skip to main content Indiana State University University Faculty Senate Committee # 9 Approved February 22, 2007 February 8, 2007 Minutes Indiana State University Faculty Senate 2006-07 Present: Bob English, Arthur Halpern, Betsy Hine, Susan Hoffman, Harriet Hudson, Larry Kunes, Tom Sawyer, Rich Schneirov, Linda Sperry Absent: Brian Ceh, Bill Clyburn, Julie Fine Meeting was called to order by chair Hudson at 3:30. I. Approval of the minutes of Jan. 25, 2007. Approved as corrected (5-0-1) II. Reports: Administrative Affairs liaison: Bob English reported on the admissions report for fall semester 2007. Executive Committee liaison: Arthur Halpern reported on the discussion we sent to Exec. Comm. regarding academic integrity and they made a few minor comments which were sent to Blanche Evans and David Wright. There was considerable discussion on the elimination of programs. Chairperson: Harriet Hudson attended the Exec.Comm. meeting and spoke regarding the awards proposal FAC sent over. That proposal is being sent back to this committee to revisit some of the points in the proposal that might strengthen the awards. The documents have been sent to FAC electronically. III. Open discussion IV. Old Business: Reorganization of Freshman Advising. The chair previously distributed a draft of a response regarding this issue. There are concerns that while advising might need to be improved the nature of advising itself may have changed over time to a more developmental emphasis. Perhaps the success of current “advising” comes more from such things as Uni. 101 and Learning Communities. There seems to be a need for more and better academic advising but there also needs to be more in the way of developmental advising, i.e., non-curricular advising. Combining both would take a lot of even a professional advisor’s time, not to mention faculty who also do advising. That doesn’t seem to be present in the current document. It was asked what exactly do they want this proposal to do? The current proposal doesn’t seem to address the developmental advising needs of first year students. We need a plan that is broader than last year’s FAC report on this issue and which was not acted on by Exec. Comm. Perhaps some consolidation of some of the current advising procedures (UACC, Uni. 101, SASC; etc.) is in order. Also, what about the students who don’t attend class where another good advising opportunity is not taken advantage of? Overall, the plan doesn’t deal with the substantive issue of developmental advising, the consolidation of various offices and councils which already do advising, have a clear plan/logistics for doing better advising, nor does it keep first year students close to academic units through departmental/College advisors. Would engaging those departmental/College advisors have to be re-located to some central advising place, outside the College and wouldn’t that then take that discipline-related advisor away from the declared majors and those students who have not been identified as needing this more intensive and centralized advising? Regarding adding more Uni. 101 classes, there is not necessarily evidence that all the Uni. 101 classes are equally effective. Harriet will continue to work on her draft response and distribute it electronically for additional comments by the committee. In reality, the best way to improve advising and retention is to reduce class size. We need more faculty. The NSSE report indicated that more than 42% of students have no contact with faculty outside of the classroom. How is adding to the advising load of teaching faculty going to help that? Harriet will also send the document on this issue from last year’s FAC. Next meeting will be Feb. 22 at 1:00 Root Hall room to be announced. Main issue at that meeting will be the issue of students who vote on College faculty councils. Meeting adjourned 5:10 pm. Betsy Hine, Secretary Last modified: September 11, 2008 Copyright © 2007 by Indiana State University.