MINUTES OF MEETING NUMBER 159
OF The
Senate OF mICHIGAN tECHNOLOGical university

9 December 1987

(Senate Minute pages: 2758 -2789)

President's Report - No Report .

President Shapton did discuss the memo sent to all Senators by Brad Baltensperger in regard to the Board of Control Workshop. It was requested that Senators discuss this with their respective faculty and provide nominees as soon as possible.

Vice President's Report (Appendix A & B - Available by Request from the Senate Office).

Appears as edited. Some discussion of the position of students in the university with less than a 2.00 engineering GPA followed. It was noted that these students receive counseling and are prompted to look at other areas of study within the university.

Committee Reports

A. Curricular Policy - No report.

B. Instructional Policy - No report.

Senator Janners provided the Senate with data summarizing the quarterly and cumulative grade point averages of students at MTU for the past four regular quarters. This was to allow the faculty to determine the effect of changing the grading policy. It was noted that for the Fall 1987 quarter there was a very small increase (.01 grade point) in the quarterly GPA of students and no change in their cumulative GPA. However, a larger change (0.1 grade point) was noted for the quarterly GPA for Fall 1986 to Fall 1987. It was suggested that this might be the result of President Stein's discussion of grading practices (Appendix C - Available by Request from the Senate Office).

C. Institutional Evaluation - Appendix D - Available by Request from the Senate Office).

D. Budget - Appendix E - Available by Request from the Senate Office).

E. Faculty Fringe Benefits - No report.

President Stein commented on the university looking at various medical organizations (HMO, PPO, etc.) presently being considered by area doctors.

F. Elections - No report.

G. Faculty Handbook - No report.

H. Planning - No report

I. General Education - No report.

President Shapton asked the committee to review the thematic clusters since a number of difficulties have arisen from courses being dropped from the curriculum.

J. Computer Fee Policy - (Appendix F - Available by Request from the Senate Office).

This report is a revised version of the report provided at meeting 158. The changes are primarily expanding the charge of the committee to include consideration of administrative computing and including the director of computing services as a committee member. Concern was voiced on the question of interfacing the administrative and academic aspects of computing and the reporting of both operations and academic administrations. The report was accepted unanimously. In additional action, the ad hoc committee on Computer Fee Policy was dismissed with thanks for their efforts.

K. Quality of University Life Task Force - Appendix G - (Available by Request from the Senate Office).

 

Old Business

Proposal 2-88, Procedure for Dropping a Course, was brought before the Senate for a vote. This proposal returns the drop period to six weeks and defines the terms of the "W" and "N" grades. During discussion of the proposal concern was noted on the part of a number of faculty that many students abuse the drop policy by taking more courses than they expect to complete then drop those courses in which they find they are not doing well. President Stein commented that the number of drops had been greatly reduced because of the overload fee, and that he endorsed the proposal.

The proposal was accepted with one dissenting vote.

New Business - None

 

The meeting was adjourned at 8:11 p.m.