[Lu_faculty] Administrative Council/Faculty Senate

[James Showalter]

9-15-15  Tues // 2:05 p.Faculty,The President's Administrative Council has been busy with the opening of the school.  
In the first meeting of the Administrative Council, the focus was diverse but included an extended discussion of the housing snafus on the Langston campus.  As faculty who teach on that campus know, this led to a great deal of irritation and more by students,  to multiple meetings with administrators, and even to some students who would not relocate being locked out of rooms.   It is my opinion that the problem was aggravated by the often clumsy attempts by the administration to undo the mistake, and by reports that they did not have enough rooms cleaned and ready in Young Hall to take an over-flow they knew was coming.  
At that meeting we also discussed the budget, and that, briefly, is simply bad with the prospects that it will get worse.  With freezes in place and many proposed spending items required to pass by either the Dr. Burnett's desk or the President's, we are going to be trying to make our nickels go as far as possible.   The result of this has been larger classes in the lower years on the Langston campus.  Dr. Montgomery has been given the ok to hire adjuncts,  but classes, particularly in Math and English but also in other areas, are large and, in some cases, too big according to the faculty who teach them.  
I have heard reports that, due to falling oil revenue, there may be mid-year "adjustments" made in state budgets,  and with the one-time moneys used last year to patch the state budget gone,  I don't see any hope on the horizon in the near future.
In the Administrative Council meeting of September 14,  Dr. Carol Cawyer, Institutional Research,  introduced the draft of the new retention plan, a plan put together by a committee that included faculty.  It is too detailed to summarize here,  but it will lead to some possible changes by faculty.   One prominent feature is an attempt to do-away with remedial courses and, instead, incorporate content when needed by individual students into the entry level college courses, eg., make available to Algebra students parts of Intermediate Algebra that they need.  I did note in the meeting that in the 1990's there was a big push by the Regents to ban remedial course,  one of the reasons for the Langston campus's Associates program and the reason that OSU invited Northern Oklahoma College down to do their remedial work for them.  That push did not do away with remedial courses despite it's intentions.
Finally,  I again request of my faculty colleagues to volunteer to serve on Faculty Senate committees.  Please contact the following Interim Chairs if you will help:
Academic Affairs:   Dr. Andre Washington (alwashington at langston.edu)
Budget:  Mrs. Angela Thomas (althomas at langston.edu)
Personnel Policies:  Dr. Joanna Mann (jmann at langston.edu)
Elections:  Dr. Meshack Sagini (mmsagini at langston.edu)
Student Affairs:  Ms. Kate Corbett (kcorbett at langston.edu)
The next Faculty Senate meeting will be on this Thursday, September 17, from 11:00 -- 12:20.  Dr. Sharron Burnett, V.P. for Fiscal Affairs, is to come and discuss the budget with the Senate,  and we will then entertain any new business.  If you have matters you feel should be brought before the Faculty Senators,  contact one of our Senators.
If you have any questions,  please contact me.
Jim Showalterchair
 		 	   		  
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