APOLOGIES: Eberhart (on sabbatical) and Mitcham

GUESTS: Nigel Middleton – Vice President for Academic Affairs, Phil Romig, Jr. – Associate Vice President For Research and Dean of Graduate Studies, Arthur Sacks – Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Joseph Dahdah - Graduate Student Association representative

PRESENTATION:

1. Phil Romig Jr. presented a comparison of endowment, research funding, and graduate student numbers at Colorado School of Mines to that at other institutions, and suggested an approach for raising the ranking of CSM relative to these other schools. The approach includes reducing credit hours for BS degree by 10%, using graduate students to teach 10% of undergrad courses, and creating four new research centers ($5 million per year each and three research faculty for each).

COMMENTS:

1. Faculty Forums – Romberger commented that few faculty attended the October Faculty Forum. The Senators thought that the low attendance might have been due to a timing issue, but that it was well publicized. They agreed to continue to sponsor future Faculty Forums.

   There will not be a November Faculty Forum because the fourth Wednesday is the day before Thanksgiving.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES:

1. The minutes of the October 5, 2004 Faculty Senate meeting were approved as amended.
2. The minutes of the October 19, 2004 Faculty Senate meeting were approved as amended.

COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE REPORTS:

1. Graduate Council – Wolden presented the following written report::

   There was discussion on the proposal for an honors designation for graduate degrees. Many members expressed opposition to the proposal as currently formulated, and little support was expressed. The matter was tabled and will die unless Raul Snieder returns with a modified proposal at the next meeting.

   Graduate Council unanimously approved a new graduate course, CHEN598: Introduction to Chemical Engineering Research.

   The council discussed a proposal for a course addition on GPGN 470/570. This was presented as a replacement for SYGN 201. There were concerns of how a 200-level course could be elevated to a 500 level courses. Also, some members expressed opposition to the dual listing. No syllabus was provided. The Council sent the matter back to GPGN for more information and clarification.

   John McCray made a second presentation to Graduate Council for a new degree program entitled Hydrologic Science and Engineering. There was discussion and members were directed to discuss the matter with their constituents. Graduate council is expected to make a formal recommendation at the next meeting.

   The Senators requested Wolden to remind the Graduate Council that there is an established center – International Ground Water Modeling Center – on campus.

   There was a brief discussion regarding standardized criteria for admission into the combined BS/MS program. At present there is no institutional criteria, and each department does it on an ad hoc basis. This will be continued at the next meeting.

   There was also a brief discussion regarding standardized criteria for creation and administration of Graduate Certificate programs. At present there is no institutional criteria, and each department does it on an ad hoc basis. This will be continued at the next meeting.

   There was a brief discussion on the graduate Leave of Absence policy. At present there is draconian language in the Bulletin that states that a student may not work on the thesis while on Leave of Absence. This is both silly and unenforceable, and it is proposed to change the wording to “students may not use non-public CSM resources while on Leave of Absence”. The exact wording was debated and will be discussed at the next meeting.

2. Undergraduate Council – Mehta submitted the following written report:

   The proposal for priority registration for athletes passed with a vote of 10-5. A proposal to add GEGN courses was approved unanimously. A proposal to modify the GE curriculum that reduces the number of credit hours from 147.5 to 136 or 134.5 was approved with one abstention and one "nay" vote. Dan Montez made a presentation about the College Opportunity Fund (COF).

   The Council requested clarification from the Senate on which items require Senate approval and which ones do not require Senate approval. It was the consensus of those present, after reading the Faculty By-Laws, that issues of an administrative nature do not have to be approved by the Senate and issues of an academic nature do have to be approved by the Senate.

3. Research Council – Parker reported that the Research Council discussed how vouchers might impact the graduate students and research at CSM.
   
4. Evaluation Committee – Davis submitted the following written report:

   Committee on Evaluation met October 13, 2004

   The Committee agreed that LAIS should be permitted to remove 5 core questions from the NHV evaluations for certain instructors, given that these 5 core questions were not applicable to the course given recent course changes. These are questions 4, 8, 10, 11, and 12.

   A motion to remove core questions 4,8,10, 11 and 12 for the three LAIS faculty as approved by the Evaluation Committee was made by Davis, seconded by Santi and passed unanimously by the Senate.

5. Executive Committee – Romberger reported that the department head representatives for 2004-05 are John Moore, Tibor Rozgonyi and Paul Jagodzinski.

   Department head representatives brought the following issues to the committee for future discussion: filling the Vice President for Research position; increase the faculty to correspond to the increase in student numbers, class size, increase technical support to correspond to increase in students, and the accounting system that has been a long-standing problem.

   Vice President for Academic Affairs Middleton agenda items for this committee include tuition planning for next year and placement of units that will be displaced when the wellness center is constructed, and the director of the McBride Program.

   It was reported that the students perceive that the increased number of students will decrease the quality of education that they receive at Mines.

The next meeting will be November 16, 2004 at 1:30 PM in Hill Hall 300.