Faculty Senate discussed resolutions regarding credit-hour requirements, promotion and tenure, and possible senate representation for Ohio University's leadership school at its meeting last night.
The first resolution presented numbers of credit hours undergraduate and graduate students would need to fulfill minors and certificates on a semester calendar.
The resolution suggested reducing the minimum number of necessary credit hours for minors and undergraduate certificates from 24 to 18 and reducing the maximum credit hours for a minor from 35 to 24 with the transition to semesters.
It also proposed reducing the minimum number of credit hours for graduate certificates from 20 to 14 and the maximum from 30 to 20.
A subsequent resolution, prompted by discussions with Interdisciplinary Council, corrects what faculty members see as an inappropriate omission of interdisciplinary work in promotion and tenure decisions.
Currently, some departments do not consider work between departments when deciding whether professors have met the requirements for tenure and promotion.
The resolution asks departments to clarify their policies on interdisciplinary work so newly hired faculty members understand the expectations for their research and teaching.
A third resolution proposed the representation for the Voinovich School for Leadership and Public Affairs, whose employees became faculty members when the center became a school. It proposes adding one voting member to the senate to represent the school.
Some faculty members opposed the resolution as it was written, expressing concern that it would upset the balance among colleges.
I have a problem with this
said Senator Ken Brown. My count is that in the current senate composition roughly each senator represents about 19 faculty. I'm concerned about disproportionate representation.
The Voinovich School currently has seven faculty members. Senators also discussed the possibility of an at-large member and considered whether this was the precedent they wanted to set for representing faculty members in newly formed schools.
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Leah Fightmaster
