Faculty Senate Minutes 
Thursday, February 21, 2008
SGC 41
 

I.         Call to Order

          The meeting was called to order at 3:18 p.m. by the Chair.

      Present:  Susan Odom, Tony Fernandez, Brian Christenson, Debbie Goodwin, Barbara Barnes,
Scott Brainard, Wayne Carroll, Mike Collins, Rhonda Combs, Diane Douglas, Randy Eriksen,
Tracy Flynn, Kathleen Grussing, Rachel Jameton, Debbie Lemon, Alan Marshall, Dave McCullough,
Nan Miguel, Leanne Parker, Holly Patterson-McNeill, Joe Pergola, Tim Petersen, Mark Sanders

      Absent:  Rik Brosten, Linda Coursey, Tim Doty, Brian Kolstad, Joni Dickinson Mina,
Chris Riggs, Tom Urquhart

      Visitors:  Chet Herbst, Eric Martin, Mike Owen

II.        Approval of Consent Agenda

      Consent agenda (including February 7 minutes and treasury report) approved.

III.      Provost’s Report

Initiative PG-13:  Involves engaging the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) in the annual
planning and budgeting process by formalizing faculty input for instructional technology. 
The IT Director proposed that two committees provide information to the Executive Committee
as it relates to instructional technology and non-instructional (infrastructure) issues and
requests.  One committee would be TAC (already being done and in the Constitution).  This
would include having the IT Director as an ex-officio member.  This committee would provide
an end-of-year report regarding instructional technology issues from faculty perspectives that
are coming down the line.  The other committee would deal more with non-instructional issues
the College faces for infrastructure technology.

Campus Cruiser:  Will no longer be available at the end of this year.  Need to migrate to
course management capabilities of Blackboard.  Starting in FA08, no LEC-W courses will have
a $3 fee.  Distance Learning provides training on how to use Blackboard, which can take as
little as 40 minutes.  A grid will be distributed showing what Campus Cruiser used to do, what
Blackboard does, and what Google Mail can do (limited).

Background checks:  Effective immediately, any new hire for full-time benefited positions
will have a background check completed.  Finalists will be informed that the person to whom
the offer will be made is going to have a background check and will sign a release.  A decision
will be made by the hiring individual as to whether a felony conviction is significant enough
not to hire the applicant.  Current employees who transfer to a new position will be
subject to a background check.  If the position has significant money handling
responsibilities, a credit check may also be involved.

Lecturers and instructors:  A two-tier lecturer system has been discussed, which
was not supported by Administration.  This would require State approval.  LCSC, as a
State institution, can change a lecturer position to an instructor position without State
approval; requires only notification.  Administration feels there is currently enough leeway
that LC can reclassify a lecturer position to an instructor as it is appropriate.  There is
not enough of a case being made to warrant a two-tiered lecturer position.  The point was
added that position duties need to correctly follow respective job descriptions.

Nursing and Health Sciences Building:  Groundbreaking is Friday, March 7, at 10 a.m.

Campus incident:  There was an incident last Friday on campus involving a student
threatening another student.  Email notification was sent out campus-wide.  The student
was told that he/she was banned from campus, and the Involuntary Withdrawal Policy went
into effect in this situation so that the student is no longer considered a student here. 
Faculty should review emergency procedures on MyLCSC website.  If you see anything of
a threatening nature, contact campus Security x2815, 9-911, and/or the Lewiston Police
Department (whichever is most appropriate).  Pass along information of any concern so that
situations can be investigated.

IV.  Chair’s Report

Student fee hearing:  Scheduled for Monday at noon in the TCC.  Increase
recommendation is 5% for maintenance of current operations.  Student government
leadership is supporting the increase.  A special student fee hearing is April 7 in Boise.

V.    Ongoing Business

N/A.

VI. New Business

Bylaws/Faculty Constitution:  postponed.

Background checks:  no new information (see above).

Campus security (Rhonda Combs):  There needs to be formalized training on security
issues.  There have been recent examples illustrating that people were not informed about
or did not know what steps to follow in situations.  Want campus-wide basic security and
safety precautions training and improved signage.  The Library currently receives security
training for its own staff from Security officers.  A Security officer could come to a Faculty
Senate meeting to discuss available options.  Also, the emergency procedures document
should be printed off and a copy kept in each division.  On the Security website is a
three-page document regarding emergency and evacuation procedures.  On the Provost’s
website, and in the catalog, is the student Involuntary Withdrawal Policy.  Possibly a
laminated card could be created showing brief instructions to follow in different situations.

VII.     Standing Committees

A.        Administrative Procedures (Leanne Parker) – Still reviewing the Constitution.

B.        Budget Liaison/CRC (Susan Odom) – There is a budget liaison meeting tomorrow to
consider recommendations to the CRC.  Currently don’t know what CEC is going to be. 
It was going to be 5%; however, it now looks like it will be 3%.  Regarding benefits,
the employee portion could go as high as 29%.

C.   Curriculum (Eric Martin for Chris Riggs) – Motion to approve, seconded, and discussion
followed (see attached).  ADS is a new prefix; however, one concern is that the
course is already existing under PSYC and is not a new course.  The new prefix is
needed because all chemical dependency courses need to also be listed under
Addiction Studies.  Approved with two opposed.

D.   Faculty Affairs (Brian Christenson) – Report provided (see attached).

Accomplished SCE goal.  Copies of final report approved today are being prepared
and will go to Faculty Affairs and division chairs for study and input.  Recommending
a hardcopy version, allowing online format, clarified purpose of SCEs, revised set of
questions.  Looking for six volunteers to do a pre-beta test at the end of this
semester in on-campus classes (one per faculty member), especially to identify
major wording problems.  Need to still change verbiage for online courses.  SCEs
are formative, not summative, to help improve instruction.  Can link to SCE from
the Senate web page.

E.   Faculty Development (Alan Marshall) – Submitted recommendations for funding of
17 proposals.  Letters have gone out.

F.   General Education (Eric Martin) – Motion to accept recommendations of committee
and unanimously approved (see attached).

G.   Student Affairs (Rachel Jameton) – Still waiting for Code of Conduct to come back. 

H.   Technology Advisor (Holly Patterson-McNeill) – Received $100,000 worth of requests
for $25,000 of funds.  Will forward recommendations to the Provost (see attached).

VIII.In-Service (Diane Douglas)

       Deferred to next meeting.

IX.       Other/Good of the Order

      Graduation applications for FA08 are due by March 3.

X.    Adjournment

      Meeting adjourned at 4:58 p.m. by the Chair.

Curriculum Committee Report to Senate
2-21-08

The Curriculum Committee has approved the following proposals.

Faculty Affairs Committee Report to Senate
February 21, 2008

1.      Please review the academic integrity task force recommendations for discussion and decision
making. Feedback can be forwarded to your Faculty Affairs Committee representative or directly
to me.  All names will be removed from the report.  The report can be viewed at
http://www.lcsc.edu/faculty/faculty_affairs_2007-08.htm (Scroll to the bottom of the page).
We are seeking feedback for our next meeting on Monday February 25^th.

Chair Elect call for service and nominations:

Ch To all full-time faculty: If you are interested in serving, or wish to nominate someone else as
chair-elect of the Faculty Association/Senate for the upcoming academic year, please call or
e-mail me. I will answer your questions about the governance responsibilities and committee
work. The commitment would entail a year as chair-elect followed by a year as Faculty
Association/Senate Chair with course releases. My phone # is 792-2476 and e-mail is
blchristenson@lcsc.edu

     Thank you
Brian Christenson

General Education Report to Senate 2-21-08

What has the General Education Committee been up to?

The Goals

Over the last 3 or 4 years the committee has been reorganizing LCSC General Education
core curriculum into a “Goal Oriented Core.”  Last year this body passed the elements of the
Core that most of could agree on, and the Gen Ed Committee has been charged with dealing
with those items we have been unable to agree on this year.

Specifically those items are requests to look into a Service Learning Goal, a Wellness Goal,
and incorporating Foreign Language into the General Education Core. As far as Service learning
is concerned.  The committee hosted a thinking through lunch on the topic and has come to the
following conclusions.

Service Learning Recommendation

At this point in time, it is the General Education Committee’s recommendation is that Service
Learning NOT be included in LCSC’s General Education Goals.  There are several advocates of
Service Learning on the LCSC campus and they have made good arguments for the benefits of
Service Learning.  However, based on the feedback the committee has received over the course
of the last year, the committee does not think that there is widespread interest across the campus
in service learning, or in requiring a Service Learning Component be added to the General Education
Core.

The General Education Committee encourages individual programs interested in requiring their
students to engage in Service Learning activities to do so through major specific courses.  However,
the General Education Committee does NOT recommend Service Learning as a general education
goal at this time.

Wellness and Foreign Language

The requests to look into a wellness goal as well as incorporating foreign language into the
core have proved to be extremely difficult for the committee to resolve largely due to the
committees inability to conceptualize a way of implementing either goal without 1) reducing
commitments to other goals 2) expanding the number of credits in the Gen Ed Core.

The committee has discussed the possibility of both the wellness issue and the foreign language
issue being resolved if the college were to go to separate cores for BA and BS’s – and this is an
area the committee would like to look into further, as it may have potential to resolve one or
both of these issues.  The committee has spent a great deal of time discussing how to address
the issues of Wellness and Foreign Language both in meetings and via email. However, those
issues are going continue to linger for awhile longer.

Assessment

Four weeks ago the General Education committee held an all day retreat in which about 25
people, including all standing committee chairs and all divisional chairs were invited.  At this
retreat we broke up into 6 groups, and developed an initial series of assessment tools for
measuring the effectiveness of the Gen. Ed. Core.

The committee is still compiling the data from this retreat and I will provide a more detailed
account when we have something interesting to say.  

Thinking Through Lunch

The General Education Committee set a goal of two thinking through lunches per semester for
itself as a way of keeping the issue of General Education before the faculty.  However, the
“behind the scenes” workload have been more numerous than expected and the committee
was only able to hold one thinking through lunch (Service Learning) in the fall and the
committee is unclear if it will be possible to hold two this semester. 

Other Issues of Major Discussion in the Committee

The Role of Distance Learning in the Core

Although member of the Committee have a variety of opinions on the matter, there is general
consensus that a policy of discussion of some type concerning the role that distance learning
courses should play in the general education occur should occur.  For example, is it possible
for a student to meet the goals of LCSC’s general education core through a 100% online delivery
format?  The concern of the committee is that there is already movement towards a 100% online
delivery of the General Education Core, but that movement has occurred without a discussion
of any sort of institutional policy concerning online courses or the development of a “virtual core”. 
The committee understands this is a potentially volatile topic, but the issue comes up again and
again in the Gen Ed meetings and we feel it is worth putting on this concern on college’s radar. 
When time permits we plan to investigate this issue further with the assistance of Kristy Roberts,
Distance Learning, and other faculty members interested.

Freshman Experience Seminar and other Ideas from the AGLS Conference

Several members of the committee attended a national conference last fall addressing issue of
general education.  One of the ideas they returned with was the use of a freshman seminar of
some type in our General Education Core.  This kind of seminar would play an even more critical
role if we were to develop thematic strands of certain courses in order to help students more
quickly make the connections between the various courses in the General Education Core.  
Andy Hanson has also been interested in the idea of a freshman seminar and he is scheduled to
come and discuss the matter with the committee next TH.

Election for Next Years New Committee Member

The Gen Ed Committee would like to remind the Senate that we will need another member for
next year’s committee.  This year, we elected that member at the first faculty association
meeting which did not occur for several weeks into the semester.  This committee was very
busy at that time and short handed.  We would like to hold the election for the new Gen Ed
committee member at the LAST faculty association meeting this year so that the committee
is fully formed when school begins in the fall.  Please ask folks in your division to consider
running for this committee – and, remember that election to this committee is for a five year term. 

The committee is scheduled to meet every T and TH at 8:15 am until April.

Respectfully submitted,

Eric Martin
General Education Committee, Chair.

Technology Advisory Committee

While nearly $100,000 of materials and equipment were requested, the committee could only
recommend $25,000 in awards. It was discussed that all proposals represented worthy solutions
for improving teaching and learning at LCSC. Should additional funding become available, it is
hoped that non-funded requests be considered.

The committee made an effort to incorporate several variables into its recommendations,
including relevance to distance education, impact on teaching and learning spaces (over faculty-
dedicated equipment or curriculum-specific items), etc. Two or more proposals were considered
to be so program- (or course-) specific that they should be divisional budgetary items. Two or
more proposals were considered to be so large or broad in scope that they should be college
(UAP) budgetary items.

Therefore, the TAC is making the following recommendations:

These recommendations have been forwarded to Provost Fernandez for final approval.

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