UNIVERSITY COUNCIL
Minutes No. 1
2001-2002
Thursday, October 25, 2001
I. CALL TO ORDER AND ATTENDANCE: The James Madison University Council
met on Thursday, October 25, 2001,
in Taylor 306, with Dr. Linwood
Rose, President, presiding.
PRESENT: Mr. Ralph Alberico, Dr. Violet Allain (for Dr. Linda
Halpern), Dr. Doug Brown, Dr. Stephanie Chisolm, Mr. Brandon Durflinger, Ms.
Rachel Franco, Dr. John Gilje, Ms. Dona Gilliam, Dr. Art Hamilton, Ms. Donna
Harper, Mr. Charles King, Ms. Meghann McCroskey, Mr. Dave Mills, Dr. Bill
O'Meara, Dr. James Ruff, Dr. Craig Shealy, Dr. Anne Stewart, Dr. William
Walker, and Dr. Richard Whitman.
ABSENT: Dr. Jerry Benson, Dr. David Brakke, Dr. Barbara
Castello, Mr. Charles Crosson, Dr. Robert Reid, Dr. Robert Scott, and Dr. Mark
Warner.
II. ELECTION OF SECRETARY
The secretary to University Council must be appointed by Council. Duties of the position include preparing and
electronically posting the agenda for members of Council, recording attendance,
and recording and electronically posting copies of the minutes.
On motion of Dr. Dick Whitman and seconded by Dr. Violet Allain, Ms.
Donna Burch was appointed secretary to the Council for 2001-2002.
III. COMMISSION/COUNCIL REPORTS:
Committee on Academic Programs:
This committee had not met.
Graduate Council:
Dr. William Walker, Chair, presented
the following report. The first meeting was October 11, 2001.
·
Eighteen faculty members were given graduate
faculty status, five were given adjunct instructor status and ten were given
graduate instructor status.
·
Eight course numbering changes
·
One course prefix change
·
Nine minor course description changes
·
One cross-listed course was deleted
·
One prerequisite addition
·
One minor course change
·
Three graduate program changes
·
One minor course title change
·
Seven courses were approved for a credit hour
requirement change
Old Business: None
New Business: Included the following:
·
New
policies regarding council membership and the criteria for a voting quorum were
introduced and passed by the council.
·
Discussion
concerning the "walking early" policy. Dr. Walker indicated he
would investigate options. Some points of the discussion included the
issue of graduate students walking in May commencement needs
to be studied more carefully, e.g. students may receive an “F” in a last
semester course (after walking) or not pass Comps. The possibility of having a
separate graduation ceremony through the College of Graduate and Professional
Programs or by each individual college was also discussed. Dr. Walker will
investigate these options and report back to the council.
·
Discussion
regarding the Graduate faculty approval policy included the possibility of
streamlining the reapplication process perhaps using the PAC’s review process,
and the need to revisit the criteria for graduate faculty approval.
·
Dr.
Walker notified graduate council that there was no specific Graduate School policy concerning graduate assistants having
“dual employment” other than they cannot work over 40 hours per week.
Discretion in allowing GA’s to assume too many hours was advised.
·
Notification
that the College of Graduate and Professional Programs would be
emphasizing the offering of certificate programs. Concerns were raised in
regard to other, existing certificate programs, and SACS requirements.
·
The
issue of CommonWealth Classroom usage was raised. GAPP will be investigating
the fiscal efficiency of the classroom.
·
Council
members voted on to a newly formed university wide Academic Programs Committee
were announced.
·
Dr.
Walker indicated he will attempt to organize a university-wide graduate fair
for JMU undergraduate students in the near future.
Commission on Community:
Dr. Anne Stewart gave the following
report.
The Commission on Community met October 18, 2001. The committee’s primary charge for 2001-2002 is to conduct an
assessment of the university climate. The
assessment is to include faculty, staff, and students. The committee was informed of the charge and
discussed factors to consider in completing this important work. Factors to consider included:
·
delineating
the scope of work
·
identifying
existing diversity initiatives and data sources
·
specifying
meaningful outcomes
·
contacting
relevant constituencies
·
procuring
sufficient support to conduct the work in a high quality manner
·
using
appropriate internal resources and expertise
·
hiring
an external consultant
The committee members strongly
recommended requesting a more detailed description of the charge from the
Office of the President. An ambitious timeline was presented and
strategies for identifying a competent consultant were discussed. Committee membership was reviewed in light of
the charge. The committee members named
possible candidates for affiliation with the committee.
The committee identified preliminary data
collection activities to begin and specific tasks were assigned to members.
The committee
members would like to seek support for establishing and maintaining a website
with information about diversity activities and organizations. It was stated that this site would also
inform the external consultant about the status of diversity at JMU.
Activities to Date:
A recommendation from the previous year was to establish on-going connections
with other groups conducting diversity-related activities. Therefore, the
Commission chair met periodically with representatives of the Office of
Affirmative Action, the Diversity Initiatives Team, and the Psychology
Diversity Committee. As a result, the Commission on Community
co-sponsored two events in September.
·
The 2nd
Annual Community Connections Reception was held in conjunction with Franklin
Street Gallery on September 28, 2001. Nearly 80 JMU and Harrisonburg/ Rockingham community members
attended. The Office of the President financially supported the
event. The Commission would like to consider accepting responsibility for
co-hosting the event on an annual basis.
·
A
workshop titled, The End of All ‘ISM’s’ was held on September 21 and 28,
2001. Subcommittees with special interests have been created from this
activity. The subcommittees have agreed to inform the Commission about
their activities and will explore opportunities to work collaboratively with
Commission members.
IV. REPORT OF THE
FACULTY SENATE
Dr. William O'Meara presented the
following report:
The
Board of Visitors has approved the new Faculty Senate Constitution which was
proposed by the Senate in spring, 2001, and which the faculty voted to approve
it with 92.5% "yes" vote as opposed to those voting "no"
(385 votes out of 416).
The
Senate also approved unanimously the following Bylaw in our September, 2001
meeting:
Section 2. Conduct of Senate Business
E. (Entirely New)
Proposed
constitutional amendments require readings of the proposed amendment at two
regularly scheduled or specially called meetings of the senate. Discussion at a faculty senate meeting may
only take place after the full text of the amendment has been electronically
distributed at least two weeks before the second reading to all members of the
faculty. The senate must endorse
proposed amendments by a two-thirds majority vote of the full membership of the
senate before submitting the amendment to the full faculty for a vote.
Summer
Activities and Senate Meetings in September and October
During the
summer the Faculty Senate Steering Committee and the Chair of the Faculty
Senate met with Dr. Brown and discussed the following issues:
Summer
Salaries: Dr. Brown and Mr. David Eton had a substantial
discussion with the Faculty Senate about summer salaries at the April 26
meeting of the Senate. During the summer,
the Speaker of the Senate completed a survey of summer pay practices at our
peer institutions. The survey shows that
many of our peer institutions have better pay scales than we do for summer pay. Since job offers are being turned down by
applicants at JMU because they are getting better summer pay elsewhere, for
example, 33 1/3 %, we have submitted the results of the survey to Dr. Brown and
the deans for their examination of ways to improve our summer pay scale. The results of the survey are available
at: http://facultysenate.jmu.edu/peer_summer_pay.pdf
Survey
on Merit Pay: The Speaker met in the summer with Dr. Brown to
review various items, including the faculty dissatisfaction with the merit pay
process. We also talked about these
matters in late August with Dr. Brown in our Steering committee meeting and
agreed that a survey of faculty on merit pay would be very useful to his office. The Speaker has asked the Faculty Concerns
Committee to do a survey this fall of all faculty about their views on merit
pay, cost of living raises, percentage and fixed dollar amount raises, and
salary compression.
Survey on Factors Affecting
Retirement: Dr. Brown and the Speaker discussed during the
summer an article on retirement in the July/August issue of Trusteeship. This article pointed out that 44.4 percent of
all tenured faculty members were ages 55 and older in 1999 and that 16.9
percent of all tenured faculty members plan to retire within the next five
years, with another 22.3 percent planning to retire within the next six to ten
years. Dr. Brown and the Speaker agreed
that the Faculty Concerns Committee should develop a survey of faculty on why
faculty choose to retire and on negative and positive factors affecting their
decisions to retire.
Faculty
Morale Survey: In spring the Senate completed a survey on
faculty morale. The Speaker discussed
the statistical results with the Academic Council during the summer. The Senate Steering Committee has been
meeting with Dr. Brown and developing summaries of written comments from the
faculty. We are writing a report, listing
the five major concerns with supporting examples for the university as a whole
and for each college. The Senate
Steering Committee will meet with Dr. Brown and the deans in late October or
early November to review the report and to discuss positive recommendations for
responding to the concerns of faculty.
V. REPORT
OF THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION
Mr. Dave Mills, SGA President,
distributed his report to all Council members. Copy attached to this Report.
VI. REPORT OF
THE HONOR COUNCIL
Ms. Meghann McCroskey, Honor
Council President, presented the following report..
Case Update: As of the Fall 2001 Semester
5 Formal Resolutions
12 Informal Resolutions
New Members: The
Honor Council accepted nine new student representatives last month. Three
have recently dropped due to unseen time commitments
elsewhere. The representatives were evaluated on a written
application and an interview. The representatives have participated in
the “New Representative Program,” which was designed to give guidance and
training of the duties and intricacies of the Honor System. These new
representatives are not fully educated on the Honor Code and Council and are
now available to sit on hearings.
Honor Council
Video: This past summer we produced a 7-minute
long video. It entails information regarding the honor code, honor
council and hearing procedures. Since the beginning of this fall semester
the honor council has presented the video to about 40 classrooms. We have
received positive responses from both the students and faculty. The Honor
Council is available and trained to give presentations to both students and
faculty.
Honor Advisory Board:
The
Honor Advisory Board met October 8. At that meeting we introduced new
members, discussed and watched the video and talked about a code change. A
possible code change would be to have some wording that would state that a
student can not drop a course.
Meeting with Dr.
Rose: Meghann McCroskey, Honor Council President, and Ben Mallory,
Honor Council Vice President, met with Dr. Rose. At this meeting we
discussed the video and how to use it most efficiently, dorm presentations, and
replacing Honor Code plaques in the classrooms.
VII. REPORT OF UPB
Ms. Rachel Franco, presented
the following report.
The University Program Board, within its
first few months of the semester, has already programmed several events for the
JMU students, faculty and community.
Several of these programs have been in collaboration with other
organizations, such as Coretta Scott King and G.O.L.D. All of our events strive to entertain and
educate JMU, and we hope to do so for the remainder of the semester.
One of the most significant additions to our
Executive Board this year has been the Director of Arts Events, who is
responsible for bringing a better awareness of the fine arts to JMU life. The director of this committee, Katherine
McDonald, helped UPB kick off the year on September 5th with her
event, “Birdland: A Selection of Jazz and Wildlife Drawings by artist Frank
DuVal.” The Dolley Madison Room of
Taylor Hall was converted into a small art gallery, where Mr. DuVal was able to
display his watercolor paintings for art lovers to see.
Along with the art gallery idea, Ms. McDonald
has been working on creating “E-Motion: an online gallery” that will be linked
off of the UPB website. Each month, an
artist from JMU of the community will be selected by the Arts Events committee
to have his or her artwork featured on the website.
Following the Arts Events program, on
September 6th, UPB was able to bring Shenandoah Shakespeare Express
to perform, “As You Like It” on the quad.
The University Program Board was able to attract families from the
community, students, and faculty alike to this event.
One of our most surprising, yet successful
events took place on October 3rd.
The University Program Board brought its first musical act, Blues
Traveler a band known for its blues/rock style.
With less than a week to organize and advertise this event, UPB was
still able to fill Wilson up with eager and excited fans.
Three of our events have also been
co-sponsored events. On September 21st,
UPB worked with Student Organization Services (SOS) in organizing the first
late night event of the year. The
movies, Austin Powers 1 and 2 were shown on a large screen late that night on
the quad. Despite the cold, 300 or so
students came out to enjoy the movies.
Late night events are trying to be incorporated here at JMU as an
alternative to partying during the weekends.
Our most successful event, Coretta Scott
King, the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke about the legacy of her
late husband in Wilson Hall on October 17th. The University Program Board sponsored this
event, along with the Center for Multicultural and International Student
Services, Black Student Alliance, and NAACP. Wilson Hall was filled to
capacity, as audience members listened to Mrs. King speak of Martin Luther King
Jr., and of the social changes that have been overcome since her time, and of
the changes that still need to be made.
On October 22nd in the PC Ballroom,
G.O.L.D, the government officials’ legislative discussion took place. Sponsored with the March of Dimes, G.O.L.D
was an awareness discussion about the March of Dimes, and what students here at
JMU can do.
With the variety of programs the University
Program Board is able to bring to our campus, we consistently aim in providing
the JMU community with the experience of diverse and enlightening events.
FUTURE MEETINGS
Dr.
Rose then addressed the Council members explaining the process for future
meetings. A motion was made and passed by the Council several years ago
recommending that University Council meetings be held electronically unless
someone requested an actual in-person meeting. So unless there is one
requested, all future meetings for the 2001-2002 year will be held
electronically.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business, the
meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.
NOTE: The
next meeting is scheduled to meet electronically Thursday, November 29,
2001.
Linwood H. Rose, President
Donna E. Burch,
Secretary
For questions, please contact burchde@jmu.edu.
