I. At
II. Senate
Members Present: Kit Andrews, Roy Bennett, Brian Caster, Keller Coker, Claire
Ferraris, Maria Fung, Scott Grim, Gudrun Hoobler, Solveig Holmquist, Tom Kelly,
John Rector, Janeanne Rockwell-Kincanon, William
Schoenfeld, Dovie Trevino, Bob Turner, Mark Van Steeter, Zenon Zygmont
Ex-Officio
Member: Darin Silbernagel (for President
Conn)
III. Minutes from last
meeting were approved at
IV. Reports from
the Presidents
A. Senate
President Janeanne
Rockwell-Kincanon started by soliciting input from the Senators about the newly
formed Provost Search Committee. It was brought to the attention of the
Senators that only 7 out of the 12 Divisions at WOU had representatives on the
Provost Search Committee. Since the credibility of this committee would be greatly
enhanced by including representatives from all divisions, a motion to recommend
to President Conn that a representative from each division ought to be
appointed to the committee was proposed. There was a discussion which centered
on the idea that representatives from each division can and would bring both
the divisional and the institutional perspectives to the Provost Search process.
The motion was carried unanimously. Two other suggestions from the Senators
were to have the chair of the Committee Dean Rosselli
come and give a brief report to Faculty Senate, and also have the candidates
for Provost address the Senate.
It
was also reported that the Senate Secretary would compile the discussion on
improving the effectiveness of Faculty Senate into a coherent document, and
then after distributing it the Senators would decide how to proceed.
There was also a suggestion to form a screening committee or an advisory panel in addition to the Search Committee that would ensure wider faculty representation in the search process for the new Provost and help expedite the entire process.
Finally,
there was a reminder that the next meeting of Faculty Senate is scheduled for
January 13th.
B. President
Conn was not present at the meeting. Darin Silbernagel shared WOU's reserves
information with the Senators. On a month to month basis, the university is
forced to spend reserve dollars, and if the tax measure in February succeeds,
we might be able to break even; if it fails, the situation will be very dire.
The
second topic that Mr. Silbernagel addressed was the slight decline in the
number of applications for admission to WOU as compared to last year's.
C. The ASWOU
president Jeremy Quintanilla presented the updated version of the DRAFT of the
Declaration of Shared Communication generated by the students, The document
calls for the formation of a Shared Communication Committee consisting of the
WOU President, the Faculty Senate President, the ASWOU president, the ASWOU
Senate President, the Judicial Administrator for ASWOU, and one representative
for the classified staff and one representative from the Administrative Support
Council. The main purpose of this committee would be to keep the lines of
communication in the WOU community open, yet it would have no real decision-making
capabilities.
There
was a suggestion to include a representative from the faculty union also.
Moreover, the Senators thought that the document needs to address the
effectiveness of the communication and perhaps the Senators need to take the
draft back to their divisions and discuss it in more depth. A motion was
carried unanimously to put the Shared Communication document under Old Business
for the January 13th meeting.
Jeremy
Quintanilla also urged the Senators to let the faculty know that the students
would be very grateful if the required books for the Winter courses (and for
subsequent terms, in general) were posted either on faculty's web pages or on
their doors in the last two weeks of the immediately preceding term.
V. Discussion of
the Effectiveness of the Senate
It
did not occur at this meeting.
VI. Old Business
A. This was
already addressed under IV, C.
B. There was a motion from the floor carried unanimously
to move all the remaining items on today's agenda, except for the Committee on
Committees report, to the next meeting.
VI.
Consideration of New Business
Please see VI, B.
The proposal by the
Economics Department to change from three to four credit classes was
distributed for introduction.
VII. A motion to
adjourn was approved around