At today’s Academic Senate meeting, more cracks formed in the shared governance of Stan State. But as shared governance continues to decline, Stan State continues to expand with talks of a possible new college.
During open forum talks about a new college coming to Stan State erupted. With the process starting over the summer.
“Creating College of Health and Human Services,” Provost Olge said.
Provost Ogle touched on the history of Stan State when talking about the beginning of creating this new college. He discussed that Stan State once had a College of Health and Human Services in the past.
When talking about updates regarding this topic, Ogle made it clear that the region that we are in and that Stan State serves reflects regions we oftentimes make fun of for their lack of health care and human behavior services.
Ogle continued to emphasize that they plan to follow Stan State rules when it comes to establishing a new college and will continue to follow up and have the academic senate further involved in conversation. He hopes to have them vote on the matter in future meetings.
CFA President Colnic had a few things to say about this possible new addition, which brought the senate from excitement to skepticism.
“I’m excited about this,” Colnic said when talking about the new college.
“I’m glad this came to us. We mention we are not in the beginning. My conception of shared governance is that we need to be involved in the beginning. This is upside down in my opinion.”
Although excited about this possible new college making its way to Stan State, he is disappointed and not satisfied with how the process has already started.
Shared governance to Colnic means that they are involved before conversations take place not only being involved after these conversations started. Feeling personally that they are often told about things when they are much far along and when changes can no longer be made.
Outside of that, today’s meeting saw the voting on two reading items from last week. The Studio Art concentration discontinuation and the revision to course module scheduling policy for the Stockton campus.
Revisions to the course module scheduling policy for Stockton comes in hopes to make classes more flexible by allowing the scheduling of non-cohort courses in one-day-a-week and two-days-a-week modules during the day before 4 p.m.
The rationale for this revision to the scheduling policy is not only the increased flexibility that comes for students, but also the increased flexibility that comes for faculty. Giving them the myriad benefit to having more options to teach once-a-week and twice-a-week courses in Stockton.
The senate voted on this item but did not disclose the voting information out loud and kept it to the zoom chat.
The second reading item for this week’s senate had to do with the discontinuation of the studio art concentration.
The discontinuation of the Studio Art concentration comes as it became part of the major requirements for the Art History major, which by default, the major concentration is in Studio Art.
The senate voted and again did not disclose the decision to the whole meeting, instead opting to keep the vote to the zoom chat.
