Erin Feld is stepping down as chair of the Tutoring Committee, and so a new faculty member is needed to serve. The Senate has always felt that it is important that the tutoring committee be chaired by faculty, to emphasize our role in oversight of instructional matters, and so it would be great if someone could volunteer for this role.
Several upcoming possible changes to Palomar’s policies were discussed.
AP 3900 (governing free speech on campus) is being evaluated, in the wake of recent events on campus involving demonstrations which some students found unsettling, or incidents in which students felt intimidated or coerced by individuals wanting to distribute literature. The guiding principle behind the reevaluation is to ensure that the campus is open to public speech as much as possible, regardless of content, with only those restrictions necessary to allow campus functioning (e.g. demonstrations cannot block access to buildings).
AP 5010 governs admissions and concurrent enrollment. The change being contemplated would clarify that even when exceptionally gifted students are allowed to enroll at very young ages, a faculty signature will still be required to enroll them in a class.
AP 3280 governs grants. The contentious issue here is that some large grants are used to create programs which serve students, but which must then be institutionalized (becoming budget drains) when the granting agency stops funding the project. While this may well be a good thing, there are many who feel that such grants should be reviewed *before* they are applied for, to consider how this issue will be dealt with if it arises. Proposals for “Intent to Apply for a Grant” paperwork have been presented. However, these new forms would have to be filed some number of weeks before the grant application is made, and it was pointed out that in many cases, grant applications are due on short notice–thus, this requirement would make applying for some grants impossible. The Senate also discussed whether such pre-application review might only be needed for grants which specifically fund ongoing projects, or which involve an amount of money above a certain threshold.
New PRP and Resource Request forms are coming up for review, as part of making the PRP process more streamlined, as well as more conducive to authentic program review (as opposed to being more bureaucratic than necessary).
The Senate is considering a statement on its view on Distance Education policy. This will be discussed further at upcoming meetings.
The Curriculum committee would like to remind everyone that curriculum changes take time to review properly (and require Chancellor review), and that late submissions are unlikely to be approved when the applicant would like. The recommended timeline is to develop new curriculum in a spring semester to be submitted in fall, with the anticipation that it will be effective the *following* fall.
Finally, there will be a meeting of the CALM organization (oriented around encouraging and facilitating zero- or low-cost course materials) today, February 14, from 2:10-3:00 in MD-155C.