Committee Minutes, Wednesday, September 19th 2007

Chairman Amber Joyner submitted the following report to the Student Senate on Thursday, September 20th 2007, on behalf of the Academics Committee, and pursuant to its Wednesday, September 19th 2007 recommendations:

Attendance:

There were five (5) members (Briggs, Chen, Donnelly, Joyner, Parnell) present.

There were two (2) members (Carter, Roscoe) absent.

The following official was also present: Graham.

A quorum was present.

Meeting Overview:

Academics committee met to review legislation passed last session and discuss new ideas in order to determine what issues to present to Dr. Conway on behalf of the students. The committee also elected a Vice-Chair and Secretary.

Meeting Minutes:

*Election of Vice-Chair
Nominations: Sen. Parnell-elected by consent

*Election of Secretary
Nominations: Sen. Chen-elected by consent

*First Year College Mentor Program
-Idea: Mentoring Freshmen in FYC to focus on getting into a major within their first year of college
-Sen. Parnell: This problem is actually an advising issue; advisors should be pushing to keep students on track in their academic studies
-Sen. Donnelly: Match students up with Juniors and Seniors in an academic program the student is interested in and allow the freshman to shadow them. This program is already implemented at other schools in the country.

*Executive Concerns: Miss Alisha Graham
-Working on getting rid of 8am exams
-Advising process:
>>advising for double major students
>>better advisor training
>>Sen. Parnell: Advisors shouldn't be based on major, rather have a team of advisors to cover all areas of study. Also need to increase the number of advisors to give more attention to individual students.

-Freshman retake policies
>>Extend to outside freshman year
>>R66 from 86th session seeks to include 300 and 400 level classes for freshmen
>>Extend the policy to allow 1 or 2 retakes over entire undergraduate career, regardless of course level or student classification
>>Grade requirements: debate over what grades would be considered low enough to allow retake; Students can pass with C's but a C on transcript lowers chances for grad school
>>Remove first take of class from the student's transcript

*Lab courses
-Sen. Parnell: Need to look into increasing the number of labs available to students. Oftentimes, students can enroll in a course but not a lab course.

*Drop Date
-Sen. Briggs: Still has class where first test grade will not be available before final drop date. Students need idea of grade before making a final decision.
-Sen. Parnell: Students should have some idea as to whether or not they did well on a test and could make decision before receiving grades.

*24 hour exam policy
-Sen. Joyner: Concern of Sen. Carter: Policy needs to be either changed or reworded. Policy states that three exams within 24 hours can be rescheduled, however policy is not enforced if exams are spread over two days but still within 24 hours.

*Progress Reports
-Sen. Donnelly: Faculty enforcement in providing progress reports for members of fraternities and sororities. Reports are provided for athletes and are now required for some fraternities but students are being met with resistence from professors.

*GB 82
-Committee concluded that the current attendance policy is left fairly open to faculty discretion and would be difficult to enforce an attendance policy, especially for classes in which participation is required for part of a grade.
-Will discuss with faculty senate to determine what faculty thinks about a general attendance policy.