics Committee shall be guided by whether or not a public announcement will be helpful . . . .”

Singler's motion to amend was seconded and carried.

Discussion of the main motion, as amended, continued. 

Bill Jenkins, History, moved to amend [the document referred to in] the main motion by adding to the bottom of section II.C., which includes the definition of “plagiarism,” a statement saying, “This definition of plagiarism shall not apply to the classroom or to other forms of public presentation in which the speaker is not expected to cite sources for the ideas presented.”

Jenkins's motion to amend was seconded, and discussion followed.

During discussion, Morrison noted the loss of a quorum; therefore, at the next meeting, the first item of business will be the amendment to the main motion that was on the floor. Informal discussion continued, with Morrison requesting that the committee consider the question that Palmer-Fernandez raised about the relationship between YSU’s existing Statement of Ethics <http://www.ysu.edu/acad-senate/ethics_statement.htm> and the proposed document.

Unfinished business:  None.

New business:  None. 

Adjournment:  The meeting “adjourned” at 5:40 p.m.