Agenda
II. Reports (Reports are being pre-distributed. Chairs or assigned representative should submit them to M. DeMichele by December 8
III. Student voting privilege on Curriculum Committee
Open discussion of this issue is request to educate the Executive Board on the thoughts and concerns of the faculty on this issue. This matter will be first on the agenda for the first meeting of the Executive Board in the spring semester on February 4.
The Curriculum Committee has, through its chair, expressed the following concerns to the officers of the Faculty Senate about voting privileges for students on this committee.
“The student request for a vote was deemed of significance. The point was made that had any other constituency in the college requested a similar privilege on a Faculty Senate committee that request would not be taken seriously.As a consequence of the above point, concerns were raised about the impact of giving a vote on a Faculty Senate committee to a person who is not a member of the Faculty Senate. This raised constitutional and governance questions which the Curriculum Committee felt unable to answer. These include: (1) how would the constitution of the Faculty Senate need to be amended to incorporate voting privileges for non-Faculty Senate members? (2) could constituencies besides students request similar voting privileges? (3) could voting privileges by non-Faculty Senate members be requested for other Faculty Senate committees, including Rank and Tenure? (4) to what extent does granting voting privileges on the Curriculum Committee to non-Faculty Senate members compromise faculty supervision of the curriculum? (5) What if there is a graduate student representative on the Committee? Would this student vote, too? (6) What happens to the chair of the Committee? The chair only votes when there is a tie among the six (5 divisional and 1 at large) representatives. With an additional vote, there will be no ties.”
IV. Party!