Baker University’s endowment situation raised many questions from members present at Tuesday’s Baker University Faculty Senate meeting.

In hopes of working on budget issues, Baker is looking at spending only $500,000 from the endowment during the 2010-2011 school year.

“From both Dr. Long and the Trustee presentation, fighting about the financial state of the school is a good thing,” Susan Emel, professor of mass media and communication, said.

At the meeting, Faculty Senate unanimously passed the motion to improve the endorsement of the Ad HOC committee to evaluate interterm.

“I think it is time to make interterm more in line in its intended mission for students,” Ran Sivron, associate professor of physics, said.

Faculty senate does not feel ready to create the actual committee, but wants to make sure to have student involvement in the evaluation process. Questions were raised over what department areas should be represented.

In further business, Rand Ziegler, vice president and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, presented the Academic Peer Review, APR, committee’s plan to help cut costs within departments.

The plan is to present reports to inform the various academic departments at Baker how they rank among one another. Report cards will be given to look at and to examine expansion ideas.

An argument was made that this type of report card will not be looking at the departments as objective numbers. Also, the question arose as to how growth will be defined.

As an example of what the APR committee ultimately wants, Joe Watson, assistant professor of mass media and communication, used the mass media department’s plan to add a public relations track as an example of what growth means.

“APR has two goals of wanting to find efficient ways to tighten budgets and explore growth options,” Watson said. “This is more of a way to reflect over what can be done. There is a lot of potential in public relations.”

Changes to the mass media department were accepted and new courses in the areas of digital media and public relations passed. <br/>Along with these changes was the addition of a new minor, church service and leadership.Along with these changes was the addition of a new minor, church service and leadership.
Along with these changes was the addition of a new minor, church service and leadership.

Voting on the 2011-2012 calendar passed with changes made that both the fall and spring semesters will start on a Wednesday and end on a Tuesday, with the fall semester being one day longer.