Minutes of the Wichita State University Faculty Senate
Monday, October 28, 2013
CH 126 3:30 pm
Members Present: Anderson, Barut, Bergman, Brooks, Bryant, Castro, Celestin, Close, Decker, Driessen,
Hamdeh, Horn, Houseman, Hull, Johnson, Kagdi, Klunder, Kreinath, Lewis, Liu, Lu, Matveyeva,
Miller, Moore-Jansen, Mosack, Oare, Rillema, Rokosz, Ross, Thiessen, Yeager, Yildirim,
Yu
Members Absent: Alexander, Hanawalt, Markova, Pile,Taher, Trechak
Members Excused: Baker
Summary of Action
1. Accepted Committee appointments to Faculty Senate Standing Committees (see Committee
Reports, Rules)
2. Forwarded the report from the University Admissions and Exceptions Committee to
Academic Affairs Committee
I. Call to Order
President Victoria Mosack called the meeting to order at 3:30pm
II. Informal Statements and Proposals – Senator Chris Brooks offered the following informal statement: "In the event of any sizable increased enrollment at Wichita State University, which
is one goal of the new Strategic Plan, many departments will need to hire additional
instructors. Whether these new instructors are adjunct/lecturer/ temporary hires or
new graduate students assigned as teaching personnel, the formula for credit hour
production and instructor remuneration will likely remain the same. Non-professorial
instructors are given a base pay of approximately $2000 per course, which may vary
through the colleges, while GTAs tend to be paid slightly more. Both groups of teachers,
however, generate many, many more times the tuition dollars than they are paid. As
increased enrollment will bring pressure to academic units to meet demands, they will
request funding from the administration to hire additional staff. An alternative method
of meeting instructor needs would be to develop a formula for each academic unit that
considers monies generated from classes taught compared to instructor budgetary needs.
Service departments, units offering general education courses, programs with any threshold
course required for further study, and other academic components (certificate programs,
for example) will likely find that they are generating hundreds of thousands of dollar
in tuition monies but paying out as little as 20% for instructor remuneration. By
establishing a formula for tuition return to departments who generate much more "income"
that they pay out, the university can provide both the incentive and reward components
of the Strategic Plan part seven; they can provide a certain amount of departmental
or college independence by authorizing academic units to "fund themselves"; and WSU
can ease demand on the general fund by placing selected departments on a "tuition
accountability" program that mirrors the agreement between Regents Schools and the
State of Kansas."
Senator Brooks was urged to follow up with a formal proposal to the Senate.
III. Approval of the Minutes
The minutes of September 23, 2013, Faculty Senate were late getting to all senators,
consequently President Mosack postpone approval of the minutes until the next meeting
of the Senate..
IV. President's Report
President Mosack informed the Senate of the death Monday, October 14, 2013, of faculty
colleague and former senator,• Gary H. Toops .He was a respected professor in the Modern & Classical Languages & Literatures department
since 1989, where he taught Russian and linguistics. He served as a Faculty Senator
during his career at WSU, most recently during the past academic year (2012-13). President
Mosack asked the Senate to pause for a moment of silence in honor of Professor Toops.
President Mosack reported that the meeting of representatives of the University's
senates with the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR), during their campus visit of October 7, 2013, seemed to be very productive. The
members of the KBOR seemed to be very attentive to what the WSU campus representatives
had to say. As would be expected the Regents and campus representatives were focused
on budget issues. Likewise, the visits of the representatives of the Kansas legislators
were focused on budget issues.
President Mosack indicated that the focus of the October 16-17, 2013, KBOR meeting was on FORESIGHT 2020, which is a strategic agenda for the state's public higher
education system. The objectives of the agenda are as follows:
• 1. Increase higher education attainment among Kansas citizens
• 2. Improve alignment of the state's higher education system with the needs of the
economy
• 3. Ensure state university excellence
President Mosack shared that proposed Honors Program curriculum changes were reviewed and approved by Faculty Senate Academic Affairs
and GenEd Committees. Senators and members of the faculty are encouraged to attend
one of the information sessions about the Honors Program which will be announced soon.
President Mosack reported to the Senate on President Bardo's plan to create a “OneStop” operation at Wichita State that will better address the needs of adult learners in
the community by adjusting the normal hours of the university in order to provide
some services in the 5pm to 7pm period of each work day, Monday through Thursday.
This will begin November 4, 2013 with the following targeted areas of student service:
Admissions, Advising (LAS, Barton School, CFA, Education, Engineering, CHP), Bookstore,
Career Services, Co-op, Counseling and Testing, Disability Services, Shocker Card
Center, Accounts Receivable (Bursar), Library, Student Health, Office of Faculty Development
& Student Success (OFDSS – the Student Success part and the Academic Center for Excellence
(ACE) Lounge), Financial Aid, Graduate School, Housing and Residence Life, MyWSU and
Blackboard IT support, MRC, Registrar, Tutoring, and Veterans Services.
.V. Committee Reports
Mehmet Barut, Chair of the Rules Committee, brought forward the following nominees
from the Rules committee to fill vacancies on the 2013-14 Faculty Senate standing
committees:
Academic Affairs Fine Arts, Jeff Pulaski and Education, Susan Unruh
General Education Fine Arts, Robert Bupb and LAS Math/Natural Sciences, James Beck
The Senate voted to approve all of the nominations.
Senator Barut appealed to all senators to assist him in filling the following vacancies
in Senate and on the Senate standing committees.F
FACULTY SENATOR VACANCIES
Business Marketing 2015
LAS Humanities 2014
Humanities 2015
Social Sciences 2015
COMMITTEE VACANCIES
ACADEMIC AFFAIRS -- Health Profession 2015
FACULTY AFFAIRS -- LAS Humanities 2016
LIBRARY -- Education 2015 and LAS Math/Natural Sciences 2016
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH -- LAS Math/Natural Sciences 2015 and LAS Humanities 2015
EXCEPTIONS & ADMISSION -- Education 2016
VI. Old Business – None
VII. New Business
A. Student Success Collaboration, the New Student Alert System, and Faculty Activity
Tracking - David Wright, Associate VP for Academic Data Systems, reported on three services
that he has been working on to assist in student advising, retention, and graduation.
The first of these is the Student Success Collaboration (SSC) which is a service that was purchased from the Educational Advisory Board (EAB).
The SSC is a combination of on-site services and software that will be customized
to Wichita State. It is a comprehensive advising and monitoring solution for managing
retention and degree completion. SSC will be used for assisting all students, from
freshmen to senior. Advisors can use the system to maintain contact with students
from the time they enter WSU to the time of degree completion., a comprehensive case
study approach. The software will be accessible by advisors from any web-based interface
with full WSU security, and refreshed daily from WSU information systems. In-depth
analysis will be provided for course scheduling. The analysis will provide insight
into problematic areas that need attention, and areas that are bottlenecks to student
success. The service also provides ongoing training and exposure to best practices
for advisors and programs. SSC implementation has started, with hopes of being fully
operational in November.
Dr. Wright also reported on a new Early Alert system that he is developing to allow instructors the opportunity to identify and notify
students in their classes whose current academic performance is putting them at academic
risk. A student's low performance in any of the following four categories can be sufficient
to justify an at-risk notification: attendance, participation, assignments, and exams.
Ten to fourteen instructors are being sought that would be willing to volunteer to
be a pioneer in the new system during the spring semester. The system should be available
throughout the campus during the fall semester of 2014.
Dr. Wright is also nearing completion of a system that allows faculty members up-to-date
information about their teaching history and current employment status. This information
will be available on-line in the “Faculty Reports” of “Reporting Services.”
B. Pre-Approval for Senior Study Abroad residency Exceptions --- Susan Castro, Chair, University Admissions and Exceptions Committee (UAEC), reported
on a proposal by her committee to streamline a procedure associated with the residency
requirements and the study abroad program at Wichita State. Essentially the committee
has identified a needless bottleneck, and impediment to the program, caused by the
conflict of “study abroad” and the “WSU residency “ requirements. After much discussion,
the Senate agreed in principle with the University Admissions and Exceptions Committee
and passed the following two part motion (offered by Senator Hull and seconded by
Senator Moore-Jansen) to be forwarded to the Senate's Academic Affairs Committee:
1.) the UAEC can continue their practice of preapproval of the exception to the residency
requirement for approved study abroad programs, and similar enrichment programs at
domestic universities, and 2.) the catalog copy will be revised to carefully word
this relationship so that no “exception” will be necessary for most cases of this
nature.
C. United Way Campaign presentation -- Pat Hanrahan, President, United Way of the Plains gave a brief report on the many
valuable services provided by the United Way of the Plains (UW) and encouraged the
faculty of WSU to be generous in its contributions to the organization. He spoke of
the United Way hot line (211 phone number) that is available to direct callers to
the United Way agency that can best address their needs, the GIV program for contributing
“items of value,” and the internal process used to distribute funds to the agencies
within the UW umbrella.
VIII. As May Arise
Lyn Goldberg, chair of the General Education Committee, reminded the Senate of the
General Education Forum scheduled for 8am to noon (plus lunch with RSVP), Friday, November 8, in the Suderman
Room of the MetroPlex. The program will include a guest speaker from Washington D.C.
IX. Adjournment
The meeting of the Faculty Senate was adjourned at 4:40pm.
Submitted by Walter Horn
Secretary of the Faculty Senate