Faculty Council Meeting of Tuesday, 3 September 2002

President: Joe Liles; Vice-president: John Woodmansee; Secretary: Floyd Bullard

Minutes

Announcements

Dot D. and Mike N: They and Noreen have worked out a "job description" for hall parents.  Basically, it is to coordinate with SLI's on hall activities, drive, etc.  Be there.  You don't have to spend money.  It would also be nice to walk around on hall, be present there.  That makes for a quieter hall and more studious environment.  There is still a need for 8 more hall parents.  They would appreciate our help.  They are changing the program to make it more structured and easier for faculty to be involved.  Mike will soon send around an email about this and solicit our help via this electronic medium.  Q: Can parent hall parents and faculty/staff hall parents coordinate with one another?  A: Yes, there will be an occasion for bonding with the parents in the near future.

Agenda Item 1: Super Study

Joe: This is not intended to be us second-guessing Joan--we need to know what's going on to support the program.  Joan, will you come up here, and I'll support you 100%.

Joan.  This was called Supervised Study, then Super Study, now it's called Guided Study.  (Laughter.)  The overall goal is this: after class hours, we want the campus environment to be more academic.  This is one strategy to help us get there.

Joan spoke for a few minutes about the value of Super Study, thanking faculty for their help and highlighting the differences between this year's and last year's Super Study.  First, there is the time that disciplines will spend (or have spent) discussing with students how to study.  Second, there is the rearranging of students in Hill.  (The students in Hill, Watts, and Beall are generally harder to manage because you can't be with them all at once.)  Policies on laptops (no) and passes to do group study (no) have not changed.  Also, no food, no drinks, and headphones are okay so long as they can't be heard by others (which is apparently hard for them to do).  No pillows, no pajamas.

One person commented that it would be helpful if each supervisor emailed his or her successor to let them know what happened, to allow for continuity.  There was some discussion about whether students should be allowed to have food or water.  Someone said that she was skeptical last year about Super Study, but now she thinks it's a very good thing.

Despite Joe's saying that it was not a discussion item, there was also brief discussion about assignments given to students that they read texts posted on-line.  This is to save copy bills for departments, but some students find it difficult to read on the computer.

Agenda Item 2: Plagiarism.

Joe began by sharing with the FC what the humanities department had agreed to regarding responding to plagiarism.  Among the items he shared were these:  They don't want to create a library of past student papers.  They only plan to use software to check for plagiarism in cases when there is cause for suspicion (not routinely).  They should "teach" the hearing board and the administration how to recognize plagiarism.  They take plagiarism very seriously, and believe that second offenders should be expelled.  Teachers are responsible for teaching students when and how to cite sources appropriately.

Tom Trocano then very briefly shared the discussion that ensued in the science department.  They were also not excited about using plagiarism-detecting software routinely.  One teacher commented that in the science department's discussion, only two teachers said they would use this software at all.  They didn't know whether lab journals were checkable by software.

Jo Ann Lutz did the same for the math department.  There was some doubt that software would read documents written in non-standard word processors.  There was also a desire to check randomly selected papers.  There was no desire to build a library of student papers.  (Like the humanities department, math felt this would be too much work.)

Discussion about the faculty's general response to plagiarism ensued.

It was pointed out that writers of college references may not see students' records of disciplinary actions (by law).

It was pointed out that all charges of plagiarism, however small, should be reported to Tom Clayton (or Harry Tucker, in serious cases) so that it will go on record.

Steve wanted the discussion to be specifically about the use of the software, and he wanted it to be consistent across the school.  He would like the FC to make a recommendation to the administration.

Joe said he would like such a recommendation today, but he realized we may not be ready to make that.  We may like to know first whether software will check things like lab journals and mathcad documents.  But he does not want the issue to return to FC, so he would like a member of each department to get together later and make a recommendation on behalf of the faculty.  Anita McCoy, Dot Doyle, and John Woodmansee volunteered for this task.  These people and Steve Warshaw will work out an institutional policy on how we will respond to plagiarism and bring it back to FC.  Okay?  Okay.

John W. said he would like to know now how comfortable faculty were with the idea that all cases of plagiarism for which there was strong evidence would be taken to Tom Clayton or Mike Newbauer.  These are likely to be treated as Level 2's or Level 3's and they would be all be documented.  The general response was: we're not thrilled to do it, but we believe it's necessary.

The meeting adjourned at 5:06PM.