University Faculty Senate

The Senate Newsletter
December 1 , 2004

 

The other Senate Officers and I attended the annual CIC Faculty Governance Conference in November. Senate leaders from most of the CIC institutions were present. These meetings have shown to me how very different are faculty senates and their leaders even within our relatively homogeneous group of peer universities. Some are large (like ours), and some are quite small. Some have rather significant budgets and staff, and others (where the senate does not handle course and curricular matters) have almost none. Some play major roles in university governance, and some seem to be rather insignificant. Of course, most talk at these meetings tends to revolve around comparisons. My impression is that Penn State’s system comes off rather well as a model of serious and effective faculty governance.

The Senate Office has been receiving many questions about revisions to the GI requirement that were passed by the Senate last spring and approved by the President. Beginning with students enrolling in summer 2005, the three-credit GI requirement will be replaced with a requirement of three credits in United States Cultures (US) and three credits in International Cultures (IL). The following points should answer most of the questions we receive about the transition to this new requirement:

  • The GI designation will cease to exist at the end of spring semester 2005. Students enrolled before then may subsequently use any course carrying the US or IL designation to fulfill their GI requirement. Students who enroll beginning summer 2005 will be subject to the new requirement.
  • At the present time, 120 courses have been designated as US courses, 145 have been designated as IL courses, and 82 courses have been designated as both US and IL courses. These courses include all courses that previously carried the GI designation. The list of US and IL courses is updated twice each month and is available on the Web at http://www.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/gened/gi.html.
  • An expedited process is in place for designating existing courses (i.e., courses in place as of June 23, 2004) that were never GI certified as US and/or IL. A form to initiate this process is available at:

http://www.senate.psu.edu/scca/US_IL_Request_Form.html

The Curricular Affairs Committee encourages departments to have their courses with 25% or more diversity content designated by January 31, 2005. The expedited process will end on December 16, 2005.

Any questions or concerns regarding the transition to these new requirements can be addressed to Douglas K. Brown, Chair, Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs, at: dkb5@psu.edu.



The next Senate meeting is December 7. The third meeting of the year is typically light, as by this time most committee business remaining from the previous year has been completed but the new work of the Senate is still typically in committees. This year is no exception. The following are among the items on next week’s agenda:

  • Remarks by Provost Erickson followed by questions from Senators. President Spanier cannot attend Tuesday’s meeting.
  • A revision to Senate Policy 83-80, which places limits on source and time for acquiring credit prior to graduation (legislative). This revision would extend to deans additional authority to grant exceptions to this policy.
  • A report on how the Information Technology Fee (charged to all students) was used during FY 2003-2004 (informational).
  • A report by the Director of Computer and Network Security on measures to protect University computing systems from Internet security breaches (informational). The full PowerPoint presentation of this report is not in the Agenda, but we hope to post it to the Senate’s Web site.
  • Summary of Fall 2004 visits by Senate officers’ to non-University Park campuses (informational). The report summarizes the topics discussed during our visits to seven campuses.
  • A report on the status of construction projects at University Park (informational).

The agenda for next week’s meeting is posted on the Senate’s Web site at http://www.senate.psu.edu/agenda/index.html and the minutes (The Senate Record) will be posted at http://www.senate.psu.edu/record/index.html approximately three weeks after the meeting. Members of the University community are invited to attend this meeting or any Senate meeting, and we have seats reserved for this purpose.  Any member of the University community who is not a member of the Senate may request to speak on any item of business already before the Senate.  Requests must be made to the Chair, through the Executive Secretary of the Senate, at least four calendar days before the Senate meeting.

For information on how to submit major, minor, option or course proposals, the Guide to Curricular Procedures is available at http://www.senate.psu.edu/curriculum_resources/guide/contents.html and the Senate Curriculum Report is available at http://www.senate.psu.edu/curriculum_resources/bluesheet/bluex.html.

Current Committee Business (a snippet)

The officers have heard a number of complaints about the quality and accessibility of essential University information on the Web. The University is relying increasingly on its Web space to publish authoritative information (about degree programs, for example), and our measures to ensure the quality of that information are inadequate – at least according to the complaints. At their meeting next Tuesday, the Committee on Computing and Information Systems will be hearing about this subject from the Director of Graduate Enrollment Services and a senior advisor in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. If you would like to sound off on this topic, I encourage you to contact the committee chair, Lee Coraor ( ldc1@psu.edu).

Kim C. Steiner
Chair, University Faculty Senate
steiner@psu.edu