To: Members of the University Senate

From: Donald D. O'Dowd, for the Steering Committee

Re: Agenda for the Meeting of March 27, 1969

The next meeting of the University Senate will be held on Thursday, March 27, at 3:30 p.m., in Room 200 of the Dodge Hall of Engineering.

A. New Business

1. Recommendations of the Graduate Study Committee. (Mr. Tomboulian)

The President and the Board of Trustees should be requested to approve the offering of the new degree programs described in the following four motions:

a. THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION IS AUTHORIZED TO GRANT THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING IN SPECIAL EDUCATION (CONCENTRATION: EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILDREN). THE PROGRAM LEADING TO THIS DEGREE MAY BE IMPLEMENTEDAS SOON AS FEASIBLE.

The prospectus for this program was attached to the Senate agenda of March 6, 1969.

b. THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IS AUTHORIZED TO GRANT THE DEGREES OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY AND MASTER OF ARTS IN THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. THE PROGRAMS LEADING TO THESE DEGREES MAY BE IMPLEMENTED AS SOON AS FEASIBLE.

The prospectus for these programs was attached to the Senate agenda of the meeting of March 6, 1969.

c. THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES IS AUTHORIZED TO GRANT THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PH.D.) IN SCIENCE, UNDER THE SPONSORSHIP OF AN INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE CONSISTING OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE DEPARTMENTS OF BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, MATHEMATICS, AND PHYSICS. THE PROGRAM LEADING TO THIS DEGREE MAY BE IMPLEMENTED AS SOON AS FEASIBLE.

The prospectus for the program was attached to the Senate agenda of the meeting of March 6, 1969.

d. THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING IS AUTHORIZED TO GRANT THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PH.D.) IN ENGINEERING (CONCENTRATION: SYSTEMS ENGINEERING). THE PROGRAM LEADING TO THIS DEGREE MAY BE IMPLEMENTED AS SOON AS FEASIBLE.

The prospectus for the program was attached to the Senate agenda for the meeting of March 6, 1969.

2. Recommendation from the Academic Policy Committee. (Mr. Lowy)

a. The Academic Policy Committee recommends that the criteria for admission of a student to the Honors List in the category of Student of Distinction, be amended to read as follows:

GRADE POINT AVERAGE OF 3.0 OR HIGHER, AND NOT A UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR OR STUDENT OF GREAT DISTINCTION. A STUDENT MUST HAVE TAKEN AND COMPLETED TWELVE OR MORE CREDITS, WITH A GRADE POINT AVERAGE OF 3.0 OR HIGHER AND WITH NO GRADE BELOW 2.0.

b. The Academic Policy Committee recommends that the general qualifications applicable to all categories on the Honors List be amended to read as follows:

IN ORDER TO QUALIFY FOR THE HONORS LIST, A STUDENT MUST HAVE RECEIVED NUMERICAL GRADES IN TWELVE OR MORE CREDITS OF ACADEMIC WORK. ANY STUDENT WHO HAS RECEIVED A GRADE OF U IN ANY COURSE IS NOT CONSIDERED FOR THE HONORS LIST.

The present set of criteria for the Honors List is presented here for the information of the Senate:

UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR -- Grade point average of 3.9 or higher, with no grade below 3.0. (Note: Not changed by the above proposed amendments.)

STUDENT OF GREAT DISTINCTION -- Grade point average of 3.50 to 3.89 with no grade below 3.0. (Note: Not changed by the above
proposed amendments.)

STUDENT OF DISTINCTION - Grade point average of 3.0 or higher, and not a University Scholar or Student of Great Distinction. A student must have taken and completed three or more courses with a grade point average of 3.0 or higher, and passed every course. (Note: These standards would be modified by the above proposed amendments.)

In order to qualify for the Honors List, a student must have received numerical grades in twelve or more credits of academic work. Any student who has received a grade of 0.0 or U in any course is not considered for the Honors List. (Note: These standards would be modified by the above proposed amendments.)

Comment

These changes are recommended in the interest of improving the criteria for membership in the Honors List. At this time it is possible for a student to receive a grade as low as 0.5 and still qualify for honors. As the criteria are currently written this policy has the awkward connotation of equating a U grade with a grade as low as 0.5. It has been the intention of the Senate to define a U grade as equivalent to any grade below 2.0. This change will bring the Honors List criteria in line with the published interpretation of grades and will provide some minor tightening of criteria for being placed on the Honors List.

3. Recommendation from the Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee. (Mr. O'Dowd)

The Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee wishes to recommend several changes in the appointment policies of the university for action by the Senate and final approval by the Board of Trustees.

a. First, the committee wishes to recommend for the approval of the University Senate three motions which bear upon a change in the range of personnel covered by the appointment and tenure policy of the university. It is the position of this committee that members of the professional library staff should be included in the faculty appointment system and the following motions would permit this to occur. The committee recommends that:

1. PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY STAFF MEMBERS BE AWARDED FACULTY APPOINTMENTS AT THE STANDARD ACADEMIC RANKS AND THEY BE INCLUDED IN THE TENURE SYSTEM.

2. THE LIBRARY SHALL BE CONSTITUTED AS AN ORGANIZED FACULTY WITHIN ONE YEAR OF THE APPROVAL BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE EXTENSION OF FACULTY STATUS TO PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY STAFF MEMBERS.

In connection with the two motions above the committee recommends further that the Rules of Tenure be changed by adding the following section:

B) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

ADDITIONAL ITEM:

6) A MEMBER OF THE PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY STAFF WHO HAS COMPLETED A STANDARD SERIES OF NON-TENURED APPOINTMENTS AS DESCRIBED IN PARAGRAPH A AND SECTIONS 1) THROUGH 5) OF PARAGRAPH B ABOVE, MAY BE GRANTED TENURE AS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND NEED NOT BE PROMOTED TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR.

Comment

The Committee on Tenure and Appointment Policy believes that the library and the university will be greatly advantaged by including professional library staff members in the faculty appointment and tenure system. There is a growing trend in this direction among colleges and universities throughout the United States and it seems appropriate that Oakland be in the vanguard of this development. The university librarian assures us that the quality of our library staff can be continuously strengthened by according academic rank and associated perquisites to the professional library staff.

The nature of our particular Rules of Tenure with its "up or out" feature would work an unusual hardship on professional library staff members; therefore, an amendment is recommended which will permit library staff members only to attain tenure at the assistant professor rank. The information that we have gathered indicates that where professional library staff hold academic rank the tenured assistant professorship is universally in effect. By the terms of this legislation staff members will not be faced automatically with an up-or-out judgment at the end of a six~year period.

The committee believes that the professional library staff should constitute itself as an organized faculty and submit a constitution to the University Senate after a reasonable period of time. The library staff would then have an opportunity to consider carefully the practices and procedures to be followed by the library in arriving at policies to govern its functioning as a faculty organization rather than a primarily administrative entity.

The committee recommends that the three motions presented above should be treated as a package since they describe a means whereby the library can be changed in its orientation into an academic organization that is entirely consistent with the role it plays in the university as a teaching and academic agency.

b. The Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee recommends that an additional item be added to the Assistant Professor section of the Rules of Tenure to safeguard the interests of faculty members. The new section is as follows:

B) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

ADDITIONAL ITEM:

7) WHEN THERE IS A TIME GAP BETWEEN THE DATE OF TENURE DECISION AND THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF PROMOTION OF A FACULTY MEMBER WHO HAS COMPLETED A STANDARD SERIES OF NON-TENURED APPOINTHENTS AS DESCRIBED IN PARAGRAPH A AND SECTIONS 1) THROUGH 5) OF PARAGRAPH B ABOVE, HE MAY BE GRANTED TENURE AS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR.

Comment

This addition to the Rules of Tenure is designed to deal with one specific situation which results from the way in which appointment and promotion recommendations are accepted by the Board of Trustees. At the present time a faculty member may be granted a reappointment at a non-tenured rank in November of the last academic year of a full sequence of non-tenured appointments with the understanding that he will be promoted to associate professor in the spring of the following year. Under the Oakland University tenure rules a faculty member who is appointed as an assistant professor does not have tenure until his promotion to associate professor takes effect July 1 following action by the Board of Trustees. By the addition of section 7) to the Rules of Tenure a faculty member will be formally and legally granted tenure at the time the Board acts in November. Should the Board of Trustees choose not to accept the promotion recommendation which had been promised to the faculty member the preceding fall, he would continue to have tenure although in this extraordinary case at the assistant professor rank rather than at the intended rank of associate professor. In practice it is extremely unlikely that any such difficulty will arise. but the addition of this rule will provide a further guarantee of the security of the faculty member under the current Rules of Tenure. The Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee intends to recommend some changes in the sequence of appointment and promotion actions of the Board of Trustees during the coming year which could alleviate the kind of difficulty described in this section and make much more rational the procedures for appointment, tenure, and promotion actions.

c. The Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee recommends that the Senate also take action on a third item. This particular amendment to the Rules of Tenure is designed to authorize officially the use of visiting appointments. We recommend that the following section be approved:

E) VISITING APPOINTMENTS

A PERSON MAY BE APPOINTED THROUGH NORMAL CHANNELS AT THE RANK OF INSTRUCTOR, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, OR PROFESSOR AS A VISITING FACULTY MEMBER FOR A MUTUALLY AGREEABLE TERM OF APPOINTMENT. VISITING APPOINTMENTS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE TENURE RULES AND ORDINARILY SHOULD BE OFFERED ONLY FOR PERIODS OF ONE YEAR OR LESS.

Comment

The section currently numbered E) entitled "For purposes of application of these tenure rules:" should now be renumbered F) to make room for the section on visiting appointments.

The Tenure and Appointment Policy Committee has noted that there is no official category available for making visiting appointments at the standard academic ranks. Several such appointments have been made in the last two years but their legal status is somewhat tenuous. It would be possible with this amendment to appoint people at any regular tenure rank on a visiting basis for a one-year term. As the rules currently stand instructors and assistant professors should be appointed for two years and an associate professor should be appointed for three years. There is no provision to appoint people in these ranks for a shorter period of time although there has frequently been good cause for making such short-term appointments. In some cases these brief appointments are designed to fill vacancies created by leaves of absence and sabbatical leaves. In other cases desirable candidates indicate that they are available for one year and are only willing to accept a short-term appointment. In a number of such cases the people who have been approached do not wish to accept the rank of lecturer which to them may have connotations that are confusing when it appears in their curriculum vitae. It is in the light of these considerations that the committee recommends an extension of the Rules of Tenure to include visiting appointments.

4. Recommendation of the Academic Standing and Honors Committee. (Mr. McKay)

The Academic Standing and Honors Committee moves the adoption of the attached report entitled, "Procedures in Cases of Student Academic Violations." The formal motion reads as follows:

THE STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES PRESENTED IN THE DOCUMENT ENTITLED, "PROCEDURES IN CASES OF STUDENT ACADEMIC VIOLATIONS," SUBMITTED BY THE ACADEMIC STANDING AND HONORS COMMITTEE IN MARCH,1969, IS ACCEPTED AND WILL HENCEFORTH SERVE AS OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY POLICY.

Comment

The original report of the Academic Standing and Honors Committee was reviewed by the Senate in April, 1968, and was then accepted as university policy pending an open hearing by the committee. That hearing, designed to ascertain student and faculty reactions to the standards and procedures noted in the report, was recently completed by the committee. The attached final report is basically the same as the original document although some modifications have been introduced since last April.

5. Report of Steering Committee Activities. (Mr. O'Dowd)

a. The Steering Committee has accepted the recommendations submitted by Fred Obear, Vice Provost, for a revised schedule for the advising, orientation, and registration activities associated with Freshman Week in the fall semester of 1969. The approved modification includes a one-day expansion in the registration period, from the two days originally suggested by the ad hoc Calendar Committee, to three days. Mr. Obear submitted his recommendations on behalf of those who share responsibility for conducting this program: Messrs. Atkinson, G. Brown, W. Jones, McGarry, Reitz, F. Smith and Sturner.

The Steering Committee accepted the recommendations because they are consistent with the guideline standards submitted by the ad hoc Calendar Committee last spring and approved by the Senate on April 11, 1968, and simultaneously permit the university to more effectively and efficiently service the student and faculty needs during Freshman Week. The revised calendar noted below will be in effect for only the fall semester of 1969.

Comment

It has become increasingly clear that the schedule of activities originally established for the period between August 28 and September 3 cannot be accommodated given the level of present staffing in these and other administrative areas and the limited availability of faculty and staff to work on weekends and holidays. For example, a two-day registration which seemed reasonable when the fall calendar was originally conceived, and which is still a desirable
format for the future, cannot this fall suffice to permit the registration of 6,000 students. Similar time and staffing problems for the Advising Office and for Food Service and Housing also make some adjustment in the current schedule desirable. The approved changes affect only the timetable of events for the fall, 1969.
No substantive, long-range changes are requested or approved.

b. The University Senate at its meeting of March 6, 1969, delegated to the Steering Committee the responsibility for establishing an "equitable election procedure" for the selection of an Oakland University representative to serve on the Search and Selection Committee concerned with recommending a replacement for Mr. John Hannah, who has resigned as president of Michigan State University. Earlier in the meeting, the Senate nominated a list of six members of the university faculty from which the Oakland University representative would be chosen. On a motion by Dean Hetenyi, it was agreed that none of the nominees would be allowed to withdraw his name from the active list until the expiration of at least twenty-four hours. Three of the six nominees eventually decided not to stand for election, thus the ballot listed only three of the original six Senate nominees: Messrs. Akers, G. P. Johnson, and McKay.

The Steering Committee decided that the most "equitable" procedure for electing a representative to the Search and Selection Committee was an election by the members of the University Senate, which is the most broadly based representative body of all aspects of the Oakland community. The Steering Committee made this decision consistent with what it considered to be the spirit and the letter of the Senate's reactions, as noted in its meeting of March 6, and with the general procedures approved by the Academic Council of Michigan State University (which initiated the invitation to Oakland University to send a representative to the Search and Selection Committee). After the election of a university representative to the Search and Selection Committee, the Steering Committee will recommend to the Senate a procedure by which an advisory committee to the Oakland University representative can be formed.

c. The Inter-Faculty Association recently invited Oakland University to appoint at least two faculty representatives from our "faculty governing body" to attend an organizational meeting of the Association of March 27 and 28. The purpose of the meeting is to reconstitute the Association and form a new, enlarged organization called, "The Association of Michigan Collegiate Faculties. " This new organization will include representatives from all of Michigan's thirteen public four-year degree-granting institutions, a membership substantially larger than the present membership of the Inter-Faculty Association. The agenda of the meetings will center on the proposed constitution or charter for the suggested Association of Michigan Collegiate Faculties, a document that was drawn up by the present membership of the Inter-Faculty Association. The Steering Committee recommended that the Oakland University delegation to the meetings on
March 27-28 consist of one representative from each of the organized faculties. The executive committees of each of the three assemblies have been asked to designate a delegate from their respective schools or colleges.

d. Chancellor Varner referred to the Steering Committee a complaint he had received about a film entitled, "The Bed," shown recently during the Fine Arts Festival. In accordance with the policy recommended by the Commission on Student Life, and accepted by the Board of Trustees in February 1968, the university Senate was given the responsibility to appoint a Board of Review to give a professional opinion regarding a particular work if disapproval was voiced to the Chancellor.

The Steering Committee convened a Board of Review consisting of R. Williamson (chairman), Beznos and Mascitelli. The Board was charged to determine if "the film ,vas suitable for showing in the Fine Arts Festival of 1969 on the Oakland University campus." The members of the committee were asked to render their professional opinion regarding the film within the context of the charge that it was obscene.

The Board of Review viewed the film on March 20, the same day it was convened, and rendered the following judgment:

It is our opinion that the film, "The Bed" may be shown again in the 1969 Fine Arts Festival on the Oakland University campus. The Board did not find the film to be obscene, libelous or slanderous. We recommend that you apprise the sponsors of the film of the Board of Trustees' policy in which the university does not guarantee to defend the sponsors in the event of legal action.

WFS: ljm
3/25/69

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