The
University Senate
of Michigan
Technological University
Minutes of Meeting
474
1 April 2009
Synopsis:
The Senate
1. Call
to order and roll call. President Sloan called the University Senate Meeting 474
to order at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, April 1, 2009, in room B45 EERC. Secretary
Cooper called roll. Absent were Senators Johnson, Vable, and Koszykowski, and
representatives of Army/Air Force ROTC, the Library, Mathematical Sciences,
Physics, Academic Services B, Advancement, IT, and Research. Liaison Anna
Pereira (GSC) was also in attendance. Mechanical Engineering–Engineering
Mechanics, Academic Services A, and Auxiliaries and Cultural Enrichment
currently have no elected representatives.
2.
Recognition of visitors. Guests included Dave Reed (VP for Research), Max Seel
(Interim Provost), Donna Michalek (Assistant Provost), Brad Baltensperger
(Chair, Cognitive and Learning Sciences), Robert Keen (Chair, Curricular Policy
Committee), Bruce Seely (Dean, College of Sciences and Arts), Troy Coogan (USG),
Peg Gale (Dean, SFRES), Jason Keith (Chemical Engineering), Darrell Radson
(School of Business and Economics), and Chris Brill (Cognitive and Learning
Sciences).
3.
Approval of agenda.
Hamlin
moved approval of the agenda; Storer seconded the motion; it passed unanimously on a voice vote.
4.
Presentation: “Research Update” by Dave Reed
Reed was invited to address questions raised
by Greenlee’s presentation on finances at Senate meeting 468 on November 12,
2008. He handed out tables showing total department/school/college research
expenditures and incentive returns for fiscal years 2008 and 2003 and for
expenditures and national ranking by NSF disciplinary classification for fiscal
years 2000–2008. Total internal and
external research expenditures for 2003 were $30,264,162; for 2008, total
internal and external research expenditures were $60,356,544.
Total research expenditures for colleges and schools and for units were also
reported. In 2003, the School of Business and Economics had no research expenditures;
in 2008, it had $354,240. In 2003, the College of Engineering had $14,856,239;
in 2008, it had $23,506,295. In 2003, the School of Forest Resources and
Environmental Science had $5,820,302; in 2008, it had $10,500,159. In 2003, the
College of Sciences and Arts had $4,370,577; in 2008, it had $10,663,920. In
2003, the School of Technology had $137,162; in 2008, it had $299,869. The
right hand side of the table shows the incentive returns by department, school,
and college. A fraction of indirect costs are returned to the unit in part to
cover the cost of the research conducted. These incentive returns go to deans’
offices as well as to units. There’s a formula that is used to calculate the
amount returned.
Caneba asked what
percentage of indirect costs are returned to units. Reed said that in total
across the university a little over 50 percent. What’s in the table is just the
amount that was returned to the units; it doesn’t include what went to the
principal investigators. Miller asked how the internal expenditures are
calculated. Reed said there are a lot of pieces that go into that figure: the
biggest single piece is faculty time devoted to research — a percentage of
their salary is reported as internal expenditures. It also includes cost-shares,
start-up packages for faculty, and anything that goes through the Tech Fund and
goes to units. Miller asked if we self-report on our expenditures on the NSF
report. Reed said yes, we report them to NSF each year, which compiles all the
information from the 663 universities last year that got federal money. Miller
asked whether her personal report is added in.
Reed said payroll tracks the percentage of your salary that goes to
research and the percentage that goes to instruction.
The second table shows expenditures in
millions of dollars and national rankings by research expenditures by
disciplines; NSF reports the rankings by disciplines, not by departments, so
some of the listings don’t match up exactly to our departments. The table shows
rankings through fiscal year 2007, and expenditures through fiscal year 2008.
In science and engineering overall, Michigan Tech ranked 172 among all
institutions in 2000 and 163 in 2007; in non-science and engineering, Michigan
Tech ranked 222 in fiscal year 2007. In engineering overall, Michigan Tech
ranked 62 in 2000 and 66 in 2007; in environmental science (SFRES and GMES),
Michigan Tech ranked 72 in 2000 and 59 in 2007 (the 2007 figure includes some
other environmental sciences); in business and management, Michigan Tech ranked
132 in 2007. Disciplines in the top 100 in 2007 included
bioengineering/biomedical engineering (52), chemical engineering (50), civil
engineering (48), electrical engineering (66), mechanical engineering (22),
metallurgical engineering and materials (49), environmental sciences (59),
humanities (78), and visual and performing arts (72).
Drelich asked why
there are discrepancies for research expenditures for departments between the
two tables. Reed explained that the first table shows departments; the second
table reports disciplines. Vogler asked where the numbers for environmental
science are. Reed said the line for agriculture becomes environmental science
in fiscal year 2003.
5.
Presentation: “Strategic Planning Process” by Dave Reed
In 2006, the university adopted the current
strategic plan, which was used as a working document to prioritize projects at
the university and in budgeting. The effort now is not only to have it as a
working document, but to have it a living document, and to go back and review
it periodically. Is it still the right thing for the university going forward,
or do we need to make minor or major course corrections? The first page of the
handout is the timeline. We’ve been working since fall 2008 on reviewing and
revising the strategic plan. The academic deans had a major role in this
effort; the executive team took it to a retreat; then both groups met in
February 2009; we took the document to the chairs and deans for review; and we
took it to the board of control for an informal review in March 2009. Now we’re
entering a period of public comment: the plan is posted on the web, showing the
differences between the old plan and the revised plan; chairs and deans are
reviewing it with their units; we’re bringing it to the Senate today; we will
meet with the staff council soon; there will be a forum in April; input from
other stakeholders (alumni, student groups, graduate students) will be
gathered. Comments will be consolidated in May; the board will review that in
July and adopt the plan at that meeting if there are no extensive revisions, or in a fall board meeting if there are extensive
revisions.
On the next two pages
of the handout is the executive team and deans’ draft of the new strategic
plan. The mission and vision have not changed. The goals paragraphs have some
wording changes to broaden their applicability and bring in things that weren’t in the
previous documents, such as ethics. The
Goal 1 statement has not changed, but the bulleted action items have changed.
Many of the things in the current plan have been accomplished, and many things
need to be addressed going forward. There have been some changes in the Goal 2
statement, particularly at the end where “an understanding of the social and
cultural contexts of our contemporary world” was added; Bruce Seely was
instrumental in bringing that discussion to the group. In Goal 3, some things
have been added as action items. The goals of people, programs, and scholarship
are still the core of the three goals. At the high level there is very little
change; at the action level there is a fair amount of editing and change. Reed
invited questions about the process.
Luck asked Reed to
comment on how 2006 plan worked, what happened as a consequence of the
document. Reed said that probably the most visible thing was the Strategic
Faculty Hiring Initiative. Without a doubt that would not have happened without
the priorities set in the strategic plan. We realized and got the board to buy
into the idea that what limited us in terms of getting where we wanted to go
was faculty capacity: we had to grow the faculty. Les Cook could point to a
number of things in student life and activities. Another example is the
increase in interdisciplinary research institutes, which was in the plan. Luck
asked if there has been any assessment of the SFHI hires to see if that’s been
a successful strategy. Reed said that the new hires haven’t been here a full
year yet, so it’s hard to do an assessment. But three of the hires were in
atmospheric science, and we now have as many atmospheric scientists as many of
the most prominent programs in the country. Sloan asked if there has been any
thought of taking the plan to the next level which would be more quantitative
and have numerical goals. Reed said yes. There’s a dashboard page off the
university webpage and there’s four major metrics that we’re tracking: PhD
graduates, research awards, entering freshman ACTs, and endowment dollars. Mike
Hendricks is leaving the controllers office and is coming into a position in
institutions systems development, and one of the first things he’s going to
undertake is a modification of the dashboard page, so that it has more real
time numbers and more complete and uniform listings. We’re going to try to get
more rigor into the information we put out. Sloan said
that a plan involves not only tracking but setting goals, and that in the
College of Engineering over the past year there has been considerable effort to
do this. She said she is wondering when that will show up in a university-wide
document. Reed said that the unit-level goals will show up on the dashboard
page too when we get that going. Units have the option of including metrics
other than those four that they feel are important to what they do and they
want to track. Reed added that if anyone has any more comments, they should
submit them on the webpage or to Cathy Banfield and to his office.
6.
Approval of minutes from Meeting #473.
Cooper reported a change suggested by
Malette: in Lehman’s report on enrollment, the sentence about telling students
to contact “admissions” if they needed help with finances should be changed to
“financial aid.” Malette moved that
the minutes as slightly revised be approved; Hamlin seconded the motion; and
the motion passed on a voice vote
with no dissent.
7.
President’s Report.
Proposals
7-09: Repeat Policy, was approved by the administration on March 19, one day after we passed it, with one minor change, replacing “Office of Student Affairs” with “dean of students.” The chair has ruled that this change is editorial. The Senate, of course, is free to overrule the chair on this point. If so, the proposal will be brought back to the Senate at its next two meetings.
Provost
Search Committee
The committee met for the first time on March 26
and elected its chair, Alex Mayer, and
vice-chair, Darrell Radson. Consultant
Dr. Robert Lawless of Academic Search was unable to attend due to weather in
Texas but should be at the committee’s next meeting on April 16. The committee
is reviewing the position description and ad copy and expects to approve these
at that meeting.
Elections
So far most of the nonacademic units have
elected new senators and alternates, but none of the academic departments have
done so. We also still have openings for Senator at large and the faculty
review committee and one or two other committees. In two weeks we need to elect
Senate officers for next year at the first meeting of the 2009–2010 Senate and
we would like to have as many new Senators present as possible.
Aetna
At the request of several Senators and
constituents, the Senate is collecting accounts of experiences with Aetna,
Tech’s new health insurer, and has received about two dozen such reports. These
can either be sent to me (masloan@mtu.edu)
or to Senate Benefits Committee chair, Dana Johnson, dana@mtu.edu.
8. Old
Business: “Senate Resolution on ADVANCE Grant”
This resolution was introduced by Hoagland at
the last meeting. She could not attend this meeting, and her alternate Larry
Lankton presented the revised resolution. There were people from the ADVANCE
program at the meeting who were able to speak to it: Peg Gale and Donna
Michalek. Lankton said that the second paragraph of the resolution is now moot,
as the ADVANCE grant document was distributed today on email. He said there is
a lot of very negative sentiment about the grant, particularly the part about
external people being assigned to serve on search committees. Setting up and
running search committees is a departmental prerogative. It is insulting to
departments to imply that they cannot function unless someone comes in from the
outside who is going to enable departments to make
better decisions and come up with more diverse faculty. It’s as if we’ve been
living under a rock since the Civil Rights Act of 1964–65. This is an intrusion
into the functioning of a department which was decided upon without
departmental input and it shouldn’t ever happen unless we approve it.
Gale said that an
accountability subcommittee chaired by Chris Anderson has been talking about a
flow chart that incorporates the Colleagues of Equity and Procedures (CEP), and
they have decided not to use a flow chart to visually represent the role of the
CEP. They are still working through the subcommittee to decide what the
function and charge of the CEP is. Although the deans decided the CEP would be
external to the department, Gale and Anderson never thought that. They thought
the CEP list would be made up of recommendations from the deans who would ask
for volunteers to be trained through the University of Michigan STRIDE program.
The committee hasn’t come up with a charge yet, but they’re going to be doing
that tomorrow and hopefully finalizing it, but it's been a process. This is a
grant that’s been funded; it’s not a cast-in-stone process. They are still
developing the charge of the CEP and how the chair can choose a CEP, and it was
not the intent that the chair could not choose someone from within their unit.
Lankton quoted from a
section of the grant that was distributed today that says “we have decided” —
not that “we’re considering” or “might implement” or “use the grant to investigate”
— “we have decided, based on the experience of the PI in contributing to the
design and implementation of an award-winning process used at the University of
Windsor, to appoint peer equity assessors.” So the grant itself says that they
have decided to do this, which takes away the faculty’s decision making power.
Faculty should not be happy with this top-down process.
Michalek emphasized
again that this was a proposal, but now in the implementation that is not the
way we are going. At Academic Forum where this was discussed back in February
publicly, the question was raised whether the department could pick the person
they want, and we said yes; we wouldn’t see anything wrong with that. There was
never any intent that the CEP would come in and tell the committee what to do
or who to hire. The person was to be a resource, to bring a different
perspective and some outside knowledge about other options. Gale added that
it’s part of a process. We have already learned a lot on the accountability
side about what we can and can’t do at Michigan Tech, and we will be reporting
back to NSF on what works and doesn’t work at a technological university.
Lankton said that
it’s one thing to say that the department can choose a person, but you’re still
saying that the department has to choose a person. I don’t see that there’s
been broad faculty input. You’re making us choose somebody that we don’t think
is necessary to the process. We should object to the notion that a small group
of people have decided that we have a problem and that the way we’re going to
fix it is to reach into every single department on campus and fix it the way we
think it should be fixed. Gale said this is just a proposal. Lankton asked what decision the committee is
going to make tomorrow. Gale said this is just for three years; we have to
evaluate whether or not it will work. But we still would like to test something
involving a person being on a search committee who could represent other
interests than those of the search committee. It was successful at Windsor and
didn’t get a lot of push back, but we’re getting a lot of push back on it now.
It will be reviewed at the end of the project. It’s a small project, too, not
as large as what the University of Michigan has done. It’s not going to be set
in stone, unless it works to improve our diversity from a recruiting standpoint
and a hiring standpoint.
Storer said that he
was disappointed that this is still a negative resolution. As a Senate if we
want to be involved in shared governance we should not just respond to
suggestions from above saying yes or no; we should offer constructive ideas to
improve programs that are being pursued. He also said that people are greatly
underestimating the value of having external members on search committees,
which has been done in Forestry and the reviews from the search committee
members were very positive. Also the second paragraph is now a moot point, and
we can’t vote on the resolution without removing it. It’s been indicated by
people involved in the project that it is being redesigned anyway, so it’s not
a useful resolution from that point of view.
Snyder said that the
resolution does not say that search committees should not have outside members;
the resolution simply says that outside members should not be assigned to
search committees. There’s a difference between search committees having
outside members and having outside members being assigned to search committees.
Gale asked if saying
that our school chooses to have our outside member be a CEP whether that would
go against your resolution. Kern asked whether this allows for an option for
departments to have a CEP or not as a department chooses. Michalek
said there’s a phased implementation, and we said that departments who want a
CEP in the first year can choose to do that and if it doesn’t work no
department will want to have one. Kern asked if that means that a department
has an option to say no. Gale replied that they haven’t developed the
accountability document yet and hopefully they will finish it tomorrow.
Lankton said this resolution
doesn’t say that you can’t continue to refine this plan or anything like that;
it doesn't speak against the goals of this grant. It speaks against the
particular procedure of assigning an external member to serve on a department’s
search committee. There are other ways that you have thought about such as
having somebody inside the department trained in diversity so that somebody
inside the department can have an influence on the search. That’s another way
to achieve the goal of the grant without the imposition of an outside member.
And if a department does want to have outside members, that’s fine.
Dewey said he has received a lot of comments
from members of the Civil Engineering department that they are in favor of the
ADVANCE grant including the outside committee member. People compared it to the
process of having an outside committee member on graduate committees in order
to get a different point of view.
Sloan asked for a
vote on the question. Frost asked whether we can we vote on this resolution
considering that the second paragraph is moot. Sloan said we need an official
motion to approve the resolution.
Lankton moved to approve the first paragraph of
the resolution and Snyder seconded the motion. The resolution passed by a vote of 12–10.
9. New
Business:
a.
Proposal 9-09: “Academic Calendar 2010-2011 and 2011-2012” presented by the
Instructional Policy Committee
Kern stated that the calendars follow all
guidelines except for one that is impossible to follow; it happens every four
or five years that we cannot make the last Friday of the Spring
semester fall before the 27th of April. The last time this happened there was
no problem. The proposal was approved
by a voice vote with no dissent.
b.
Proposal 10-09: “Management B.S.” presented by the Curricular Policy Committee
c.
Proposal 11-09: “Operations and Systems Management B.S.” presented by the
Curricular Policy Committee
d.
Proposal 12-09: “Finance B.S.” presented by the Curricular Policy Committee
e.
Proposal 13-09 “Marketing B.S.” presented by the Curricular Policy Committee
f.
Proposal 14-09 “Management Information Systems B.S.” presented by the
Curricular Policy Committee
g.
Proposal 15-09: “Accounting B.S.” presented by the Curricular Policy Committee
Keen reported on proposals 10-09 through
15-09 which are all from the School of Business. He stated that he has been
privileged to be the chair of a superb curricular policy committee. What
senators have received are draft proposals; these are not the ones that will be
voted on on April 15. Drafts with editorial changes will be sent out this
Friday. The proposals will be retitled to better reflect their intent to change
the names of the programs from “a concentration in” to “a major in.” Another
important change is that the implementation date will be changed from Fall 2010 to Fall 2009. It will help the business school out
with accreditation and it makes the people who are selling the programs to
students happy.
Snyder asked whether he faculty of the School of Business actually looked at the
individual proposals and approved them. Keen and Darrell Radson, the dean of
the school, said yes.
h.
Proposal 16-09: “Double Majors at MTU” presented by the Curricular Policy Committee
This proposal was developed by the committee
at the request of the registrar to correct what may be a problem of listing on
diplomas degrees that we do not offer. The problem arises when the two majors
are not the same type: one is a bachelor of science and the other a bachelor of
arts. In such cases, the diploma and the record may read “awarded a bachelor of
science in Mathematics with an additional major in Liberal Arts. The problem is
that we do not offer a BS in Liberal Arts. This proposal stipulates that
students who wish to earn double majors in programs that offer different
degrees (BS and BA), must instead take the option of earning a double degree.
Double majors and dual degrees are handled differently at different
universities. There has been only one student so far that this might have
affected, and maybe one or two more whom this would affect.
Luck observed that
different departments list on their websites different standards for double
majors and dual degrees. He asked whether this proposal could be amended to
require some clarification on these websites. Snyder said that double majors
are currently defined by university policy. Keen said that this proposal does
not change the definition of a double major. If individual departmental
websites don’t follow university policy, that’s a matter for the web site
police or whoever supervises those to make sure that university policy is
followed. Snyder said that
it seems very clear that if you get a double major you get only
one degree, so the wording on the diploma doesn’t imply that you are getting a
second degree of any sort. We don’t grant majors, we grant degrees. He said the
problem is a moot point. The point of double majors is to allow students to get
credit for the work they’ve done and to encourage them to do diverse things at
the university. Cal Poly says “in the event that a student has completed the
requirements for two different degrees such as a BA and a BS, the student will
be required to declare one major as the degree major in order to determine the
degree that will be awarded. The fact that the requirements for another program
have been completed will be noted on the transcript.” We’ve been recording them
on the transcript, but we also note it on the diploma. Keen said that the
question is whether the state auditors would look at a diploma that has BS in
Liberal Arts on it as a problem. The proposal is forwarded to the Senate with
the approval of the curricular policy committee.
i.
Proposal 17-09: “Interdisciplinary Minor in Hydrogen Technology” presented by the
Curricular Policy Committee
Keen said that this proposal needs further
revision, mostly editorial, from the draft that was circulated to the Senate.
We will get the approved revised draft out to the Senate by this Friday. The
title is likely to be Multidisciplinary Minor in Hydrogen Technology since that
is the wording used in the catalog copy. Input from people from Materials
Science has been sought and received.
j.
Proposal 18-09: “Minor in Leadership for a Technological World” presented by the
Curricular Policy Committee
Keen said that one more draft of this
proposal will be sent to Senators on Friday. This proposal is not reported with
the full backing of the committee; the committee is divided on the worthiness
of this minor. The point person is Bob Warrington, and Andrew Storer, a member
of the committee, has been working to help polish the proposal.
Luck asked what was the difficulty the committee had with the proposal. Keen
said that some members of the committee felt that leadership is not an academic
area of study and should be developed through other experiences. Storer
commented that Warrington apologized for not being able to attend the Senate
meeting to ask questions. Storer said that the initial proposal was not very
academic, that it was a lot of getting out and doing things,
and it was withdrawn. So members of the committee put together a new proposal
after reviewing minors at other institutions. We clustered courses under five
core competencies: self awareness, communication, teamwork, ethical practices,
and social responsibility with the idea being that students would take classes
in each of these areas. We have moved this away from a very
applied activity more firmly into the academic realm.
L. Davis asked who in
the School of Business was involved with this? Storer
replied that Christa Walck was involved early on. L. Davis said that he was surprised when
this showed up as coming out of the School of Business, among others, as he
hadn’t heard anything about it until now. He said that leadership is an academic
area in business schools nationwide. It’s a recent focus among graduate
students, though he said he was not sure we have any faculty in this area.
Lankton said that his
department (Social Sciences) doesn’t have much truck with this minor either.
Some people deal with leadership as a scholarly field, but this proposal
doesn’t deal with scholarly work in leadership but is pretty much a hodge-podge
of courses. It seems to be a trendy sort of thing to latch onto leadership. He
said he thought that if you can’t get a major in it, you can’t get a minor in
it. It is not an academic discipline; it is a field of study in several
different I don’t see that this proposal is built around a solid core of
courses in that area. disciplines. A lot of the people
teaching these courses would be surprised that they are included in a
leadership group. There are courses on the list that teach nothing about leadership, and courses that do teach about leadership that
are not on the list. If a minor is built on the courses you take to fulfill it,
this proposal is lacking.
Miller asked whether
the minor is to be restricted to Pavlis scholars. Storer said that the proposal
is not restricted.
Lankton said that the
proposal like the thematic clusters we used to have, not a minor.
L. Davis asked what
the difference is between leadership and leadership for a technological world.
Storer said that the committee wanted to emphasize that as the world changes at a rapid pace
due to technologies, effective leadership is important.
Lankton commented
that there are different kinds of leadership: individual traits, community
leadership, corporate leadership, technological leadership, and scientific
leadership. He asked what kind of leadership this
proposal is aimed at. Storer said that students should have a good
understanding of the different kinds of leadership. They will gain a better
understanding of leadership.
Snyder said that
there are a lot of questions about the proposal that should be addressed before
it is brought to the Senate. Sloan said that it has already been brought to the
Senate. She said that Bob Warrington and Senator Storer are the point people on
this. Suggestions should be sent to them with a copy to Max Seel as Provost.
k.
Proposal 19-09: “Ph.D. Program in Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors” presented by the
Curricular Policy Committee
Keen This proposal is not in fact presented
by the Curricular Policy Committee; it was added to the agenda by the Senate
officers. We received this proposal on March 16, and we have not had time to
work on it yet. The proposal has been around for 14 months, but the committee
has only had it for two weeks. It will not get out of the committee by Friday.
Baltensperger, chair
of Cognitive and Learning Sciences, said that this proposal was approved by the
department in November 2007, by the college in January or February of 2008, by
the Graduate Faculty Council in March or April 2008, and then it disappeared.
It has been thoroughly vetted. We know
there are some questions about it. We are available to meet with the committee
to move this along. It would be nice if we would not have to wait until fall to
approve it, two years after it was proposed. This is a PhD proposal that
includes a masters on the way if students wish it, but
we want to market it is a doctoral program because the emphasis we want is on
the development of research expertise in graduate students so we can support
faculty research initiatives. We have benchmarked this program extensively
against every other human factors program in the country. (He passed out
handouts.) The program requires 72 credits in contrast to other doctoral
programs that require 60 credits, but 72 credits is
somewhat toward the low end among benchmarked programs. We have a substantial
number of core courses for the program — 26 credits — because students who go
into human factors tend to come out of psychology or engineering; engineering
majors tend to have no background in psychology, and psychology majors come out
of liberal arts programs and specialize only at the graduate level. We have
clearly identified the resources we need to run this program. We need two
faculty to get the program up and running and a third at some point further
down the road. We need additional space, and some modest library resources.
These are clearly spelled out in the proposal.
Seel said that
clearly we do not have three additional faculty lines for next year. We will be
adding 100 faculty over the next 10 years in the SFHI
program, but we also need to be able to add faculty from time to time in areas
that do not cut across the university. Human factors is a growing area of importance for a
technological university, the interface between humans and technology. It is an
important area for Michigan Tech, and therefore the university should make the
commitment to add the two lines. L. Davis asked about the additional space
requirement. Seel said that space is under discussion. Not all people who will
be affected have been part of the discussion yet, so I would prefer to defer
saying anything about it now. L. Davis said that there is a not insubstantial
space requirement and probably some very hefty new construction or lab
development. Seel observed that this is a good time to apply for lab
development money from NIH from the stimulus package. L. Davis asked if we are
being asked to commit to the program without the resources being in place. Seel
said that the Provost can commit to lines and space. L. Davis asked whether we
have a realistic estimate of the space costs and are you committing to covering
that. Seel said he couldn’t answer right
now but he should be able to answer this question pretty precisely two weeks
from now. Baltensperger asked whether it would it be fair to say that the
administration supports the proposal, and the President wouldn’t sign it
without recognizing that space need. Seel said that’s true, and that even if it
is approved by the board of control there are other levels of approval it must
go through too. Human factors is an important area for Michigan Tech, Seel
said, and he is making a commitment for the two faculty lines and a third if
the program succeeds, as well as for additional graduate students and GTA lines
and the space.
Hamlin asked whether
this proposal is being introduced today and whether we will be able to vote on
it having had it for only 10 days. Sloan said that the substance of the
proposal is on the floor two weeks in advance, so we could vote on it at the
next meeting. She invited Seel to explain the long history of this proposal.
Seel said that he is grateful to the Curricular Policy Committee for acting on
this, and that we’ve had the language
for the proposal for about a year. Keen said that we had it once before, but it
was taken back into the Provost’s office. Sloan said that this seems to be a
promising proposal for Michigan Tech. It has gone through several stages of
vetting already and it was held up through no fault of the department. Holding
it up for another year seems unfortunate. Most of the substance will stay the
same, and we should be flexible enough to be able to vote on it. We can handle
amendments on the floor. Another possibility is that since we have reserved
another meeting date on April 22, if you all feel you need a little more time, if I get a good
faith commitment that we will have a quorum on April 22, we can take it up
then. Seel said that he would be happy to meet with the finance committee and
that he would address the space commitment in two weeks.
Storer said that
there’s been concern that there is no masters proposal, and that students who
come into the program who for various reasons don’t end up completing it need
the safety net of a masters degree. Baltensperger replied that there is a
safety net. There are two situations for which we need a masters
degree: when a student has completed two
years but doesn’t want to go on for a doctoral degree, and when the faculty
decide that a student who has completed two years doesn’t have what it takes to
complete a doctoral degree. So we have included a masters
degree as a fall back. Amato-Henderson said that we checked with the state and
they said that it does not require a separate proposal for a masters
degree, that it could be contained in the same proposal. Storer said that the masters degree should be included in the title.
Baltensperger said that we do not want to recruit or encourage masters students. Sloan said that including the masters in
the title seems to be the sense of the Senate.
Baltensperger addressed the question as to whether
they have the faculty to cover the courses by passing out a sample two-year
teaching schedule which shows that they can offer all the courses in the
program annually except for two that would alternate with one another. Snyder
asked whether they are not going to admit students to the program until they
have the two new faculty. Baltensperger said that they
would be recruiting faculty next year and start the program in fall 2010. Sloan
said that they need to clarify the timeline before the April 15 meeting.
Keen noted that
Senators should receive one or two additional proposals from the Curricular Policy Committee
for the April 15 meeting agenda. One asks that the provost’s office will
maintain a listing of all degrees offered at Michigan Tech and another proposes
a name change of a degree in Humanities.
Sloan reminded
everyone that the point person on the business proposals is Darrell Radson; on
double majors, Keen; on the minor in hydrogen technology, Jason Keith and Tim
Shultz; on the minor in leadership, Warrington, Storer, and Seel; on the PhD in
human factors, Baltensperger, Seely, and Seel. Keen should be copied on all of
these.
10.
Adjournment
President Sloan adjourned the meeting at 7:24
pm.
Respectfully submitted
By Marilyn Cooper
Secretary of the University Senate