Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

October 3, 2007

Senate members present:  Ruth Frickle, Glen Avantaggio, Gloria Rose Koepping, Chris Gan, Sherri Chun, Jack Harton, Darryl Brice, Dusty Wilson, Jeff Wagnitz, and Kate Bligh.

Guests:  Gwen Spencer

The meeting was called to order at 3:05 in room 411 of the Library.

As a quorum was not present, the approval of past minutes from June 6, 2007 was postponed.

Ruth Frickle handed out an agenda for the meeting and a copy of the current Faculty Senate constitution.

Introductions of new members were made and Glen Avantaggio gave an overview of the Senate’s role and purview.  The Faculty Senate is primarily responsible for approving graduation and curriculum rules and requirements.  Ruth Frickle stated that we also have input into academic standards and campus wide policy changes.  We also staff a variety of Senate and campus wide committees.  The Chair of the Faculty Senate is also the college representative to FACTC.

Ruth Frickle gave a recap of last years topics which included Common Course numbering, Professional and Technical Degree Requirements that were approved, input into the Students Rights and Responsibilities handbook, especially the Academic Honesty section, the approval of Physical Anthropology as meeting the Science distribution for the A.A. degree and the abolishment of the five week WI grade.  The WI grade proposal is in the Policy Development Committee and will likely be approved in the next few weeks.

Mention was made of some historical contributions of the Senate including the Diversity and Globalism (DG) requirement for the A.A. and an updated Academic Probation Policy.

Ruth Frickle then identified a concern about the newly elected Secretary continuing to hold the Senator position from the Health, PE, and Education division at the same time.  After some discussion, the Secretary chose to voluntarily resign from her Senate seat and requested that when the constitution is amended in the future, that a provision for this situation be included. 

The Senate as a whole then identified potential new business for the year.  These topics included getting more information on the Honors designation,  the purpose and operation of the FRC, class caps on distance learning classes, and creating new PR&R procedures.

Meeting Adjourned at 3:35 p.m.

Next meeting is October 17^th, 2007.

Minutes submitted by Gloria Rose Koepping, Faculty Senate Secretary