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.