Minutes: February 22nd, 2005

ACADEMIC SENATE MEETING

MINUTES

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2005

2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

Meeting
Attendance:

CALL TO
ORDER: 2:14 p.m.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Chair Colvin
announced that there would be a meeting on campus regarding the lower division
transfer issues with campus representatives from other community colleges
around the Bay Area to talk about transfer patterns within the 30 disciplines
under discussion in the CSU. A report would follow at the March 29 senate
meeting.

Colvin also
announced that online voting for the selection committee for the search for a
new VP of Advancement. An email had been circulated the day before announcing
nominations for this search committee.

Colvin urged
senators to be alert to their college elections for university and college
committees.

The March 8
senate meeting would be a town hall meeting with Leroy Morishita to discuss the
revision to the campus’ physical master plan, with a special guest, new member
of the Board of Trustees Jeffery Bleich, in attendance. No agenda will be
distributed.

Secretary Fielden
noted that the campus would be participating in a system-wide large scale
assessment of a test developed in conjunction with the non-profit testing
service ETS, to be called the ICT initiative. Senators had a handout at their
places that outlined the purpose of the initiative and some details regarding
the test, which would be occurring in a ten-day period beginning March 4.
Senators were encouraged to share this information, which would also be
distributed to colleges and departments. Senators were urged to encourage
undergraduate students to sign up to be test-takers. Incentives for the
students included a 25 dollar gift certificate and a chance to win an iPod in a
lottery (50 to 1 odds.) The test was designed to test Information communication
Technology proficiencies, and could potentially be utilized by the campus in
several ways.

CHAIR’S
REPORT

Vice-chair Williams
reported on the senate chairs’ meeting on February 10 with topics that included
the applied doctoral degrees to be jointly offered by the CSU and UC systems.
Academic technology forums were also on the horizon, with the goal to help CSU
leaders learn about issues in academic technology. Williams noted the senators’
concern whether this was an opportunity to use technology to increase class
sizes.

Intersegmental Coordinating Committee (ICC) an arm of
California Education Round Table, whose mission involves preparing students for
the workplace, had concerns that included students transferring from community
colleges to the CSU. One issue for our campus was that this group had the
attention of the legislature, particularly regarding K-12 education. There did
not seem to be enough concern about graduate education, and there was a need to
keep aware of what this group was doing. He mentioned the Institute for
teaching and learning and summer scholarships, and what kind of support faculty
needed to be better teachers. Lastly there was the student grievance process
issue with the most important element being that senators know what process was
present at the department, college and university levels, and that everyone
needed to know that the grievance process existed and was in a position to
serve its purpose.

AGENDA
ITEM #1—APPROVAL of the AGENDA for FEBRUARY 22, 2005

AGENDA
ITEM #2—APPROVAL of the MINUTES for FEBRUARY 8, 2005

Senator Abella asked that on page 3, Agenda item 6, in the first
reading the minutes list the action phrase “m/s/p” when in fact the item had
not actually passed.

Yee, Gregory m/s/p

Statewide
Senator Gregory expressed thanks to Chelberg as last session’s visiting
minute taker.

AGENDA
ITEM #3—REPORT from SUZANNE DMYTRENKO, UNIVERSITY REGISTRAR & DENISE FOX,
AVP, HUMAN RESOURCES, SAFETY & RISK MANAGEMENT: EMPLOYEE STUDENT
INFORMATION PRIVACY (ESIP) WEB TUTORIAL

Fox announced that there was
now a brief, twenty-minute tutorial mandated by the chancellor’s office that
provided education to faculty and staff regarding student privacy and security.
In past campus employees had had to sign confidentiality requirements, and this
tutorial would negate this need. It was on the verge of being launched, and
would be available March 9. All faculty and staff would be required to view the
tutorial, which Dmytrenko would describe. This was a quiz that could be taken
anytime, anywhere.

Dmytrenko indicated that campus already had a
tutorial up on the web that dealt with privacy issues and contained a test, and
this served as a beginning point for this newer product. It would be a one-time
requirement for all employees. If an individual staff member did not have
access to the web, their office could do one-on-one training. There were a
number of key issues that all employees needed to be understood.  New
information would be included at a later date.

Senator Gregory
posed what she surmised was a dumb question, as to whether the use of the word
“PC” excluded Macintosh computers.

Dmytrenko responded that the
tutorial would work on any platform, any browser.

Statewide
Senator Yee thanked for the report, and asked about monitoring
compliance.

Dmytrenko responded that it would be possible
to see who had completed the training. No real deadline was envisioned yet but
that the motivation was that no one would be able to access student records
without doing the tutorial.

Fox indicated that the tutorial was
educational in nature, rather than something just to pass.

Senator Heiman
asked about those dumb enough to have done the earlier version, whether they
would still need to complete this new version.

Dmytrenko responded in the affirmative.

AGENDA
ITEM #4—REPORT from DAVID ABELLA, CO-CHAIR, STUDENT FEE ADVISORY
COMMITTEE: ATHLETICS FEE REFERENDUM

Senator Abella spoke as Co-chair of the Student Advisory Committee
and as a participant for the past two years. He indicated that the Voter
pamphlet in front of senators had been approved by the committee last week, and
concerned the March 14-16 referendum, and provided some background. Last year
the students had voted on four items in a referendum. Athletics had been on the
ticket and had lost by a very narrow margin, unlike the other items which had
been approved. Since then, reductions had taken place with five sports lost.
Based on this and the narrow margin for victory, the president had charged the
committee to review this action, resulting in two town hall sessions, the first
focused on the athletic community, the second with a more general focus. The
response from the community was that athletics should be supported again. The
committee was charged to do a survey, with strong campus support indicated.
Alumni, faculty, and staff were all committed to the program. Realistically it
seemed unlikely that general fund support could be expected in the near future.
The only real source of support would be a student fee increase. To build
stable program, campus would need this.

Currently
students paid $24 to the athletic fund and the proposal would increase the fee
by $17. He mentioned the difference between Intramural and other sports. The
fee would rise in future years, until year 5 when the fee would be pegged to
the CSU fee percentage increase. He spoke to the need for stable funding.

As to process, the proposal had come to the committee over a month ago;
the committee responded with diligence and had to consider its referendum
policy. It was necessary to waive the 60-day notification period, and the
30-day pamphlet notification period. The whole process normally needed a whole
year, but circumstances suggested a change in policy in this particular case.  His
feeling was that support of the athletic department helped make SFSU a
university. If this passed, the whole athletic department would be funded by
student fees, so he expressed some hesitancy in having student fees assume the
entire burden. Second, looking at fee increase, there were also some issues for
the year 2009-10 when fee would hit a phase adjusted to the university budget.
The university would still not be contributing any general fund support. As a
student, he thought it desirable to keep athletics.

Senator Yee
thanked Abella for his efforts and observed that SFSU had a relatively low
athletic fee compared to other campuses, and she questioned an item on the
inner panel of the pamphlet as to what the budget increase meant.

Senator Abella responded that he did not know exactly how that
particular provision would play out. He deduced that it was based on the
general fund support given to campus, the percentage increase allocated for
that.

Senator Velez
asked about what intercollegiate sports had been discontinued

Senator Abella
responded that M/W swimming, M/W outdoor track, Women’s tennis and Women’s
volleyball had been cut, but that volleyball would come back.

Senator Axler
had concerns about the percentage of athletic moneys going to intramural
sports, which seemed rather small.

Director of
Athletics Michael Simpson responded that the actual budget for
intramurals would double with the passage of the measure.

Colvin asked for the information to this
question return back to senate.

Vice-chair Williams
noted that faculty had encouraged the student vote and hoped it continued.

Senator Abella
thought this a good note to end on, as he had a strong belief in student
voting. Students did not always vote in large numbers, yet he had been
encouraged by the large turnout the previous year. Faculty had been
encouraging, and the stakes were high now.

Senator Suzuki asked where the pamphlet would be available and
how it would be distributed.

Senator Abella
responded that distribution places included the student building, the
administration building, the library, all across campus. The Website location
was listed on the front page with more information.

Senator Chelberg
indicated that an email had already gone out to students and would be repeated.

Senator Abella
indicated that this had already happened, and that the committee would employ
as many avenues as possible.

Chair Colvin
indicated that Axler’s question would go to the student committee for a
response.

AGENDA
ITEM #5—REPORT from OSWALDO GARCIA, CHAIR, ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW COMMITTEE:
UPDATE from the TASK FORCE on GRADUATE PROGRAM REVIEW

Chair Colvin
commented on this update on the committee’s activities, and was hopeful that
the report would serve to engage the campus community in discussion. She urged
senators to regard Garcia as the “messenger” of the committee.

She thought
that this topic needed to be on the senate’s agenda for the rest of the
semester, as it was a difficult issue, and hard to handle in the normal first
and second reading format to reach resolution. Ideas needed to get placed on
the table for discussion, the only way to make good policy.

Senator and
Chair of APRC Garcia began with some background. APRC was about to
finish its fifth cycle of review and each cycle had proceeded according to
senate policy. A ten-member task force had been constituted in the fall, with
the goal of a draft for the senate early in the spring semester. The focus had
been on the most pressing issues first. One priority that emerged in aftermath
of the last WASC accreditation review was some noted deficiencies in graduate
programs at SFSU. The committee had to deal with this without abandoning its
other tasks.

The task
force has developed a draft policy that would have further discussion in
committee later this week. Some careful analysis was required so that the
committee’s evaluation could guide university policy and process. He noted that
the document took a historical view of the cycles of review and included new
items that had not been included in the past. He spoke to the currency of
graduate programs, and the need to set standards for quality, which had only
marginally been done before. Some accrediting bodies handled individual
programs, but there were issues university-wide regarding graduate programs.
The document intended to include specific standards to be considered as a
“floor” and that each department would be able to define their own standards.
Some things to consider were: number of students per program, graduates per
year, administrative requirements, course offerings, most of this detail had
not been present in past. He was not prepared to discuss all the details at
this time, but felt the need to present this to the campus community beginning
with the senate.

Senator Suzuki
asked if there was any chance of coordinating these reviews with reviews
from those units that had outside accreditation reviews, so that two reviews
could be done at the same time, and not do two reviews.

Garcia responded that it seemed to make
sense to coordinate these two different reviews, and that perhaps campus might
ask further questions at the same time.

Senator Suzuki
asked who would be contacting outside reviewers, and who would be doing the
extra work.

Garcia differentiated between the task
force and APRC. The task force would need to develop feasible guidelines.

Senator Stowers
commented about APRC in general. From recent senate experience, it was
apparent that program reviews were not that useful in developing policy for
suspension and discontinuance. She hoped for some notion of quality indexes to
be developed and observed that a lot of program reviews did not do this.

Garcia was aware of this, and commented on
the disconnect between the discontinuance proposals and APRC reviews. Campus
needed better standards, but also needed to recognize that “one size does not
fit all.” Departments need some autonomy, ability to make their own decisions,
yet there were some university issues too.

Senator Velez
asked whether these guidelines would be aligned with assessment activities.

Garcia thought this a good question.
Assessment had not been so important in the past, and had not even had much in
the way of resources. This was addressed in the new policy.

Senator Yee
thanked Garcia, and spoke to the importance of student advising at the graduate
level. She asked if there were any plans to develop roadmaps, visual aids, or
the like for graduate students, to provide guidelines for timely graduation
etc.

Garcia agreed with this suggestion. He
hoped the committee would go beyond this, and consider not only how to make it
easier for graduate students, but also to address admission requirements.

Chair Colvin
noted that a time certain had been reached, and asked permission to extend
discussion.

Senator Heiman
spoke as member of both APRC and task force and thought it appropriate to put
all the cards on the table. He asked if Garcia would address the size of APRC
and the workload issues involved.

Garcia responded that APRC had a
well-defined workload, but faced a very intense task. Normal workload
guidelines were in place, but the job takes a long time to finish. The new
policy might dictate a revision of the guidelines, but if the committee already
were booked, it would not be able to do this. The committee might require more
members from senate to be included in their roster to finish their work.

Garcia
requested senators to contact him if they had any good ideas, and he expressed
hope to have a new draft for the next meeting.

Senator Stowers
suggested that Dean of Graduate Studies Hallum and her office had done some
data collecting and analysis, which had never before been available.

AGENDA
ITEM #6—RECOMMENDATION from the EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COMMITTEE:
DISCONTINUANCE of the MINOR in CALIFORNIA STUDIES PROGRAM, 2^ND
reading

Chair Colvin noted that she had received a message from the dean of BSS who
held a preliminary meeting to solve issues regarding the California Studies
program. She asked for further time for the college to reach a balanced
resolution and would entertain a motion to postpone the motion’s second reading
to March 29.

Carrington,
Gerson m/s/p

Unanimously
passed.

AGENDA
ITEM #7—RECOMMENDATION from the FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: RESOLUTION in SUPPORT of a UNIVERSITY CLUB, 1^st reading

Pong, Fehrman 
m/s

Senator and
chair of FAC Pong indicated that the committee had strongly endorsed
this resolution given the urgency of the situation. Finding a permanent home
for the University Club (UC) seemed highly important.

Senator Yee
thanked Pong and the committee. She spoke in favor of the resolution, and
provided an informational update from the Board of Directors (BOD) for the UC.
The BOD was here today to hear advice from the senate. The UC had been in the
Franciscan building since the mid 70s, a building that would close this year to
accommodate the library renovation. A study had been conducted to find another
home, which outlined the advantages and disadvantages of every option. No
viable space options existed. Now there was a plan of action in place. Core
paid membership was low, income was poor, and strong campus interest was
insufficient for support. Despite all efforts, membership and attendance were
down.  Statistics indicated some 462 members in 1997, a number which was now
down to 167 as of today. In 2004 income was $45,000, and expenses were $53,000:
a loss of $8,000. The various issues were listed on the handouts. The BOD had
passed two items of business: payroll deductions would begin to cease and all
operations would terminate by June 3. The UC would still commit to graduation
ceremonies, but could not continue after that. The BOT had tabled a motion to
dissolve corporation. They had also tabled discussion and any move to handle
residual funds, but needed to decide these last two issues soon. She
appreciated the resolution from the senate, but sought guidance on how to
proceed from here.

Senator Heiman
asked about the cost of membership and benefits to the members.

Senator Yee
replied that membership dues were indexed proportionally to salary,
specifically 1 percent of an individual’s salary. Benefits included use of
rooms through reservation, parties, other special activities, receptions, and
campus-wide activities.

Turitz thought that the last “resolved”
clause in the resolution might be superfluous.

Senator Ulasewicz
remembered an earlier survey that had been done and asked what exactly the UC
wanted from the senate.

Senator Yee
indicated that the senate has offered advice in past. Do we want to dissolve,
is there reason to continue.

Senator Meredith
encouraged suspension of the corporation rather than disbanding completely. Any
issues of liability might be handled by a member vote.

Chair Colvin
indicated that this resolution would return at second reading at the next
senate meeting.

AGENDA
ITEM #8—RECOMMENDATION from the FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: PROPOSED
POLICY for a FACULTY HONORS & AWARDS COMMITTEE, 1^ST Reading

Pong,
Meredith m/s

Senator and
chair of FAC Pong indicated that past senate chair Cherny had provided
good guidance in this area. FAC had conducted a broad review of programs at
other CSU campuses, and had developed this current document to help honor our
faculty and recognize their achievements.

Senator Gregory
thought this a good idea, especially in context of the current low morale
situation on campus. She thought it wise that we look at ways to contribute to
the university community in this manner. On line 21, it did not seem clear what
“established procedures” meant. Also, she suggested that some way of making
sure that the process did not follow that of the previous effort, the OPA,
which was flawed, be found.

Pong responded that the intent in line
21 was that the committee would establish the procedure.

Senator Velez
noted that it would be up to the committee to decide what the award looked like
and how it was handled. If a monetary award was included, the committee would
decide that too.

Senator Gregory
would be happy with greater precision in the process description.

Pong responded that there was no intent
to create a competitive award, but rather a distinguished teacher award, that
could be interpreted liberally and in multiple ways.

Senator Smith
asked about the perspective from the staff, and asked whether there was a
parallel structure or committee for staff on campus to do something similar.

Chair Colvin
thought it appropriate to think about staff awards as well.

CEL Dean Whitaker
responded that campus already had the “star of the month” award with a yearly
winner who received a sizable monetary award.

Senator Smith
was aware of this, but thought it a different matter than something coming from
the senate.

Senator Chelberg
indicted that the bylaws had changed some years ago, when there was a staff
seat on senate appointed by staff council, and that currently there was work on
a process by which a staff member could be elected by staff to participate in
the senate.

Senator Van
Cleave thought the concept of recognition a good one, but noted that not
all faculty teach, and encouraged an award that would include faculty who do
not teach as their primary activity.

Pong expressed willingness to consider
this.

Senator Palmer
asked if there was any reason this process could not fall under the purview of
FAC.

Chair Colvin
asked whether FAC considered this.

Pong responded that FAC had thought that
the awards current committee, for the honorary degree, might do this, and
perhaps it would work to expand their charge. After some discussion FAC decided
that the current committee did not take all the different elements of this new
award into account, and thus drafted this new policy.

Senator Palmer
responded that FAC included professional development under their jurisdiction.

Senator Ulasewicz
asked about service learning.

Pong responded that this had been one of
FAC’s concerns. OCSL (Office of Community Service
Learning) has an award, but this new award would have a higher
profile. FAC had given more guidelines to recognize faculty, not just for our
own campus but nationwide.

Pong encouraged colleagues to look at
the document and provide feedback. New faculty members had an opportunity to
help craft this policy to honor faculty. He thanked FAC members for their work,
particularly Senator Velez.

AGENDA
ITEM #9 —ADJOURNMENT— 3:50 p.m.