Order called, order maintained

In today’s academic senate, senators returned to an orderly fashioned meeting after weeks of discussions regarding shared governance.

After voices rose last time, Speaker Alami maintained order and kept comments to a minimum while senators presented their items.

“Senator Silva, this is an information item if you have a statement please save that for open forum,” he had said in response to Senator Artur Da Silva’s comment of support.

“Well this is coming as an information item that’ll come back as a first reading item at the next senate meeting and then the second. So we still have time, it’s not a done deal,” he said.

Provost Ogle returned to the senate this week to answer questions regarding his discussion items as well as to provide insight on other concerns brought to the senate’s attention.

While there were many discussion points made today, a lot of them are in the beginning stages and will be highlighted at future meetings once they are more solidified.

The first reading item on the agenda this week was about adding a Data Science minor to the Computer Science major.

This item was brought to the floor as it is believed from the University Educational Policies Committee (UEPC) that students at Stan State who are pursuing a variety of careers can benefit from some basic data science skills.

Senator Hatem expressed support for this addition and discussed their enthusiasm regarding the moving forward with this minor.

“I would like to move this forward, and I think it’s past due. We needed to have the Data Science minor I think a long time ago, so I’m really excited about this,” they said.

Senator Drake also spoke about her support in regards to this new addition.

“There’s a great amount of support from the committee, so thank you for bringing this forward and Senator Hatem, we look forward to supporting it,” Drake said.

The senators had a positive response to this reading items and transitioned into the next items with little to no questions.

The reorganization of colleges was also a topic of discussion during today’s meeting, where Ogle explained the current status of this process.

Ogle talked about a survey he conducted in order to get an idea of whether there is support regarding the possible new college of health and human services.

“The results of the survey, about 32 people answered the survey, 22 folks showed somewhat or support on pursuing the idea,” Ogle said. “Five, I think, folks that expressed some concern.”

Senator Martin did raise a question about whom this idea came from, which was answered by Ogle.

“It is basically jointly coming from myself and the President from a variety of different sources,” Ogle responded.

Ogle was also questioned on whether he had taken a look at Stan State’s archive historical notes when the school moved away from the College of Health Science.

He answered, “It is on my list to read, I do have those, it is on my list.”

Ogle did make it clear that he plans to maintain the four college model. However, he has not decided how that model will look with the addition of a new college.

“Create this college and maintain the four college model,” he said. “Something I have not decided on in terms of what the other colleges would look like.”

Today’s meeting went into overtime ending three minutes after the scheduled end.