Meeting of the Faculty Senate
Approved Minutes
January 28, 2016

The meeting was called to order at 12:25 p.m.

  1. A motion was made to correct and approve the minutes of December 8, 2015, with an addition to item #3 so it reads: “To promote our students’ success, Shauna Shames proposed prohibiting them from easily taking more than five courses per semester”. The motion was approved unanimously by voice vote.
  1. The courses proposed by Women’s and Gender Studies at the December meeting remain on the table as the APC committee had not heard back from this program.

Jerry Verbrugghe and the APC committee are working on gathering the data requested at the Senate meeting on December 8, 2015.  Information will be presented at a later date.

  1. Bill Whitlow and Julie Still presented a working draft of the “Camden College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) Learning Goals”. The goals were developed with this question in mind: “What does a college degree allow someone to do”?  The Senators discussed: whether department/program goals will need to match these goals; how the CCAS goals should be assessed and measured; what it would mean to be held to the goals, particularly with regard to items difficult to quantify, e.g., measuring students’ ‘curiosity’; whether to include or further explain in the goals that students should be able to develop and express their own conclusions based on analysis; and whether to add that students should engage and participate in communal processes. The final statements from the floor were in support of the overall principles with an acknowledgment that “less is more.” Each of the goals will be different to each department; there is no need to recreate the wheel.

As a quorum was not present, there was no vote. Bill and Julie will return to the committee with the feedback from the Senators, reword and re-present to the Senate for approval at a later meeting, and find out the timing of this implementation.  

  1. Other Business: Senator Shauna Shames asked for an update on the faculty committee working on the new marketing plan for Rutgers-Camden. No one had any information other than the fact that faculty focus groups had met earlier in the year.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:10 p.m.

Present (Senators):  Andrew Lees, Janet Golden, Laurie Bernstein, Eric Klein, Jongmin Nam, George Kumi, Osama Hamed, Aaron Hofstetter, Margery Amdur, Prospero Garcia, Ana Laguna, Nick Kapur, Julie Still, Haisheng Li, Tim Knievel, Shauna Shames, Bill Whitlow, Brandi Blessett, Richard Stansfield, Kenneth Elliott, Kenneth Hohing

Absent:  Kate Cairns, Guy Kortsarz, Joseph Barbarese, Keith Green, Paul Bernstein, Susan Mokhberi, Debashis Kushary, Will Lee, Nicole Karapanagiotis, Richard Jimenez, Wayne Chan, Joseph Cutuli, Stephen Danley, Chinyere Osuji, Cyril Reade, Wayne Glasker, Jean-Louis Hippolyte