49th Faculty Senate
May 7, 2015 – 3:30 PM
Robert C. Voight Faculty Senate Chambers – 325 Graff Main Hall
Vol. 49, No. 17
I.
Roll Call
a. Present: M. Allen, J. Anderson, C. Angell, K. Beyer, L. Caya, G. Cravins, M. Current, T.
Docan-Morgan, N. Eschenbaum, R. Fowler, T. Gendreau, P. Haried, D. Hart, K. Hunt, S.
Kelly, T. King-Heiden, J. Kirsch, W. Maas, M. Rott, B. Seebach, J. Shanks, K. Terpstra,
B. Shrestha
b. Excused: R. McKelley
II.
Minutes of April 16 and April 30 approved.
III.
Reports:
a. Chancellor (Joe Gow):
i. Chancellor Gow updated the Senate on the status of the state budget, including a
general timeline for meetings of the state’s Joint Finance Committee.
ii. He noted that as the end of the semester approaches, there are a number of
positive things happening on campus (student presentations, new construction,
etc.), and it’s good to see that we are still moving forward.
iii. Chancellor Gow congratulated Provost Macpherson, the new President of
SUNY-Brockport, and AVC Bob Hoar, the new Provost at Montana StateBillings.
b. Provost (Heidi Macpherson):
i. UWL student Erin Ross won an honorable mention in UW-System’s Tenth
Annual Liberal Arts Essay Scholarship Competition.
ii. UWL’s STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) will be
submitting their report soon.
iii. Spring Commencement will be held on Sunday, 5/10/15. Everyone is encouraged
to attend.
iv. The Mentor Mixer will be held on Monday, 5/11/15 in the Art Gallery from 3:305:00 PM.
v. The Second Annual Writing Hunker will be held on 5/18/15 and 5/19/15.
vi. Provost Macpherson expressed appreciation for the support she has received
from UWL.
c. CFO (Bob Hetzel):
i. CFO Hetzel deferred his report due to the information already provided by the
Chancellor and the length of the meeting’s agenda.
d. Student Senate Liaison (Rep. Amy Keel):
i. Rep. Keel noted that the Student Senate had their final meeting of the year last
night (5/6/15). She thanked the Faculty Senate and wished them luck.
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IV.
Approval of May, 2015 Graduates:
a. The list of graduates was approved contingent upon the successful completion of the
requirements for their respective degrees.
V.
Committee By-law Changes:
a. The senate heard a second reading of proposed changes to the General Education
Committee and General Education Assessment Committee By-laws.
b. The changes were unanimously approved, M/S/P.
VI.
Committee on Faculty Committees Report (Marty Allen, Chair):
a. 601 people were eligible for positions on Faculty Senate committees. Of these, 290
people made more than 1000 requests. All but approximately 20 people were
accommodated in some way.
b. The report was unanimously approved, M/S/P.
VII.
IPSE Education Leadership Certificate Program (Pat Markos, Director of Institute for
Professional Studies in Education):
a. If approved, this would be a cohort program in Principalship that would be marketed
across the state. Instruction would occur through a combination of face-to-face, blended,
and online coursework. The program already has buy-in from eight local principals with
doctoral degrees.
b. The motion to move the program forward to HLC for consideration was
unanimously approved, M/S/P.
VIII.
APR Task Force Report (Sandy Grunwald, Chair, and Steve Simpson, Graduate Program
Director):
a. The Task Force was created by the Faculty Senate and the Provost, and was charged with
examining review processes for externally accredited and graduate programs.
b. The Task Force's recommendations are described in their report (available as a
Distributed Document for this Senate meeting). A summary of their recommendations
includes:
i. Use of an 'APR Checklist' for accredited programs that would provide a
supplement to APR rather than an entire, partly duplicated report.
ii. Modification of the report to a 'Self-study rubric', rather than a long narrative.
iii. The creation of a new Graduate APR Committee.
c. Questions:
i. If approved, when would these changes be enacted? These changes would begin
in Fall 2015, although it was acknowledged that there would still be details that
needed to be worked out. Departments with both undergraduate and graduate
programs would be required to submit separate reports.
d. The motion to accept the report from the APR Task Force was unanimously
approved, M/S/P.
IX.
Preferred Name Policy Report (Will Van Roosenbeek, Preferred Name and Pronouns
Committee Chair):
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a. The committee has been working to add a 'preferred name' field to admissions
applications. Although this field exists on current applications, it has not been
implemented.
b. The committee is seeking general approval so they can move forward with their work. It
was noted that HR has been using a preferred name for faculty and staff without
problems for a while now, and the same option should be extended to students.
c. The motion to approve the committee's report was unanimously approved, M/S/P.
X.
Suspend MS in Sport Administration (Mark Gibson, ESS):
a. This program was revived four years ago when a newly-hired ESS faculty member was
interested in doing so. The courses were taught above load, and the faculty member is
now leaving UWL for another university. Once the current cohort has completed their
program this summer, another cohort will not be accepted.
b. The program has sufficient interest and potential, but the department does not currently
have adequate resources.
c. The motion to approve the suspension was unanimously approved, M/S/P.
XI.
Entitlement to Plan MS Degree in Microbiology (Bernadette Taylor, MIC):
a. In 1999, Microbiology split from Biology and formed its own department. Currently,
microbiology graduate students earn a Masters in Biology with a microbiology focus
(such as Clinical Microbiology). The Microbiology Department is also interested in
eventually offering a Professional Masters degree.
b. Offering an MS in microbiology would impact 5-8 students at a time, and would not
affect any of the current collaborations between the MIC and BIO departments.
c. It was noted that this plan received the unanimous support of the Biology Department
d. The motion to allow the Entitlement to Plan was unanimously approved, M/S/P.
XII.
Graduate Education Review Report (Rob Dixon, Chair of Graduate Council and Steve
Simpson, Graduate Program Director):
a. The steering committee for the Graduate Education Review, which consisted of Dixon,
Simpson, and Chris Bakkum, wrote a self-study for a group of external reviewers. These
reviewers were on campus 4/20/15, and their written report is forthcoming.
b. Questions:
i. What does the steering committee see as the current strengths and weaknesses of
Graduate Education at UWL?
1. Concerns: Visibility on campus; coordination of graduate programs;
assistantship packages are not competitive; lack of opportunities to grow
certain programs.
c. Strengths: Good students; national attraction (rather than regional); core faculty who
make graduate studies a priority.
XIII.
Salary Compensation Plan (Mike Tollefson and Adrienne Loh, PTS Committee):
a. PTS presented a Salary Compensation Plan to Faculty Senate on 4/16/15, and concerns
were raised regarding the clarity of certain ideas/definitions. They have addressed these
concerns in the current plan.
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b. The current plan proposes applying half of all monies to an across-the-board salary
increase and reserving the other half for addressing issues of salary inversion and
compression. It includes “what if” scenarios.
c. Discussion:
i. How will this plan affect IAS? Splitting the monies in half will help IAS more
(overall) than an across-the-board increase with no consideration of inversion and
compression.
d. The motion to approve the PTS plan was approved, M/S/P, 1 dissent.
XIV.
Recommendations from the Academic Technology Committee (Dan Grilley, ATC Chair,
and Patty Fairchild, D2L Site Administrator):
a. Two sets of recommendations were made. ATC and ITS are working together to address
both of them:
i. D2L Roles and FERPA Violations: An internal audit of the permissions and
“Roles” individuals can assume in D2L found that the University is out of
compliance with both FERPA guidelines and the Best Practices employed by
other campuses in the UW-System.
ii. Copyright and Sole Ownership Issues: Currently, anyone listed as an Instructor
(including anyone assigned the role of Instructor by the Instructor of Record) is
automatically given copyright access to original materials posted on the site. This
policy does not appear to be widely known, but has the potential to cause legal
issues.
b. The motion to approve the recommendations made by ATC were unanimously
approved, M/S/P.
c. The ATC also brought proposed by-law changes before the Faculty Senate. These
changes are aimed at reaching out to administration, creating more liaising, adding
consultants, and broadening the consultancies as a means of improving the ATC’s ability
to advocate for faculty computing, etc.
d. Discussion:
i. What power does the ATC have? It was suggested that, currently, the committee
is not appropriately powered. It is a newer FS committee, and most of the
members are untenured and/or unpromoted. This observation was given as one of
the reasons for targeting a broader distribution of faculty and consultants.
ii. Are these changes by-law worthy? It was noted that the proposed wording differs
from that describing the membership of most other FS committees; however,
there are some similarities. If the by-law changes are approved, it will be the job
of the Articles and Bylaws Committee to ensure the wording is in line with other
committee by-laws.
iii. Will the addition of more consultants help the issues currently faced by ATC?
This year, there has been greater consultation with ATC before policies have
been distributed campus-wide. These changes that have been brought before
Faculty Senate have been approved in concept by CFO Hetzel and CIO Elhindi.
XV.
Old Business:
XVI. New Business:
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XVII. Adjournment at 5:30 PM
Respectfully submitted,
Janet Kirsch
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