Debates were made on several aspects of the school at the last senate meeting.

Ethnic Studies

One of the first topics discussed this week was the implementation of the Ethnic Studies requirement for CSU graduation. 

There is still much debate and confusion as to how the Ethnic Studies requirement is going to look like. 

It stirred up the questions of if it is going to be okay for students to take ethnic studies courses within or outside their majors, and when would be the best time to start implementing the courses.

Dr. Ann Strahm, Sociology Department Chair said, “Stan State and the other CSU campuses will ‘explore’ how the ethnic studies requirement will look like on campus.”

CFA 

The California Faculty Association (CFA) members received a bargaining survey about what they’d like to see in the next contract with CSU management. 

There will be an open meeting at in October for faculty to share what they’d like to see. 

A series of topics will be discussed including bargaining and how the next contract will be secured.

The current agreement contract expires at the end of June 2020.

RPT

The RPT committee has been very busy and has met four times in regards to the changes currently made.

President Ellen Junn has removed herself from the RPT process leaving two possible alternative directions.

One possible process is the president being replaced with the Provost Kimberly Greer. 

In case of disagreement with the RPT and Provost the president will still step in.

The second will consist of the tenure requests passing to the department, the Dean, to RPTC, finally to Provost. The decision has not been finalized. 

Michelle Soto-Peña, Professor of Liberal Studies, shared her concerns regarding the changes.

“As you’re going and thinking about different areas of consideration, providing guidance going from two year to one year… it can impact faculty members who recently went onto maternity leave or returning from maternity leave because I think that is a shadow of population of this RTP process. Not so much the labels in the contract and extension of the RPT process on maternity leave, but there is no where it talks about the submission portfolio and I think the process of creating the portfolio is very stressful especially for new mothers.”

Summary

The academic senate meeting brought up many topics that affect the Stanislaus State community.

Solutions to questions regarding the evolution of our campus is in the works.