Minutes
Faculty Senate Meeting
February 23, 2011
Professor Riddick called the meeting to order at 2:22 P.M.
Present: Professors Leigh Riddick, Lyn Stallings, Jim Girard, Naomi Baron, Phil Brenner, Al
Cheh, Joe Dent, Larry Engel, Brian Forst, Clement Ho, Alan Isaac, Phil Jacoby, Jonathan
Loesberg, Jie Lu, Stacey Marien, Sarah Menke-Fish, Mary Mintz, Kathryn Montgomery, Dan
Mullins, Lenny Steinhorn, Provost Scott Bass and Dean Phyllis Peres
Welcome and Introduction, Leigh Riddick
Professor Riddick called the meeting to order and welcomed everyone to the meeting.
Chair’s Report
Professor Riddick informed the Senators that several of the candidates for the Deans position in
KSB will be visiting the campus within the next week.
Provost Report
Provost Bass announced that SIS will be doing Airport interviews and candidates will be coming
for campus visits within a couple of weeks.
Review of the Undergraduate Academic Rules and Regulations, Leigh Riddick
Professor Riddick welcomed the visitors in the audience to the meeting, and rather than make
them wait while the Senate dealt with other business, she invited them to speak first. Since the
visitors interests was in speaking about the proposed changes to the Academic Rules and
Regulations, she briefly summarized the mandate and process that had taken place to arrive at the
current changes that have been recommended by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Academic Rules
and Regulations.
She first recognized Nate Bronstein, President, Student Government, who wished to make
comments. Mr. Bronstein (current junior in the School of Public Affairs) thanked the Senate for
allowing him to visit and also thanked his fellow students for coming to the meeting and
supporting student representation. He stated that the outpouring of interest both online and in
person from students expressing their concerns on the issues presented in the revisions to the
regulations was overwhelming. Mr. Bronstein stated that for students to come to a meeting at
2:00 P.M. is difficult and for that he was very grateful for the turn out. He stated that he is not
going to speak at this time on actual issues but he will give an overall summery of the items of
concern that the visiting students will address: (1) Pass/Fail changes, (2) new limitations on the
wait list procedures, (3) freshman forgiveness, and (4) shortening of the add/drop period. He
Faculty Senate • February 23 Minutes
Page 1 of 4
stated that he wanted to let his fellow students speak at this time and noted that this was not a
moment of confrontation but collaboration. He thanked the Ad Hoc Committee and the Senate
for allowing students the opportunity to participate in the discussion.
Professor Riddick thanked the students for their collaboration as well as for their attendance. She
then introduced Eric Goldstein, Director of Academic Affairs, Student Government Association,
who would speak on behalf of the students. She also thanked Mr. Goldstein for catching some
missing items that had been left out of the draft document being reviewed.
Eric Goldstein thanked Professor Riddick. He began by saying that he had already expressed his
concerns with the add/drop issue last week so he will not repeat those concerns today. He then
expressed concerns about three areas:
General Education, Pass/Fail policies: Currently there are no limits to the number of pass/fail
General Education classes that can be taken as pass/fail. The new proposal limits that number to
zero. He believes that there is a middle ground with this issue. He stated that the students agree
that taking all of your General Education classes pass/fail is not appropriate, but the students feel
that the purpose of taking some of these of classes pass/fail is to be able to explore areas that you
might not otherwise explore and with less risk to damaging a student’s GPA. Students feel this is
very advantageous and would like to see a possible change that would allow two pass/fail
opportunities in one General Education track but not in the same area.
Course Repeat Policy: Currently, there is not a course repeat policy in place, so course repeats are
essentially unlimited; the proposed policy is to limit students to repeat up to three courses. In each
case they would be allowed to repeat these courses twice each for a total of taking each course
three times. Mr. Goldstein noted that putting a limit on the number of courses you can repeat to
three for your entire college career takes away the ability to use this policy to its maximum benefit.
Some students may want to take a series of challenging courses, and in some cases grades matter a
great deal for graduate and professional school applications.
Waitlist: Limiting a student to one section per class on the waitlist does not allow students to
achieve the actual goals they are seeking, which is entry into a section that fits into the rest of their
schedule. He would like to see a process set up to allow students to have the ability to put in a
selection criteria request that would define a specific time to work with one’s schedule.
Professor Riddick thanked Eric Goldstein and called Tim McBride to the microphone for
comments.
Tim McBride (current sophomore in the School of Public Affairs) stated that even though there
was a lot of discussion about the add/drop period at last week’s meeting, there has been an
outpouring of opinion and opposition to the proposed changes to the add/drop period since the
Senate meeting. He presented to all senators a resolution unanimously passed by the
undergraduate Student Government Association which recommends that the add/drop period
remain at 10 business days.
The next student speaker was Roger Deming, representing students who are U.S. military service
veterans at American University. He said that this specific body of students has many challenges
that they face daily. These include families, kids and jobs. He feels that limiting the add/drop
Faculty Senate • February 23 Minutes
Page 2 of 4
period to seven days is going to hurt veterans as they try to manage their schedules and could
possibly cause them to not be able to continue their education and lose their veterans’ funding.
Professor Riddick thanked all the student visitors for their input and for taking the time to
express their concerns. She then informed the Senate that they would now turn to finishing the
review of the faculty manual and she turned the meeting over to Professor Stallings.
Review of the Faculty Manual, Lyn Stallings
Professor Stallings began the review of the Faculty Manual to address the concerns for clarity
express in the prior Senate meeting on the issue of Termination of Faculty when a program is
eliminated. (See memorandum to all faculty dated February 24, 2011, “Completion of Second
Review of Faculty Manual part II and amendment to section 9.c.”) CHECK MEMO DATE
The faculty Senate VOTED on the motion to accept the 4th proposal, the policy on Termination
of Faculty positions as a result of Program Elimination. The vote was 15 in favor, 2 opposed,
and 2 abstain.
With this motion, Professor Stallings and the Senators completed the final review by the Faculty
Senate of the Faculty Manual. She also informed the senate of the remaining timeline for other
approvals and all the people that will be reviewing the Manual before the final campus votes are
taken. Professor Stallings will provide a further update in two weeks.
Professor Riddick announced that the next item on the agenda was proposed changes to the
Senate By-Laws. The By-Laws are currently in the Academic Rules and Regulations. The
proposal is to remove them from the Academic Rules and Regulations, which apply to students,
and to instead create a new document related to faculty governance procedures to be called the
“Rules of the Faculty Senate.” Additional changes are being proposed to content in the current
By-Laws. These will be reviewed next week. Professor Riddick asked the Senators to focus
first on issues related to Senate committees in their review to prepare for the next Senate
meeting; this focus is important since committee elections will be coming up in March, and it
would be helpful to have the committee mandates and procedures reviewed by that time.
Professor Riddick introduced Professor Stallings to summarize the changes being considered.
She gave an overview of the items for review which included: (1) adding a dedicated seat for
the multiyear faculty to the senate, and (2) allowing any elected committee member to serve on
the Senate, for those committees whose chairs currently fill the Senate position for the committee
(this would provide flexibility). Professor Stallings also stated that language was added to the
proposed changes to strengthen the voice of the senate, to clarify the number of members on the
Senate, and to clarify the language that states that the DAA is an Ex officio member on the
Senate. She also stated that scheduling committee meetings is already a concern for
committees, due to faculty schedules varying over faculty members. Also, faculty time is
valuable. One recommendation to deal with these two issues would be to make some
committees smaller. These are some of the items that will be revised in the upcoming, line by
line review of the by-laws. She asked the Senate members to please review the document for
next week’s meeting.
Faculty Senate • February 23 Minutes
Page 3 of 4
Continued Review of the Undergraduate Regulations, Leigh Riddick
Professor Riddick informed the Senators that in the interest of the students present we would
begin our review of the Academic Rules and Regulations by addressing the items about which
the students had expressed concern: the waitlist, add/drop, pass/fail policies for general
education, course repeat policy and freshman forgiveness.
Professor Riddick began with the pass/fail topic. While the senate had already voted in favor of
changing the policy to seven days in last week’s meeting, all student comments had not been
considered, so Professor Riddick raised the issue for additional consideration. (The vote in the
last meeting: 5 in favor, 8 opposed and 1 abstention to change the policy to seven days.)
Professor Montgomery asked the senate to open the floor for discussion on the topic of the
add/drop period.
Professor Riddick opened the floor for discussion. She noted the students concern earlier in the
meeting concerning the need to be able to shop around for the appropriate class, and that leaving
the add/drop period at 10 days would provide additional flexibility for that process.
Professor Stallings wanted to know if this was a resource issue and Professor Riddick replied no.
Professor Brenner said that the he spoke with the SIS Graduate committee council and they felt
that the two weeks is very necessary when scheduling internships.
Professor Steinhorn feels that there were a lot of issues with shortening the add/drop policy and
that it can cause a lot of harmful repercussions for various students.
Professor Riddick recognized Jessie Boeding, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs in
Kogod. Ms. Boeding said that her concern is for classes such as Literature, Language, calculus
and statistics classes that are required for many of the majors offered. Missing up to 4 or more
classes with the longer add/drop period puts student in a hard position to catch up and this is not
in the student’s best interest.
Professor Riddick and other members of the senate continued to discuss the add/drop policy. She
ended the meeting by informing the members of the senate that language would be drafted to
reflect some of the suggested changes for review at the next meeting.
Professor Riddick asked the senators if there were any issues for the good of the order.
Meeting adjourned at 4:45 P.M.
These minutes were drafted by Lura Graham, Staff Assistant to the Faculty Senate, based on recordings
taken during the meeting and then proofed by Prof. Riddick. Due to the heavy workload of the Senate
during the AY 2010-11, these minutes were not reviewed by the Senate as a whole.
Faculty Senate • February 23 Minutes
Page 4 of 4