Discussions on student courses being categorized incorrectly in Stan State’s online portal, the illegality of posting course materials online, and general announcements on the Food Pantry, Vasche Library and Academic Success Center were addressed at the first Academic Senate meeting of the 2018-19 academic year on Aug. 28.
PeopleSoft Problems
Updating Stan State’s course catalog has been an ongoing collaboration between various departments on campus since last year.
“The folks in Enrollment Services and the folks in the Academic Programs Office did extraordinary work to update the catalog, update the roadmaps, make sure that every course has the new course designation,” said Dr. Betsy Eudey, University Educational Policies Committee Chair. “It turns out that PeopleSoft doesn’t play well with some of the stuff we have done.”
Eudey explained that the PeopleSoft program, which is used for the MyCSUStan portal where completed courses are tracked, only allows one General Education (GE) code. So, some units that students have taken prior to the current academic year show under “additional courses” rather than their correct GE category.
“There are 7,000 of those courses that are in the wrong location,” said Eudey.
Currently, the only fix for this problem is to manually move each students’ courses to the correct category. “We’re going to have to do this manual work until students graduate,” said Eudey.
Courses are being manually moved for each student in order of graduation, with graduating seniors’ courses being fixed first. On a case-by-case basis, a student may be able to “jump the queue,” but each case must be approved by the corresponding department. “This is a system problem created by a system band-aid,” said Eudey.
“Anybody know why we have PeopleSoft? Oh yeah, that was a Chancellor’s Office mandate too,” said Dr. Chris Nagel, Speaker of the Faculty.
Course Hero
Concern was voiced by the Senate over Stan State faculty’s class materials being posted to the online study site Course Hero.
Course Hero is an online platform where students can receive tutoring and share study tools. In some cases, Course Hero will pay students who post materials to the site. 64 departments are listed with materials on Stan State’s CourseHero page.
“Some of these are student notes, but some of these are your course materials that you’ve developed and that you might have copyright rights to,” said Eudey. “People are sharing exams, they’re sharing assignments, they’re sharing different kinds of things that you might want to know about.”
Faculty can request that their materials on Course Hero be taken down, but the person who posted them has a right to dispute the request.
“There is a state law as well as a CSU policy that it is illegal for students to sell their notes to classes and to post our materials online, so it is a legal matter as well as a not good thing to do,” said Eudey.
Nagel suggested a cease and desist message be written on behalf of the Senate and sent to Course Hero, or that a request be submitted to the Chancellor’s Office to take action.
President Junn expressed interest in a “coordinated CSU response” to the issue. These are only potential ways the Senate could deal with the issue.
New Warrior Food Pantry
Dr. Paz Oliverez, Interim Vice President for Student Affairs, announced that an extended food pantry will open its doors in the Health Center on Sept. 11. The Warrior Food Pantry in Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) will remain open.
Oliverez explained that “students will be able to leave [the Health Center] with a box of food, fresh food, twice a month.” The food will be supplied by United Samaritans and will include fresher items such as bread, which are not currently supplied in the Warrior Food Pantry. Oliverez also indicated that plans to expand the food pantry to include refrigerated items are underway.
Library Temporary Space
Ron Rodriguez, Dean of Library Services, announced to the Senate that while the library renovation is in progress, library faculty and staff will transition to temporary buildings between Bizzini Hall and Demergasso-Bava Hall.
“The library and all its partners, for example OIT [Office of Information Technology], are going to modular buildings,” said Rodriguez. He explained that the move is officially scheduled for June 1, 2019. “Library faculty are currently discussing the need for additional study space,” he said.
Changes in Academic Advising
It was also announced that advisors in the Academic Success Center (ASC) will be assigned to students by college, rather than by last name.
“We’ve determined that the better way for students to know their advisor is by college,” said Julie Sedlemeyer, Interim Director of the Academic Success Center. “This is new for us. We’re excited to try something different,” she said.
Sedlemeyer also expressed the ASC’s concern for helping incoming freshmen transition to Stan State. “We have started something called our Freshmen Advising for Successful Students,” she said. The program provides workshops and email correspondence to freshmen students, she added.
This article has been updated to include a clarification on the Senate’s action on faculty’s materials being published on Course Hero.
