Minutes102298

JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY COUNCIL

Minutes No. 1 1998-99
Thursday, October 22, 1998

I. CALL TO ORDER, ATTENDANCE, MINUTES: The James Madison University Council met on Thursday, October 22, 1998, at 4:00 p.m. in Taylor 306, with Dr. Linwood Rose, President, presiding.

PRESENT: Dr. Ralph Alberico, Dr. A. Jerry Benson, Dr. Dorothy Boyd-Rush, Mr. Blair Brown, Dr. Barbara Castello, Dr. James Couch, Mr. David Eton (representing Dr. Douglas Brown), Mr. Tim Emry, Dr. Joan Frederick, Dr. Elizabeth Garbrah-Aidoo, Dr. Matthew Gilley, Dr. Arthur Hamilton, Dr. Archer Harris, Mr. Collin Lee, Mr. Don Moore, Mr. Geoff Polglase, Dr. Charles Reynolds, Dr. Mark Warner, Ms. Cammie Weston, and Dr. Richard Whitman.

ABSENT: Ms. Amy Edwards, Dr. John Gilje, Dr. Linda Cabe Halpern, Mr. Charles King, Dr. Dorn Peterson, and Dr. Robert Scott.

II. ELECTION OF COUNCIL SECRETARY: 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. Warner seconded by Dr. Benson, Ms. Donna Burch was appointed secretary to the Council for 1998-99.

III. COMMISSION/COUNCIL REPORTS:

Undergraduate Curriculum Council:

Dr. Joan Frederick, chairperson, reported that the Undergraduate Curriculum Council had not met and therefore had no report.

Graduate Council:

Dr. Dorothy Boyd-Rush, Chairperson, presented the following report:

The Graduate Council met two times (April and September) since the last University Council meeting. The following actions were approved.

Ten faculty members were given graduate faculty status. Several of these were handled administratively during the summer as the Graduate Council does not meet and authorized the graduate dean to handle routine actions.
Several course changes were approved in Speech-Language Pathology, Public Administration, Geographic Information Center, Music, Technical & Scientific Communication and Psychology.
Program changes were approved in Speech-Language Pathology in which already approved courses were changed from elective to required status. This expands the scope of the program without increasing the 43-graduate-credit hours required for the degree. In Public Administration, changes were made which allow students to seek specialization within the program areas and take advantage of other graduate offerings in Psychology, Management, Computer Information Systems/ Operations Management, Health Administration, Technical and Scientific Communication, Adult Education/Human Resource Development, etc. The program continues to require 42-graduate-credit hours of course work and internship. In-service students or students with appropriate undergraduate preparation may have some requirements waived; but in no case, may a student complete less than 30 graduate credit hours, exclusive of internship.
Open discussion on the Graduate Assistantship policy changes was held. Despite the magnitude of the changes involved, it is now fully operational. Many helpful suggestions were made by the Graduate Council for the future.

Commission on Student Services:

Dr. Mark Warner, chairperson, reported that the Commission on Student Services had not met and therefore had no report.

Commission on Community:

Dr. Mark Warner, chairperson, reported that the Commission on Community had not met and therefore had no report.

IV. REPORT OF THE FACULTY SENATE

Dr. Archer Harris, Speaker of the Faculty Senate, presented the following report:

The 1998-1999 Faculty Senate officers and committee chairs are as follows:

Dr. J. Archer Harris, Speaker

Dr. Joan Frederick, Speaker Pro-Tempore

Dr. Elizabeth Ihle, Faculty Marshal

Dr. Carter Lyons, Treasurer

Dr. Bill O'Meara, Secretary

Dr. James Leary, Chair, Academic Policies

Dr. Kirk Elwood, Chair, Faculty Concerns

Mr. Glenn Smith, Chair, Student Relations

Dr. Greg Versen, Chair, Reconciliation

General Education Survey
Last spring, the Faculty Senate initiated an effort to conduct a survey of the faculty on perceptions of the General Education program. The Senate was pleased to be able to work with Dr. Halpern and the General Education Council in formulating the questions that appeared on the survey. The survey consisted of eight questions. The first five called for multiple choice responses. All eight provided for comments from faculty. The results of the survey can be found on the WEB at http://www.jmu.edu/facultysenate/year/1997-1998/sendocs.

V. REPORT OF THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION

Mr. Tim Emry, SGA President, presented the following report:

The SGA has gotten off to a very quick start this year, and we have an abundance of enthusiasm throughout the organization. Several of the more important and relevant items they are working on are:

SGA recently passed a Bill of Opinion regarding the plus/minus grading change. The bill has two Be It Resolved clauses:

BE IT RESOLVED The Department of Academic Affairs reconsider the application of the new grading system, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED The Department of Academic Affairs consult and inform the student body prior to applying changes to the grading system at James Madison University.

This bill was overwhelmingly supported. It was passed 61-0-3 in Senate and passed 3-1 in Executive Committee. This is obviously that the student body and the SGA feels very strongly about and I would like to see that we could all sit down together and see if we can work anything out, or at least gain some understanding from each other. While I realize that last year's SGA is also to blame for the students not being adequately informed, I feel like we cannot take full responsibility.

Last year SGA passed a Bill of Opinion that stated that the students wanted to have Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day be an observed holiday for the University. This is something that the student body, myself included, is still very resolute in supporting. I do understand, however, that we have rules for the number of days we can have off per semester. Thus, I have a proposal that would keep the amount of days that we are in class at the current level.

I assert that thanks to the new Student Success Center, the paper trail that students have to chase the first week of class is much less. I would move that we begin classes each semester on Monday, rather than Tuesday. That would allow us to take the second Monday off each semester, Labor Day and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It seems that the Monday we get off at the start of each semester is less used for preparing to start the new semester, and used more as another day to party. I feel that if we held worthy events and did enough advertising, we would encourage students to stay on campus for the King Holiday. If faculty offered incentives for students to stay and participate in the activities, we could almost guarantee that, for the most part, the Holiday would not be used as an extended weekend. Obviously this is something that cannot be decided immediately and should be well researched. I am committed to see this endeavor through the long haul and I would like to be included on any discussions or meetings regarding the topic.

On Tuesday, October 13 Senate passed a Bill of Opinion that stated:

BE IT RESOLVED That the JMU SGA endorse the addition of a Hindi language class to the curriculum of JMU in order to encourage Indian students to learn their native language and the student body to be more aware of the Indian culture.

This bill was passed by a vote of 46-4-6 in Senate. However, the bill was tabled by the Executive Council by a vote of 2-1. The members who tabled the bill felt that there was not enough research done in regards to the bill. The writer of the bill plans to talk to more people and present her research to us. I expect that we will take the bill off the table and pass it within the next week.

It is clear that these are three issues that the students and SGA are very interested in. I would like to see us establish some formal way of sitting down and discussing these bills with the appropriate bodies and people. These bills will be in vein and worthless to both the students and the University if we are not able to adequately communicate to each other. I think that in the past, SGA has done a negligible job of following up and communicating. I am committed this year to extending and improving the lines of communication.

VI. REPORT OF THE HONOR COUNCIL
Mr. Blair Brown, Honor Council President, explained the following information:

Case Update-To date, we have received notification of one case. The case was resolved under the new option of informal resolution between faculty and student.

Honor Code Changes-We are operating under the provisions of the revised system beginning this fall. The two main changes involve informal resolution between faculty and student, and multiple-sanction penalties ranging from reduced grades on assignment to expulsion. There are other changes in the system, which can be found in detail on our new website at www.jmu.edu/honor.
Honor Council News

We are officially under the jurisdiction of Academic Affairs working with Dr. Douglas Brown and Dr. Teresa Gonzalez. We are pleased to have their advice and support on policy issues involving the Honor Council.

A meeting is pending of the Honor Advisory Board to discuss the goals of the Honor Council for this year. This year's chair is Dr. Raymond Ramquist. Dr. Ramquist also chaired the HAB last year, and we look forward to his return.

Honor Awareness Week is the week of October 19-23. Our main goals is education concerning the new changes and to solicit faculty and student input of its effectiveness.

Honor Council President, Blair Brown, presented elements of the new system October 12, 1998 to Academic Council.

VII. REPORT OF UNIVERSITY PROGRAM BOARD
Ms. Amy Edwards, Executive Chair, was not present during the meeting; however she had forwarded to the chair's office the following update on UPB:

On Monday October 5, 1998 the UPB Executive Board held an information forum for all student leaders, administration, and academic divisions. This time was used to introduce all board members to the JMU community and make them aware of our services we can provide for them. We also debuted our new graphic animation introduction for the movies in Grafton-Stovall. For any information concerning the topics covered at this event, please contact our director of Public Relations and Marketing, Eunice Calcaterra at x7822.

UPB sent thirteen representatives to the regional NACA (National Association of Campus Activities) conference in Winston-Salem, NC. Due to his phenomenal commitment our UPB Coordinator, Chris Stup, was nominated for NACA's "Best New Professional" award. Dave Pascual, our Director of Multimedia and Information Services, also entered a web design competition and was awarded first place for the UPB web page. We encourage you to take a look at our web page at www.jmu.edu/orgs/upb.

A list of our upcoming programs and the dates is listed below. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

October 30 - Talent Jam '98
November 17 - MTV Village Area
November 17 - Third Eye Blind with Eve 6
November 19 - Spike Lee
January 17 - Kweisi Mfume for the Martin Luther King Day celebration

VIII. OTHER DISCUSSION

Electronic Meetings

Dr. Rose announced that unless anyone objected, the Council would meet electronically unless there are action items on the agenda. This proved to be effective and time saving for everyone last year. Therefore the December 3^rd meeting will be done electronically. The procedure will be: Reports will be sent from the commission/committee chairs to Ms. Burch, secretary to the Council, two weeks before the scheduled meeting. For this first time she will e-mail you to let you know that they are available for your review. You will need to review these minutes and send Ms. Burch (burchde) an e-mail message by 5:00 p.m. on the day of the meeting stating that you have done so. If she does not hear from you, then you are counted as absent.
If anyone has any concerns or questions about this process, please let me know.

Centennial Commission

For the past few years, University Council has had a small number of items brought before this body for approval. It is time to examine the role of the commissions/committees in the decision-making process on campus. I will soon be announcing the formation of a Centennial Commission. One of the charges to that body will be to examine and recommend those programs and processes which will determine the future direction of our academic and university programs. As a result this group will recommend to the President the future role of all commissions, including University Council.

IX. ADJOURNMENT:

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 4:18 p.m.

Linwood H. Rose, President

Donna E. Burch, Secretary