The first meeting of the Student Senate for 2004-05 was convened in 165 Peik Hall, Minneapolis campus, on Thursday, September 30, 2004, at 11:36 a.m. Coordinate campuses were linked by ITV. Checking or signing the roll as present were 29 voting student. Chair Nathan Wanderman presided.

Nathan Wanderman, Student Senate Chair, noted that he has several goals for the year. The first is to keep students in the Senate through high attendance and participation. He plans to do this by providing the Student Senate with topics to work on and reasons to attend meetings. He would also like to see ideas generated from various sources that can be brought to a Senate committee, the University Senate, or the administration. He intends to consult with campus assemblies and college boards to find ways to improve the student experience. Also needing improvement is communication with other student governments; he therefore asked students to regularly report back to their student assemblies, associations, and boards. His last goal is to show the general student population that the Student Senate is a worthwhile organization.

In conclusion, he asked that senators either talk with him or the Student Senate Vice Chair, Tom Pielow, about any problems or ways to improve the Student Senate.

Becky Hippert, from the Senate Office, provided the orientation for student senators. She walked the senators through several handouts, reviewing the history of the organization, roles of senators, the current structure, membership, Senate-specific rules of order, and general Robert’s Rules.

Q: How is are attendance rules considered for students who come to Senate meetings, but leave before the meeting adjourns?

A: A student is not considered absent from a meeting as long as they are present for some part of the meeting and sign in. Non-attendance occurs when a student does not attend the meeting, or notify the Senate Office that they will not be in attendance.

Q: How do coordinate campus members sign-in for attendance?

A: The Student Senate Chair will usually poll the coordinate campuses at the beginning of the meeting to see who is present. An email is then sent after the meeting to catch any students who came in later in the meeting.

Q; Does the Senate have an established process for resolutions?

A: There is no set resolution procedure for the Senate. Most resolutions come from a committee, but a senator can also ask that a resolution be placed on the agenda.

Nathan Wanderman then stated that the last part of the orientation would be caucus discussion groups. Since it is hard to form a community from the entire Student Senate, he would like to break senators into six smaller working groups that will meet at each Student Senate meeting to discuss ideas and concerns. He hopes that these caucus sessions will lead to more action items, such as resolutions, at Student Senate meetings. He then broke the senators into groups and asked them to brainstorm topics for ten minutes.

After the brainstorming session, the following topics were presented to the full Student Senate: smoking around buildings on the Crookston and Morris campuses, better neighbors program in Duluth, Senate reorganization and representation, securing representation from other GAPSA colleges, a Duluth representative to GAPSA, tuition, late night buses on the Twin Cities campus, and teaching and teaching assistants.

MOTION:

To approve the Student Senate minutes, which are available on the Web at the following URLs. A simple majority is required for approval.

http://www1.umn.edu/usenate/ssen/040429stu.html

DISCUSSION:

With no discussion, a vote was taken and the minutes were approved.

Crookston – DeAnn Roers reported that CSA just had its retreat, at which time goals were set, and committee and senator assignments were finalized. Crookston is also considering a mentoring program with the community and a ban on smoking around campus buildings.

Duluth – Tom Pielow said that Duluth is trying to improve its better neighbors programs and working on increased UMDSA membership.

Morris – Nate Hilfiker said that MCSA is talking with the administration about their goals for the year. A retreat was held, at which time MCSA goals were set. Almost all members have been elected for the year.

Graduate and Professional Student Association – Jamie Larson said GAPSA has been involved with the Student Public Affairs Coalition. The first social was held a few weeks ago, and more are planned for the semester. The President’s Reception for incoming students was held and was very successful. The GAPSA President and Vice President have been meeting on a regular basis with University administrators. Serious constitutional revisions have also been made and will be approved shortly. Lastly, a grants program is going well for travel grants.

Minnesota Student Association – Emily Cox reported that MSA has partnered with GAPSA to create the Student Public Affairs Coalition, which is working on getting students registered to vote and a speakers’ series that includes Senators Coleman and Dayton, and a debate between Representatives Sviggum and Enteza. A debate watch will be held tonight. Other MSA committees are working on teaching evaluations and a constant lobbying presence. She then encouraged all MSA members to attend the October 19 meeting when the biennial budget process will be discussed.

Nathan Wanderman said each student evaluation includes a student release section with ten questions that are not used in employment or hiring. Currently, faculty need to authorize the release of these questions for each class, each semester, which means that few evaluations are available to students, The Educational Policy Committee (SCEP) has been working to get more faculty to release these questions for on-line viewing.

The Student Senate Consultative Committee (SSCC) wanted to remove the positive check-off and just have all evaluations placed on-line. Marvin Marshak, Chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee (FCC), is highly supportive of this plan. A SCEP report should be available in November.

He would like to hear from student senators if they would like to keep the information on-line and what questions they would like asked.

A senator said that SCEP has not been focusing on on-line evaluations, but rather revising the current form based on current Senate policies.

Q: How effective are student evaluations?

A: The student release questions are not used in promotion and tenure decisions, but are simply to help students when choosing classes. The rest of the questions on the evaluations, however, are used in promotion, tenure, and salary decisions by deans and department heads.

A senator said that these questions are important because they address learning styles and not angry students submitting comments to a student-run website.

A senator then questioned whether all questions are best served by simply a yes or no answer.

Nathan Wanderman asked for a few volunteers to work in a small group to revise the questions prior to the next meeting. Stace Vonderhaar and Nathan Hilfiker agreed to serve.

Nathan Wanderman said that the Vice President for Finance, Richard Pfutzenreuter, will be meeting with both MSA and GAPSA within the next few weeks to talk about the budget process. One item he would like to explore this year is ways that students can become more involved in the budgetary process. He asked senators to forward to him any questions that they would like to have asked during these meetings.

Becky Hippert gave the student senators background on the revision process over the past two years, the proposed inclusion of academic professional and civil service staff in the Senate, and the voting that took place last spring. She noted that the Bylaws and Rules were approved last April by the Senate, but that the Constitution and representational structure still need to be approved. The current Constitution requires the re-vote on an item to be presented at the next Senate meetings, which means that this vote needs to take place at the meeting later today even though many senators are new. She reviewed the representational numbers and organizational chart, and then asked for any questions from senators.

Q: What colleges will lose student seats under the proposal?

A: Duluth Liberal Arts, Duluth Business and Economics, Morris, Institute of Technology, Carlson School of Management, Graduate School, Education and Human Development, General College, and Continuing Education would each lose one seat.

Q: What will happen with the dissolution of the Twin Cities Campus Assembly?

A: The new Constitution creates a substructure of the University Senate, called the Twin Cities Delegation, to handle Twin Cities-only business. These agenda items would be handled either at the beginning or end of University Senate meetings.

Senior Committee Delegate Program

DISCUSSION:

Nathan Wanderman said that he came up with this idea to foster better communication between the Student Senate and the committees. The basic idea is that for each committee that has students serving on it, one student would be assigned as the Senior Committee Delegate (SCD). Their role would be to track student attendance on their committee and to summarize committee actions in a paragraph. These paragraphs would then be compiled by the Student Senate Vice Chair, and be distributed at each Student Senate meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:02 p.m.