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Attendance: Approximately 30
Announced Agenda: 5 items
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President Malcolm Gillis called the meeting to order at 4:00 PM in McMurtry Auditorium. Alan Chapman served as Parliamentarian. One media representative, Mark Berenson, News Editor of the Rice Thresher, was acknowledged as being present.
1. Minutes of 1/29/02 Faculty Meeting.
The minutes of the January 29, 2002 Faculty Meeting were APPROVED, as circulated in advance.
2. Election of Secretary to the Faculty
Speaker Robert Patten referred to the By-laws of the Faculty, Article 2.2, noting that at a regularly scheduled meeting, such as this one, the faculty may elect a Secretary to serve for a term of three years.
The two major duties of the Secretary are to keep minutes of the meetings and, at the end of the year, deposit a full record of that year's minutes in the university archives.
Following authorization at the last faculty meeting, on behalf of Faculty Council, Patten nominated staff member Janis Cain, Manager of Faculty Affairs in the Office of the Provost, to be Secretary to the Faculty for a term of three years. This was done with the understanding that if her faculty meeting responsibilities become too onerous, she could reconsider her service in this capacity, if elected. The nomination did not need a second because it came before the faculty from Faculty Council.
The motion PASSED unanimously. Patten then made some comments about Janis and her previous experience.
3. Undergraduate graduation situation
Prior to discussion of graduation degree certification problems, President Gillis suggested media representative, Mark Berenson, also a member of EX&S, be allowed to remain in the meeting. President Gillis requested and received this approval.
President Gillis called on Dan Osherson, chair of the Committee on Examinations and Standing, to present the issue. Osherson explained that some students requesting to graduate on time have encountered problems with their degree audits caused by misinformation. This year EX&S has faced several cases in which a student appears to have been misinformed by an agent of the University about a deadline or a procedure. Historically, EX&S has consistently taken the side of the student in order to avoid any possibility of blaming and punishing the student for the University's mistakes. In this spirit, EX&S advocated that the students at issue today, who have been provided erroneous degree audits, be allowed to graduate on time.
Osherson called on Jerry Montag, Registrar, to explain the details of this issue. Montag provided the following information:
After reviewing a report regarding errors on student records from Harvard University, the Registrar's Office decided to perform manual checks for accuracy of student records at Rice. During this process, a list of irregularities was developed, showing a few students had received double credit for courses. In light of these errors, the Registrar's Office perceived a need to further examine student records to ensure complete accuracy. After meeting with the President and the Provost, the Registrar was charged with manually checking all students' records who were approved for graduation. Four students with serious problems emerged from this detailed examination.
The first student received IB credit, similar to AP credit, for Math 101 and Math 102. This student decided, as was his right, to repeat the course. The system did not check at the time of registration, in 1999, for a repeated course. [Certain courses can be repeated for multiple semesters, and count toward graduation; other courses can be repeated, such as Math 101 and Math 102, count on the record of a student, but are counted only once for credit toward a degree.]
This particular student completed 125 hours of 128 hours required for his selected Bachelor of Science degree. Degree audits, obtained on-line from the Registrar's Office for the past several years, showed the student had passed all requirements for graduation. The problem never appeared through degree audits or on transcripts. It was recognized as a system error.
The second student in question experienced a similar problem. In 1999, the Registrar's Office erroneously gave this student credit for AP Math 101 and Math 102. The student did not notice that credit for Math 102 had already been received. The system did not have a procedure to check for repeated courses. The student's degree audit showed all courses passed, while his transcript showed the total number of hours required had not been satisfied. His transcript showed 126 hours completed when 128 hours were required for graduation.
The last two students' situations differed somewhat. They did not have any repeated courses, but the system script performing the degree audit was incorrect. The degree audits showed the students completed Distribution I, II, and III requirements. The degree audits showed they passed Distribution I requirements, when, in fact, one student did not pass Distribution I requirements and only had 9 out of the 12 required hours. In the other student's case, only 11 of the 12 required hours were completed. Both of these students have ample credits for graduation. These errors were beyond the control of the students and were not picked up in their degree audits. Again, system errors created these problems.
Montag requested faculty approval to allow these four students to graduate in spring 2002.
President Gillis called for discussion.
Speaker Patten read a letter from Moshe Vardi, who was unable to attend the meeting. Vardi strongly supported an exception for these students to graduate on time and believed they should not be penalized for system errors.
President Gillis called for a motion to allow these students to graduate on time. The motion was made and seconded. The motion PASSED unanimously.
Ann Wright requested Montag relay the steps to be taken in the future to avoid problems such as these. Montag described immediate corrective actions that would be taken to ensure the accuracy of future degree audits. First, the system program will be corrected to search for repeated courses at the time of preregistration. Credit will be counted only once. Second, the Registrar's Office will ask all departments to indicate courses that are repeatable for multiple credit (seminars, research, independent study). This data will be entered into the system and put in the General Announcements. Third, the Registrar's Office will manually check records of new students at the end of their first semester's registration to ensure no duplication of credit.
Stanley Dodds commented that this problem is rather more widespread than just these four students discussed. He stated that he found several problems in the course of doing graduation degree audits for majors. In these cases, the errors were not substantive and did not affect distribution or something similar. However, Dodds felt this clearly showed serious systemic errors in the software used by the Registrar's Office.
Montag agreed and stated that other students' records showed errors, but these students had ample courses, ample credit, ample distribution credits to graduate. The Registrar's Office was able to correct most of these errors. He stated that the problems had probably been going on for some time, but the Registrar's Office was going to ensure that these types of errors did not occur in the future.
[Two detailed information sheets provided by Montag are attached to the file copy of these minutes].
4. Announcements
Speaker Patten announced Faculty Council will have four openings this spring. Nomination petitions have been sent to all faculty. These open positions are:
A great deal of work is done in Faculty Council. One of the most exciting new developments for the Council has been meetings three times this year with the President, Provost, and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. These kinds of meetings and interactions will continue in future years. Patten urged deans and faculty to encourage their departments to get good representatives from the seven schools to participate in Council.
The second announcement concerned the calendar for academic year 2002-03.
For some months, the University has been going forward with the calendar in which Rice's spring break would, for the first time in decades, correspond to HISD's spring break. Last week, HISD announced that their spring break next year would occur in the third week in March. Rice's spring break was changed from the first week to the second week in March. Because spring break was moved to the second week in March, the two-day break at the end of March was eliminated. Patten noted that last week the Thresher contained an editorial calling on the faculty to rethink eliminating the two-day break at the end of March. Therefore, before passing a calendar for academic year 2003-04, this issue needs to be revisited.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at approximately 4:20.
Respectfully submitted,
Janis Cain
Secretary to the Faculty