[Uosenateexec] Six Senate Exec Updates

Fri Jan 8 11:54:46 PST 2021

Hi folks,

What a week! I hope you all are doing as well as could be expected.

I’m writing to provide you with some information that you would have received in Wednesday’s Senate Exec meeting. What the email format is lacking is the ability to interact with the speakers, so I’ve provided with each topic an email address for any feedback that you might have. Apologies in advance for the long email! 

1) Call for nominations: We need an elected, tenure-related senator to replace Michael Hames-Garcia (IRES), who is stepping down from UO service obligations as he transitions to another institution. The list of senators is here <https://senate.uoregon.edu/senate-members/2020-2021>. Please send me your nominations (berkman at uoregon.edu or senatepres at uoregon.edu).

2) Some changes are afoot at the Graduate School. The Provost is considering moving the administration of the Graduate School into the Office of the Provost. Right now, the OtP is soliciting feedback on the proposal. The staff and OAs who work in the office would become OtP employees. The Dean of the Graduate School position will be eliminated and replaced with a Vice Provost of Graduate Education or equivalent. The proposal is that operations of the graduate school would remain unchanged. The rationale is that the staff is overburdened and Johnson Hall can provide better administrative support because of an economy of scale. The elimination of the dean position also saves some costs. Janet Woodruff-Borden (janetw at uroegon.edu) is conducting the outreach. She and the Provost spoke with the Graduate Council on Wednesday, and the Graduate Council will be discussing internally and providing its assessment back to the Senate (and Provost). Spike and I are also meeting with key personnel in the office to get their candid take. I’m attaching a brief history of the graduate school that Andy Karduna put together. (“History of UO Grad School.pdf”)

3) The final motion for the first proposed change to the Senate By-Laws is attached (“Motion to change majority requirement for bylaw amendments…"). I’m also attaching a document that provides an overview of all the changes that the Senate Rules Committee has suggested (“Outline of Suggested Bylaw Revisions…”). We are asking that these motions be forwarded to the Senate for discussion and vote by the Executive Committee. Please take a look at the proposed changes (which have now actually been vetted by two rules committees—last year’s and this year’s) and let me know if you have any thoughts or further suggestions. Each change will be drafted into its own motion. 

4) The legislature wants the Oregon public universities to align some of their courses into a common course numbering system with shared (or at least substantially overlapping) learning objectives. The rationale is to make it easier for students to transfer between the unis and colleges without loss of credits. So this doesn’t apply to all courses but just the most common ones that transfer students bring with them. This is something the legislature has been trying to get the universities to do for a long time, but it sounds like it is getting serious now under the leadership of Rep. Dembrow. The worry is that if they push hard and the universities don’t appear to be collaborating then the HECC will step in and force something upon us. If they are really serious about making it happen, we (the collective faculty senates, as represented in the Inter-institutional Faculty Senate) need to find a way to ensure faculty ownership of the process, since this cuts directly to faculty governance of our curricula. The IFS is meeting today with legislators. The discussions between Provosts, HECC, legislators, and faculty are developing rapidly and we’re watching this closely. We will update as we know more. I’m attaching the proposed plan that the IFS is discussing today (“Legislation to Support Oregon Transfer Students…”)

5) Cass Moseley was scheduled to present on some changes to Policy around Human Subjects Research and Proprietary Research, and also had some information about how the research operation is affected by some national security concerns. We will hear more about these proposed changes in Wednesday’s (Jan 13) Senate meeting. She and I will be co-chairing the group that will lead a revision to the Human Subjects Research Policy, and several other Senators with HS research / IRB experience will be part of the committee. The policy will come before the Senate for a vote as part of the regular Policy process (for academic-related policies). Please let her know if you have any questions or comments (though I know there’s not much info at this point). Her email is cmoseley at uoregon.edu.

6) The motion from the CIET to approve the teaching evaluation criteria is attached (“2021 Jan Senate Legislation Teaching Evaluation Framework…”) along with a couple of accompanying documents. We will be considering the motion at Wednesday’s meeting. The final text of the motion will be posted by the end of the day today. After that point, we can still make changes with a motion to amend. The CIET has been working on this for quite some time so you have probably seen some version of this already. Several comments have come in about it, the most substantive of which is how much freedom units will have to deviate from the 4 criteria for teaching (evidence-based, engaged, professional, and inclusive). Will a unit, for instance, be allowed to remove “evidence based” as a standard? As written I believe the answer is no, but some have suggested that the criteria should be suggested and not required. Please send comments to the CIET co-chairs Sierra Dawson (sdawson at uoregon.edu) and Bill Harbaugh (harbaugh at uoregn.edu).

OK, that’s it! Congratulations on making it to the end of this email-that-should-have-been-a-meeting.

-Ell

he/him/Ell

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0008.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: History of UO Grad School.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 50621 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0003.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0009.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Motion to change majority requirement for bylaw amendments 2.1_Senate Rules Committee_01.07.2021.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 16808 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0004.docx>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0010.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Outline of Suggested Bylaw Revisions_Senate Rules Committee_Jan 7 2020.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 13457 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0005.docx>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0011.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Legislation to Support Oregon Transfer Students 1.7.21.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 151393 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0004.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0012.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 2021 Jan Senate Legislation Teaching Evaluation Framework v3.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 22086 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0006.docx>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0013.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Addendum to Teaching Evaluation Framework motion.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 14737 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0007.docx>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0014.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: UO_Teaching_Evaluation_Criteria.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 341717 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0005.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uoregon.edu/pipermail/uosenateexec/attachments/20210108/c497893c/attachment-0015.html>