Speaker Series Names Big World Little Concordia Concordia Meets World Looking Beyond And

Concordia University, Nebraska
Undergraduate Council - Special Session
Minutes
November 03, 2008, 3:10 p.m.
TLEC Conference Room
In attendance:
LAshby, PBerkbigler, RBork, JJurchen, MMeehl, KMiller, JMueller-Roebke, BRoyuk, ESiffring, DThurber, TWarren
Not present:
Meeting agenda:
1. Opening Prayer
- JMueller-Roebke opened us in prayer.
2. Approval of Agenda
- Agenda was then approved.
3. Approval of Minutes for October 20, 2008
- Minutes from both prior sessions were approved.
4. Ad Hoc Committees in Progress
a) General Education
- BRoyuk shared information from KMiller (she was completing docenting a test) in terms of the step the committee is currently engaged in. They have sent a set of questions to all departments to collect reflection on how we may already be meeting our proposed General Education Goals and Outcomes.
- JMueller-Roebke shared that she is not rushing this process of review along - if, as departments do internal reviews, they find more time is needed to consider and review, she is supportive of that.
5. Current Business
a) Speaker Series Naming Contest
- BRoyuk shared the following listing of proposed names for our consideration and also mentioned that Jared Kite will be setting up a web survey which will enable campus faculty and students to review the possible names, voting to select one of them.
- Proposed names as of today:

Speaker Series Names
Big World Little Concordia
Concordia Meets World
Looking Beyond and this can be more centralized by adding Looking Beyond CU or Looking Beyond Concordia University It seems to me that Concordia is already in the world; not apart from it, but part of it. So it seems appropriate that we would look beyond the four corners of Weller hall, or of our dorm room, attend seminars, and lectures that broaden our scope of the world past the front steps of Concordia University.
The Global Conversation (Possible tagline: "Join the Conversation")
Soapbox Soliloquies
RE: Your World (Ads could be in the form of email mock-ups that introduce the topic or issue to be discussed.
World Forum (Why does this make me think of Monty Python?)
For Your Consideration
Consider This
The Colloquy / The Colloquium (Include a definition in place of a tagline.)
Special Deliveries (I've got some great ad ideas for this one.)
Speak to Me
KIWI Speaker Series (Keeping Informed on World Issues)

- MMeehl favored either "Looking Beyond" or "The Global Conversation," which BRoyuk supported.
- The UGC members didn't favor "Big World Little Concordia" or "Soapbox Soliloquies"
- We also discarded "The Colloquy / The Colloquium" as too technical in language, and "KIWI" because it set up a curious New Zealand connotation.
- TWarren spoke in favor of a combined name / combined idea expressed as "Your World - Consider This"
- PBerkbigler also seconded "The Global Conversation" as a good option.
- We narrowed the list to "Looking Beyond," "The Global Conversation," and "Your World - Consider This" which will be carried to vote by the campus community now.
b) Attendance Policy
- BRoyuk shared the text of an e-mail exchange between PBerkbigler and Bruce Creed that laid out contradictory terminology and ideas that exist within our existing policies.
- JMueller-Roebke answered a final question that was posed within the e-mail exchange regarding an element of Faculty Personnel Handbook policy 4.9 which refers to "The Record of Student Attendance Policy" as a seemingly non-existant policy. She answered that this policy has been re-titled in later edits and this policy (Fac. Handbook 4.9) simply needs to have the language updated to reflect the new policy title.
- TWarren asked if we felt in past conversations that the position of the university faculty was to desire to have autonomy of handling
- DThurber posed the question, "Is it possible or is it not possible to take a look at the existing policies that we currently have, finding one of the policies that can be taken as the initiating policy and then work on the other policies to synchronize and match up with the others?" He followed this up with the question, "Or, do these existing individual policies need to exist with some separation of practice / content due to their existence in separated policy handbooks?
- BRoyuk felt that this would be possible, and that starting out with Academic Policies handbook 2.320 to examine the "may" and "shall" language within this policy would be a best step forward. PBerkbigler seconded this idea, noting that correcting 2.340 would provide a solid template for any necessary revisions to the other policies.

- TWarren asked if we could simply move the language within 2.320 towards a "shall be" model, versus a "may" model.
- JMueller-Roebke shared a situation she had faced as a department chair involving a professor who wasn't going to offer a student opportunity to take a final exam at a time other than the regularly scheduled exam time, connected with a student who was going to take a flight at a time that wouldn't allow them to attend the initially scheduled time. She wasn't entirely certain how, as a department chair, she was expected to decide in that situation and noted that policy didn't clarify a concise course of action to take.
- KMiller asked if, currently, there wasn't the possibility that any student could always ask to have an attendance situation reviewed by a department / by the university.
- Jenny answered that we don't have a policy in place right now that would either allow or prevent them from doing that.
- LAshby asked if the departments could be enabled to determine their attendance policy and then enforce it.
- Discussion was had around policy 2.320, point 2B and 2C, moving towards using the term "may" in place of "shall" within these policies. This would move our practice towards allowing individual faculty to determine in their own classes what absences would or wouldn't be allowed.
- Dialogue was also had around the idea of where an informational "clearinghouse" or central sharing point on absences would exist legitimately on campus: within the Provost's office / duties of the Provost or within the Dean of Student Services' office / duties? Conversation moved much more towards approval for class field trips or off-campus activities being given by the Provost's office, but communication about these approved absences still being disseminated by the Dean of Student Services' office.
- The majority of the UGC members felt, in discussion, that we should seek a Gospel-oriented rather than law-oriented stance within this policy: work with "may" rather than "shall" or "should" language in our policy, encouraging campus community members to connect with one another before issues arise and to work through conflicts together. These ideas are reflected especially in the noted additions to section 1 of the policy, as listed below in these notes.
NOTE BY PBERKBIGLER AS MEETING NOTETAKER:
- Discussion on this topic was rapid and fairly wide-ranging, making it challenging at times to really listen to the discussion to accurately capture the ideas and meaning being expressed, plus to then be transcribing those ideas a the same moment. In order to best participate in the discussion so I could later (post-5 PM on Monday, November 3) transcribe the ideas more accurately back into written notes, I stopped attempting to take typed notes in this document somewhere in between Kathy's comments about students having attendance situations reviewed and the lower notes about larger group discussion.
In place of the more comment-by-comment / minute-by-minute notation style that the rest of these minutes employ, I'm going to include a copy of the policy we were reviewing within these minutes and tag comments that I heard mentioned / discussed within the body of the policy itself.
I'll then place a well-marked copy of the revised version of the policy, sans-additional comments, in the minutes just below the annotated version.
I sincerely invite anyone who participated in the discussion whose ideas are partially, inaccurately or not included at all in my notes to share those ideas with me again or request corrections to these notes. I'd be very, very glad to include them but knew I was missing too much content of what was being said as I was attempting to write down a faithful version of prior ideas / comments at the same time.
- THE POLICY WE DISCUSSED TODAY, WITH ANNOTATIONS -

+++++++++++
2.320 Class Attendance Policy (under review) 2.320
I. Class Attendance
A. Each student is expected to attend all classes and laboratory periods for which s/he
is registered.
B. Students are directly responsible to the class instructor for their attendance.
(MMeehl suggested the inclusion of additional statements at this point in the document which, in discussion with other members of the UGC, took the form of three distinct statements. At least one of those statements was created simply by moving item B from within part II of this policy up a section, then following it with two entirely new ideas which buttress it.)
C. A student is to present an excuse in advance of the absence to the instructor
whenever possible. In all other cases s/he is to present the excuse the first day on
return to class.
D. (NEW ITEM - PBerkbigler's draft of ideas originally suggested by MMeehl and ESiffring) The Concordia University community understands that activities involving students which occur outside of or in addition to regularly scheduled course activities are an inevitable and acceptable portion of the university experience. This community believes that such experiences are a vital portion of an undergraduate student's educational background and should be supported as such.
E. (NEW ITEM - PBerkbigler's draft of ideas originally suggested by several comments from UGC members. I was unable to document all sources of these ideas as they were shared.) In order to support and sustain an environment where students are involved in a wide range of educational opportunities and activities, the Concordia University community believes in the vital necessity of communication between all parties involved in a situation where a student is absent from attending a course session because of participation in activities directly related to their involvement in other university-supported courses or extracurricular activities. Without this communication in advance of the period of absence, adaptations and allowances made between the parties involved becomes extremely difficult to negotiate. Instead, we ask that community members work to find acceptable agreements regarding the inevitable crossovers between educational opportunities and activities.
II. (It was suggested that "Excused" be deleted in this title line by TWarren) Absences
(Since item B was moved and item C was removed below, it is PBerkbigler's suggestion that we eliminate the A that originally preceded the following statements.)
A student may be excused by the individual instructor from attending classes for the following reasons:
1. Serious illness
2. Sickness, death, or special needs in the family
3. Activities sponsored by the college and approved by the administration
4. Other circumstances which are clearly beyond the student's control
{ORIGINAL ITEM B IN THIS POSITION WAS MOVED TO SECTION 1 OF THIS POLICY}
(It was proposed during our meeting that Item C, "Absences from class for approved co-curricular activities or off-campus field trips shall be excused." would be deleted entirely as it proved redundant with statements included in sections V, VI, and VII below)
III. At the beginning of each semester the instructor is to review the attendance policy with the students, and identify to the students any penalties that may be invoked as a result of unexcused absences.
IV. (NEW WORDING INCORPORATED - JMueller-Roebke had shared during the UGC meeting today that some of the wording in this original section of the statement: "to students, his/her divisional dean, and the Executive Vice President for Academic Services" reflects an outdated and now non-existant model for how instructors needed to share their attendance policies with university administration. By gathering some thoughts and suggestions about additions and revisions to this statement, the version composed by PBerkbigler shared here attempts to also adjust sentence construction a bit to make the new notion of instructors providing their students AND their department chairs copies of the attendance policy they'll be handing out and acting on.)
Course instructors are to provide their department chair and the students enrolled in their course with written copies of the attendance policy as it is interpreted by the instructor.
{NOTE ON NEEDED PARALLELISM: It seems like adding the ideas surrounding educational opportunities and activities that are discussed in section 1 of this policy also means we need to examine similar additions in item C at this point.}
V. The instructor is to file with the - (NOTE: I felt some confusion over whether we settled the idea of which office was to receive initial notice of instructor academic activity lists, but have settled on "office of the Provost" for the time being because it best matched with the notes I was able to take) - the list of bonafide participants in a proposed ("approved" was eliminated in our proposed revisions today) co-curricular activity or off-campus field trip at least one week before the event.
VI. The Dean of Student Services will: (I'm noting the words "is to" as proposed deletions in this title so that construction will match up with the new additions listed in this section)
{NOTE ON NEEDED PARALLELISM: It seems like adding the ideas surrounding educational opportunities and activities that are discussed in section 1 of this policy also means we need to examine similar additions in items A & B at this point.}
A. {In discussion, the UGC members agreed that the word "approve" needed to be removed, but also discussed ideas that would eliminate the word "excuses" at this point as well, enabling a new initial portion of this sentence to be fluidly included) receive a list of approved ("from classes for" would also be eliminated from this sentence on the basis of the proposed revisions to its construction) co-curricular activities or off-campus field trips;
B. inform instructors in advance of approved excuses from classes for co-curricular or
off-campus field trips.
VII. (It also seems like we need to compose this title to echo the construction of the title for Item VI) The Provost will:
{NOTE ON NEEDED PARALLELISM: It seems like adding the ideas surrounding educational opportunities and activities that are discussed in section 1 of this policy also means we need to examine similar additions in item A at this point.}
A. approve (we discussed removing the phrase "excuses from classes for" from this section of the policy) academic co-curricular activities or off-campus field trips;
B. hear appeals from students regarding (we also suggested removing the phrase "implementation of the class attendance," leaving the phrase to simply refer to the policy number) AP policy 2.320.
("Revised 5-77" - I'll leave this item in flux for the time being as new revisions have not been approved yet.)

- THE POLICY WE DISCUSSED TODAY IN ITS CURRENTLY EDITED FORM -

c) Summer School
- No discussion was had on this topic.
d) Intellectual Property
- No discussion was had on this topic.
6. Future Business
a) Advancement in Rank
- No discussion was had on this topic.
b) Policies for human research/establishing an IRB
- No discussion was had on this topic.
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- For future discussion, we should also include the Travel / Field Trip Policy (get policy number on this detail).
- BRoyuk suggested that the UGC members meet again next Monday (November 10) for further review specifically on the text of Academic Policies Handbook policy 2.320. The UGC members agreed to this additional meeting.
- JMueller-Roebke also suggested that we revisit the handling of plagiarism cases, specifically whether there needs to be a clearinghouse somewhere where these can be reported and the faculty community can be aware of individuals who are involved in multiple cases of plagiarism.
7. Adjournment
- Meeting adjourned after these discussions.