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