I.

Call of the Meeting to Order 3:32pm by President Spurgeon

II.

Informal Statements and Proposals

A.   Foundations of Excellence --  Report by Keith Pickus, Associate Provost

1. WSU is looking at issues of enrollment, recruitment, meeting our goal of 2% growth per year.  A task force was appointed to look at strategic planning for enrollment management, which includes retention and graduation rates.  John Gardner has developed strategies on retention of 1^st year students.  WSU is one of 19 universities participating in a program called the Foundations of Excellence.
2. Foundations of Excellence is a guided self study, not prescriptive.  It looks at how we interact with our new students.  WSU has about 2800 new students each year, and half of them are transfer students.  This program will allow us to evaluate our interaction with new and transfer students. 
3. There are nine dimensions or themes that we will assess in the transition from High School to College.  These are stated as inspirational.  The way the process is organized is around steering committees for each dimension, with 2 co-chairs for each.  There will be at least four faculty members on each committee, as well as unclassified professionals and students.  We need to get the range of input, and a survey was submitted to faculty with an excellent response rate.
4. Dimension committees are meeting now.  The goal is by May1st to have a working plan to improve the way we interact with our first year students.
5. Senate discussion:
   1. A question was asked about whether this will look at students who come to WSU to take one course or one year but move on to other places.  Provost Miller stated that those students are seen as retentions if they go on and graduate somewhere else.  But students who do leave WSU but do not graduate elsewhere are not counted in our retention numbers.  Provost Miller did not see WSU as a service university in the same way that community colleges might provide.
   2. There will be a survey for students beginning November 5^th. Pickus encouraged us to encourage students to be involved.  There will be a $10 book store gift certificate for participation.
   3. The student data will be looked at as well as NESSY data.
   4. Pickus discussed a conceptual student success course or orientation that may be put in place in the future

III.

Approval of the Minutes -- Monday, September 22, 2008 --  Approved
                                                Monday, October 13, 2008  --  Approved

IV.

President's Report:

1.      President Spurgeon said the Executive Committee had discussed whether the recent approval of the changes to the Tenure & Promotion policy should be submitted to a vote at a General Faculty Meeting.  He displayed Article 3 – Section 1 of the faculty senate Constitution which covers general faculty meetings.  Section 5 states that action by the faculty senate is final but there is a procedure for faculty to request the Executive Committee to put something on the agenda for a general faculty meeting.  After a brief discussion it was agreed that a notice should be posted in WSU Today about the faculty senate vote, with a reference to the procedure in Section 5 of the constitution.  A recommendation was also made to state a date for when the proposal will be submitted to the Provost’s office for approval.

2.      President Spurgeon summarized a discussion the Council of Faculty Senate Presidents had with the Kansas Board of Regents at the October regents’ meeting.  The senate presidents proposed a tuition waiver system, one which would not involve any cost to the university.  He displayed the regents’ policy on tuition assistance, which requires actual dollars to be expended for tuition assistance for faculty dependents.  There is also a statute which requires the same thing, and currently tuition waivers must be granted by the legislature on a case-by-case basis.  It would require a statutory change to allow tuition waivers, and one possibility is for the legislature to grant that authority to the regents.  He said the regents seemed receptive to this proposal, but there was some concern about how this would be received by the legislature. 

3.      The Faculty Senate Holiday party will be held on December 8^th in Ablah library at the normal time for senate meetings.  It will be in the lower level in the special collections area.   

V

Committee Reports:

A.  Rules Committee --  Deborah Soles, chair

 Letters have gone out for folks to serve on the grievance committee.

VI.

Old Business: none

VII.

New Business: 

A.  Proposed revisions to the Faculty Senate Election Rules  -- 

The Executive Committee proposed some revisions to the senate election rules.  These changes are intended simply to track the language in the Faculty Senate Constitution with respect to eligibility of faculty to serve in the senate, and to make some technical changes to the nominating process.  It was noted that there are some typos in the proposal, which will be corrected.  The senate approved the changes unanimously

B.  “Discussion of C- for courses which require a C”

 The context of this discussion is that the Provost’s office indicated there needs to be clarification about whether a “C-“grade will be treated as a C for courses and programs which require a C or better.  The same issue applies for a B-.  Academic Affairs would like to take the position that the default rule would be to treat a C- as a C, though a department/college can provide otherwise in the catalog.  Initially, the Executive Committee believed that this might require senate action through a policy change, but it now appears that for several reasons all that is needed is to inform departments and colleges that a C- will be interpreted as a C unless they provide information otherwise in the catalog.  First, under the current grading system a student who does C- work receives a C.  Second, the plus/minus proposal approved last year indicates that a C- is in the range that denotes satisfactory performance.  Senator Soles explained that she had looked in the catalog and the general education requirements do not require a C for individual courses.  She could find very few instances of such requirements in the catalog, and concluded that this is an issue for the colleges.

There was discussion about whether a student who received too many C- grades would still be able to graduate by meeting the GPA requirements.  It was pointed out that that is currently the case.  Several senators noted that their departments currently have different minimum grade requirements than other programs, even in that college.  Provost Miller said we need to be able to have a default to a letter grade. 

Student Government President Zach Gearhart was asked about the students’ position on this issue.  He said the students are not supportive of plus/minus grading, but now that it has been approved, the students would appreciate any clarification on what the transfer or equivalencies will be, and support the position that a C- is a C.

The senate agrees that this is a department/college issue and the main thing is to make sure that those areas are aware of the issue so they can determine whether to go with the default interpretation or modify their policies to provide otherwise.

AS MAY ARISE:   NONE

Meeting Adjourned at 4:40pm

Respectfully Submitted

Brien Bolin

Secretary