Speaker of the Faculty and Chair of the Academic Senate, Dr. Chris Nagel (Philosophy) opened Stan State’s Academic Senate meeting on December 4. During the meeting, staff discussed advising notes that are now available in PeopleSoft, budget priorities, changes to ASCSU presidential search process, and changes to how students give opinions on their professors teaching.
PeopleSoft Advising Notes
Many professors with advising status will be glad to know that they can put advising notes directly into PeopleSoft. These notes will be beneficial and contain what students have been told by other advisors, as to what classes they should or should not take.
Although students are not able to currently see these advising notes, this information is however considered a public record. “If you want the student to have access to what you put in the notes, you have to copy and paste it into an email,” said Eudey.
Dr. Nainby (Communication Studies), “Although it is true that students can not see this information, a great place to put notes that you do want students to see is in Stan planner.” Eudey said, “You are not obligated to use these notes, but it is a really useful tool.”
Budget Priorities
Another topic that was discussed at Academic Senate, was the budget priorities resolution. A key component of the budget priorities and prioritize the recruitment of underrepresented faculty. Another factor is to adequately fund and hire tenure-track psychological counselors, tenure-track librarians, career service advisors, and academic service advisors, prioritizing the recruitment of underrepresented faculty and staff.
Changes to ASCSU Presidential Search Process
There was also a vote to support the ASCSU Presidential Search Process in the CSU system. This would bring back transparency in its Presidential searches and successful policy of providing for the public announcement of finalists with accompanying official public visits by finalists to campuses.
There are currently four universities that are in the presidential search, so we need to support them; those universities are CSU Fullerton, Humboldt State University, CSU San Marcos, and San Francisco State University. “This vote has been voted on and passed,” Dr. Chris Nagel (Philosophy).
Students Feedback on their Professors
Students will soon see a change in the way that they give feedback on their professors. We currently use the IDEA forms, but some issues were brought up, such as students not giving honest answers or feeling rushed to answer the questions.
There is currently a draft in place to modify these surveys, the new surveys have more feedback questions. The new surveys took feedback from two schools, CSULB and CSUEB.
