Academic Affairs Committee

Charges

Mandate from Policy B2.0:

The Academic Affairs Committee shall be the educational policy committee of the Senate and shall formulate and review all matters related to educational policies and procedures, with the exception of policies that are in the purview of the ICC and Graduate Council. The committee shall also serve as liaison with appropriate administrators and administrative bodies of the university. The Academic Affairs Committee shall consist of the following: one faculty member per college, each to be elected by their collegial faculty; three members at large elected by the Faculty Senate; and the provost or their delegate (ex officio, voting).

AAC Charges AY 2024:

New Charge:

Amend policy D05.0.II to revise references to the intercession and consider revising the policy to either one or two academic terms NOT including summer.

Supporting Language: D05.0.II incomplete grades.

The policy references two academic terms to charge the grade, including summer but excluding (the nonexistent) intercession. I suggest this policy be revised to be either one or two academic terms NOT including summer.

Rationale: There is an epidemic of requests for incompletes. I received 5 this Spring, only one of which was connected to a medical issue. My suggested policy charges will not address the epidemic. However, every student request included a request to complete the work over the summer. I believe this policy implicitly creates the expectation that summer is an appropriate time when it is not always possible or advisable for the faculty to use the summer in this way.

Carryover Charges

The Committee final report is hard to interpret when it comes to carryover charges. They have a bunch of recommendations but they are poorly described as to what actions have been or should be taken. In general, they have not followed the principle that what Senate wants is motions, not recommendations.

That said, there appear to be two actual carryovers (per the final report) -

1. Complete the Senate review and approval of updates to the Academic Integrity Policy D08.0.

2. Contact hours vs Credit hours for indirect instruction (labs/studios/workshops)

Draft a request to the Provost’s Office to assess the guidelines for contact time per credit hour in the case of laboratory intensive classes, from college to college, from both the students’ and faculty’s perspective (teaching load) determine whether guidelines for contact time per credit hour and student work hours are.