The Stanislaus State Academic Senate met on February 28 to discuss a variety of topics, including the system outages, academic proposals and priority registration for student parents.
The meeting began with general announcements including upcoming events on campus like the spring 2023 food distribution schedule, the blood drive on March 6, and a Remembering the Holocaust Event on the 15.
Academic Technology and Learning Committee (ATLC) chair Dr. Peggy Hauselt, professor of geography, gave the ATLC’s report on what their meeting was about and focused on the system outage.
She went on to give a debrief of what occurred during the outage. Hauselt explained that on Feb. 16, suspicious activity was reported and within hours, the whole system was shut down. She added that the university was in contact with the FBI and the Chancellor’s office
Hauselt continued to explain that no level one or personal data was compromised, but passwords may have been. Once that was identified OIT began working on a system to reset passwords both in person and remotely.
Rafael Espinoza, chief information officer at Stan State sais that it was an ongoing investigation.
“We have a forensics team that’s looking at all of that and we have no indication whatsoever that there has been any kind of data loss,” he said.
The network outage would be a re-occuring theme througout the remainder of the meeting.
Priority Registration for Parents
University Educational Policies Committee (UEPC) Chair, Marcy Chvasta, addressed priority registration for students who are parents.
Chvasta explained during the UEPC report that they found they had more time to implement this new policy than they originally thought.
“I resolved that this policy will be effective for the Spring 2024 registration cycle,” she said.
The new policy was then voted on by the senate and resulted in 35 Yes’s, 0 No’s, and 6 people abstaining.
New Concentrations in Majors
The University Educational Policies Committee also wishes to add a Journalism and Professional Writing Concentration. This concentration Is designed to give those students not interested in teaching a core foundation and contemporary workplace in writing.
This will allow them to complete their BA in English as a writing specialist.
Faculty Budget Advisory Committee chair, Nancy Burroughs, discussed a proposal to add a new concentration in digital and social media marketing to the masters of business administration.
They explained that there were currently two concentrations in this program and that this would be the third.
