NORTHEASTERN
STATE UNIVERSITY
Minutes
of Faculty Council Meeting
Friday, May 6, 2011
Call to Order
The meeting was
called to order by President Denise Deason-Toyne at
3:01 p.m. in Tahlequah (SCI 129). There
was ITV access at Muskogee (SYN141), Broken Arrow (BABT225) and Tahlequah (SCI
129).
Council
Members in attendance: Ron Cambiano (COE);
Kristopher Copeland (COLA); Jennifer Edwards (COLA);Brandon Oberg (Library); Susan
Woitte (Library); John Diamantopoulos; Isaac DiIanni (BT); Ryan Fenska (OPT); Julia
Kwok (BT); Denise Deason-Toyne
(President); Dan Savage (Vice President)
Council
Members in attendance in Broken Arrow: Anita Ede (Education); Pamela Louderback (Library), John Newhouse (B T)
Council Members in attendance in
Muskogee: Joyce
Van Nostrand (SHP)
Council
Officers in attendance: Denise Deason-Toyne
(President), Dan Savage (Vice President), Pamela Louderback
(Secretary/Treasurer).
Guests:
Tahlequah: Martin Tadlock, Mark Giese, Dave Kerby,
Cheryl Van Den Handel, Glenda Seiter
Guests: Broken Arrow: Tom Rink
(Library)
Invited Presentations
[Council
will set aside time at the first of each meeting to visit with Dr. Martin Tadlock and Dr. Mark Giese General Education update.]
Dr. Giese addressed the council on the General Education
update. He updated the Council on
the activities of the GenEd committee as noted in the
document emailed to Council members. Dr.
Giese noted that the committee remains an active standing committee. Any requests for GenEd
will funnel through this committee. The GenEd committee has also been charged with coming up with
general helpful guidelines
Results from the GenEd committee activities include:
- Explicit GenEd stated learning outcomes should be made available to be placed in your syllabus. A learning outcomes folder is located at the Academic Affairs website.
When asked whether the template trumps the departmental templates, Dr. Giese replied, Yes.
- Syllabi should cover at least one bullet point found on the template. At the respective course level, student learning outcomes should be addressed. Teachers would agree on common course student learning outcomes objectives where several sections are being taught. There is room for flexibility in your specific course but there also needs to be a common standardization of some objectives across the sections.
- These changes need to be up and going by Spring 2012
President Deason-Toyne welcomed
all faculty to the final Faculty Council meeting of
the semester. She thanked everyone for
their service.
A.
Committees and Standing Reports
1. Review/Approval of Minutes of the 04/01/11
meeting
April minutes was reviewed. There were two changes/modifications concerning grammatical
errors. A motion was entertained by Edwards
to approve the minutes, it was seconded by Kwok. The motion carried; the minutes were approved.
2. Financial
Report/Budget for 2011-.
No budget items were reported; the budget remained unchanged. The Council will be buying bricks for
the Circle of Excellence winners. Mr. Foutch has landscaping plans and President Betz has ideas
for a final location.
No committee reports
B. OLD BUSINESS/PENDING ISSUES:
1.
Faculty Council to
Faculty Senate table until the Fall semester
2.
Definition of Student Centered
There
will be continued discussion on what the term Student centered
means.
C. NEW BUSINESS:
1. Student writing skills mandatory
demonstration of competency in zero level writing courses
Student writing skills require students enrolled in zero level courses be able to demonstrate a certain level before moving on. Students need to take advantage of services such as the Writing Center. President Deason-Toyne is building a folder of compiled extremely poor writing samples and requested faculty send samples to her. It was noted that students need to be held accountable for their own learning as well as the faculty.
Dr. Geise noted that historically there existed a Zero level committee chaired by Janet Bahr. The original thought behind the committee was to provide CPT testing to students. After two semesters, the classes kept getting larger. As well, the number of students attending Comp I and Algebra classes kept getting smaller. The concept of taking CPT has virtually gone away from the original concept of requiring it as mandatory policy/practice. It was noted that some classes have the WritePlacer software tool integrated into their course.
The Chair of Language and Literature (Dr. Les Hannah) is coming up with some policy to address this concern. Dr. Giese suggested inviting Dr. Bahr to Faculty Council to discuss the topic further. This would be helpful in determining where we go from here.
Dr. Van Nostrand noted the Nursing department offers an APA workshop on how to write, format, etc. It was suggested that maybe we should consider whether to make this a mandatory practice university-wide. It was further noted that some transfer students have already completed Comp I & II, yet competency is not necessarily reflected in their subsequent work at NSU.
President Deason-Toyne suggested we may want to consider meeting in small groups during the summer to keep the conversation going and come up with ideas. Dr. Giese would be willing to show everyone how WritePlacer works. Something can be set up this summer as Dr. Giese is on campus all summer.
2. Set dates for 2011/2012 Meetings Sept
ember 9th will be our first meeting for the Fall
semester.
However, we might have a short meeting in August to get back together, set an agenda for the year, etc
3. Appreciation to Faculty Council Delegates
President
Deason-Toyne thanked all delegates for their service.
4. Appreciation to Dr. Dan Savage Service as
Vice President, 2009-2011
President
Deason-Toyne gave a special thanks to Dr. Savage for
his exemplary service to the Council during his two year tenure as
Vice-President.
No Announcements
D. Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 3:42 p.m.
The next schedule meeting is September 9th, 2011.
Submitted by Pamela Louderback,
Secretary-Treasurer
05/13/11, approved with correction 9/9/11