Minutes January 26, 2010

The Senate met to continue our discussion of the program formally known as the deans' list.  We began by confirming the growing consensus that new nomenclature and a structured nomination process would alleviate most of the Deans' major concerns.  At our next meeting we hope to finalize and vote on those ammendments to the original resolution. 

Name: "Commended Students" seemed to sit better with most than "Honors" or other alternatives.  Senator Murray pointed out the importance of a name that doesn't create laughable acronyms, so we will not, for instance adopt the name Commended Really Interesting Student Program, or worse, Commended for Radical Academics Program.  More seriously, Senator Weiskopf advised that our name not set up false expectations by appearing to similar to academic honor rolls at other schools.

Process: The Maurer method was favored by most Senators present.  While some details still need attention we were in broad agreement about the following: 1) The process needs to be easy for faculty to understand and complete 2) the process needs to be easy for deans to administer 3) the process needs a quantitative basis to alleviate concerns of subjectivity (though distributed subjectivity is still subjective, even with numbers attached) 4) Deans need to retain some latitude in crafting the final list. 

We also agreed that faculty may only nominate students they teach, and while Dean Botella pointed out that one's teaching load may increase or lessen one's ability to affect an individual class list, we saw no way around that effect. I did follow up with Mr. Gillespie, who assured me that Survey Monkey will allow us to pull together scores and comments, but also allow us to look at individual responses, so a Dean could look and see how a students score was generated. 

Roughly, the process might look as follows.  1) At the close of a grading period, the Dean of students sends out the survey by email.  The survey would include text reminding faculty of the criteria for commendation, and the most recent list of commended students to help faculty look beyond those names.  2) Faculty nominate 1-5 students, assigning each points, not to exceed 10 total points.  (i.e. the faculty member has ten points to distribute among the nominated students).  Faculty also write 1-3 sentences of commendation for each nominated student, and identify each student's graduating class. 3) Deans receive a survey report sorted by grade and score, and use that report to generate their lists and personalized comments for letters of commendations.  Deans also screen the list to reduce repeated commendations, and ensure some diversity of commendations (some for improvement, some for acheivement, etc.) 4) Letter would go home and into the file. 5) Deans announce the list of commended students in school meeting. 

Senators, please examine this closely and recommend changes through the blog comments so that we are well placed to make and pass a resolution at our next meeting. 
                     

Senate Minutes 1.12.10

The senate had a very productive meeting yesterday, where we sat down with the four class deans and talked through the issues surrounding the Deans List resolution. We began with a recapitulation of the history and rationale of the resolution, and then heard feedback from the deans who have some reservations with the resolution that have slowed its implementation. Dean Newman made a particulaly salient point that the role of the Dean is so much more than academic, that the nomenclature of a "Dean's List" applying to a strictly academic commendation creates discomfort. Deans also expressed anxiety about having to defend their choices for a list, their desire for a reduced role in the process, and the need for a more objective selection method (or at least one where the subjectivity is distributed). Much discussion ensued, with particularly broad participation of both faculty and student senators.

While we were still going strong at the end of our time, my sense of the meeting was that with a change in the name of the list (commended students? honors list?), and the development of a robust faculty nomination process, we could potentially implement the existing resolution at the next grading period or at the end of the year. Several options for the nomination process have already been proposed. Two that seem promising are as follows:

1) The Integrity Council Method: Faculty are allowed to nominate up to five students each grading period, with a couple of sentences of explanation. The students who receive the most nominations are screened by the Class Dean to ensure a diversity of commended students (some for high grades, some for improvement, some for intellectual curiousity, etc.) and to make sure that each list doesn't repeat too much of the most recent list.

2) The Maurer Method: Faculty are given a set of nomination "points" to award (say 10 for argument's sake)through a survey instrument like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang. Again, a couple of commending sentences would accompany each nomination. They may award them all to one student, or distribute them among multiple students. The students with the most total nomination points are then screened by the Deans as above.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank the senators for such a thoughtful, articulate, civil discussion. I was particularly proud of the student senators, who expressed their perspectives so well.