Meeting,
Approved 12/6/07
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Members
Present: |
B. Allen,
E. Ametsbichler, C. Anderson, T. Atkins, L. Barnes, R. Bendick-Kier, B. Brown, F. Cardozo-Palaez,
J. Carter, B. Cochran, A. Delaney, B. Douma, L. Dybdal, J. Eglin, D. Erikson,
J. Gannon, J. Glendening, S. Gordon, B. Halfpap, L. Hayes, J. Henry, J.
Herbold, W. Holben, K. James, B. Larson, C. Loisel, J. Lopach, J. Luckowski,
M. Mayer, S. McCann, D. McCrea, M. McHugh, J. McNulty, S. Miller, M. Monsos,
C. Nichols, M. Papanek-Miller, M. Patterson, M. Pershouse, D. Potts, L.
Putnam, B. Reider, T. Seekins, D. |
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Members
Excused |
N.
Bradley-Browning, K. Canty, J. Crepeau, L. Eagle Heart-Thomas, L. Frey, S.
Greymorning, L. Knott, J. Renz, P. Silverman, |
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Members
Absent |
L. Blank,
S. Justman, M. Kupilik, K. Unger |
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Ex-Officio
Present: |
President
Dennison, Registrar Micus, ASUM Vice President Ness |
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Chair Hayes
called the meeting to order at
Communications:
Provost Engstrom:
The graduation lists were presented and approved.
The Provost
appreciates all the hard work taking place regarding general education. He will be meeting with ASCRC after the
holiday to discuss some interdisciplinary ideas.
There is much work needed to update Unit Standards. In some cases unit’s standards are 15 years
old. The Unit Standards Committee is
working on procedures to streamline the process.
Academic Program Review is a constructive process designed to improve
programs. Programs conduct a self-study,
are reviewed by an outside evaluator, Graduate Council (as appropriate), and
Academic Affairs. The program then meets
with Academic Affairs and through discussion establishes action items.
The Board
of Regents is meeting next week and will be discussing several items of
interest to faculty. One is
transferability -there is a perception that students are having difficulty
transferring within the Montana University System and the Regents are
considering a common course numbering system.
This is a controversial practice that has been implemented by other
states. Other topics include aligning
K-12 with the expectations of higher education, math and writing placement
scores, and employee recruitment and retention issues. Your faculty
representatives will be in attendance to join the discussions as will
representatives from Academic Affairs.
Senator
Ametsbichler: How does the new focus on graduate education fit in with these
discussions?
Provost Engstrom: There will be parallel discussions. A focus on graduate education by the larger
campuses will involve higher enrollment of undergraduates at the smaller
campuses and therefore will involve admission standards discussions. The
administration has not yet started to look at the details. They are working on a collaborative strategic
budget initiative for teaching assistants and new programs.
Senator Mayer: Is there any evidence, other than anecdotal
regarding transferability problems?
Provost
Engstrom: Probably not. The fact is that transfer students take a few more
courses on the average to complete their degrees. Common course numbering is a political
solution and would likely not resolve the issue in a practical sense.
Senator
Mayer: This issue is problematic given the huge investment of faculty time
required for little benefit.
Senator
Holben: There should at least be some translation of courses in order to
enforce prerequisites.
Registrar Micus: Prerequisites have not been checked in Banner because
initially there was a bug in the system that would cause it to crash. This has been fixed, but currently no
prerequisites are built into the system.
We hope to have this function working next fall.
Provost
Engstrom: Transferability is not a
non-problem. There are some issues out there.
Fall Enrollment – Recruitment, Retention, and Intervention
Recruitment -Jed
Liston, Assistant Vice President – Enrollment Services
New Freshmen
enrollment (Resident, Nonresident, and WUE Students) overall was even with last year at 1670. There was an upward trend in WUE
students. The capture rate of
The University made an investment to recruit more non-resident students and has
seen some results. However, other
universities are doing the same thing and thus applicant volume is going
down. Faculty contacting top students is
helping the yield (378 Non-resident students enrolled out of 1551 acceptances).
This is the fifth year that freshman GPA has risen. There is an initiative jointly funded by
Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and the Administration to increase applicant
numbers.
New transfer students are in decline.
The biggest concern is the significant decline in non-traditional
students. Non-traditional students are
defined as 25 or older or having been out of school for more than 3 years. The mission of enrollment services is to get
the university the very best students at the volume the institution needs.
Student
Credit Hour Loads- Bill Muse, Associate Vice President- Planning, Budgeting and
Analysis
The detailed
enrollment analysis has been taking place now for three years and has many
components. It is being worked on from
many angles due to the demographic challenge in
Retention
– Registrar Micus
In fall 2005 the University looked hard at retention due to the 69.5%
traditional resident freshmen persistence rate.
Students leaving were in good standing and caused concern. Retention
initiatives resulted in an increase to 72.5%.
Lower division retention is at 73.2% and upper-division at 80.0%.
Non-resident student retention is particularly important. Registration cancellation and late fees have
been moved back reducing the number of cancellations by approximately 200
students. There was a joint effort to contact students and encourage them to
pay before the cutoff.
Implications
We need to continue
to mitigate the declining pool of
Students
who withdraw are surveyed, as are students who enroll and those that accept,
but go elsewhere. This year there were several comments by students that really
wanted to come to
Senator Cochran: Contacting student applicants feels a lot like a cold
call. It would be really helpful to have
some additional information to start a conversation with the potential student.
Jed Liston:
Enrollment Services is working on revamping the system and will be providing
faculty with all the information that has been gathered (test scores, GPA,
general interests) on the potential students.
Senator
Gannon: Are there any plans to address
graduate student recruitment?
Dean
Strobel: Currently we all chip in and try to recruit. If the graduate initiative happens, some
resources will have to go to recruitment efforts. At this point there have not been discussions
to address the issue directly. There are
some services that could be used for recruiting. Recruiting efforts could be targeted to
increase International students.
Bill
Muse: A couple of strategies are being
considered that would improve the University’s ability to attract and enroll
graduate students. One is more and
higher level stipends. Part of the issue is having programs and
faculty.
Jed
Liston: The President has mentioned that
it might be necessary for each program to recruit. Each program or academic unit would get an
allocation and would have a person assigned to recruit the student slots.
Provost
Engstrom: Residency status is another part of the graduate student recruitment
issue. There will be efforts to get the
Board of Regents and the state to consider resident conversion for graduate
students.
Dean
Strobel: The selling point for the state
is that the University needs to be treated as an investment rather than an
expense. The University is engaging in
developing programs that are going to help with economic development of the
state or region.
Jed
Liston: Enrollment of minority new
students is up in every category except in Asian American students. It appears that there are fewer local Asian
American than in previous years.
International student enrollment has had significant growth and there
will be efforts to expand areas of recruitment.
Senator
Uchimoto: Looking to
How does UM’s enrollment issues compare to national
trends?
Bill Muse:
Our peers around the country are also working on retention. In terms of the size of enrollment, array of
programs, and the academic preparedness of incoming freshmen, UM’s profile is about average.
Registrar
Micus: The robust economy and unemployment rate in
Bill
Muse: Many states are faced with the
challenge related to the reduction of state support. Universities are looking
to out-of-state students to replace some of the revenue and are competing via
discounted tuition and selective recruiting.
It is a tough market.
Jed Liston:
UM is a $100,000 education for non-resident students. We are expensive to get to, and have an
expensive cost of living compared to other places. These economic factors are not working in our
favor.
What role
does the
Jed
Liston: Significant. We are capitalizing
on the
Intercollegiate Athletics Report
Jim Lopach, Faculty Athletics Representative, explained that this is an annual
report requested by President Dennison and the Athletic Oversight Board. A hand out was distributed to senators.
Jean Gee, Associate Director,
Intercollegiate Athletics went over the student athletes GPA data.
Student athletes achieve a higher GPA (3.02) compared to the general
student population (2.84). This is to be
expected because student athletes must follow academic progress rules.
The six year graduation rate for student athletes is 67% compared to 42% for
the general student population. The federal graduation rate calculation is
flawed because it does not account for students transferring. UM’s NCAA student
athlete graduation success rate (accounts for students transferring out of the
program) of 72% is slightly below the national average, but above the average
of all Division I schools and the Big Sky Conference. In terms of comparative measures, UM student
athletes are performing well.
The
Academic Progress Rate is a timely measure of the progress of student athletes
through their education. Scholarship
student athletes are assigned four points per year. Athletics receives the points after each
semester that the athletes are retained and eligible. All sports are above the cutoff of 925.
Jim
Lopach: There are approximately 300
student athletes that are checked twice every academic year for
eligibility. Each transcript is reviewed
according to NCAA, Big Sky Conference, and UM’s
academic regulations. Twenty-six
athletes were determined to be ineligible for the reasons listed.
There were 10 rules infractions last year reported to the NCAA and/or the Big
Sky Conference. Most of the violations
were related to recruitment, none were associated with academics. The fourth infraction listed was discovered
by the Internal Audit Office, which oversees Athletics closely.
Jim O’Day,
Director, Intercollegiate Athletics addressed student athlete behavior
problems. Two of the four court cases
have been dismissed. They have started
a random drug testing and a mentoring program.
Athletics just completed a strategic plan where student welfare was
identified as a priority. It will be
looking at fundraising to build a new academic center. Currently there are 10 terminals located
outside the football locker room to service 300 athletes. Also needed are meeting rooms and an
expansion of locker rooms. Parents of potential student athletes are interested
in the spaces their children will be spending most of their time, so these
goals are important for attracting top student athletes. Training facilities are also being reviewed.
The current
budget is $11.5 million. The administration supports the program with $3.5
million dollars. The scholarship account
has reached $2 million and raised $2.5 million through the capital
campaign. Last year $100,000 was awarded
to students, whose eligibility expired, for summer school degree completion
assistance.
The bid was
open two days ago for the 2,000 seat stadium expansion. The revenue from the seats will be of
$25,000. The cost should be paid off
within six years and will allow an accumulation of $1.3 million in ticket
sales. The financing package will allow
$190,000 to be put aside for the bonding of the new interdisciplinary science
building. When completed, the students
will have 700 additional seats for a total of 4,000 stadium seats.
Chair’s Report:
Nominations for the
Faculty Service Award should be submitted to the Faculty Senate Office by
Several committees still need faculty members.
These were specified by Chair Hayes.
ECOS is
suggesting revisions to the Center Policy resulting from its experience in
conducting the reviews for the past five years.
The draft is under new business.
Also under new business is revised catalog language for International
Baccalaureate. Provost Engstrom
requested that ECOS consider a proposal to allow students that complete the IB
to enter as sophomores. ECOS found that the current practice of credit for exam
scores also required review.
After the
visit from Donald McCabe, President Dennison reconsidered the proposed Ethics
Creed and sent another draft to ECOS for consideration. Chair Hayes then met with the President and
discussed ECOS’ recommended revisions, which he agreed upon. This new ‘Ethical Principles of The
University of Montana’ is the result of this process. Faculty will be given the opportunity to
comment on this version via a revised online survey that will be sent to
senators.
Committee Reports:
ASCRC Chair Holly Thompson
The curriculum
consent agenda was approved after discussion regarding the significant changes
to the curriculum from intermediate algebra to calculus.
Professor Hirstein provided some background and summarized the changes in the
math service curriculum. The Board of
Regents mandated that remedial courses not be taught at the four-year
campuses. MATH 100 Intermediate Algebra is considered remedial as it contains material
that should be covered in high school.
Regent’s policy stipulates that students should have three years of math
prior to university. Although the
Regent’s passed this rule, admissions standards were not adjusted, so that
students with ACT scores of 18 were admitted.
This score is really below Math 100, so there was a mismatch between
students’ ability and what was offered.
The new mandate would likely widen this gap, so a taskforce was put
together last spring to work on the issue.
Material from MATH 100 will be moved to MAT 100, a
Two new courses are being added to fill the gap to precalculus:
MATH 111 College Algebra, and MATH
112 Functions and Trigonometry. Then another workgroup talked with various
client departments and discovered that students needed a better foundation in
linear structure and probability prior to statistics. Students continuing with
science and other majors that require calculus have two options. If well
prepared in high school, students can go directly into Precalculus (MATH 121) if not
they should take the two course sequence MATH 111 and 112.
Senator Uchimoto: He is concerned about the
prerequisites of MATH 107, 109, and 117.
Currently the prerequisite is MATH 100.
The proposed change is to a B- or higher in Math 005. This implies that students could fulfill the
University’s math literacy requirement without studying the functions or
relationship beyond linear functions and this would do a great disservice to
non-science students. How would the
prerequisites be enforced?
Professor
Hirstein: One thing this change has
thrust upon us is the necessity of looking at the university’s prerequisite
policies. Until now we have had an
advisory role in terms of prerequisites. Math prerequisites have been assessed
through scores on ACT, SAT or the placement exam.
Holly
Thompson: A number of related issues are currently being considered. The math changes are one issue. Another is the desire by Provost Engstrom to
ensure that students take their math general education requirement early. And Registrar Micus is taking a serious look
at enforcing prerequisites through Banner.
Professor
Hirstein: The Board of Regents is
considering a new policy on remediation next week. The policy indicates that students scoring less
then 22 on the ACT or 540 on the Math section of the SAT will be admitted
provisionally until they meet the required scores. This can be accomplished by retaking the
tests or taking the prerequisite/remedial courses.
Professor
Patterson (Chair of Mathematics): The
current prerequisite on Math 107, 109, and 117 is MATH 100 or an appropriate
score on the placement exam. Students were failing MATH 100 and still taking
MATH 117. There is now a committee
looking at what is necessary to fulfill math literacy.
Senator
Uchimoto: Students who graduate from the
Professor
Hirstein: Students can still learn logarithmic and semi-logarithmic functions
in MATH 107. It has almost nothing to do
with what was taught in MATH 100.
Senator
Uchimoto: This change could lower the math requirements for the University and
he is very concerned.
Senator
Lopach: Given that this has gone through thorough review and discussion at
ASCRC, it should be considered, unless the chair wishes to alert the Senate of
a potential problem.
Senator
Uchimoto moved to separate the proposed mathematic proposals from the consent
agenda. The motion was not seconded.
The
curriculum consent agenda was approved.
Graduate Council Chair David
Erickson
Political Science 502 was pulled from the consent agenda. The department requested that the form be
withdrawn from consideration. The other
items on the curriculum consent agenda were approved.
Old Business:
Sabbatical/Leave Bylaw Amendment
The amendment was
approved.
New Business:
Draft
revisions to Academic Policy 103 were available as information for vote at the
December meeting.
Draft catalog
language for International
Baccalaureate was available as information and will be voted on at the next
meeting.
Good and Welfare: None
The meeting
was adjourned at