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Provost updates Faculty Senate on new initiatives 4:25 p.m., Feb. 8, 2007--UD Provost Dan Rich informed Faculty Senate members at their Feb. 5 meeting that the administration has begun a search for a new vice president for student life. Since the retirement of Roland Smith in 2002, those responsibilities have been handled by UD President David P. Roselle. Members of the University community are invited to submit nominations to the search committee chairperson, Vice Provost Havidán Rodgríguez. Further details are available at Rich also reported that the University has set a new record for undergraduate admission applications with nearly 23,000 applications and more than 20,000 applications from outside Delaware. The University continues to attract a larger number of nonresident applicants than any other public university in the nation. Rich said that UD is now a major graduate education institution with “more than 200 doctorates awarded annually in over 40 fields and 3,400 graduate students.” To further strengthen graduate education, the deans, department chairpersons and faculty are undertaking a campus-wide review of graduate programs with a focus on further improving graduate student success. To support new proposals for enhancing graduate studies, the Provost's Office has created a fund for graduate program improvement and innovation grants. The details of this grant program will be released later this semester. Rich added that about 1,200 students have returned from study abroad during the Winter Session. Currently, UD ranks number one among public universities in participation in Study Abroad: 43 percent of UD undergraduates study abroad. UD will receive the Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education from the Institute for International Education in March at the United Nations. “Our overall goal is to further enhance the international dimensions and global context of learning to all facets of education at UD,” the provost said. Rich announced that there has been remarkable growth in UD Online in recent years and much of that growth has been from resident undergraduate students who enroll for some of their coursework through UD Online. Many students now are able to take the courses needed to resolve scheduling conflicts or to meet final graduation requirements through UD Online. He noted, however, that it is important that this type of online instruction remain a supplement to the main corpus of campus instruction. Rich has appointed a task force that is now reviewing the academic and scheduling aspects of online instruction and will recommend guidelines for maintaining appropriate academic and scheduling practices. Casey Patriarcho, representing the Delaware Undergraduate Student Congress (DUSC), asked to read a statement written by the Direct Action Committee, a registered student organization, calling for the University to provide benefits for faculty and staff in domestic partnerships, including all nonmedical benefits, to investigate the financial and administrative preconditions needed to cover the cost of health care outside the University health plan and to begin lobbying the Delaware legislature to include domestic partnerships in its health plan. The senate approved revisions to academic majors and minors at the meeting, while disestablishing one major and extending the life of another. The senate voted to disestablish the food business management and technology major in the Department of Food and Resource Economics since the major has attracted only two students in the four years it's been available, and to extend the provisional status of the master's program in health promotion for three years, which will be reviewed for permanent status in the spring of 2010. Senators also approved changing the name of the Department of Fine Arts and Visual Communications back to the Department of Art. There were no challenges to more then a dozen curriculum changes, including: the disestablishment of a policy history concentration in the Department of History; and revisions to the anthropology and anthropology education majors, the medical humanities minor in the Department of Philosophy, the major and honors major in early childhood education in the Department of Individual and Family Studies, the leadership major in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, the major in elementary teacher education middle school English concentration in the School of Education, and the minor in figure skating coaching in the Department of Health, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences. The senate also approved requests by the Department of Health, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences to change the minimum grade requirement for Elementary Human Physiology from a D to a C-, and by the Department of Music to tie the Praxis I exam to student's junior-level clinical courses and add a notice about the need to take the Praxis II exam before student teaching for music education--general/choral concentration in voice and piano and instrumental concentration in musical instrument. |
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