FACULTY SENATE MEETING
MINUTES
April 13, 2009
3:15 p.m., 601 Rudder Tower
http://facultysenate.tamu.edu

Present:    Derya Akleman, Carisa Armstrong, Stephen Atkins, Karl Aufderheide,Guy Battle, Robert Bednarz, Michael Benedik, Tom Blasingame, Dragomir Bukur, Tahir Cagin, Antonio Cepeda-Benito, Joe Cerami, Iftekharudd Choudhury, Louise Darcey, Walter Daugherity, John Fackler, Holly Gaede, Melinda Grant, Michael Greenwald, Robert Griffin, Mariah Hahn, Gary Halter, Mike Hanik, James Heilman, Richard Hutchinson, Joe Jaros, Eluned Jones, Vikram Kinra, Andrew Klein, Ming-Han Li, Thomas Linton, Robyn Lints, Carol Loopstra, Patrick Louchouarn, R.N. Mahapatra, Sam Mannan, Christopher Mathewson, Robert McGeachin, Jeffrey Morris, Tim Murphy, Adam Myers, Frederic Pearl, Brian Perkins, David Peterson, Angie Hill Price, Khalid Qaraqe, Dan Roelke, Jorge Seminario, Douglas Slack, Robin Smith, Karen Snowden, Kathleen Speed, Richard Stadelmann, John Stallone, Robert Stewart, Bob Strawser, Elizabeth Tebeaux, Frank Thomas, Jyotsna Vaid, Tom Vogel, Hank Walker, Thomas Welsh, William West, Kirk Winemiller, Gary Wingenbach, Thomas Woodfin

Paul Parrish (Interim Dean of Faculties)

Absent:    Louise Abbott, James Aune, Wolfgang Bangerth, Gwendolyn Carroll, Keith Chaffin, Thomas DeWitt, Rainer Fink, Carlos Gonzalez, Guido Kanschat, Larry Kelly, Rafael Lara-Alecio, Clinton Machann, Lanny Martindale, Peter McIntyre, Kathryn McKenzie, Michael Messina, Bo Norby, Ramona Paetzold, Weston Porter, Lynn Ruoff, Roger Schultz, Susan Stabile, Ramesh Talreja, Winfried Teizer, Hamid Toliyat, Manuelita Ureta, John Van-Huyck, Shelley Wachsmann, Robert Warden, Gwendolyn Webb-Johnson, Matthew Whiteacre, Debra Zoran

Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order at 3:15 by Speaker Clint Magill. Speaker Magill opened the meeting by welcoming guests and senators. There were two senators from Galveston and two senators from Qatar present via videoconferencing.

Speaker Comments:
Speaker Magill stated he was pleased to see many of the senators at the forum on Shared Governance on Wednesday last week. The panel included Dr. John McDermott, the very first Speaker of the Senate and Dr. Angie Price, the immediate past speaker of the Senate.  The points brought up by panel and members of the audience should provide good targets for the President’s task force on enlightened governance and for institutionalizing shared governance.  As emphasized in the forum, shared governance needs to operate at all levels of our University, especially in departments.  The task force will be co-chaired by Provost Vitter and soon to be Senate speaker, Bob Bednarz. 

He stated he was also impressed with the attendance and participation at the Research Retreat last Tuesday that was held as part of the Academic Master Planning process now underway.  Many of those in attendance expressed gratitude for a mechanism that provided a voice to faculty members in defining possible ‘Landmark’ areas where Texas A&M should become even more involved.  It really did seem to show the kind of grass-roots involvement in administrative decision making that we would hope for.  Magill said he's glad that he doesn't have to make the final decision, but from what he heard, he expects Texas A&M will excel as much in those areas not identified as landmark areas as those that are.

Magill reminded the senators the he mentioned last month that there are heavily sponsored bills in the Texas legislature that would actually require Universities to allow anyone with a concealed weapons permit to carry their gun on campus.  He reported at that time that the Texas Council of Senates passed a resolution against that legislation.  He has been asked if the Senate can’t also pass such a resolution and he supposes the Senate could, but this is a case where he thinks a petition, signed by as many faculty, students, staff and administrators as would sign might have more effect.  It might also be more effective if each of us contact Representative Brown and Senator Ogden with our concerns.  If someone is willing to start a petition right now, he's sure we could collect many signatures.

Speaker Magill stated that most of the comments in the committee of the whole last month dealt with what we call the ‘U of H’ memo, asking for some things we already do but many others that don’t seem very realistic or reasonable.  We were also approached by the Faculty Senate leader at the University of Houston to see what we have done about the “mandate for changes in higher education” put forward by the Governor’s office and that their regents had apparently taken as an order.  The memo they forwarded to us dealt with a meeting held by Governor Perry last December and although the whole document calling for transparency/ accountability/rewards was included, the memo specifically included the following:  “As Governor Perry stated during the meeting, it is imperative that you ensure your university systems’ faculty evaluation rating and course syllabi are available, online and in campus buildings, n late than the 2009 Spring Semester”. The U of H Senate passed a resolution asking their Regents to hold off on taking actions until it is clearly a requirement from the Coordinating Board rather than a request from the governor.  They would like support from us and the University of Texas, Texas Tech, etc.  So far we have only been hit with the last portion of the original document dealing with the monetary awards for teaching.  Magill noted our resolution against that program as it was originally proposed led to a somewhat improved program called SLATE.  Since we are not sure who or how the TAMU system is addressing the items requested in the latest memo, Magill's not sure how we can address the call for help from the U of H.  Chancellor McKinney’s was the only A&M e-mail address on the memo requesting the information on faculty evaluations and posting of syllabi. 

Speaker Magill spoke of the EC and Academic Affairs Committees meeting with student leaders from the event last semester who reported that their nominees for awards for one and two credit courses were ignored by the Chancellor.  Since they felt he had agreed to use the formulas the students had developed they were not happy with this decision. Magill and Bob along with a student representative are trying to set up a meeting with the Chancellor to discuss the issue, but since the announcement this spring again said only 3 credit courses could be considered, it seems obvious Dr. McKinney is not inclined to include all instructors in the program.  Magill stated he certainly hopes more of our colleagues will begin to realize how even the perception, whether true or not, that ‘making a course easier’ would enhance the chance of winning hurts the academic image of TAMU. 

Magill noted the announcement of winners of the Senate elections may be held up for a short while; there were several cases where write-ins were entered for empty slots and they must be contacted and verify willingness to serve before being named to the positions.  Unfortunately, we also had one candidate in Liberal Arts whose bio-sketch was included, but whose name was left off the ballot.  This kind of an error is rectified by re-voting for that one position.  As much as anything, it points out a need to revise our by-laws to do away with the first, second etc. choice voting which was included to avoid run-off elections when someone had to sit with the ballot boxes constantly on voting days. Now that electronic ballots are available, having run-off elections would be simpler.

Installation of New Senators:
Speaker Magill officially installed new senators (Patrick Louchouarn and Jeffrey Morris).