Committee Minutes, Thursday, January 24th 2008

Secretary Jeanne Chen submitted the following report to the Student Senate on Tuesday, January 29th 2008, on behalf of the Academics Committee, and pursuant to its Thursday, January 24th 2008 recommendations:

Attendance:

There were six (6) members (Briggs, Carter, Chen, Joyner, Poteat, Roscoe) present.

There were three (3) members (Donnelly, Parnell, Warren) absent.

The following officials were also present: Alston, Demanovich, Foxx, Palmer.

A quorum was present.

Meeting Overview:

We had Seth Palmer as our guest speaker about the Textbooks bill; and we discussed the Dead Week Bill and reworded a few sections of it.

Meeting Minutes:

Seth Palmer, guest speaker – Textbooks Bill

Talking points
- Students generally spend nearly $900 each year on textbooks
- NCSU bookstore is a non-profit university maintained department; profits are paid into university needs-based scholarship funds
- Guaranteed buy-back books are based on professors saying that they are going to use the books for the next few years
- As of 2007, there were 400-500 textbooks that cost $100 or more because they were bundled; the number of bundled textbooks are currently being examined
- Textbooks adoption deadlines: fall – April 05, spring – October 15, summer – March 15
- Book consortium between NCSU, UNC, and ECU, where because each school offers similar classes, all 3 schools buy similar books
*Both ECU and UNC bought NCSU $25,000 of books last semester, where they bough back the books from their students and sold them to NCSU
*If 7 campuses participated in this program, it could save students $2 million
- Rental programs – ASU, ECSU, and WCU – would be too hard to do here because NCSU has too many disciplines and too many students
- As of now, the bookstore is working with Registrar Louis Hunt to send reminder e-mails to professors reminding them to submit their textbook requirements.

Rewriting the Dead Week Policy

Amended:
- Sen. Carter - Section 2 – “Exceptions…upon request” ~ adding “or with unanimous prior consent of the class” – passed unanimously.
- Sen. Carter and Roscoe – Section – “Students should contact…regulations” ~ adding “and the professor appears to be unreceptive” – passed unanimously.

Sen. Carter makes motion to report this favorably to the Senate.
Adjourned: 8:40 pm

Next meeting: TBA