The University Senate met in special session at 3:00 p.m,. September 28,
1998 in the Auditorium of the W. T. Young Library.
 
Professor Roy Moore, Chairperson of the Senate Council presided.
 
Members absent were:  Sammy Anderson, James Applegate, Leon Assael, Anthony
Baxter, Suketu Bhavsar, Jeffrey Bieber, Brian Biermann, Deborah Blades,
Rachel Bomberger, Maria Boosalis*, James Brennan, Sharon Brennan, Jayson
Brittain, Joseph Burch, Lauretta Byars, Joan Callahan, Brad Canon, Charles
Carlson, Ben Carr, Edward Carter, Michael Cibull, Jordan Cohen, Todd
Curtis, Robert Dahlstrom, Inaas Darrat, George DeBin, Henri DeHahn, Eric
Drake, David Durant, Juanita Fleming, Ray Forgue, William Freehling,
Richard Furst, Hans Gesund*, Larry Grabau, Howard Grotch, Issam Harik,
Patrick Herring, Kay Hoffman, James Holsinger, Blake Hornal, Mike Inmann,
David Johnson, Jamshed Kanga, Alan Kaplan, Edward Kasarskis, Richard
Kermode, Keith Kinderknecht, James Knoblett, Joachim Knuf, Philipp Kraemer,
Thomas Lester, C. Oran Little, Marianne Lorenson, Donald Madden, Jason
Miller, David Mohney, Robert Molzon, Margo Monteith, Phyllis Nash, Michael
Neitzel, Jacqueline Noonan, Miles Osland, Claire Pomeroy, Thomas Pope,
Shirley Raines, Dan Reedy, Thomas Robinson, Elizabeth Rompf, Michael
Schlossberg, Robert Schwemm, Robert Shay, Steven Skinner, Sharon Stewart,
David Stockham, Kaveh Tagavi, Thomas Troland, Henry Vasconez, William
Wagner, Thomas Waldhart, Retia Walker, Charles Wethington*, Carolyn
Williams, Eugene Williams, Emery Wilson, Ernest Yanarella.
 
*  Absence Explained
 
The Chair stated that he hoped they would find this an informative meeting.
 It would also be informal with the chance for questions.
 
Chairperson Moore made the following remarks:
 
I would first like to talk about the Senate and what it does in rather
broad terms.  I would then like to talk about the Senate Council.  Then I
will ask the committee chairs to talk about their specific committees and
also be available to answer questions.
 
The Senate is an elected body.  The election process is not handled by the
Senate Council, but is handled by the Registrar's Office, by Don Witt and
Susan Caldwell.  The Chair of the Rules and Elections Committee, Doug
Michael is responsible for actually counting the ballots, votes and
nominations.  As far as the office that oversees the whole process, that is
the Registrar's Office.  I should also point out that Susan and Don sit
down here and the proceedings are recorded.  The minutes themselves are
actually done by Susan and Don.  The minutes are then turned back to me.  A
question has come up about what are the official minutes.  Let me point out
that there are two forms of minutes that are disseminated, one is what we
call the longer minutes, which is a blow by blow account and has the names
of people who ask questions and make comments.  Those are still available.
They are on the WEB.  The reason those do not go out is because the Senate
voted last year that those minutes would no longer be distributed because
of all the trees that were being killed as a result.  Anyone who wants
those can come by the Senate Council office and pick up a copy.  There is
also the official minutes.  Those are summaries of the various proceedings
and are sent to all senators, administrators, and a group of other people
as specified in the Senate Rules.  The minutes from the last meeting are
already posted on the WEB.
 
The Senate itself, the larger group, which is around 114 members, is very
much involved in determining overall academic policies of the University.
That is specified in the rules and those of us who are Senate Council
Chairs take that very seriously.  It is also responsible for new academic
programs, for curriculum, and new courses.  Typically the way those work,
for new courses in particular, is that it is simply a notice process.  All
senators and administrators get a notice when a new course is being applied
for or whenever a course is being modified or deleted. That goes out and if
there are no objections it then comes back to me for approval.  The
circulation for that is 10 days.  If I do not see any problems I go ahead
and sign off.  When it comes to new programs, those have to go to the
Senate Council and then on to the University Senate.  As far as all the
notices you get regarding new courses, those are not going to the Senate,
other than just being circulated, those are not being voted upon as such by
the Senate, unless someone has objections.  In that case, there would be
further discussion.
 
The Senate is also responsible for the University calendar.  For example,
this Friday none of you are supposed to be teaching.  If you are, you are
violating one of the Senate Rules.  This Friday is what some people would
call a dead day, a break.  That was debated in the Senate, and the rule was
changed so that there is a fall break of one day, a Friday.  That was a
change that was made by the Senate.  When it comes to the calendar that
comes from the Senate.
 
The Senate makes recommendations, but does not have a final say regarding
creation, changes or the abolishment of academic units.  As far as I can
see by looking at previous minutes, the President takes that very seriously
and does usually take the Senate's recommendation.  The Senate is
responsible for advising the President on planning and physical
facilities--also on the appropriate committees.  For example, if you want
to know how you got on an area committee, it is because the Senate Council
recommends names and then forwards them to the President, who makes the
final decision.
 
Finally, I will point out that the Senate makes decisions regarding
admission policies.  There are a few changes this year in the Senate.
There are nine new senators from Lexington Community College.  There is a
transition team, headed by David Durant and on which I also serve, which is
looking at how we can go about merging all the rules including the appeals
board and how we can better bring those into alignment because there are
some major differences between the rules of LCC and the University Senate.
 
The Senate Council is the smaller body.  It is made up, of under the rules,
nine members that are elected from the larger group.  The Senate does elect
the Senate Council.  There are two members from the student body, elected
by the student membership of the Senate.  There are three nonvoting
members; members of the Board of Trustees, the Student Government
Association president, and the immediate past chair of the Senate Council.
 
One question that often comes up is what constitutes a quorum for the
Senate and the Senate Council.  The Senate Council meets every Monday,
except the second Monday when the Senate itself meets.  In order for the
Senate Council to be able to properly conduct business, six voting members
must be present.  Just as with the Senate, Senate Council members serve
three-year terms.  There are three faculty members elected each fall with
their terms beginning on January 1st and going through December 31st.  The
student members are elected for one-year terms.  There is a chair and a
vice-chair.  That is a change this year.  In the past, there has been a
chair and a chair-elect who acted as a vice-chair.  As of this year, we
have no chair-elect.  We will elect a chair-elect in December and that
person will be elected from among the current members of the Senate
Council, by the Senate Council.  As far as the Senate itself goes, a quorum
of the Senate requires 45 voting members.  There is no voting by proxy.
You cannot give your vote to someone else by proxy.  If you can not be
here, you can not vote.  In order for there to be a roll call, where people
individually have to give their vote, twenty-five percent of the members or
one-fourth of the members present have to ask for the roll call.  The chair
can also ask for a roll call vote.  The roll call can not be debated.
 
We do have a secretary to the Senate, which is the Registrar, Don Witt.  We
also have a secretary to the Senate Council, Cindy Todd.  We have a
parliamentarian, Gifford Blyton.  The parliamentarian is there to advise,
not have the final say, but simply advises the chair regarding rules and
procedures.  We do follow Roberts Rules of Order unless there is a
conflict, in which case the Senate Rules prevail.  There are two sergeant
at arms.  I would encourage you to look at the rules.  They are quite long.
 You will note that much of the policy making is delegated to the Senate
Council.  However there are issues, particularly maybe a proposal for a new
degree or new program, or issues regarding tenure, and those, of course,
would come before the full Senate.
 
How do you get something to the Senate Council?  The simple way is get
someone on the Senate Council to do it for you.  There are other ways.  One
is a written recommendation which can be made to either a committee or to
the Senate Council itself.  The Senate Council would have to act upon that
recommendation.  The Senate Council may decide it does not want to forward
that recommendation to the full Senate.  There are three choices that the
Senate Council has when it comes to forwarding proposals to the full
Senate.  The Senate Council can say no, we reject the proposal, and not
forward it.  There are some procedures by which the proposal could be
introduced on the floor of the Senate, but I will not go through those now.
 The next option is to send the proposal forward with a recommendation for
approval.  That is the most common way.  If you notice when you get the
proposal, it will have at the bottom a statement that says this proposal
was recommended for approval by the Senate Council.  The last option is to
forward a proposal without recommendation.  It does not mean that the
Senate Council approves or disapproves.  It simply means the Senate Council
wishes to have the proposal forwarded to the full Senate to be debated and
discussed and let the decision be made by the Senate.
 
The Senate meetings themselves are the second Monday of every month, when
there are classes in session.  However special meetings can be called.
Special meetings can be called one of three ways: 1) if 10 voting members
of the Senate sign a call for a special meeting, 2) the President of the
University calls for a special meeting, or 3) the Chair of the Senate
Council makes the call.
 
How does the agenda get determined?  It is primarily the Senate Council
which does that.  The Senate Council meets for two hours every Monday.  The
Senate Council looks at lots of issues, sort of as the filtering body that
basically determines those issues that will go forward to the full Senate.
 
All meetings, both the full Senate as well as the Senate Council, are open
at anytime to anyone who wishes to attend.  The only time a meeting is
closed is whenever there is a call to go into executive session.  If there
is such a call, it requires a majority vote of those present.  If there is
not a majority vote, there can be no executive session.  If there is an
executive session, the open meetings and open records law requires that
there be a notice as to what the purpose of the executive session is.
After the executive session is over, a vote may be taken.  No final votes
may be taken in executive session.  If there is a vote, it must be
confirmed in public.
 
At this time I will introduce each of the committee chairs that are present
for them to talk about their committees.
 
Senate Academic Planning and Priorities Committee - Kim Anderson, Chemical
Engineering.
 
This is my second year as Chair of this committee.  These are the members
of the committee:  William Freehling - History, Behruz Abadi - Oral Health,
Ellen Hahn - Nursing, Walter Abbott - Sociology, Jim Norton - Medicine,
Susan Mains - Student, Graduate School, Eric Drake - Student, Allied
Health, and Mike Nietzel - ex officio.
 
Their charge is identifying major academic problems likely to be faced by
the University in the foreseeable future.  To formulate and recommend to
the Senate plausible academic goals for the institution.  To develop
procedures and criteria for recommending priorities.
 
They also are to recommend to the Senate a means for increasing the
University's effectiveness and establishing and implementing academic
policies.
 
To serve the Senate and the Administration as a source of faculty
information and opinion concerning academic planning and priorities.
 
Based on that, I had a meeting with Roy Moore and talked about possible
focus areas for this committee for 1998-99.  I have not met with committee
members yet, so these are open for discussion with them.
 
First of all, student retention and graduation rates are a very important
issue that this committee should look at.  I have heard more than once that
the Council on Postsecondary Education is actually looking at these
tuitions as far as distribution of the money.  We feel that this is a very
important area that this committee should focus on and provide some
information.
 
Second of all, when there are faculty working on academic issues, there is
a question, especially for those untenured, about rewards for these
services.  I would like this committee to look at rewards for participating
in undergraduate education--not just necessarily look at promotion and tenure.
 
Finally, there is some question about our computer facilities.  I have
heard some people say that we are starting to max out on the facilities
that we have available and how are we going to continue to provide
facilities if our student population continues to increase?  I would like
to bring the issue up to this committee to discuss the possibility of
having the students buy computers.
 
Also any other issues that you or the other committee members would like to
recommend.
 
As far as how we plan to run the process this year, I will probably set up
a monthly meeting with the committee.  They will meet at a standard time
and will prioritize the areas of focus and choose one or two to concentrate
on this year.
 
Chairperson Moore said that all the committee meetings are open and anyone
can attend.  If you want to know when the committees meet, just call the
Senate Council office.  Also there is a bulletin board outside the Senate
Council office in the basement of the Administration Building, Room 10.
The agendas for the committees and the Senate and the Senate Council will
be posted there.  The committee minutes can also be made available.  All
the committee chairs know they are supposed to send out an agenda and keep
minutes.
 
I have had some questions about the ten-day notice rule.  The ten-day
notice rule is a requirement under our rules that, anytime a proposal is to
be voted upon by the Senate, it must be circulated to the voting senators
at least ten days in advance.  It can be waived by a majority vote of the
Senate.  If you are trying to get something before the Senate, you need to
keep in mind when the Senate meets and that it has to be on the agenda and
that there is a requirement of a ten day notice.  The Senate can put an
item on the agenda for discussion only.  It will always say for "Discussion
Only."  If it is for discussion only, it can not be voted upon at that
meeting, even if there has been a ten-day notice.  Amendments can be
proposed, but they can not be voted upon.  It can be discussed and debated
but no formal vote can be taken if an item is for discussion only.  The
Senate Council determines if an item is for discussion only.
 
Rules and Elections - Douglas Michael, College of Law.
 
We codify and interpret Senate Rules.  As the name of the committee
indicates, we are in charge of the rules and elections.  The Senate Rules
are the rules governing the academic affairs of the university as it
relates to students and faculty.  Basically, it is everything that it is in
that little book that is called Student Rights and Responsibilities that
the students all get.  Plus a couple of other sections about the
organization and functioning of the Senate itself.
 
The rules are not perfect, and issues always arise under them for
interpretation.  Normally, I suggest strongly that you take those questions
to Roy first and then he will decide how to dispense with them.  Sometimes
he will decide it should go to the Rules Committee.  Nonetheless, sometimes
we will decide it is not a matter we are comfortable with interpreting and
will send a proposal to change the rule back to the Senate Council.
Sometimes we will issue an interpretation binding until the Rules Committee
decides otherwise.  We try to be deferential.  If it is all unclear, we
will send it back for the full Senate to act upon.
 
The other exciting thing we do is count ballots.  Susan and I regularly
count ballots for senators and for faculty trustees.  Anyone is more than
welcome to come help do that.
 
The committee is pretty much reactive.  I do not have an agenda.  We codify
things as they are done by the Senate.  Things are passed, and we decide if
they are to fit in the Senate Rules and where they best fit in.  Sometimes
that requires changing the rules.  For example, last year the Senate
decided that credits given for advance placement should be given the grade
of CR.  When they went to codify that, there was nowhere in the Senate
marking system a grade called CR.  So they had to provide for one.
 
Basically, you will come to the Rules Committee if you have questions of
academic matters that are not covered in the rules.  We meet on a reactive
basis when enough of those things have come up, enough things to codify or
enough questions for interpretation.  If you are on that committee, we will
meet sporadically at the whim of the chair, which is usually every month or
so.
 
Last year, there was the infamous plus/minus system or the lack of it which
came in several iterations.  When it was finally done, we had to sit down
and calmly codify that, which required chasing down a couple of little
pieces of plus/minus rules that were in the plus/minus rules but they were
not sure they should remain there.  It was very difficult to decide how to
do that.  If you push the rules in one place, you will discover another
rule that has impacted another one here.  If there are three or more of
them, then you have to decide what to do with them.
 
Every now and then the Senate acts on things without codifying them.  The
Senate will pass a paragraph, and they are not sure how to fit it in the
rules and not sure who is responsible for interpreting these words that are
not the same words that are in the rules.
 
The question was asked where they would find the rules interpretations?
 
Professor Michael said that the rules committee interpretations fall under
the relevant Senate rules.  If there is an interpretation, it will follow
the rule and be notated RC.
 
Library Committee - Michael Lach, Information Systems
 
The Library Committee is charged by the Senate with the responsibility for
recommending to the University Senate policies to promote the educational
interests of the University as a whole with respect to the libraries and
for consultation and advising with the Director of Libraries on such
matters as are referred to it by the Director or other University personnel
which pertain to improving the usefulness of the libraries of the
University of Kentucky.
 
That basically means that if you do not like something that is happening in
the library, you come and ask us to take a look at it and see what sort of
rules and regulations the library has and to look into it and see if there
is logic and see if other universities are doing things in that direction.
 
In talking with Roy and the Director of Libraries, given this new facility
and the fact that they have combined four libraries into one, they have
moved over a million volumes to compact shelving.  The fact that we now
have classrooms, seminar rooms, faculty studies, graduate studies, as well
as the state of the art auditorium we are in now we thought that it would
make sense for our committee to consider the policies and procedures that
have been created for the W. T. Young Library.  These four different
libraries have different rules for circulation of books and journals.
There are rules about how many times you can sign out a classroom.  Who
gets a faculty study?  How long do you get a faculty study?  Essentially,
none of this has been reviewed by our faculty.   My proposal is that over
the period of this year on a monthly basis we begin to review all of those
rules and regulations and make sure that they are consistent with what we
need to promote the educational interests of the university as a whole with
respect to libraries.
 
Admissions and Academic Standards Committee - Ray Cox, Mathematics
 
The Admissions and Academic Standards Committee is more or less what the
name implies.  It is their function to examine and recommend to the
University Senate changes in admission requirements, grading rules,
standards of grading, standards of granting academic credit, probation,
suspension, degree, and graduation requirements.  They are basically a
reactive committee to handle proposals from colleges and programs within
departments in terms of their admission requirements.  We were involved
last year in the plus/minus grading scene.  This year, aside from the
normal issues that come before us they will be looking at what impact the
Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship or KEES will have on admissions
and the university procedures.  Also, they will be looking at distance
learning.  There are a lot of courses now being offered through distance
learning.  They will be looking at the criteria for granting credit,
examinations, and how the courses are taught and graded.
 
Academic Organization and Structure Committee - Cliff Hynimann, College of
Pharmacy
 
This is my second year as chair of this committee.  The charge is to review
proposals and recommendations concerning priorities for new academic units,
the abolishment or merger of academic units, or major changes in
organization and structure of academic units.
 
Last year, we were pretty reactive in dealing with issues as they came up.
However, there are a couple of agenda items that suggest we should be more
proactive.  One is to look at recommendations for the creation or
abolishment or change in organizational structure of academic units--in
other words to do this without necessarily receiving proposals.
 
Finally, to study and report on matters relating to faculty size, strength,
and student enrollment.  We did not address that at all last year.  Last
year we just looked at three areas: the Center for Health Services
Management and Research, the School of Public Health, and the name change
in the Department of Geological Sciences.  This year, however, we are going
to become more proactive, and one of the suggested areas was that we look
at some of the reviews that have been done by the University on colleges,
external or perhaps university reviews to see if there are issues there
related to organization and structure or perhaps even issues related to our
final charge of faculty size and strength that perhaps we should address
within the committee.  We did also recognize last year that there is an
inconsistency between the guidelines document from the Senate Council for
looking at new proposals and an Administrative Regulation which deals with
Centers and Institutes.  We may also take a look at that and see if they
can bring the two of those things in line.
 
Research Committee - David Hamilton, Department of History
 
I was appointed to this committee three years ago, and the only action the
committee took that year was to disband itself.  It was no longer necessary
because of the inadept guidelines.  This was a time when research at this
University was coming under greater scrutiny because of what was happening
in Frankfort.  It seemed to me a bizarre decision to disband at a time when
the Governor and the University were investigating this the way they were.
I suggested to Jim Applegate and he thought it was a great idea that they
continue.
 
This committee has an open-ended agenda--more than perhaps some of the
other committee charges have suggested.  Last year, the obvious thing was
to discuss, debate, and consider the results of the Reedy Task Force to
consider how the decisions were implemented and carried out.  It seems to
me that the Senate can get bogged down at times concerning various
policies, and that we as a body ought to be engaged in what I think are
some of the really vital aspects of our university community.  Certainly,
research is one of these; a research climate or environment is something
that a University Senate needs to consider.  One of the issues we took up
last year in our meetings were the effects of the new programs regarding
Tier 1 and Tier 2.  One of our concerns was what to do about the overall
research climate of the University, as opposed to simply support for
programs that were identified as Tier 1 and Tier 2.  I think that the
committee felt very strong that we define ourselves and establish our
collective identify by how they encourage, facilitate, and honor research
and that they will continue to address these issues.
 
I have been waiting for the latest documents regarding the matching
endowment programs before meeting.  I am hoping to distribute these to the
committee members to discuss what this will mean for programs in the
University.  I hope that we can continue to pursue these topics throughout
the remainder of the year.  Certainly, this is a topic in which we all have
a strong interest.  If anyone has a suggestion for an issue, a concern that
comes under the rather broad definition of research, please get in touch
with me.
 
Academic Facilities - Mary Molinaro, University Libraries
 
Our committee generally is dealing with all types of space on campus,
including classroom space, departmental offices, computer labs, and the
like.  I had talked to Roy several weeks ago about the direction and the
focus for this committee for this year, and we agreed that one of the big
tasks that was needed was an assessment of facilities.  I know that none of
you probably teach in substandard classrooms, but we may want to address
that generally and look and see exactly how good our classrooms are, how
questionable some are, and how really bad some of the others are and make
recommendations on how those facilities could be made better.  So it is a
big task ahead.
 
The question was asked if they would be also looking at the equipment
within the room.
 
Professor Molinaro answered, "yes".  They were not looking at just if there
is chalk in the chalk rack.  I know that the University is putting in a lot
of smart classrooms.  We want to know how smart they are.   There is a wide
range of issues on classroom space.
 
Nate Brown, President, Student Government, said that there was something on
the WEB that has pictures of every classroom and a rating scale.  How often
is that looked at?
 
Professor Molinaro answered she did not know.  Are the ratings accurate?
If that is the case, then all the classrooms with a four are probably
great.  That is the type of issue that they are looking at and delving
into.  Looking at the rating scale; it may actually have chairs, but they
want to know are they functional?
 
The question was asked, would they be involved with scheduling?
 
Professor Molinaro said absolutely not.  Last year, they did talk about
some scheduling issues.  They will be working with the Registrar's Office.
 
A Senator said that one thing that had come up in their Committee B
discussions for the undergraduate initiative is the lack of informal space
where student teams can get together or faculty and small groups of
students can get together.  There are no vacant classrooms available, and
there is no place to meet with a small group of students.
 
Professor Molinaro said that was probably the reason she was asked to be
chair of the committee because of her involvement with the library.  They
do have a lot of those types of rooms.  They will need to look at those
campus-wide.  While they have a lot of rooms that will meet that need, in
the library it is not enough for the whole campus.
 
The Chair said that this committee last year had a report that was
presented to the Senate Council on the scheduling of academic facilities.
You will be getting that report with your packet for the next Senate meeting.
 
Institutional Finances and Resource Allocation Committee - Craig Infanger,
Agriculture Economics.
 
I just finished my second term as a senator.  In my first term, several
years back I was on this committee and it never met.
 
Our committee started some real functioning last year and most of the
committee is holding over from last year.  We have six members and two
students representing five different colleges.
 
Our basic charge is to examine the overall picture of University finances
and resources--not getting engaged in anything about an individual college
or individual departments.  You will also notice if you take a look at the
chart on the WEB site, that the focus is on budget reductions, which I
guess reflects the mentality of the time that the charge was written.  We
are currently trying to schedule a meeting with Joan McCauley to talk about
the UK budget process, and they will be meeting with the Chancellor of
Lexington Campus and Medical Center to talk about the implications of all
the new research trust funds and what impact that is going to have on the
academic function of the University.  Last year we had a meeting with the
Chancellor of the Lexington Campus concerning the Lexington Campus reserves
for fiscal year 1999.  Most of you would describe it as the Chancellor's
tax.  The Chancellor went over line by line of every one of the allocations
that had been made.  This represents I think the first time the faculty was
permitted to see that type of information.  We are trying to build on that
this year and create an expectation on the part of the Administrators of
the Lexington Camps and Medical Center that they would like to talk about
it and know what the criteria are.  You are more than welcome to come to
our meetings.
 
Admissions Advisory Committee - William Cohen, Biological Sciences
 
The charge of the Admissions Advisory Committee is to be responsible for
recommending admissions policy within general guidelines established by the
Senate.  We work closely with Don Witt, the Registrar, and Pat Herring, the
Director of Admissions.  I met with them initially two weeks ago and our
committee has already met.  Some of you may be aware of the fact that our
rough numbers for admission for the freshman class this fall were about 200
higher than fall 1997.  Part of that was because the actual admissions
process extended over a relatively long period of time, fall through
spring.  One thing that we wanted to do with our full committee meeting was
to get the admissions process going earlier this year, particularly with
regard to the so called automatic admit pool, which is the 80% pool, and
set the overall high school GPA and composite ACT scores, and the committee
has already approved the numbers.  They are, in fact, the same as for Fall
1997.  The idea in general is to have the process occur early, admit
students earlier and establish the freshman class early on.  The other 20%
is the review part where students who do not meet with automatic criteria
can be admitted by special talents.  One of the charges of the committee is
to provide recommendations to the Director of Admissions with regard to
criteria, which are in addition to just overall high school GPA and
composite ACT--for example, looking at areas as perhaps an academic core
type GPA.  We are looking at other ways, particularly as Ray Cox mentioned
from the committee, dealing with the so called KEES scholarships if, in
fact, several years from now there is an explosion in terms of respective
enrollments at the University.  We are indeed interested in trying to
establish some more complex criteria other than the two simple ones which
have been used in the past for automatic admissions.  Also, Pat is working
on some increased enrollment service ideas to share on Preview Nights.
 
A lot of what we do is to advise and be a sounding board.  We are waiting
for Pat Herring to do some additional analysis so we can see some of the
correlations he has made and decide whether those should be added to the
existing set of admission criteria.  Needless to say, a simple change from
overall GPA to an academic core GPA would probably set off lots of noise in
the state, but it is going in the right direction.
 
Nate Brown asked if there was a student on the committee.  He was told,
according to Senate Rules, there could not be a student on the committee
because of conflict of interest.
 
Professor Cohen said it was a good idea to have a student on the committee.
 In some discussion they have had of Advanced Placement classes, the value
of those classes, and when students take them, Rob was extremely useful.
The student insight to the process is important.
 
The Exceptions Committee - Fred Danner, College of Education.
 
Their committee is a three member committee of the Senate that deals with
appeals for people who have been denied automatic admission or admission by
the regular criteria.  Anyone who has been denied admission can appeal in
writing.  They have a limit to the number they can bring in under the
exceptions.  I believe it is less than 10% of the freshman class can come
in under essentially waiving the standard criteria.  The standard criteria
are basically GPA and ACT scores.  People sometimes feel that is not a good
measure of their potential.  They write letters to the committee.  They get
hundreds of such appeals a year.  They have to make informed judgments or
guesses.  Whether someone who was just over the line, their last two years
they pulled themselves up, they messed up the first couple of years at some
junior college, were immature and did not take it seriously and now they
show a couple of years of solid work somewhere else and want to come and
have been denied because they did not quite meet the GPA standard.  We are
basically the committee that handles appeals.
 
Ad Hoc Committee on Minorities - Lionell Williamson,
 
This is the third year I have chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Minorities.
I assume that the reason that I have been encouraged to chair this
committee for the third time is perhaps that maybe the third time we will
get it right.  By right, I mean we will finally get a series of meetings
going and get some things accomplished.
 
The committee has the charge of looking at the economic, social, and
political status of minority faculty and staff on the campus.
 
When they began to meet two years ago, the staff was in the process of
going through a major reclassification.  They decided to look at the status
of minority faculty on this campus.  One of the reasons that they decided
to do that is because they believe that somewhere between September 1st and
May 15th something happens each year to minority faculty and they lose a
good number of their faculty.  They thought after a series of meetings and
deliberate discussion to do something really ingenius and that was to
survey those minority faculty who left over the past five years with the
intent of finding out why they may have departed the University.  There
were some faculty they were not in a position to interview because of some
legal activities by the University.  That is over now and we can go ahead
and survey those faculty.  We identified a list of faculty who departed the
University over the past five years, and each one of us selected from that
list individuals we would contact and do a telephone survey of them to
determine perhaps why they left and use that as a basis for making
recommendations to the Senate as to how they might better retain minority
faculty.  They would like to find out the reasons for these faculty members
leaving.  Our committee will be reporting to the Faculty Senate this year a
recommendation in terms of how we can retain minority faculty.  There are
eighteen recommendations that came out of a 1990 report by this committee
approved by the Faculty Senate looking at the overall status of minorities
on this campus.  We are prioritizing the eighteen recommendations because
we will not be able to look at all eighteen.  We will be looking at those
this year.  My objective is to meet at least monthly.
 
Retroactive Withdrawal Appeals Committee - Scott Kelley - College of
Business and Economics
 
This is the first year for this committee.  Basically, our charge is to
evaluate student appeals for retroactive withdrawals, as the name implies.
Without going into too much detail about the criteria, it can be up to a
year, serious injury, illness, serious personal or family problems, serious
financial difficulties, or permanent disability.  Those are the criteria we
are working with.  We had our first meeting last Wednesday and the first
thing we realized after about fifteen minutes of discussion was that it was
going to be real important for them to have a standardized form.  They will
probably work from the Arts and Sciences model.  The committee will meet
monthly and the main reason for that is the rule states the students should
have an answer within 30 days.
 
The question was asked what is the composition of the committee?
 
Professor Kelley said that the committee is made up of five faculty
members, four alternates and two ex officio members.  There is to be a
student, which will be appointed.
 
The Chair said that this committee was created by a committee, which he
headed last year.  You may know that up until this committee was created,
any retroactive withdrawals involved the Senate Council Chair waiving the
Senate Rules in order to grant such a withdrawal.  Jan Schach, who was the
Chair of the Senate Council, did not feel that was a good way to do that,
because there was no way of determining what is fair or unfair.  She asked
him to chair the committee, and recommendations from the committee were
then adopted by the Senate Council and by the Senate.
 
Chairperson Moore said that there were two committees that were not
represented.  The first is the Academic Programs Committee chaired by Tom
Troland.  That committee looks at new academic programs, and there are
three permanent subcommittees: the Graduate Program Subcommittee, The First
Degree Programs Committee, and the Professional and Preprofessional
Programs.  When new programs are requested, those subcommittees investigate
and look at the proposal and then make a recommendation to the full
committee, which then makes its recommendation to the Senate Council and
then to the full Senate.  That committee deals only with new academic
programs.
 
The other committee is the Ad Hoc Committee on Women chaired by Joan
Callahan.  That committee is to look and make sure the University is
complying with the rules and policies that were established by the
University Senate in 1990 with regard to equity goals that were set.  It is
also charged with investigating the economic, social, and political status
of women employees and students at UK and to identify problems and to
recommend new goals and programs as necessary.
 
There is one other committee, a task force chair by David Durant--The
Lexington Community College Transition Force Committee.  That committee is
looking at how we can better integrate LCC into the University of Kentucky.
 
Professor Moore said that the charges for all the committees are on the WEB
site.  What he had hoped to do was to arrange it so that they would have
the e-mail addresses of the chairs so all they will need to do is click on
the chairs' address.  In the meantime, everyone should have a copy of the
list that includes the e-mail address and phone numbers of all chairs.
 
William Maloney, Chair of the Committee on Student Evaluations, made the
following remarks.
 
I have been working for the last year with the Teaching and Learning Center
on a three-year program taking a look at how we evaluate teaching, last
year setting up the criteria for evaluating teaching.  This year, starting
this Friday, they are having a workshop on the Evaluation of Teaching with
Bill McKeachie from the University of Michigan, who is a national expert on
teaching evaluations.  Then we are going to look at how they can actually
employ it.
 
The question was asked that when the Rules Committee makes rule
interruptions, how much they relied on the knowing or understanding the
original intent of the Senate when they pass the rule?
 
The Chair said that he had been chair of the committee for two years.  They
certainly went back and looked at the minutes of the meeting to see what
the discussion was and try to make some judgment as to what the intent was.
 When there was a question, instead of making an interpretation, they sent
it to the Senate Council to clarify or amend the rule.  Certainly, an
important function is to go back and look at the minutes.  In some cases
they talked with the people who were originally involved with the proposal
to see what they had in mind.  It is not a scientific process.  That is why
any interpretation can be overridden by the Senate Council.
 
Chairperson Moore said he hoped that the meeting been informative.  It is
the first time they have done this.  There are refreshments in the Alumni
Gallery.
 
The meeting was adjourned at 4:35 p.m.
 
 
Donald Witt
Secretary, University Senate

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Last Updated: Friday, November 20, 1998 (Prior revision: 11/18/1998)