Faculty Senate Minutes November 4, 2004

SENATORS: Rich Cowden, Phil Kavanagh, Bill McCracken, Tony Schountz, Larry Madsen, Cindy Thomas, Ellie Baldwin, Steve Murray (for Jill Cordova), Tim Hatten, Tim Casey, Chad Lee C. Grabow, Barbara Borst

MINUTES SECRETARY: Jessica Cowden

GUESTS: Karl Castleton, Myra Heinrich, Carol Futhey, Andy Breckel, John Sluder, Holly Teal, Morgan Bridge

I. ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Graduate Council minutes were approved by e-mail.

The next Board of Trustees meeting will be held November 17, 2004 in Grand Junction. Any issues should be submitted to Phil Kavanagh.

The College Opportunity Fund (COF) will be put on the agenda for an upcoming Senate meeting to further discuss its impact on the college and the students including the 145 credit hour cap and how to ensure that proper progress is being made by the students to allow for the cap. Rich Cowden announced that the COF communications committee, on which he is serving, will meet next on November 16, 2004 and he will report back to the Senate on their progress.

No progress has been made on the Policies and Procedures Manual.
The motion was made, seconded and passed that a group of Senators form an ad hoc sub-committee to begin a dialogue with Department Heads and the administration to start addressing the development of a Policies and Procedures Manual. (Casey/Cowden) The sub-committee is to include Tim Casey, Phil Kavanagh, Chad Grabow and Rich Cowden.

II. MINUTES

The motion was made, seconded and passed to receive and approve the Graduate Council minutes from September 14, 2004. (Casey/Schountz)

An amendment was made to the September 16, 2004 Faculty Senate minutes to move Jane Arledge’s name from the list of Senators to the list of guests.

III. GENERAL EDUCATION ASSESSMENT (Myra Heinrich)

Myra Heinrich provided the Senate with a list of highlights of the proposal that the Assessment Committee has been drafting including additions to syllabi, standardized testing, individual course assessment and a three-year rotation schedule for GER assessment.
The motion was made, seconded and passed to receive the highlights of the proposal as an information item. (Casey/McCracken)

IV. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (John Sluder)

John Sluder began the IT presentation by identifying IT’s main objective, which is to address how MSC buys technology and how it could be done better. Sluder assured the Senate that IT intends to use Faculty Senate as a filter as they go through the process of assessing those issues.

Sluder then began a discussion on the e-mail and communications policy described under Professional Conduct in the MSC Employment Handbook. To explain the basis for the No Privacy Expectations policy, Sluder reminded the Senate of the Open Records Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which establish that information produced and stored using the college’s property belongs, in part, to the college. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act also serves to protect the employee from having their digital information stolen from an outside user, which is why it is an Open Records Environment. As long as the information being developed and stored is part of the employee’s work product, they are protected. Sluder also referred the Senate to the State Employee Handbook, which would legally be considered the ultimate governing document for issues of policy. The State Handbook states that “No state time, property, equipment, or supplies shall be used for private purposes or any other purpose not in the interest of the State of Colorado.”

It was agreed that the main concern is the placement of the No Privacy Expectations policy in the Handbook and that it would be more appropriate in the Policies and Procedures Manual as its current placement makes it an acceptable cause for termination, which does not seem to, ultimately, be the intention.

The motion was made, seconded and passed to formally request that the Board of Trustees remove section H.2 (No Privacy Expectations) from the Professional Conduct section of the Employee Handbook. The intent of the motion was to delete the paragraph. The further idea was to address the issue of personal use of electronic equipment separately in policies rather than the Handbook. As John Sluder pointed out, the policy is already established and can be found at http://www.mesastate.edu/it/acceptableuse/mscPolicies/index.htm.

The motion was made and then withdrawn to amend or consider rewriting section H to align it more with the State Handbook. (Grabow)

The meeting was adjourned at 5:01 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Jessica Cowden
Minutes Secretary