Academic Senate Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio  44555

Note 1 :  Submit agenda items for the April 5 Senate meeting to Bege Bowers, English Department, by noon on Monday, March 27, at the latest.  Please provide a hard copy and a disk copy of your report and cover sheet in Word 6/95 or rich text format.  A downloadable cover sheet is available at the Academic Senate web site:

Note 2:  Since we did not have a quorum at the March 1 Senate meeting, no action could be taken at the meeting. The minutes below record reports and discussion.

Note 3:  Minutes and agendas are no longer distributed in hard copy.  If you would like to receive an e-mail message letting you know each time the agenda and minutes have been posted to the web site, you can subscribe to the Academic Senate Newsgroup.  The server is news.ysu.edu.  The newsgroup is ysu.acad-senate.

Note 4:  Again, for the fourth time this academic year, there was no tape of the Senate meeting. I have summarized the meeting from my notes.  It is imperative that you submit both a hard copy and a disk copy of your reports and statements to ensure accurate records. (BKB)

Topics presented/discussed: Charter and Bylaws Committee’s decision about the number of committees a student can serve on; its statement about authority to recommend policy regarding general education; proposed library budget; Academic Standards Committee’s guidelines on minors; change in list of general education courses attached to the agenda; GER advising issues; GER intensive courses.

Actions:

In the absence of a quorum, no action was taken at the March 1 meeting.

Call to Order:

At 4:11 p.m., Jim Morrison, chair of the Academic Senate, announced that we would proceed with an informational meeting.  We could not proceed with the matter on the floor at the end of the last Senate meeting.

Minutes of the Previous Meeting:

In the absence of a quorum, the chair could not call for approval of the minutes of the 2 February 2000 Senate meeting.  They are available at the Senate web site.  (To view them, click here; then click your “Back” button to return to the March minutes).

Senate Executive Committee / Report from the Chair:  Jim Morrison reported that the Senate Executive Committee met and considered issues about the role of the General Education Committee that were raised at the last Senate meeting.  Meetings will continue with relevant parties to see that we have smooth operating procedures for each committee.  The SEC will soon address the procedure for selecting members for next year’s standing committees.

Ohio Faculty Council Report:  Jim Morrison reported that the OFC has developed a resolution supporting benefits for domestic partners.  Morrison read the resolution, which will be attached to the agenda for the April Senate meeting for possible endorsement or resolution.  Eight of our sister institutions have ratified the resolution.

Charter and Bylaws Committee:  Tom Maraffa reported for committee chair Dale Harrison, who could not attend the Senate meeting.

The committee met February 18 and discussed Brandon Schneider’s request that students be allowed to serve on more than one appointed chartered Senate committee or subcommittee. The committee was sympathetic to the students’ concern but felt they should try to get enough volunteers so that no one would have to serve on more than one committee.

The committee also reviewed the Senate Bylaws and drafted this statement:  “Either the Academic Standards Committee or the General Education Committee may recommend policy regarding general education to the Academic Senate.”

Library Committee:  Since Dora Bailey had to leave the meeting early, Jim Morrison asked her to make her report for the Library Committee at this point in the meeting.  See the Library Committee report below, at its usual spot in the Senate minutes.

Pavia noted that the ASC’s proposals about minors were attached to the agenda for March 1. She asked that we not confuse the proposed guidelines with 2/3 conversion.  They are intended to define standards for minors. The philosophical, guiding principle for the proposals appears in the first paragraph of the ASC’s statement:

A minor is an intellectual venture that broadens and deepens the student’s intellectual growth.  An intellectual framework and coherence are evident in the scope and sequence of the minor course of study.  A minor is intended to contrast with or deepen the major or General Education and is to be taken in a discipline other than that of the major.

Tammy King referred to a memo she (King) had distributed proposing two changes in the Academic Standards Committee’s statement on minors. Item 1 in the memo—a statement about who will be responsible for certifying that a student has completed a minor—is now irrelevant since King had not seen the revised guidelines the ASC had submitted for the March 1 web agenda.  The ASC’s revised guidelines stipulate that the “department in which the student receives the major will be responsible for certifying that a student has completed a minor”; this stipulation is essentially what King had planned to propose.

Item 2 in the memo is intended to make it clear that departments, “in an effort to help students deepen their major, can offer multiple minors.”

Discussion continued:

Bob Hogue:  I would like the ASC to consider at its March 7 meeting whether 18 hours is the best number of hours for a minor.  Wouldn’t 15 hours be better since so much will happen at once with semester conversion and the implementation of the new general education requirements?  Also, I’m still not sure who is required to have a minor, who makes that decision, and what the alternatives are (e.g., interdisciplinary programs aren’t now required to have one).

Pavia:  The issue of defining who must have a minor came up at our last discussion and at a chairs’ meeting.  We wanted to stay away from saying who does and does not require a minor.  Each college can define its rules about who is required to have a minor.  The committee’s version is intended to be more standards-oriented than regulatory.

Pavia praised the committee for its hard work.

Joyce Feist-Willis:  I’m also on the ASC.  We looked at catalogues from other institutions in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  KSU stipulates 18-24 hours for minors; John Carroll, 18-21; Ohio University, 16-22; University of Toledo, 20-24; Bowling Green, no fewer than 20; Dayton, 12 upper-division hours plus any prerequisites; Case Western, no fewer than 15 and no more than 18.  Eighteen hours are on the low end of what other institutions require.
 

Academic Programs Committee:  Committee chair Kathylynn Feld reported that several programs and course revisions are circulating and available in the deans’ offices; you have until March 10 to file objections.  A couple of programs are still outstanding.

University Curriculum Committee:  No report.

Academic Planning Committee:  No report.

General Education Committee: Bill Jenkins, committee chair, reported.

Courses Attached to the Agenda for March 1:

Jenkins noted that some of those courses were in circulation at the time they were attached to the agenda.  As of March 1, all of the courses except 990075 had cleared and are thus approved.  990075 was going through the Curriculum Committee’s approval process at the same time it was going through the GEC’s process; new procedures will be set up for next year.  The course cleared the GEC’s circulation, but an objection was filed during the curriculum-approval process.  The course will be considered certified if it clears the University Curriculum Committee.

Advisement of Students:

Jenkins reported that early next week the GEC will distribute a packet to department chairs and hopefully to faculty and advisors to use in advising students about GER.  Here are some general guidelines for fall 2000:

• Students entering in the fall as new freshmen:  follow the new GER.

• Students presently at YSU, transfer students, and students who have been out for four quarters:  may follow the old GER (the recommended option for these students) or the new GER (not recommended).  Following the new GER is not recommended for these students because (1) some of the students’ previous courses probably won’t count for the new GER, and (2) these students will have to take some additional courses.

Intensive Courses:

J.-C. Smith:  Has the GEC considered any sort of moratorium on intensive courses?

Jenkins:  The committee doesn’t see any reason to delay implementation of intensive courses.  The advisor can decide the conditions under which a student choosing to follow the new GER would not have to fulfill requirements for intensive courses. Get proposals for intensive courses in as soon as possible.  Departments offering majors should provide opportunities for students to take writing-intensive courses in the major.  If a major doesn’t have a writing-intensive course available in a given semester, or if some students have scheduling problems, the students can take a writing-intensive course in another area.

Smith:  Can a multi-section course be approved as intensive—and can some sections of the course be offered without being designated intensive?

Jenkins:  This issue is being discussed.  For next year, we feel that all sections of a given intensive course must be intensive, though the decision isn’t final yet.  We’re considering section-by-section designation for later years.

Jenkins’s number is 742-2983.  Call if you have questions.

Bassam Deeb, Enrollment Services:  I encourage you to have faculty and advisors document what they tell students so that later, if a student says, “Somebody told me this,” there will be a record of what the faculty member or advisor said.

Integrated Technologies and University Outreach Committees:  No reports.

Library Committee:  Dora Bailey, committee chair, reported that Tom Atwood attended a March 1 meeting at which it was announced that the library budget would be cut 9% for next year.  The committee is uncomfortable passing a budget that reflects that cut.  It will ask us to consider a budget based on what the library should have (see the proposed budget in the agenda for the March 1 Senate meeting).

Academic Research, Student Academic Affairs, Student Academic Grievance, Honors, and Academic Events Committees:  No reports.

Unfinished business:  None.

New business:  None.

Adjournment:  The informational meeting ended at 4:45 p.m.