Ohio University President Roderick McDavis paid a visit to Monday’s Faculty Senate meeting to address the faculty workload policy in the state budget in and explain the progress of the guaranteed tuition model.
The wording in the state budget about the faculty workload policy states that current full-time faculty will have to teach additional classes to the amount they taught during the 2012-13 school year.
Elizabeth Sayrs, chair of the senate, said that although it is unclear where those concerns came from, the state is concerned about the workload of other Ohio institutions because of enrollment drops at northern Ohio schools.
The policy still has room to change, and Sayrs said that the OU Faculty Council will be raising concerns about the policy to state legislators.
McDavis will address the policy with the presidents of other Ohio institutions on a conference call Tuesday.
“(This policy) does not take into account the differences among state institutions, and there are many,” McDavis said.
After presenting the model to Governor John Kasich’s staff and the Ohio Board of Regents, OU has been given permission to further pursue guaranteed tuition and flesh out a model.
“We’re beginning to try to fine tune the idea and turn it into a proposal,” McDavis said.
Once the model has been expanded and presented to the Board of Trustees during its April meeting, the guaranteed tuition model must be passed by legislation, and at the earliest it could be implemented by fall 2014.
Faculty expressed concerns about students who have to drop out for financial or other reasons or students who want to continue their degrees past four years, but McDavis said that such concerns will be addressed as they draw up plans for the model.
“There are things that we think we can do … internally to (get) students to stay,” McDavis said.
Vice President for Student Affairs Ryan Lombardi also attended to address the Residential Housing Development 10-year plan and some of the transit and flexibility options that the plan offers.
To conclude its meeting, the senate passed resolutions changing the faculty handbook language about the Student Accessibility Services and policy for notifying students about textbooks.
dk123111@ohiou.edu
