Joe McLaughlin, a professor of English, will be the new faculty senate chair, and both David Thomas, a professor of theater, and Katherine Hartman, a professor of marketing, will remain in their current positions of vice chair and secretary, respectively.
Faculty Senate announced the appointment of its new executive positions, received enrollment updates and continued the discussion about the university's proposed academic center at its meeting Monday.
Joe McLaughlin, a professor of English, will be the new Faculty Senate chair, and both David Thomas, a professor of theater, and Katherine Hartman, a professor of marketing, will remain in their current positions of vice chair and secretary, respectively.
“Since there was only one person running for each of the positions, we sort of expected it to go quickly,” Hartman, Faculty Senate’s secretary, said. “Two of us are repeating another year, and McLaughlin already has experience. We hope the entire team will be an effective group improving the education experience at the university.”
Current Faculty Senate Chair Beth Quitslund said there now will be 55 faculty members on the senate.
Pam Benoit, executive vice president and provost, started the meeting with updates about Ohio University's enrollment figures.
There are currently 20,378 pending applications for the incoming class and more than 2,000 students committed to attending OU, which is up nearly 9 percent from the same time last year, Benoit said.
“It is encouraging, but is still too early to tell in terms of the number of students that we’ll actually yield,” Benoit said of the rate increase.
The conversation about enrollment provoked a response from Giorgi Shonia, an associate professor of mathematics at OU’s Lancaster campus, who said budget cuts to the regional campuses have affected their enrollment numbers. Shonia refused to drop the issue until Quitslund advised him to move on from the topic.
Benoit also confirmed that OU’s spring break will be pushed back a week to March 6 through March 10 in 2017. The break now will align with the Athens City School District’s spring break.
“As a parent, I think having spring breaks at the same time is life changing,” Kamile Geist, director of the music therapy program, said at the March meeting. “When our children are on spring break and we are not, it becomes an issue of childcare.”
Craig Bantz, associate vice president for the Office of Information Technology and chief information officer, also talked about various technology-related issues to faculty members.
Maintenance work is scheduled for Blackboard from 5 p.m. May 4 through May 8, which will force the site to be down. Quitslund expressed concern about the work as it will give students five hours after grades are officially due to view them.
Bantz said TurningPoint, the company OU contracts with for classroom clicker software, is transitioning to a subscription service that would cost students about $30 per semester. The company has agreed to support the current services for the next few years, but Bantz suggested shifting to other attendance-centered services such as Top Hat.
Joseph Shields, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College, updated faculty on the most recent round of the OU Innovation Strategy, which encourages the collaboration of academic fields to combat “the challenges of the 21st century,” according to the website for OU’s research division. Shields said the program awarded $4 million to four faculty teams this semester for new research and teaching initiatives.
Faculty also discussed the proposed Perry and Sandy Sook Academic Center after one of the faculty athletic representatives, Robert Colvin, a professor of biological sciences, presented information about student-athletes’ academic performance. Student-athletes have an average GPA of 3.1, which is the highest it has been since 2009, Colvin said.
Since it was announced, many faculty have expressed concerns with the academic center.
“I think the overall context here is not that we’re not building a special center for athletes but that we’re creating a special class, social class, on our campus that treats student-athletes better than students in the other units on campus,” Bill Reader, a professor of journalism, said at the meeting.
No resolutions were brought forth at the meeting, which ended in a round of applause for Quitslund, the outgoing senate chair.
@KyraCobbie
