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Simpson thanks faculty
President applauds Faculty Senate for "wonderful year"
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
President John B. Simpson was on hand Tuesday during the last full Faculty Senate meeting of 2005-06 to thank the senators/professors for "another wonderful year" of teaching and mentoring UB students.
"I am told that 4,798 people applied for degrees" to be awarded at general commencement and 14 other ceremonies this month, Simpson said. "That's a spectacular achievement."
Simpson went on to say that UB 2020 is now entering "a very interesting stage" with implementation of the first strategic strength proposal in integrated nanostructured systems, a plan that includes hiring 29 new faculty members across the proposal's various disciplines.
Moving forward on the proposal "signals, without question, that the provost and I mean to have this process succeed," Simpson said, noting that other institutions—as shown to him during conversations he had with other university presidents at last week's AAU conference—are not attempting strategic plans that have the same scope as UB 2020.
"In virtually every case, the kinds of things other institutions are looking at are rather generic: issues such as we need more dormitories, we have to feed our undergraduates better or we need more research money," Simpson said. "We have the only example where university minds, as far as I can tell, at a major research university, are thinking very carefully and thoroughly to determine what our long-term paths and directions are.
I think it is very much to our credit."
Simpson also thanked Will Hepfer for his four years of service as secretary to the Faculty Senate. Robert G. Hoeing, associate professor of linguistics, will be the new secretary, beginning this fall.
Simpson noted UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences will have its grand opening ceremony at 11 a.m. June 2 and praised the facilities of the new structure. "It really is quite remarkable," he said.
In other business, the Faculty Senate showed it had done its homework by passing four proposals from the senate's Grading Committee.
William H. Baumer, professor of philosophy and grading committee chair, presented first a revised academic "second-chance" policy, which allows any student "whose initial study in pursuit of a baccalaureate degree...has been unsuccessful, i.e. has resulted in generally poor grades or uncompleted courses and may have resulted in academic probation or dismissal" to petition for readmission as a matriculated student to baccalaureate study at UB.
The policy is meant for students who have attempted but failed or abandoned their efforts to gain a degree at UB, but have "reordered their lives and activities so that they may be able to pursue baccalaureate studies here successfully," according to the grading committee proposal.
The policy now allows students to request readmission to UB for a term that begins at least five academic terms after their last enrollment and that requests must be supported by evidence of students' "improved ability to pursue baccalaureate study successfully," such as transcripts from post-secondary institutions, work experience or honorable military service.
The FSEC also adopted these policies from the grading committee:
A course-repetition policy, which states more "clearly the conditions for repetition of a course, including ... a course failed more than once." Current policies "may be taken to encourage multiple failed repetitions," according to the revised policy, because while a student's first failure of a course is included in computing the student's grade-point average, subsequent "Fs" earned in the same course are not. The revised policy incorporates failed course repetitions by adding the credits of each failed class to the student's total attempted credits, which results in a reduced GPA.
An incomplete grade-policy revision, which gives both graduate and undergraduate students 12 months in which to make up incomplete courses. The new policy allows a default grade of "B," "C," "D" or "F" to accompany the interim "I" grades given to undergraduate students who haven't completed requirements of a course; the default grade for graduate students is "U." The default grade becomes the permanent grade of record if the incomplete grade is not changed within 12 months after the close of the term in which it occurred. Students may not reregister for any courses in which they have an interim "I" grade.
A prompt grade-submission policy, which requires faculty to submit grades for all courses within seven days (including weekends and holidays) after the last day of the term's final exam period, or after the last day of classes in the absence of a final exam period.