Minutes of the December faculty senate meeting

Members present: Tim Steckline, Charles Lamb, Barb Chrisman, Don Chastain, Randalei Ellis, Steve Babbitt, John Glover, Tom Hills and Rob Schurrer. Student representative: Scott Biggin.

The meeting was called to order by President Steckline. The agenda was approved with the addition of items related to response from board office on institutional requirements; mathematics requirement; and sabbatical leaves. The reading of the minutes for Nov. 17^th meeting will be delayed to January meeting. Larry Tentinger was proxy for Rena Faye Norby.

Kathleen Parrow was present at the meeting to address issues of the revision of the student opinion survey document. She serves on the committee for revision along with Holly Downing, Gary Meek, Sandee Schamber, and Priscilla Romkema. Kathleen Parrow indicated that the survey is not done for faculty development purposes, it is done to evaluate how you do your job. Many of the same issues discussed with Downing were discussed with Parrow. The revision process will continue through the spring semester. Some faculty are concerned with the number of categories for evaluation—whether it should be 4 or 5 plus no opinion. The order of the categories was also at issue. We will hear further from the committee as the revision continues.

Under the issue of the institutional requirements approved by the faculty senate, it was explained that Tad Perry and the people at the regents office are not happy with the proposal. They want wellness reduced to two hours and they are questioning the need for more social science and humanities requirements.

It was announced that Tim Martinez has resigned his faculty senate position due to class schedule conflicts. A replacement will come from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Discussion was held related to the three-hour college algebra requirement now in place as a part of the new general-education requirements. As of July 1999, new students are no longer required to take the lab for this course for one-hour credit. Students under old general-education requirements may continue taking the one-hour lab as a requirement.

Sabbatical leave requests were received from Susan Hove-Pabst and Steve Parker. Susan Hove-Pabst proposes study in Italy for the year and Steve Parker wishes to study and perform in Germany for one semester. John Glover moved the approval of the requests. Second by Steve Babbitt. Vote was positive.

The issue of plagiarism on campus is an academic concern. Faculty senate will pursue this issue during spring semester. Information on Web site for checking content of papers was presented. This site is found at www.TurnItIn.com

Meeting adjourned at 4:55 p.m.

Respectfully submitted. Barb Chrisman, recording secretary

Minutes of the November faculty senate meeting

Members present: Tim Steckline, Charles Lamb, Rob Schurrer, Rena Faye Norby, Randalei Ellis, Don Chastain, Tom Hills, Scott Biggin (student senate representative).

Others present: Lyle Cook, Holly Downing, Allen Godsell (student senate).

The meeting was called to order by President Steckline. The agenda was approved with the exception that discussion of the plagiarism policy was delayed until the December meeting.

Minutes of the Nov. 3, 1999, meeting were approved, with the exception of a typographical error, as moved by Schurrer and seconded by Chastain.

Lyle Cook discussed several issues that might be of interest to the faculty. The institutional general-education requirements submitted by BHSU will be considered by the academic affairs council Nov. 18 and will be on the BOR agenda for their December meeting (along with general education proposals from SDSU and USD).

Assessing technology literacy is an important consideration for all of the regental institutions. BHSU has embedded the assessment of tech. lit. in specific courses within each major (as opposed to a universal tech. lit, course or a standardized test), so faculty must address that assessment explicitly in the syllabi for those courses. Norby asked what the goal for technology literacy is, and what is driving the urgency of this issue. There is a perception in state government that South Dakota graduates are technologically illiterate, thus unsuitable for the workplace. Hills commented that this emphasis on technology can produce positive results (Governor's Awards, TTL workshops, etc.), and faculty should be encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities available.

Each of the regental institutions need to submit the number of students in remedial courses to the governor for possible compensation. An immediate issue is how BHSU defines "remedial".

Chastain asked about the proposal for an associate degree in network administration that was recently submitted by BHSU. While nothing has been decided by the BOR, some of their actions suggest BHSU will not be their choice for a home for this degree. Chastain mentioned that some of his advisees are looking at other institutions to attend because of the indecision and delay in instituting this program.

The current BOR funding formula and its ongoing impact on BHSU was discussed. BH will lose money on the access for SD residents' criterion, but that should be offset by gains we have made as a result of enrollment increases. Our retention is better than the national average (>53% of freshmen) for public schools of our size, so we are doing well there. Several senate members questioned whether BH was being out-recruited by other South Dakota institutions. There seems to be a lack of direction or organization in recruiting for better South Dakota students. An example of this was the lack of a presence of the enrollment center at the recent South Dakota Supreme Court session at BHSU and at the honors band workshop at BHSU. This is partly due to the lack of money

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Steckline asked whether registration would be annual or semiannual in the future. Cook stated that BHSU will be instituting telephone registration in the spring, and that should result in year-round registration soon.

Steckline and Chastain asked Cook about the possibility of a central advising office. Cook was not opposed to the idea, but suggested it should be a faculty-generated proposal. Several senators raised concerns with centralized advising, including: faculty losing contact or impact on their students, the difficulty of steering undeclared majors and whether there was a clear problem with the current system that would be addressed by this approach. Schurrer mentioned that advising would be easier if faculty could access student records through Datatel.Cook mentioned that this was promised by Datatel but is not yet available on any campus in the system along with multi-institutional screens.

Cook concluded his discussion with brief comments regarding summer plans for BHSU. He said TTL workshops will probably continue for another three years, and that the majority of summer school courses are being offered in the second and third sessions because of problems with students securing financial assistance and difficulties with processing for the records office during the first session.

Holly Downing distributed a revised student opinion survey to be evaluated by the senate and the faculty prior to instituting it campus-wide. The purpose of the revision is to standardize the format across colleges and the proposed changes include a simplification of the demographics section and the elimination of a “neither agree nor disagree” response to the questions. Schurrer asked why the committee did not adopt the model from Kansas State University that recommends at least 5-7 available responses. Discussion concerned several of the specific questions and how a standard survey could account for the unique environment of different courses. Downing responded that the committee felt this was the most “workable” evaluation and would like to adopt it for the spring 2000 semester. Hills recommended that senators should submit the revised survey to their constituents for comments.

Steckline recommended several candidates for marshal at the December commencement, Howard Perry and Darlene Schwartz were unanimously approved. Schurrer moved, Lamb seconded.

The meeting was adjourned at 5 p.m. by President Steckline.

Submitted by Charles Lamb, secretary pro temp

*The Enrollment Center has indicated that an information table was staffed by them during the Supreme Court visit. The Enrollment Center also said that they usually staff an information table during the Honor Band Program each year.