September 23, 2014 Senate Minutes – CCAS Faculty Senate

Regular Meeting of the Faculty Senate
Approved Minutes
September 23, 2014

The meeting was called to order at 12:27 p.m.

Andrew Lees, Senate President, introduced himself and will be working with Dean Lindenmeyer this year to find ways to encourage faculty to serve in leadership roles.

A motion was made to approve the minutes from the special meeting of the Senate on April 22, 2014. The motion was approved unanimously by voice vote.

Bill FitzGerald called for volunteers to continue to work with him and Julie Still on an umbrella/subcommittee to the General Education committee to work to establish learning goals for the College of Arts and Sciences. This subcommittee began constructing a list of goals last academic year, but a member of that group has since left the university. Bill Whitlow volunteered to join the sub-committee.

Bill FitzGerald, on behalf of the Academic Policy Committee, presents the following courses for approval. The APC unanimously support the courses below:

Department	Course number	Course Title	New/Revision
Biology	50:120:127	Principles of Biology	NEW
Biology	50:120:283	Biostatistics	NEW
Biology	50:120:299	Principles and Practices of Biological Research	NEW
Biology	50:120:396	Special Topics in Biology: Bacterial Pathogenesis	NEW
Biology	50:120:498	Senior Thesis	NEW
English	50:989:313	Writing for Non-Profits	NEW
Health Sciences	50:499:101	Introduction to Health Sciences	NEW
Mathematics	50:640:117	Honors Pre-calculus	NEW
Political Science	50:790:306	Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict	NEW
Political Science	50:790:326	Government and Free Markets	NEW
Political Science	50:790:358	Democracy and Dictatorship	NEW
Political Science	50:790:411	Good and Bad Governments in Futuristic Fiction	NEW

A call for separate votes for each department’s course proposals was made to accept the courses as proposed. All courses were approved unanimously by voice vote.

Dean Kris Lindenmeyer thanked Andrew Lees for his service and willingness to lead the Senate group, again, and thanked the group too for their commitment and representation back to the department regarding shared governance. Dean Lindenmeyer’s informal agenda included updates on the following:
- General Education – it is important to make it flexible for students to have selection and opportunity to get the courses they need and meet the learning outcomes we have established for a Rutgers student/graduate.
  1. Want to make teaching Gen Ed courses more attractive to FT faculty as Gen Ed’s can be more narrowly focused in a particular field or an upper level course and still satisfy the requirement.
- Budget – “Be cautious”. Across the country, in general enrollment is down in Arts & Sciences. Factors for this decline include a down economy for several years and therefore students looking for more vocational tract opportunities. At the campus level, the addition of the Nursing School has moved the students out of A&S (however we continue to teach the general education courses for those students); the plan for growth in A&S was modest. We had hoped to pick up 100 students this fall but in essence we actually lost 100, which equates to roughly $1,000,000 lost in revenue. We added approximately 50 new faculty over the last 3 years; very little hiring is projected this year.
  1. How to increase revenue/enrollment –
    1. We need to identify A&S to the public that would help in a career field, i.e. Digital Humanities Certificate (approved last year.) New director Jim Brown started on September 1 and has planned several launch events this fall that will help to define and market the program. Generally, it could be defined as to bring the skill set of traditional humanities to a technical world — the “fourth literacy….reading, writing, arithmetic…” Jim will also be teaching the first formal introduction course to Digital Humanities in spring 2015.
    2. Looking to establishing a new interdisciplinary program, Digital Studies and Communications degree for fall 2015. Students attending Discover Rutgers Day and Orientation events often ask for this type of degree. While still in the early stages of planning, the key is to link the technical side of this area to the literature side. Input from interested faculty and departments are welcome. Please contact the Dean’s office if interested in participating.
    3. Health Sciences degree was not recruited until after June, as we were waiting on approval from the NJ President’s Council before we could post it. This will be another way for us to attract new students.

Expect to make up the deficit in the next year with these new programs/degrees. Very optimistic in where things are headed.

Questions from the floor to Dean Lindenmeyer:

What competition from Rowan is expected with regard to Health Sciences?
The MOA agreement says that neither University can offer what the other is currently offering. Additionally, Dean Lindenmeyer reported that the new Nursing and Science teaching building is scheduled to open no later than fall 2017 and the Administration is working on agreements for students to get fast-tracked into post-grad programs in health sciences.

What is Digital Studies Certificate vs. Digital Studies and Communications? Still in discussion, but it is hoped that the certificate may be the bridge to the degree. In this field, “certification” vs. minor is preferred due to its technical focus.

Logistics – The plan for attracting new students with these programs and buildings, how will parking being addressed for recruiting both students and faculty/staff? It is an issue that is continually brought up. At other campuses which have gone through these types of growing pains, the Faculty Senate has had to voice concern to Administration and the University of the poor quality of life issue created by the lack of space. Immediate assistance may be to relocate parking spaces to the Camden County garage.

Andrew Lees invited Tom Ryan (RCIT) to the meeting to address concerns raised in the letter from Dan Cook regarding audio and video recordings of lectures, as well as questions from the floor. Tom opened with some background information on the audio and video recording done at the law school for the last eight years, and provided some instances when a faculty member might be notified of recording due to a student’s accommodation requirement. Concerns from the Senate floor included:
- Isn’t audio enough of a reasonable accommodation?
- Who else has access to the recording? Other students? Department Chairs?
- Could students use this as means of not attending class?
- How is faculty notified?
- Where can more information be found?

Due to the end of the meeting hour, a motion was made to consider this at another meeting. A second motion was made to bring the letter and concerns to the Information Technology Committee to consider it further and make a recommendation to the Senate. The motion was approved unanimously by voice vote to bring this to the Information Technology committee for recommendation.

A motion was made to adjourn. The motion was approved unanimously by voice vote.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:15p.m.

Present (Senators): Alexander Samokhvalov, Robin Stevens, Rajiv Gandhi, Osama Hamed, Bill FitzGerald, Aaron Hostetter, Margery Amdur, Paul Bernstein, Prospero Garcia, Ana Laguna, Nick Kapur, Susan Mokhberi, Julie Still, Debashis Kushary, James Gennone, Shauna Shames, Joseph Cutuli, Bill Whitlow, Brandi Blessett, Katrinia Hazzard-Donald; Kenneth Elliott, Jean-Louis Hippolyte, Ken Hohing; Cyril Reade

Present (Faculty): Keith Green (for Carol Singley)

Present (Invited administrators): Kris Lindenmeyer, Joe Schiavo

Present (Invited Staff); Tom Ryan (RCIT)

Absent: Laurie Bernstein, Joseph Gerver, Eric Klein, Jongmin, Nam, Will Y. Lee, Grace Brannigan, Wayne Chan, Stephen Danley, Louis Tuthill, Wayne Glasker