Quest.

Content Warning: mention of the death of a student

This month’s faculty meeting opened on a somber note, beginning with faculty taking a moment of silence to honor the memory of a first-year student who sadly passed away the week prior. Following this, Karnell McConnell-Black, Vice President for Student Life highlighted additional support for students, staff, and faculty at this time; all-day drop-in hours with counselors at the HCC as well as extended hours and additional counselors available over the next few weeks. He then emphasized what a challenging time of the year this is in general, and urged faculty to please make a care referral if they notice any behavior out of the ordinary. 

Deans Report

With this, Dean of Faculty Kathy Oleson came to the podium for the Deans Report. She began her address by saying, “There are not any magic words to say when devastating things happen,” and urged faculty to, while supporting students, also remember to take care of themselves and to reach out to the Dean’s Office as they can be of help.

Oleson then called up Tamara Metz, Associate Dean of the Faculty, to remind faculty about the student advising survey, emphasizing that when meeting with sophomores and juniors, to plan is to collect this information – only individual advisors will see the responses that their advisees send – and faculty will be asked what their sense is about the data. Following questions about these logistics, Derek Applewhite, Professor of Biology, approached the stand with the CAPP report.

CAPP Report

CAPP (Committee on Academic Policy and Planning) had only a few things to speak about, first with pending new course approvals. The Quest did not have time to write down all the classes up for approval, but there was a big slate of classes and all were approved. Following this, a discussion of a new off-campus study abroad program in Stockholm was announced; DIS Abroad Stockholm. The addition of this program was also passed unanimously. President Audrey Bilger then posed a suspension of the rules so that faculty could vote on an issue from before spring break, because in some cases, voting on things for CAPP from before spring break, after spring break, is not allowed. This motion passed with all “Ayes.”

CAT Report

Paul Silverstein, Professor of Anthropology, then came up with the CAT (Committee on Advancement and Tenure) report. He advised faculty to encourage their students to do faculty evaluations during class time, as it increases the overall response rate. He then brought up a vote on a constitutional amendment to change the language in the faculty handbook, but the Quest could not write down what this was fast enough.

Appeals and Review Committee 

Nigel Nicholson, Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean (GLAM) Studies and Humanities then came to the podium for the Appeals and Review Committee. He picked up where Silverstein left off, and said, “As Paul alluded to, we have a motion that is in your inboxes that CAT has brought forward, and so far it has not made quorum.” He then encouraged faculty to vote on the proposal, adding that even if one is a visiting faculty member, they can also vote.

Legislation Committee

Following this, Vice President for Student Life McConnell-Black then came back up to the stand in order to talk about a J-Board and AdCom (Administration Committee) academic misconduct proposal. In opening this discussion, he outlined the issues that both committees have been dealing with, “Including policy practice gaps, inconsistent findings and outcomes, insufficient educator training, processes.” He then continued, “A significant part of the problem stems from the division of governance between the chambers.” In explaining this, he said that this was especially a problem during breaks because when J-Board is on breaks, AdCom takes on the crux of the cases. This is also a problem because the majority of cases, specifically surrounding academic misconduct, happen over breaks because of finals happening and then students going home for the summer or winter. 

One of the things that this proposal is trying to do is bring into alignment the intentions for each chamber. The overall goal is to reduce the workload for AdCom and to ensure that things are consistent and applied equitably. So, the proposal entails that J-Board operates over the summer for adjudication. The brief timeline looks like this: Feedback from the May 2023 Faculty Meeting is summarized by adjusting deadlines for summer, changing the recusal request timeline, making it easier to form a board, and pieces around clarification on how AD COM handles cases and questions about student training timeline. Staff feedback from a recent all-staff meeting can be summed up by opinions that an all-student judiciary board sounds great, and boards should have oversight, but there were questions about international students. The current and next steps are centered around providing faculty feedback to Senate (reportedly having been sent out this past Tuesday), Senate discussion and voting (during the week of April 15), and the final vote taking place at the May 10 faculty meeting.

Keith Karoly, Professor of Biology and a faculty advisor to J-Board, then noted that he did not see in either document sent to faculty that faculty is in charge of changes to J-Board code, saying “I didn’t see a rubric, so it’s not mandated, where is that occurring in the legislation?” McConnell-Black then explained that his goal in speaking about this is to take information from various groups around campus and have the feedback go back to Senate; it should go back to the authors of the legislation to make changes to allow us to take the feedback and incorporate it or not.

Margot Minardi, Professor of History, then chimed in saying, “…I would vote no to adjudicating faculty from those roles…I don’t find the framers’ intent to be what it is…At this moment when [we are] having this critical transition to technologies, it’s crucial to have students and faculty working together on these cases.” Jon Rork then seconded what Minardi said, and brought up the fact that Reed has rules about paying students to work only in Oregon, and wondered about where Reed is putting those who would have to stay over the summer to work on cases. “We are limiting a lot of opportunities for them, they can’t have their internship in DC because they have to work in Oregon.” Adam Groce, Professor of Computer Science then said, “I’m really worried about a situation where faculty do not have the ability to [control] policy regarding academic misconduct…general questions of how harsh to be about certain kinds of misconduct or what is considered misconduct. Those are college policy decisions. And I don’t see a mechanism here for faculty to get to make those decisions.” He continued, bringing up that students are more forgiving than faculty; “I think, in particular, I’ve heard…as a recent phenomenon in the last couple of years, the students have become much more forgiving than the faculty in a way that wasn’t previously true…I also worry in a situation where academic penalties are still the province of the professor.” After clarifying questions ensued, the discussion came to a close, and Luc Monnin, Professor of French, came up for the Administration and Committee Report.

Administration Committee Report

In this report, Monnin brought up a very pressing issue; the problem of major and minor requirement overlap. According to him, in many cases, what is currently written leads students to not be able to take certain classes. For example, a student with a Film and Media Studies minor might not be able to take English classes because of the overlap between the two departments. Monnin suggested redoing the code in order to organize the link between majors and minors in terms of not allowing “double dipping.” He continued, “We allow group requirements and major and minor requirements to be double dipped…We already have a lot of students who do double dip; if we allow this there might be triple dippings; we might need a longer discussion between minor and major; we do not want to have to deal case by case.” According to him, CAPP said that the suggested solution is okay, and it was open for discussion if the college should allow double dipping between minor and major. Monnin closed this report out by reminding faculty to remember that he was “just the messenger.”

Alex Montgomery, Professor of Political Science then brought up the fact of languages; Under majors that require languages such as anthropology or linguistics, you can learn a whole language, but not get any minor credit for it. “We should encourage students to learn languages,” he said. Further brought up by Montgomery was the fact of Interdisciplinary majors; “Guided by [a] home department; students majoring in an ICPS variant…would no longer be able to get the economics minor…not taking advantage of the rules, just getting credit for the things that they are doing.”

Many other faculty members chimed in, including Kris Anderson, Professor of Psychology, who mentioned the allied field requirement that psychology has, arguing that students are currently getting minors in other languages that also count toward their major; “This sounds like students not being able to get minors. That’s concerning.” Faculty then clarified what this actually meant, emphasizing that the proposed change is that rather than outlawing students counting any class in that department that they’re majoring in toward a minor, it’s just outlawing double-counting an individual course. So a student still could take a course, the burden is now that they have to take additional courses, whereas previously, they were forbidden from doing it and only accomplished it through other means.

Jake Fraser, Professor of German and Humanities, explained this issue very succinctly; “My understanding…is that there actually were some cases, because the way that the major department exclusion worked is that there are some classes that not only couldn’t be double dipped but could not be single dipped.” He then explained this in a hypothetical, “You’re an English major; an English major requires eight English classes, you’ve taken nine, and one of them happens to be Film Noir class, the way that the language currently works is, you as an English major cannot count that ninth Film Noir class towards the Film and Media Studies minor because of your major department. And so this affects students in English and also students [who] want to do Film and Media Studies and Art because there are a lot of studio and art history classes that relate to this…However, we would really like to have some progress for Film and Media Studies. It doesn’t have to be this solution, but we would like to allow our students to take at least single-dip because it makes it very difficult for English and Art majors to get a Film and Media Studies minor. So I guess…it doesn’t have to be this particular solution if that makes things worse for other departments, but we would really like to be allowed, we’d like to get rid of the major department exclusion”

Groce followed this, advocating to cut the current language without replacing it with anything. “Think about what it means when we put a minor on a transcript, we are certifying a certain level of competency and the fact that the art department said that those French classes are useful for their art degree doesn’t change the fact that the student has that level of competence.” Bringing up the language once again, Kara Cerveny, Professor of Biology argued to look at the consequences of the language.

The policy language in question:

“A student may elect to complete a minor in fields where a minor had been established. Minors typically require 5 or 6 courses and represent an identifiable level of achievement within the relevant field. A course cannot count toward both a major and minor. Departments or programs that offer majors are not required to offer minors.

Following a lot more discussion, a proposed amendment came onto the table: The amendment crossed out the sentence in the policy above; such that there would be no restriction on classes counted as a major towards a minor. Faculty discussed voting on this, and then Dean of Faculty Kathy Oleson asked the group if it would be helpful to have some data before voting on this. Jon Rork then chimed in, “Let’s table the substitute motion,” and the “Ayes” carried. Closing this out, Luc Monnin mentioned that AdCom should not necessarily discuss the link between major and minor and that CAPP would be better suited to deal with such a matter.

Academic Success Committee

Mary Ashburn Miller, Professor of History and Humanities then brought up two big issues that the Academic Success Committee was dealing with: ambiguity around four-week comments and having to sift through four-week comments. A motion was then brought to the table to provide some kind of feedback in four-week comments, making them required for all faculty to submit without increasing faculty workload greatly. A “button” system was brought up, allowing faculty to pick from a number of seemingly prewritten options in submitting their comments, to make things easier. Alex Hrycak, Professor of Sociology brought up the point that “This feels like we are rating our students…students will feel like we are dehumanizing them…I don’t think a student who doesn’t go to class 3 days in a row needs this…that’s what the care team is for…I don’t think intellectually that students will need [this], this feels like customer service.”

Many faculty members gave their opinions, but Miller then redirected the group, reminding everyone that what they were voting on today was the policy language and whether four-week comments should be required. Voting on the proposal to change the language around requiring four-week comments was responded with resounding “Ayes.”

The final announcements were from Sameer ud Dowla Khan, Professor of Linguistics, who announced that a faculty for justice in Palestine group was formed last week; with eight or so courses that cover Palestine in some way for at least a week included. President Audrey Bilger then announced that there have been lower sign-ups for commencement, and encouraged faculty to sign up.

With this, the meeting was adjourned.