Rebuilt HTML — PaddleOCR-VL (Baidu)

Alhuani, Abdallah Nursing Tierra Freeman, BSS Mara Merlino, BSS

Griffin, Robert Fine Arts

Senators Ex Officio Members and Guests Present

Amusan, Ibukun Math & Sciences Narayanan Rajendran, Math/Sci

Andries, Ken AFE Tom Webster, AFE

Capriles, Nancy BSS Jim Thornton, LLP

Graham, William Education

Griffis, Bruce Math & Sciences

Grimes, Kristopher AFE

Gyawali, Buddhi at-large

Kumar, Ashok at-large

Landy, Tucker Whitney Young

Liu, Zhanping Computer Science

Ray, Andrew Aquaculture

Moffett, Joe LLP

Ross, Scott Fine Arts

Rye, Reba at-large

Sharma, Rita Math & Sciences

Sipes, Kim at-large

Smith, Peter LLP

Tate, Debbra Library

Tope, Avinash AFE

Ulrich, Stephen PUA,SW,CJ

Wang, Changzheng at-large

Representative still needed from School of Business, 1 from Behavioral & Social Sciences, 1 from Nursing

(Cindy Glass was elected to serve from Behavioral & Social Sciences and will be added to roster)

The eighth meeting of the AY 2015-16 Faculty Senate was called to order at 3:19 pm on Monday, December 14, 2015, Hathaway Hall Room 123. Agenda was approved with modification to move APC to first on the agenda. Faculty Senate minutes of November 30, 2015 were approved with one correction to note approval by unanimous vote of Curriculum Committee’s Action Item to identify a class offered through the “Bridges of Opportunity Training Program” as off-site and thus requiring compliance with off-site regulations.

Committee Chair Moffett presented an Action Item New Policy proposal from the APC that addresses consistency of delivery of online course content at the University. This is the first policy that defines different types of courses, noting who should review online courses and by what process those courses are developed, as well as distinguishing those students who should not take online courses. The proposal calls for a University-wide Distance Education Committee and a Director of Online Programs to Chair the committee. After extensive discussion the proposal was approved unanimously by the Senate, with minor friendly editorial amendments including the inclusion of a Library representative on the committee.

Chair Moffett pointed out that the proposed new position of Director of On-Line Courses will be a quality assurance person who will not be evaluating the course content, which will still be under the purview of the academic units.

President Smith said that the ad hoc committee will look at online class evaluation systems/criteria for on-line courses in recognition of the format differences between on-line and traditional and hybrid classes, such as the classroom observations of traditional courses.

The APC discussed various rationale for Freshmen taking on-line classes and the Senate once again discussed those as well, summarized below:

There was extensive Senate discussion about consideration of curriculum specific appropriate use of hybrid and on-line classes, such as science classes that require a lab performance assessment and capstone research papers. The pros and cons for the practice of recording lectures and posting online as a course supplement was discussed. It is a viable study and review aid, as well as make-up mechanism

for an absence. The downside is tendency of students to miss classes and just view the on-line lecture. Chair Moffett suggested those questions could be addressed by the new Director and Committee.

A Senator pointed out that faculty are the most informed regarding demands of particular classes and how they work best. Therefore, they should be in the chain of review for exception applications. APC had decided that ‘too many cooks’ would be cumbersome.

Senate voted a 10 minute extension for APC.

A Senator said that “for the record”, he disagrees with telling students they cannot take classes. Chair Moffett said that APC considers the proposal a compromise since students can apply for exceptions, including those in all on-line program. The administration must understand, in that case, that certain 100 and 200 level liberal studies core classes must have on-line sections scheduled and offered.

There was discussion about SACS requirements that relate to on-line classes, especially for advertised all on-line degree programs.

Student advising was briefly discusses and it was noted that faculty from Math/Science asked and received approval to advise and register their majors.

Time was extended another 5 minutes.

A Senator asked if the Chair positions are indeed 9 month, with supplemental pay for summer work. Chairperson Freeman reported that they were here all summer in 2015.

The proposal was passed by voice vote.

Chair Andries reported that the Curriculum Committee did not meet. However, via email discussions they recommend changes to FSCC#15/16-05 Action Item and Tracking Documents due to discrepancies that the administration caught. The changes were approved by voice vote.

He also reminded all present that any action items for Fall 2016 implementation must be to the committee by the first meeting in March.

Chair Ross reported that the BASC has two pending action items that are shelved right now in attempts to access a full line-item university budget. One is a public records request for a copy of the budget and the other is an Action Item calling for the publication of a detailed budget, archived in the KSU library and published on the KSU web-site. It appears that a line-item budget does indeed not even exist and that the Board of Regents approved the summarized budget the BASC received from Greg Rush without looking at the details of how the money is spent.

A Senator confirmed that one of the summarized budgets we saw is indeed archived in the KSU Library and that seems to adhere, in one interpretation, to the standards. However, some other universities publish detailed budgets. KSU's budget can be found on-line but not on the KSU website. The State-

Journal has published salaries of KSU employees, which is some of the information we have been trying to attain. The BASC will follow-up on both action items and adjust them accordingly. The committee also discussed the issue of CAPS vs faculty advisement of Freshmen. The consensus is that faculty are best informed and qualified to advise and register students for their specific degrees and a proposal needs to go up to recommend financial compensation if that occurs outside of their 9 month contracts, during summer orientation for example. The Committee will look on this in more detail in the Spring semester and request the PCC to work on it with us. The External Audit should be available in January. The BASC needs to be able to take part in budgetary proceedings earlier in spring and have seats throughout process. While the reported percentage of the total budget on Instruction is up to 23.9%, (from 18%-20%) the total budget is down, Instruction included. It is not clear what the administration classifies as Instruction in the budget and that is another reason we need a line-item budget to review. Funds for Instruction were swept into the University General Account and can only be accessed as approved by President Burse. There continues to be confusion about the deposit of shared health care funds, which is supposed to be retroactive to October 1. A Senator said he has checked and supposedly payroll is in the process of working that out now. Chair Moffett added that possibly we should look at embedding caps advisors in units. NKU has done so in an attempt to address their 2nd worst graduation rate of state universities. They hired consultants who said that advising was their primary problem for graduation. A Senator pointed out that NKU is much larger than KSU and hiring additional staff within units could mean even more staff relative to faculty. Professional Concerns Committee Report: All of the policy procedural problems with the establishment of a viable Post Tenure Review Committee were reiterated. We still have not received a list of the 25 faculty members to be reviewed, a faculty member from a reviewee’s academic unit must be on the committee, yet the committee is limited by policy to 7 members and there are 12 academic units.

The meeting adjourned at 4:24 pm when a quorum was lost.

Minutes Submitted by: Reba Rye, Faculty Senate Secretary