[Uosenate] suggestions for the Military Deployment Policy

[Anthony Hornof]

UO Senators: I sent this yesterday to the to the UO Senate Working Group on the Military Deployment Policy. (I tried to cc: the Senators as well but I sent it to the wrong email list.) Sandy Weintraub already acknowledged my comments and assured me that the working group would consider them.
Best wishes,
Anthony

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Hello to the Working Group on the Military Deployment Policy,

Thank you for your work supporting educational opportunities to active-duty and reserve-duty personnel, with your work on the "Military and Federal Agency Deployment Accommodation Rights Policy" at
https://senate.uoregon.edu/senate-motions/us2324-06-military-and-federal-agency-deployment-accommodation-rights-policy

I believe that it would be easier for the University meet compliance, and to demonstrate it's intent to meet compliance, if the policy included more language regarding how the University and faculty will collaborate to meet compliance. There are three main issues here, and three suggestions:

(1) How students, staff, and faculty will be made aware of the policy, and how the policy interacts with existing attendance policies. In the meeting, Ron Bramhall indicated that the Provost's Course Attendance and Engagement would be updated to include the military deployment policy at:
https://provost.uoregon.edu/course-attendance-and-engagement-policy
Frances White indicated that it would be included in the Provost's Syllabus Requirements policy at:
https://provost.uoregon.edu/syllabus-requirement-policy
Both would be great.

I suggest that the following language in the draft policy be removed: "This policy supersedes all course level policies which are regulated by UO’s Course Attendance and Engagement Policy" and be replaced with language along the lines of "This policy WILL BE INTEGRATED INTO UO’s Course Attendance and Engagement Policy."

(2) What to do when options in the policy cannot be implemented. The policy speaks about options that are available to students. For example: "The student may complete any missed course assignment." Some assignments cannot be completed late, such as certain kinds of groupwork. After a course has ended, it would be difficult or impossible to reconvene a group of students to reproduce a week-by-week educational integration of groupwork and in-class instruction. 

I suggest that this new policy include language such as "when pedagogically sound". As in: "The student may complete any missed course assignment, when pedagogically sound." All other campus policies that require exceptions to attendance policies includes such language. Such as:
    https://provost.uoregon.edu/course-attendance-and-engagement-policy
    https://provost.uoregon.edu/religious-observance-accommodations-policy
    https://aec.uoregon.edu/important-guidelines-instructors
The military deployment policy would be more consistent with other policies, and the reality of University education, if it included language along the lines of "when pedagogically sound".

(3) How the University will assist with the implementation of the policy. The policy speaks about options that are made available to students. The policy could be improved to explain how the University will provide these options.

For example, the policy states that "The student may complete any missed course assignment." The policy implies that faculty will be responsible to grade missed course assignments. This is implied based on the common practice at the University that much workload flows downhill to faculty, who are left holding the bag to implement University policies, sometimes with limited support.

I suggest that the policy state how the University will demonstrate active support of the policy. A quick brainstorm of possibilities: Permit the student to complete the course for credit in a subsequent term; offer extra pay to faculty for taking on this extra workload; hire external consultants to take on this extra workload. There may be a justifiable "no" to each of these ideas. At the same time, there are certainly ways to clarify, in the policy itself, how the University will support faculty to meet compliance. This would in turn demonstrate strong University commitment to the policy.

Thank you for your consideration, and for your work support military personnel.

Best wishes,
Anthony
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Anthony Hornof
Professor, University of Oregon
Department of Computer Science
http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~hornof/