Chair: Dr. Susan Camp

Recorder: Sarah Lewis

Members Absent: Counseling and Psychological Services Dept, Educational Administration Dept, A. Shore, T. Darvill, C. Hockey, C. Ballesteros, A. Wolfe, R. Dunn

                        The meeting was called to order at 3:07 PM.

  I.              Approval of Agenda

The agenda was approved as distributed.

  II.            Approval of November 30, 2009 Minutes

The minutes were approved as distributed.

  III.         FA Chair’s Report – S. Camp

The chair began her report by welcoming back everyone and stating that Senator Gwen Kay and she returned from University Faculty Senate Saturday afternoon.  She will give her report at the General Faculty meeting this afternoon. She stated that important items of interest include; general education, higher education act being proposed to the state legislature, budget, and new COO.

Dr. Camp then continued her report for Assembly members to be aware that the Assembly has many programs and program revisions in the council pipeline right now.  She stressed for everyone to  please talk with your colleagues about shepherding these through governance so that all can be dealt with this spring.  

IV.          Reports of Councils, Committees, and Task Forces

---Personnel Policies met on December 4, 2009 and discussed the issue of using electronic (absentee) voting by faculty on department matters.

The Faculty Bylaws identify faculty with full voting rights as those members of the academic staff of the College having academic rank and term or continuing appointments. This is a significant designation and comes with the responsibility to participate actively in the governance and operations of the College, particularly at the department level. This includes in-person participation in meetings so as to be fully engaged in discussions and debates.

PPC cannot support electronic voting as a substitute for the engagement and participation of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty in meeting departmental responsibilities.

---Academic Policies Council met on December 4^th, and approved the revisions to the Philosophy/ Psychology B.A.  The council also discussed the revisions to the Geochemistry B.S., and approved the revisions to the program.  The council also took up the suggested wording change to the Class Attendance Policy, which was amended to: “Regular class attendance is obligatory.  Faculty may consider attendance when determining grades, subject to the policies below.” This wording was approved by the council. 

---General Education met on December 6^th, 2009 and approved Anthropology Department Critical Thinking Plan and the Council began discussing deadlines for Critical Thinking Assessment for the academic year 2009-10. The Council also met on January 26, 2010 and Council fixed date for Critical Thinking reports and materials which will be on May 20, 2010. A broader discussion on assessment proceeded, but with particular emphasis put to this year’s assessment of Intellectual Issues category. The council will meet again on February 9, 2010 and it will be dedicated to responding to Board of Trustees passing of a resolution, whereby General Education requirements will be completed with an approved writing course, an approved math course, and courses in at least five other general education categories with a minimum of 30 total credits. The Council will put particular focus on the issue of transfer students from other SUNY units, especially since the resolution will take effect for fall, 2010. 

---Information Technology Council met on December 11^th, 2009, and discussed the CTAB Report. The Council stated that SCAP proposals are available on the CTAB web site at http://www.oswego.edu/techboard.  The Council also reported that Joe received an announcement from FACT that the SCAP allocation will be 5% lower than previously announced.  Joe estimates Oswego will get about $134,000 for SCAP. They also reported that Winter Breakout will include several technology-related sessions.  Also they reported that the  Banner Upgrade was completed on schedule the week of Thanksgiving, and they are still addressing some final details. Also with Banner, CTS will be investigating the technical feasibility of Student Pictures integrated with Banner.  CTS has been in touch with SUNY Cortland about their implementation. The Council also reported that on December 29^th, the wireless will be converted from the VPN to the new system and that there will be no wireless access on campus for 4-6 hours.  The Council also reported about the Calendaring & email system which includes MS Live@ EDU and Google Apps for Education.  He stated that CTAB members & friends continue to test the 2 products and that they will complete a survey of their findings at the end of January. CTS will need to test migrating the inbox, migrating other email folders and email filters and how they work on the web-based email as well as clients.  Their next meeting will be on Friday, February 12, at 3:00 pm to vote on SCAP recommendations.  They hope that subsequent meetings will be on Thursday mornings at 10 am. 

---Graduate Council met on January 29^th, and reviewed the certificate for interdisciplinary trauma studies.  It was sent back to committee.  The council also reviewed the program for the Public accounting MBA.  This program was distributed at the Assembly meeting today.  Also, the council discussed the criteria for SUNY Oswego Graduate Faculty, which was also distributed to the Assembly.

---Library Council met on February 1^st, and it was discussed that assessments needed to be completed so that the data can be sent to the company for the renovations.  Also, Library Council will have Shannon Pritting present to the council about Library Instruction and videos explaining how to do certain tasks within the library, new ideas and acquisitions that could possibly SUNY-wide, and philosophy of the learning conference.  The Council also discussed a “wish list” for things they wished to see in the renovation which included space for larger classes, especially computers for each student, virtual computing centers that relying on wireless and laptops along with the issue of power, flexible seating configuration options in classrooms with power available.  Lastly the Council reported that the library is participating in a pilot this spring with a new catalog, which includes books from the New York Public Library, other SUNY school, and some private institutions.  This catalog will increases the “holdings” from a current 450,000 books to 40 million books available with a quicker ILL turnaround.  They hope that students will be able to use it and test it out, since this is only in the beta stage.  There was also discussion about possibly putting ebooks in the catalog, and putting in the link rather than buying the book itself.  They will meet again on March 8^th.

 ---Admissions and Student Services Council met in December, will be emailing members about meeting times since only two members of the council showed.

 ---Undergraduate Curriculum Council The UCC met on Wednesday, December 9, 2009. They approved the following course updates/additions:

 CSC 335 - Programming the Web (new course)

 ISC 399 - Independent Study (update)

 MUS 323 - Women and Music (update)

 MUS 329 - Music and Politics (update)

 MUS 390 - African Music in the Americas (update)

The UCC also approved the following prereq plans:

1. Communications

2. Economics

3. History

4. Info Science

5. Music

6. Psychology

7. Technology

Here is the status of the prereq plans:

UCC will meet next on Wednesday, 2/10/10

---Faculty Senate will be giving a full report at the General Faculty Meeting.

---Catalog Coordinator reported that emails to department chairs will be going out soon with a link to look over the undergraduate catalog for the upcoming year.

---Campus Concept Committee  met today 2/1, to review and discuss CCC membership, charge/responsibilities and future items of work.

---Writing Across the Curriculum and Steering Committee will meet February 2^nd, 2010.

---Admissions to Major Task Force will be meeting next week to finalize the recommendation for Faculty Assembly.

---Political Science Revisions-

S. Rosow was present at the meeting to discuss changes to the Political Science B.A.  He began by stating that it was the first major change to the program since the 1970s.  He then summarized the changes that were occurring to the program.  He stated that the new Political Science major would have a reduced number of core requirements from the current six 200-level classes to three.  This was decided since when the implementation of the current six 200-level classes was created during a time when there were about 10 full-time faculty, whereas now there are only 6-7 full time faculty, and to be able to maintain six entry-level classes along with the upper-division classes it was straining on the department.  Also, he stated that the field of Political Science has dramatically changed, and the department wanted to focus on more global politics, and how American politics are viewed in a global perspective.   This was also revised to give students the opportunity to create their own program in interests they have.   

V.            Elections

      General Education Visioning Task Force

• CLAS Representative- Pam Brand
• SCMA Representative- Jonel Langenfeld-Rial
• SOB Representative- Anne Edwards

      Library Council- Zohra Manseur

VI.          Unfinished Business

      Revisions to the MBA Program- it was decided by the Assembly that there was no need to rush passing this revision and it was postponed until clarification was received.

      Request by Middle States co-chairs to limit Friday 12:40 department meetings during the 2010-2011 academic school year- an Assembly member discussed how the body has not been in position to be able to tell departments to when they can or cannot hold department meetings, which was then refuted by another member by stating that College Hour was a product of Faculty Assembly, which restricts departments from holding classes during the 12:40-1:35 block.  It was then recommended that it is a bi-weekly restriction so that departments can still have time to meet.  There was a motion to amend the original motion to add “1^st and 3^rd Friday of each month” which was passed by a vote of 38-1.   The proposition was then brought to the floor as amended and it was passed by a vote of 34-5. 

      Request for Assessment Advisory Committee- it was discussed that many people agree to this type of committee, and that when used in departmental assessments it helps to alleviate stress, and it was mentioned that Middle States will expect SUNY Oswego to have this committee in place.  It was then moved to amend the proposal to change the committee from having 6 faculty to 7 faculty members, to include a representative from the library. This motion was approved.  The entire proposal was then passed by the Assembly unanimously.

      Revision to catalog copy for class attendance policy- Faculty Assembly passed the following (this replaces both paragraph 1 and 2 following the heading Class Attendance, General) wording change to the Class Attendance Policy unanimously (currently on page 198 of the Undergraduate catalog).

 “Regular class attendance is obligatory.  Faculty may consider attendance when determining grades, subject to the policies below.”

 (“policies below” refers to the sections on Absence from Class, Religious Beliefs and Athletic Team Membership)

  VII.       New Business

 The meeting was adjourned at  3:57 PM.