11/09/07

A report from Baker University President Pat Long regarding the Board of Trustees retreat held in October highlighted Tuesday’s faculty senate meeting.

“I appreciated her willingness to come and meet with us,” Faculty Senate Vice Chair Martha Harris said. “The communication flow between the trustees and faculty is important, and she wanted us to be aware of that.”

Long reported on possible changes discussed by the BOT, all of which students will benefit from.

“I think she made it clear that her priorities are for the students,” Harris said.

New business included a motion from the nominating committee, which nominates faculty to serve on all of Baker’s committees and runs elections. The committee proposed that its chair, who was not previously present at faculty senate meetings, sit in during meetings. The committee also wanted to reduce its number of members from six to five so it would be equal to other committees.

The Program Evaluation and Outcomes Assessment committee brought forth a motion regarding standing committee membership. Chair of PEOA Marc Carter said the committee oversees the assessment at Baker in general education and assists individual departments and programs with assessments.

“Assessment is just part of the process whereby we check to make sure we’re doing what we say we’re doing,” he said. “Are we teaching students the things we say we’re teaching them? Think of it as ‘getting evidence for student learning.'”

PEOA currently allows all programs and departments representation on PEOA, which led to the proposed motion.

“In the past this was very important as Baker (College of Arts and Sciences) really started to think about student learning in a serious way,” Carter said. “But we’ve come a long way, and the committee isn’t doing as much as it used to. So we’ve decided to change the structure of it.”

Carter proposed to lower the number of members on PEOA from over 25 to five.

The motions discussed were carried over and are to be voted on at the December faculty senate meeting.

The Educational Programs Committee submitted a report asking that Designing Educational Programs for the Parish be deleted from the course catalog. With a unanimous vote, the course was deleted.

“The philosophy and religion department petitioned EPC to remove the course from the catalog that was tied to a subfield in their department,” Chair of EPC Bruce Anderson said. “The deletion does not mean that the course will never be taught again. It simply means that it will not be offered at this time.”

Next month’s faculty senate meeting will bring decisions for the motions discussed and look at the graduate list for the December commencement.