Address to the Board of Control on December 9, 2011
Chair Richardson and members of
the board; distinguished audience:
On behalf of the Senate Executive
Committee, thanks for breakfast and, if possible, we look forward to doing this
again next April. I believe these
interactions serve a useful purpose of providing you with a different
perspective on the institution and perhaps contribute in a small way to your
assessment of the direction in which the institution is heading. Today I would just like to bring you up to
date on the accomplishments and meetings that took place in the Senate this
semester following the outline on this slide.
We have now had presentations by
the research and teaching award winners as shown here. Both teaching award recipients featured
interactive presentations requiring audience participation, strategies which
perhaps lead to increased attention in their classes. It is no doubt useful for some of us to
become aware of these techniques of instruction. Several presentations
of an informational nature were also heard.
The Senate was assured of the efforts of student services in recruiting
students and convinced that the IT consolidation, though fraught with
difficulty and problems for some at certain times of the year, is making slow but deliberate and good progress.
On this slide we
also heard about health and sick leave changes and anyone looking at this
massive percentage of 90.52% assigned to the employees might conclude that we
are led by a hard taskmaster, one who emanated out of the pages of a Dickensian
era novel. However the Senate, partly on
the basis of a finance workshop by Vice-President Reed, is aware that the
matter is more complex than would appear prima facie and
that it involves a delicate balancing act of the merit raise coupled with
reduced state appropriations and the hardship imposed by increasing tuition
fees on the families of our students.
The fact that parking fees have not so far been imposed has also not
escaped our attention.
Next we listened to the update on
AQIP projects
and had various discussions on the 2035 vision for the university by Provost
Seel. This prompted an assessment of the
graduate program and, further, led to a presentation by VP Reed on the reasons
and history behind the fact that we only have one graduate student tuition fee since 2003,
whereas at the undergraduate level we have two, the resident and the
non-resident. The Senate was satisfied
with the conclusion on the last slide of this presentation which stated that
given the length of time for this policy being in place, a re-examination of
the pertinent issue sometime next year would be advisable. The Senate Research Policy Committee, being
aware of the Strategic Plan of the University and the difficulties in getting
the more established of us to sustain or perhaps reactivate their research
activities have distributed these two questions shown on this slide. The answers to these questions may help us
attain a realization of the difficulties in attaining the announced goal of
3,000 graduate students by 2035.
This slide
displays University Standing Committees outside of the Senate and the Senate is
responsible for conducting elections to find people to sit on these committees. It was decided to list the yearly
accomplishments of these various committees on the Senate website. As you can see so far two committees have
responded to a request by Provost Seel and their reports are quite
interesting. In one committee,
there were deliberations as summarized but in the other, the Faculty Review
Committee, there was no activity. This
is actually quite a constructive and positive thing to know. This committee’s charge is to “review and provide recommendations regarding grievances that
go beyond step two of the grievance process”.
The fact of no business means that the university resolved problems and
issues before they attained this level.
The Senate has
received and deliberated on the proposals on this slide and
these have all been approved by the administration. Proposals 2-5 of 12 pertain to rules and
regulations in the graduate program and proposal 1-12 will “allow outstanding undergraduate students to pursue an
accelerated research-based master’s degree and apply up to three
undergraduate-level research credits earned as a senior-level student toward
the research requirement for a master’s degree.” This proposal has already resulted in one
department shown here outlaying
a plan for the specific requirement for this degree allowed under this proposal. No doubt other departments will soon
establish their own specific goals and we look forward to seeing what kind of
enrollment and financial benefits accrue to our graduate program in the
upcoming years as a consequence of this proposal.
More
recently as shown on this slide we
have deliberated on five new degrees. I
should mention that before the Senate receives a proposal, it has to be first
considered within the department of origin perhaps other university wide
committees, and also the appropriate Chairs and Deans. After receipt in the Senate office it is distributed
concurrently to the Curricular Policy Committee which evaluates the intellectual
merits of the proposal, and the Finance Committee which is charged with
assessing the financial viability of the proposal. It can be said that during the deliberative
process, both of these senate committees have encountered hostility from the various
contending forces and between themselves as well. To a certain extent
some of this is warranted. Chairs, Deans
and even the Provost are frustrated with the length of time taken to ratify
these proposals and they all want the Senate to hurry up. The proponents who have to answer questions
from a variety of sources, some of which are repetitive, are also in some cases
annoyed over delays and perceived slights.
Suffice it to say that the Senate is guided in its deliberations by previously
established policies and procedures all of which were devised to ensure that both
the intellectual merits and financial viability of a proposal are in order and
we will continue to do so. Unfortunately
the required information takes times to gather and, in some cases, the
instructions outlined for the preparation of these proposals are not
followed.
In
brief the Senate has concluded that the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
proposal had merit and is not particularly financially restricting for the
following reason: it will allow students
from the Chemistry and Biological Sciences departments, and, the School of Forest Resources
and Environmental Sciences to graduate with
this new degree. In essence what it does
is allow for a natural convergence of courses and research currently conducted
in those departments for which this new degree option would be best suited to
describe. In so doing we will allow these
graduates to have a PhD certificate that is more suited to their research. This degree will also foster closer
cooperation between these departments in keeping with goals of our Strategic
Plan.
The
masters program in biomedical engineering is also worthy of support. This department has a PhD degree option
approved by you on the 24th of June 2005 and it is obviously
constructive to have a Master’s degree.
This is because circumstances may arise during the pursuit of a PhD
which would result in a reason to leave prematurely and thus it is appropriate
for this degree to be offered as an alternative. Besides some of our undergraduates may want
to avail themselves of the aforementioned accelerated research-based master’s
degree proposal which we approved earlier this year. The MS degree in Medical Informatics would
appear to be a very timely degree as it trains students to organize, analyze, and manage information to improve health care
using computer technology. Practitioners
of this degree are expected to come from a wide array of backgrounds and the
specifics of the many new courses are yet to be clearly defined and
approved. The Senate recognized the
merits of this degree and appreciated the financial details supplied which
indicated that this degree should be a positive for our institution.
Two undergraduate physics
degrees were also approved and these are anticipated to increase the numbers of
students trained in physics which is important in light of the recent discoveries
regarding neutrinos exceeding the speed of light, a subject matter that the
Provost delights in discussing. The new
secondary degree option is critical in preparing more teachers trained in
physics as the current BS education option takes a very long time to
complete. Questions were raised
regarding a perceived diminution of standards but producing a teacher also
contains the immeasurable aspect of producing people who can inspire. For these reasons and the important fact that
these two degrees are not a burden on our financial resources as attested to by
our Finance Committee, the Senate approved these proposals and appreciates your approbation earlier today of all of them.
The Senate was
pleased to receive revised charters and the first two are displayed here with
this letter-year combination, namely f and g of 12. These do not require Senate deliberation but
have to be considered by the administration and only when so approved
will the link to the actual charters be activated.
Finally, the sense of the
senate resolution was first distributed to the Senate Constituency on November 2nd with
the idea that each Senator would lead his or her group in a discussion on the issue
and then have them vote on it. When the
matter was raised for debate and final vote on the Senate floor, points were
raised both for and against. It does
appear that much of the opposition to the resolution centered on whether or not
this was a political proposition and thus had no basis being discussed in the
Senate. Claims of this nature are often
made by people who themselves are busily engaged in trying to get people to
vote one way or another on some issue, i.e., people engaged in the act of
politics. These same people use the word
“politics” as if there were nasty connotations associated with the term
itself. Hopefully we are all aware that
while there are alternatives to politics, these usually come at the price of
human life and therefore, at present, it would be far preferable to engage in
political acts rather than these other alternatives. In any case, the Senate viewed this matter as
one of merely affirming the wisdom of the Strategic Plan of our institution and
the rights of our Board of Control to establish the policies and principles
under which we function, in order to achieve our defined objectives. I am pleased to report to you that the
resolution was approved without any dissenting votes registered. It was distributed to State Congressman
Huuki, State Senator Casperson and Governor Snyder together with an invitation
for them to attend any Senate meeting and justify their stance on the bill.
Thanks for listening.