Kevin Donnelly (AG)
Lynn Ewanow (AR)
Alison Wheatley (AS)
Ike Ehie (BA)
Betty Stevens (DCE)
Mike Lynch (EDP)
Mike Perl (ED)
Ray Hightower (EN)
Bobbette McGaughey (GR)
Karen Pence (HE)
Monty Nielsen (REG)
Nancy Moser (TC)
Dave Stewart (FS/AAC)
Stephen White (guest)
Ike Ehie convened the meeting at 10:30 am.
None
The minutes for the January 14, 2004 meeting were approved as presented..
Dean White gave a presentation and answered questions about Summer School (SS) administration and policies. He handed out "Guiding Principles for Managing Summer School" that outline coordination, student credit hour, and expenditure allocation policies. These were developed when SS shifted from administration by DCE to the Deans (in 2000). He chairs the Summer School Coordinating Committee also consisting of Deans King, Holen, and Ebadi and Tom Rawson. They report to the Dean's Council, who approve allocations to SS, and in turn report to the Provost. Support is provided by the office of the Associate Provost for Planning and Analysis and Summer School (Ron Downey) and the budget is held in the Provost's Office.
White noted that he understood the key issue related to CAPP was standardization of class starting times. He reviewed the history of his committee's efforts to that end, starting with before 2000 when every college pretty much did their own thing. By 2003, his committee had moved the four primary colleges involved in SS toward using the previously existing A&S standardized times, and all agreed to common starting and ending dates for 4, 6 and 8-week sessions. In late summer 2003, Al Cochran contacted his committee to ask if Faculty Senate was involved in setting standard SS class times (He was trying to get action on our CAPP recommendations that were still on the table in the Academic Affairs Committee). The SS coordinating committee felt that they were working independently and reporting to the Deans and Provost, and felt that Academic Affairs was no longer involved. The CAPP recommendations for standard SS starting times were thus never pursued through Faculty Senate, and the changes made for 2004 (daily start time moved from 7:30 to 8:00 am) were made by the committee under their presumed authority to manage summer school independently.
Hightower noted that the SS standard time recommendations never moved on because of the question about who was in charge. Stewart noted that Academic Affairs was focused on the regular academic year and spent much time working on the recent changes to that policy, which are still being reviewed. Hightower noted that the previous Academic Affairs chairs, Don Foster, and CAPP have had significant concerns about SS starting times for several years, and that is why CAPP developed recommendations. He also asked why intersession was included in summer school enrollment, noting that if is very hard to tell how many hours students are enrolled in and whether they have overlapping schedules with various length sessions. He is not supportive of the 6-week session because of the overlap. White noted that Ron Downey and Larry Rogers have looked at the enrollment data, and found that actually the 6-week session is in greatest demand, and the department heads like it. Hightower requested a copy of the data from the committee. Eliminating it would solve the overlap problem, but cost total credit hours generated. White also noted that much of the credit generated in SS is in the College of ED, and many of these are compressed courses that will need exceptions to any standard start date and/or start time policy anyway.
Donnelly asked about the recent change from 7:30-8:00 daily start time, noting that the Registrar and Facilities came to CAPP late in the process asking if we needed to approve it. That was the first CAPP knew of the change, and is why we started investigating what our role is in SS class times. White noted that his committee discussed changing it back, but the deans felt it was too late to change at that point since the line schedule adjustments had already been made. White noted that the charge of his committee was to run Summer School independently, and that is how they are operating currently with consideration for making the schedule as uniform as possible. Hightower suggested that CAPP may be a good body to get advice from in the future and offered our assistance. He commended the progress made thus far. In the past, some faculty were unofficially changing the starting dates from that published in the line schedule. Stevens noted that starting times/dates will probably not be a real issue until rooms become limiting, like they have for the regular semesters. Hightower said he was still concerned about the overlap of the 6-week sessions with the others. Stewart noted that the idea came from DCE to capture high school as a "jump start" to college, but in the end it was upper-class students who supported the enrollment.
Ehie asked who monitors the summer school non-standard time exceptions. White responded that the current philosophy of his committee is that SS is college based. Although there are some standard guidelines that colleges are expected to follow, the Dean's have flexibility as necessary. For example, Holen does not come to the committee for exceptions for short-term education courses focused on a specific audience. This stems from the challenge to the Deans to manage summer school, with an incentive to make a profit and get something back if they generate more SCH than the cost. This also gives them control of which faculty teach SS, and helps them balance the budget. It is an entrepreneurial model that is working well, as most colleges are in the black and the deans like it. Ehie thanked White for his informative presentation.
Hightower - Committee Lists and Officer Rotation
Ray distributed an updated list of members and schedule of officer
rotations, with Vet Med removed per our previous agreement. It was
noted that Human Ecology was not on the list, and McGaughey indicated
that she thought we agreed to remove Graduate College from the rotation
when we removed Vet Med. All agreed that had indeed been approved,
so Human Ecology will be inserted in place of Graduate College,
and Ray will revise the list.
Donnelly distributed a spreadsheet with all NST and ORC changes considered for the Spring and Fall 2004 sessions. He asked for each committee member to review it for two points: 1.) Accuracy and 2.) Mark which courses should be for both fall and spring. He noted that we "grand fathered" a lot of courses that were approved for spring 2004 into fall 2004 if they were to be offered at the same NST or ORC, but they are not listed in the fall 2004 table. Once accurate and complete, it will be posted on the web with the minutes and forms by the Provost's office.
Ray noted that the final deadline for dropping with a W is just before the "60% of the semester attended" that Student Financial Assistance uses to determine if students have to pay back financial aid. He also thinks there are critical dates for international students that impact their visa status if they drop after a certain date. He would like for Moeder and International Programs to visit with us about their policies, and suggests that we consider changing the academic dates to make them consistent with the critical SFA and international dates if possible. Stevens noted that SFA uses last date of class attendance as their basis for financial aid adjustments, not the academic drop date. Perl asked if we can set these dates. Donnelly noted that the deadlines for no grade, W, and "cannot drop" are outlined in the Faculty Handbook and based on a set number of days/weeks after the start of the semester. Ehie suggested that we invited Moeder and International Programs to the next meeting to review their policies regarding this matter. They will be invited to the next meeting.
Donnelly reminded members that Gunile had visited with each of us some time ago about revisions to the final exam policy that she had worked hard to develop. He requested that we follow up with action on this item. The committee agreed to dig out the recommendations and individual notes and review them before the next meeting, with intent to take action on this policy.
Ray is working on some recommended revisions to the standard start timetable to accommodate some of the common exceptions that we made over and over (ie. five sequential labs starting at 7:30. 9:30, 11:30, 1:30 and 3:30 in dedicated lab space). Stewart noted that there are still folks not happy with the new policy and want further analysis and modifications. Ray and Dave will bring suggestions.
Nielsen gave a brief update on the LASER project. He said that a review of course prerequisites needs to be in the hopper, since the new system can readily enforce prerequisites at the point of enrollment. Nielsen is working on a way to generate lists of courses and prerequisites. Perl asked what the expectations are for CAPP if we had such lists, and what questions do we need to address? Stevens noted that colleges have been asked to review prerequisites. Donnelly noted that this would have to be done within the procedures of individual college course and curriculum committees, and he was not aware of any directive to begin this process. Hightower thinks that an official request needs to come from Academic Affairs. In the meantime, CAPP members need to be alerting these committees of the possible implications if LASER is implemented without removing "frivolous" prerequisites. Discussion followed on how prerequisites completed as transfer credit would be handled. Several members cautioned about the implementation of prerequisite enforcement if transfer work is not integrated. Integration with DARS could help with this matter, providing DARS records are updated to reflect transfer equivalency in a timely manner. Nielsen did not know if LASER would fully integrate with DARS. He noted that they are still looking at July 1, 2005 for a go live date for LASER. Pre-enrollment may be possible by fall 2005, so we need to move with some degree of urgency on the prerequisite concerns.
Stewart noted that recent discussions have focused on implications of the governor's budget recommendations. A $6.9 M shortfall is expected for K-State. Another issue is the increased use of non-tenured faculty, and whether that is eroding quality and scholarship. The tuition waiver proposal for faculty and staff (Roger Reitz bill) was supported by a group of faculty members. They got to speak to the legislature, but were followed by the Board of Regents who spoke against it "with the support of all university administrators".
The meeting was adjourned at 11:35am.
March 10, 2004.
Respectfully Submitted by Kevin Donnelly