Introducing the 37-page residence life proposal, Senate President Alan Fox pointed out that the voluntary program will be administered by trained professionals and faculty, will include oversight and will be assessed after the first year by the Office of Institutional Assessment.
The residence life proposal was presented for discussion by Matt Robinson, chairperson of the Faculty Senate Student Life Committee.
Senators held a lengthy discussion on the merits of the proposal and raised issues related to the content and implementation. The Senate agreed to continue the conversation May 12.
Also during Monday's meeting, four resolutions were addressed by the Faculty Senate. Passed by the senate were proposals to change the name of the Department of Individual and Family Studies to the Department of Human Development and Family Studies; to transfer the Department of Hotel and Restaurant Management to the Lerner College of Business and Economics effective July 1, 2008; and to recommend that the formal vote of the faculty for appointment or reappointment must be communicated to the dean of the college and by the dean to the provost.
A fourth resolution was approved to change the Faculty Handbook to specify situations when, upon request from faculty members serving as principal investigators on externally-funded unclassified research, the provost may approve an exception to the University policy against limits on publication imposed by a federal funding agency. Approval of the change included a provision for further review and reconsideration by the Senate in two years. Provost Dan Rich told the senators that the need for occasional exceptions is to enable faculty members to continue ongoing, externally-funded research programs on which federal agencies are now placing limits on publication. He said that the exceptions would only be approved if they are requested by the faculty member and that University is working with Delaware's congressional delegation to seek a change in federal limitations on publication for unclassified research.
Robinson, chairperson of the Senate Student Life Committee, was presented with the Faculty Senate's Distinguished Service Award.
New Faculty Senate officers for the 2008-09 year were also elected. Cihan Cobanoglu, associate professor of hotel, restaurant and institutional management, was elected president elect. Other new officers elected were: Charles Mason, professor of embryology and wild life ecology, vice president; Jack Baroudi, professor of accounting and MIS, chairperson of the Committee on Committees; and members at large, Committee on Committees, Baroudi and Evelyn Hayes, professor of nursing.
Photo by Duane Perry
