CAL Faculty Council Minutes - Feb. 4, 2025
2024-2025 Faculty Council Meeting Minutes
CAL Faculty Council Meeting
Location: Web Ex
Time: February 4th, 2024 4:00PM–5:20PM
Voting members = 41
Quorum = 22
Attendance
Present (36): Alamina, Alam, Al Hariri, Allred, Baltus, Christman, Damschroder, Edgington, Feldmeier, Fitzgerald, Foss, Grazzini, Kim, Layng, Rouillard, McBane, Mezo, Miner, Kinsey, Kistner, Moteleone, Mossblad, Mungo, Nelson, Nemeth, Sakowski, Semaan, Smirnov, Smith, Stauch, Taylor, Wang, Ward, Yamazaki, Zeigler, Zych
Absent (5): Beatty-Medina, Bland, Dudley, Crookston, Amialchuk
Guests: Pryor, Keith, Lawrence, Lingan, Sullivan
Call to Order
Approval of the agenda; Second; Motion Approved (25 Yes, 0 No, 16 Abstain) Approval of the minutes; Second; Motion Approved (27 Yes, 0 No, 14 Abstain)
Dean’s Report (Dean Melissa Gregory)
No report, call for questions on information in Dean’s Corner report
Executive Committee Report (Jami Taylor)
- Met with the Dean and discussed merger and curriculum report
- Council will likely be meeting more in person next year in an effort to build relationships between new colleagues
Faculty Senate Report (Gaby Semaan)
- January 28th senate report
- Email went out about Senate Bill 1, which will restrict what and how we teach
- CFO will be at senate meeting on March 11th
- Provost also brought up Bill 6 that allows withholding of funding if an institution does not comply
- Funding pause is still being figured out
- Doesn’t impact undergrad students
- Negotiations are moving forward with the interim Deans from College of Law and Engineering
- There is a committee for prioritization formed but names have not been announced
- Centralized advising is focused on recommendations from National Institute for Student Success
- Starfish is being replaced with Navigate
- Advising will be made up of 31 advisors, 3 mentors and one administrator
Graduate Council Report (Kristen Keith)
- Look at the three proposals that have been sent out and please send comments to appropriate people. The one on emeritus status is the one of the three that pertains to grad council.
- Responsible conduct of research training is April 5th
- Need volunteers from CAL to staff the fellowship and scholarship committee, must be graduate faculty status but you do not need to be on grad council.
- Only admitted students can apply for scholarship
- Midwest graduate student research symposium is coming up on April 12th, looking for volunteers to be judges
- Scholar Institute’s program will be held over spring break
- Current awards in areas of DEI, justice 40, community benefits, and promoting inclusive and equitable research may be subject to federal oversight
- Be on the lookout for email about graduate student recognition
Elections Committee Report (Sam Nelson)
No report
Bylaws/Constitution Committee Report (Jami Taylor)
- Rough draft of document coming out
- Goal is to protect division structure to protect smaller programs
- Legal required some changes in a few sections
- But the document should look pretty familiar
Curriculum Committee Report (Anthony Edgington)
- See the curriculum report for course modifications that were up for voting
- All programs and course mods were called to vote, and all passed (30 Yes, 1 No, 5 Abstain)
Old Business
No old business
New Business
- Curriculum committee report given by Anthony Edgington on the meeting regarding the changes to the CAL Core Curriculum, no vote will be held until next meeting
- Overall believes the changes proposed by the Core Curriculum Committee will be positive and beneficial
- Allows for increased flexibility for students, departments, and advisors
- Some departments may need to navigate workload changes in the beginning
- Moving from two WAC courses to one WAC course that is available college wide
- Students get a good amount of writing in our College
- Committee believes the WAC course being able to be taken within the college allows students access to different writing styles
- The one concern/question from the committee was in regards to implementation of the changes for Fall 2025
- Some disappointment over the second WAC course being removed because students are graduating and not necessarily skilled writers
- There is not a lot of resource or support for WAC courses
- Individual programs can still require more WAC courses if they choose
- Double counting is not best practices but was used when credit requirement was higher. It makes it harder for students to predict what they need to do. As we go to centralized advising we may not want to have people less familiar with our college having to do double and triple counting
- Many other peer institutions do not have a WAC requirement
- This will only impact BAs so this will not impact the colleges being merged with CAL
- Reducing the WAC requirement will also help the problem of some departments having to over enroll the WAC courses which dilutes the experience
Announcements
Next CAL meeting – February 18th – WebEx
Adjournment
Motion to adjourn; Seconded; Motion approved (33 Yes, 0 No, 3 Abstain)