UNH Faculty Senate
Summary Minutes from 7 February 2000
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
FACULTY SENATE
FEBRUARY 7, 2000 MINUTES SUMMARY
I. Roll - The following Faculty Senate members were absent:
Chandler, de la Torre, Draper, Garey, Macieski, McCann, and
VonDamm. Absent as work to rule were Barretto, Carr, Christie,
Echt, Garland, Givan, Kaye, Planalp, Reardon, Roh, and Stine.
Excused were Bornstein and Hiller.
II. Communications with the Provost - The provost said that searches
for four new deans are now underway. In the WSBE search, four
candidates for WSBE's dean are coming to campus soon, and then we
will look for consensus regarding bringing one or two of them back
for further discussions. The CEPS search is down to eight or ten
candidates, and the next step will be interviews at the airport. In the
COLSA search, the committee is starting to set up criteria and will
soon begin screening candidates; and the vacancy for a dean in SHHS
is currently being advertised. Some of the four positions may be
filled by this summer and others perhaps not until January. A
professor asked if the COLSA dean would continue to have a fifty-
percent appointment as dean and the other percent time in the
Agricultural Experiment Station, and the provost said that the issue
is under discussion.
Regarding the academic planning process, the provost said that
normally there would have been discussions on this subject first with
each constituency but that this step was delayed due to the current
contract situation. At the present time the Academic Planning
Steering Committee is doing some preliminary work which will be
followed by the public discussions. The provost said that he wants
to make sure that the academic planning process is integrated with
the governance of the university and with implementation. The
General Education Review Committee has one of its members on the
Academic Planning Steering Committee, and enrollment planners
also will be included, as well as the Academic Computing Advisory
Committee. Two-thirds of the members of the Academic Planning
Steering Committee are faculty, including the chairs of the Faculty
Senate and the senate's Academic Affairs Committee; and the
planning committee also includes students and members of the Board
of Trustees. Resource people will be asked to attend as needed.
A series of articles on the planning process will be published in the
Campus Journal, and this round of planning is intended to cover the
next three to five years. A first draft of the plan is expected to be
ready early in the fall and will include a time table, implementation,
accountability, implications, and measures of success. The provost
said that the planning effort must secure shared goals which will be
the anchor of responsibility-center management. Curricular
predatory practices could be a worry, but we have set up a committee
and other resources to guard against that. The provost added that we
need to consider what is the right size for the university over the next
five years. Once we have agreements on goals and size, the units
must act within those parameters.
III. Update from the Transportation Advisory Committee - Professor
Diane Freedman said that the membership of this committee includes
four faculty, two students, one graduate student, one operating staff,
two PAT staff, the director of sustainability, and a representative
from the town of Durham. Non-voting members include Allan
Braun, Victor Azzi, and Dirk Timmons. The committee welcomes
non-members to attend their meetings and intends to ask a member
of the faculty union to participate. Future meetings will include
February 11 from noon until 2:00 and February 18 from noon to 4:00.
The committee agrees that there should be a transportation origin and
destination study. The committee requests input from the university
community and will be advisory to the university president and the
vice president for finance and administration. A report will be
published at the end of the year.
The Transportation Advisory Committee is currently starting to
review the disappearances of general-use parking spaces for special
uses. A suit by a student is making a review of disability access
pressing. The Faculty Senate's Campus Planning Committee has
proposed a motion that no changes in parking and transportation
should be made until an origin and destination study has been done
and reviewed. The two committees should share information with
each other on a regular basis, and there should be a Faculty Senate
representative on the Transportation Advisory Committee in addition
to the faculty already on that committee. This membership change
should be discussed with the transportation committee chair Dork
Sahagian and the vice president for finance and administration, and
Diane Freedman will ask the chair to arrange for membership of a
Faculty Senate representative on this committee.
IV. Communications from the Chair - The Faculty Senate chair said
that any additional nominations for the slate of membership for the
University Curriculum and Academic Policies Committee should be
given to him by the end of the day. The slate will be presented at the
next Faculty Senate meeting.
V. Minutes - The minutes of the last Faculty Senate meeting were
approved unanimously with two modifications as follows. The first
sentence in item VI will be changed to: "If a UNH student takes a
course at any other accredited school similar to the Thompson
School, the student could receive credit for the course at UNH." The
next to last sentence in that section will be: "Some faculty in WSBE
and the Nursing and Kinesiology Departments wanted the motion to
say that no action may be taken in this regard if it would negatively
affect the department's accreditation."
VI. Update on Transfer of Credit - The chair of the senate's
Academic Affairs Committee said that New Hampshire's community
technical colleges have their own trustees and their own system,
which is not part of the University System of New Hampshire. The
community technical colleges are currently accredited by the New
England Association of Schools and Colleges - Technical College
Commission, but the technical colleges would like to be accredited
by the NEASC - Commission on Institutions of Higher Education,
which accredits UNH and Thompson School. Visiting teams have
recently been sent from NEASC to decide if the technical colleges are
ready for candidacy status, which is the first step in the application
process. A report on this is expected in April. If a technical college
receives candidacy status, in another one to five years the school
would start to submit a formal application to NEASC. Each campus
would spend about a year preparing a self-study. Then NEASC
would send a visiting team to the school for several days, and a
written report would be prepared for NEASC. After all that, the
Commission on Higher Education would decide whether or under
what conditions to grant accreditation to each school.
Until the three motions on transfer credit were passed by the UNH
senate a few years ago, a student transferring to UNH from
community technical colleges would usually get a block of credits
worth sixty percent of those at the transferring institution; but the
student would not get credit for the particular courses. However,
some courses were evaluated and approved for full credit and
sometimes even credit as a major course or for a general education
requirement. Then the motions passed by the senate eliminated the
block credit and said that courses from accredited institutions of
higher education would receive full credit and that courses from
schools not accredited as institutions of higher education would get
no credit. To meet major requirements, courses would have to be
approved by the major department at UNH; and to meet general
education requirements, courses would have to be approved by the
Admissions Office with the consent of the General Education
Committee. However, the senate was told that accreditation for the
technical colleges as institutions of higher learning would happen
soon, and the motions said that New Hampshire's community
technical colleges would be exempted from the new provisions until
the schools received accreditation. Shortly thereafter, Provost Eggers
decided to extend this grace period to Hesser, McIntosh, and the
Maine State Technical Colleges, but only until the fall of 2002. We
see now that the change in accreditation for the technical schools will
take years if it happens at all.
Finally, Bruce Keough, who is chair of the USNH Board of Trustees,
set up a Transferability of Credit Task Force chaired by Walter
Peterson. Membership in the task force includes the UNH provost,
the dean of UNH-Manchester, and the director of the Thompson
School, as well as additional trustees and legislators. The task force
met on December 20, and UNH gave a presentation at that meeting.
The task force will continue to meet and intends to give a report to
the Board of Trustees. Previously, technical college and USNH
faculty had met with the chancellor and emphasized to him the
differences between the two types of schools and their courses. The
Faculty Senate agreed that it needs to keep an eye on the transfer-of-
credit issue. The president has said that the senate has jurisdiction on
this issue at UNH, but many political pressures exist.
VII. Academic Performance of Student Athletes - Professor Steve
Hardy, who is the UNH faculty representative to the National
Collegiate Athletic Association and who also chairs the president's
Athletic Advisory Committee, said that his committee considers
issues related to the welfare of student athletes. The NCAA requires
a report for certification for division one athletics and includes
criteria of gender equity. The NCAA provides funds for the UNH
Academic Support Services for athletes and the Life Skills Program
for athletes. Student athletes at UNH have high graduation rates, and
their average SAT scores compare well also. Sometimes students
have problems with conflicts between class or exam schedules and
games or practices, and the senate has already reviewed that policy.
Today senators discussed how they have handled such situations and
who has been helpful in resolving difficulties.
Hazing is an emergent area of concern and is being reviewed. In
addition, the NCAA has set limits on the number of hours which can
be required for practice and weight lifting during the season and also
outside of the season for a given sport. However, the NCAA rules
subsequently allowed additional individual skills instruction which
is supposed to be voluntary. At UNH a weekly list of such skills
instruction is required. A professor asked why student athletes do not
seem to use the University Writing Center, and Professor Hardy said
that he would look into that.
VIII. Transportation Policy - The Campus Planning Committee
chair will send to the senators electronically the motion on
transportation policy, and the senate will have an opportunity to vote
on the motion at the next senate meeting. Proposals such as the
Sustainable Transportation Trip Report and Recommendations call
for a new approach, transportation demand management, and have
recommendations which could be disruptive and costly for faculty
and staff. Therefore the Campus Planning Committee is proposing
a motion which calls for an origin and destination study before any
changes are made. Many faculty say that the changes which were
proposed would affect their daily lives negatively and that they have
seen frequent small changes in parking rules that, in aggregate, have
already been detrimental to them. The Faculty Senate should be
consulted on the questions that would be part of the origin and
destination study, because faculty want to be sure that its wording is
not biased. The Master Plan talks about restoration of the walking
campus; but we have not had a walking campus; and most faculty
have great concerns about the proposed changes. For example, the
loop road idea would eliminate many parking spaces on campus and
would cost a great deal.
IX. Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned.