MINUTES (REVISED) SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY SENATE March 9 and March 16, 1999 Hepner Hall 221 2:00 Pm
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MINUTES (REVISED) SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY SENATE March 9 and March 16, 1999 Hepner Hall 221 2:00 pm. Members Present: Academic Senate: Boddy, DuFault, Whitney Administrators: Hartung for Weber, Marlin, Emerich for Nowak, Cobb for Kelly, Cobble, Scott Arts and Letters: Toombs for Colwill, Washington for Del Castillo, Farber, Genovese, Herman, Heymann, Huckle, Johns, Kornfeld, Little, Rogers, Rosenstein, Sweedler-Brown, Wheeler, Wood, Zimmerman Associated Students: Bradley, Tinajero, Vazquez, Grad Rep Business Administration: Do, Ely, Raafat, Wright California Faculty Association: Schulze Education: Chamley, Chizhik, Ingmanson, Strom for Morey , G.Thompson Emeritus Faculty: Marosz Engineering: Pierucci, Harris for Szeto, Craig for L. Thompson Health and Human Services: Alcaraz, Cheng, Finnegan, Heineken, Samimi Imperial Valley Campus: Sabath Lecturer Faculty: Christensen, Khwaja, Shackelford Library: Perkins, Wilson Professional Studies and Fine Arts: Beck, Broom, Carlson, Caves, Chambers, Dozier, Lamke, Nakamura, Orth [Absent: Kern] Sciences: Barnett, Girty for Berry, Bryson, Dexter, Dorman, Frey, Hornbeck, Marshall, Papin, Roeder, Short [Absent: Glembotski, Pozos] Staff: Aguilar, Cademy, Dowdy, Mungie University Services: Hayes 1. Agenda (Wright) MSP Wright, Short. Approve Agenda with addition of the date October 13, 1998 as the date the Senate had approved the IAA modifications to be voted on for incorporation in the Policy File by C&BL. 2. Minutes (Wright) MSP Wright, Short. Approve Minutes of February 9, 1999. 3. Announcements (Huckle) ∞ Correspondence from President Weber: A memo dated 3/2/99 regarding actions by the Senate at the February 9, 1999 approved the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Fifth Report, and the Ad-Hoc Parking Committee Revision to Senate Policy File regarding Parking at SDSU. The President took no action on the item related to the review of the SDSU Foundation. He will forward the matter to the SDSU Foundation Board for consideration at its May 1999 meeting. ∞ Faculty Merit Increase Procedures. The discussion of FMI procedures is presented in the February 23 & 25, 1999 SEC minutes. Because the Tentative Agreement between the CFA and CSU was not ratified, the administration will have the responsibility for developing whatever procedures are appropriate under any imposed contract. Appreciation was expressed to those who participated in the development of the procedures. ∞ Response to Statewide Academic Senate regarding Cornerstones. The following letter was sent to ASCSU President Dinielli from Chair Huckle regarding the Cornerstones Implementation Plan. “In your request that SDSU respond to the revised Cornerstones Implementation proposal, you asked us to consider our topmost academic priorities and give some idea when other initiatives should be implemented. At this time, The Senate at San Diego State University has not considered our topmost academic priorities in terms of the Cornerstones framework. Our highest priority, as stated strongly in our response to the initial draft, is that campus autonomy and local shared governance should be paramount in the implementation of the Cornerstones principles. We find the request to state our academic priorities at variance with the approach we urged in our earlier report. In that intensive review, our central theme was that there should not be a single, centralized implementation plan to carry out the Cornerstones principles. Trustees and the central administration obviously need to provide the funds for campus operations, including funding related to campus steps flowing from Cornerstones principles. In that limited sense, there is a role for a central administration implementation plan. We see the request of the statewide Academic Senate moving toward a centralized implementation plan that is not consistent with our local response, its own motion approved in January, and at least some of the language that David Spence included in his second draft that addressed partially some of the issues of campus autonomy and shared governance that the campus senates and the statewide senate raised. Minutes - March 9 and 16, 1999 Page 2 San Diego State University Senate We urge you to support us in our concern for protecting the autonomy of each campus in decisions affecting shared governance and faculty decision-making tailored to the specific needs of our educational programs, students and local communities. In our diversity lies our great strength.” ∞ Institute for Teaching and Learning Summer Workshop, SLO July 13-16, 1999. The Senate has been asked by the Provost to nominate two people to attend a summer workshop on “Improving Information Competence in Any Discipline.” Interested faculty should contact the Senate office no later than March 15, 1999. 4. University Administration (Marlin) ∞ Enrollment Management. On March 1 letters of acceptance and denial for Fall 1999 were sent thanks to the efforts of the Ad Hoc Enrollment Management Committee co-chaired by William Boyd of Financial Aid and Assoc. VP Singer. We were able to implement this as it was intended. There are some important follow-up issues. We have been very careful to monitor ethnic diversity. As we look now at various ethnic subgroups, there may be some changes in ethnic diversity as a whole. Almost 20% of students did not report their ethnicity. This has made monitoring problematic. To assure that we maintain the ethnic diversity, we are doing targeted outreach to various students groups and targeted recruitment. ∞ Open House, Saturday, March 13. Participation in this event can take several forms--telepolling, informational meetings, etc. Senators were invited and encouraged to participate. ∞ The Future of Enrollment Management. Some of the issues we need to be thinking about regarding enrollment management include moving toward having one SDSU application. Right now, we have a two-step process. There is the CSU application, then there is a supplemental application. We need one machine readable application form. The second issue is in regards to use of the Eligibility Index. This issue will involve AP&P and the Senate. Presently, we weigh the high school GPA heavily. Grade inflation is not unique to universities, and we have students who have 4.0 GPA’s and 700 on their SAT scores. There are also some procedural issues. Having an enrollment fee or a deposit would allow us to more accurately predict the number of students who will attend. We may want to go to a waiting list concept. Another issue that will fall more to AP&P and ultimately to the Senate is implementing the Senate’s principle that we not inadvertently distort the various graduate/undergraduate spread of students among the colleges. ∞ A table given to the Senate showed the Current Federal Funding Received by Universities. SDSU is ranked at 128 out of 200 in Sciences and Engineering placing us at the forefront of CSU campuses in terms of funding. ∞ World Peace Week sponsored by the Fred J. Hansen Institute for World Peace will be April 12-18, 1999. Panelists include Dipak K. Gupta, and NPR’s Mike Shuster among others. Discussion : Senator Whitney: Regarding enrollment management and the 1996-97 model, I know we are in agreement about not staying there, but where do we plan to go? Provost Marlin: We need to consider what we want to do with the University. I am certain we don’t want to lock into 1996-97. Senator Whitney: Do you think it is time Senate committees explore where the University should be going? Provost Marlin: Yes. Chair Huckle: AP&P has been assigned the task of reviewing the enrollment management process. Senator Chambers: When we first started talking about enrollment management, one of the issues that came up was looking at program growth. When do we start looking at who will have the opportunity to grow? Provost Marlin: That is something within the idea of how we do our distribution. I am speaking more of global categories, upper/lower division, but within each of those there is distribution by college , departments, programs and so forth. We have not reached that level of sophistication save for the College of Engineering where we know we have the capacity for growth. Senator Tinajero: Many students have commented that they would not be here if we had implemented the current admissions criteria. Will changing the EI mean looking more at SAT scores? Provost Marlin: Looking at the data for students, we might be able to come up with a better method than we have now. Our continuation rate is starting to creep up. Part of that is anxiety of students fearing that if they drop out they might not be readmitted. Senator Johns: I am concerned about the correlation between socio-economic levels and test scores. Are you considering other kinds of measures, taking these into account. Provost Marlin: There is a correlation between socio-economic backgrounds and test scores. I don’t have an answer yet. Clearly, we are using the simplistic method because it’s easy to measure when you are dealing with 29,000 applications. Senator Herman: You mentioned that 20% of incoming students are not indicating their ethnicity. Is this a large increase? Provost Marlin: Yes, it has nearly doubled Senator Wood: I have my doubts on test scores measuring achievement. Please review the study I conducted on GRE scores and achievement and Professor Robinson-Zanartu’s study on test scores. Her conclusion is that test scores are not very good predictors for success. Also, given your concern about GPA’s, perhaps we should Minutes - March 9 and 16, 1999 Page 3 San Diego State University Senate investigate the averages of students coming into SDSU against how they do here before making any changes along that line. 4.1 Faculty Trustee Harold Goldwhite and ASCSU President Gene Dinielli. Professor Harold Goldwhite is a professor of Chemistry at CSULA. He has been there since 1962. He has also been very active in academic government, serving as department chair, chair of the Cal State LA Academic Senate, member of the State Board of Directors of CFA, and member of the National Council of the AAUP.