President Sipes also noted that Dr. Thomas has sent the Committee Book. Committees will meet soon. President Sipes pointed out that the book contains a method to evaluate committee participation. Some items in the book are highlighted in yellow, indicating that committees still need members. Those from APC who volunteered for Academic Appeals (Nancy Capriles and Caroline Gibson) have not been added yet. There is also a new committee (Facilities Management). Faculty Affairs Committee is also new and will work with the University President. Several members of Senate noted the overlap between this committee and that which is already done by PCC. There was also discussion of the membership of the committee: two senators and five faculty at large. A senator suggested that four of the slots should be filled by members of standing Senate committees and the other three could be faculty at large. This way there would be a direct line of communication between Senate and the President's Office.
Since some committees need to have members elected, such as Faculty Appeals, President Sipes noted that Senate needs a Nominating Committee. Ken Andries agreed to chair. Ashok Kumar also agreed to serve.
President Sipes reported that President Thompson said faculty did not have to wait for the final version of the Strategic Plan to be printed and permitted her to send it out immediately.
President Sipes reminded everyone that textbook orders needed to be in by Tuesday, 11/15. Only a third of courses have been reported so far. A senator asked if students have given feedback on ebooks. President Sipes asked Jennifer Miles, who replied that new course surveys might offer a way to gather student feedback. The new IDEA system will have a polling option, and she reminded Senate of the training sessions for the system.
A senator asked about open sources. President Sipes responded that they still need to be noted on book order forms.
Chair Moffett shared that at its last meeting APC focused on three main issues. One was reviewing the Attendance Policy as it stands in the current catalogue. This policy was introduced in the 2015-2016 catalogue but is already out of date (it references CAPS) and was never passed through the regular channels (ie, APC and Senate). The committee is working on a policy that takes the best parts of this policy and integrates them with the previous one.
APC also looked at a draft of a proposal from CC that would address the problem of how transfer credits relate to IGS courses. Chair Andries of CC has also been working on a realignment of the Liberal Studies Core, and that document was also reviewed by APC to offer feedback to CC.
APC is working on an action item to address the issue that students who had taken remedial courses can no longer repeat them to improve their GPAs. APC is working to clarify how the proposed policy would work with Math courses. Chair Andries pointed out that the policy on limiting repeats is a problem, especially where Math is concerned, and suggested APC consider that issue in its proposal.