Academic Policy and Procedures Meeting Minutes

Meeting Details:

Fiscal Year: FY2024
Date:
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: Zoom
Minutes Recorded By: Caty Movich
Minutes Approved On:

Attendance—

Attending Members

  • Joe Walden
  • Weizhang Huang
  • Hollie Hall
  • Casey Wallace
  • Karen Ledom
  • Sean Navarro

Other Attendees

  • Caty Movich
  • Charlotte Tritch

Unfinished Business —

Excused Absences Survey

  1. Chair Joe Walden reviewed the current policy on excused absences. He presented a summary of the GTA survey data (about 50 response) and suggested that the lack of student understanding may be due to instructors not communicating with their students. Joe also pointed out that according to the data, it seems that smaller classes are having the biggest issues.
  2. Joe then presented a summary of the faculty survey data (279 responses). Only 5 individuals reported that the policy is taking up more than 50% of their time. Joe noted a similar pattern of smaller classes having more significant issues and conjectured that perhaps larger classes are not taking attendance. However, the survey did not ask for this information. In summary, he noted that it seems there is more stated concern from GTAs.
  3. Discussion
    1. Hollie Hall shared that her experience as a GTA indicates that students are not listening to the explanation that instructors are providing. This seems like an education issue.
    2. Weizhang Huang pointed out that some of GTAs’ frustration may come from misunderstanding how much work should go into their teaching assignments. He also mentioned that he has encountered some academic field trips for other courses that seem excessively long.
    3. Hollie has a student-athlete that is going to miss 5 discussion sections. She suggested that even though this is allowed, these absences will harm their learning. There is no limit in the policy on the number of excused absences, and Student Affairs’ guidance Fall 2023 was confusing.
    4. Sean Navarro shared that he has not heard about it being much of an issue in the advising community. Advisors are trained to figure out how to best communicate with instructors to best support students’ learning. He suggested that it is important to consider the goal of what we are talking about: enforcing an attendance policy vs. promoting student learning. He suggested that the frustration from the survey data indicates more of a concern with the former.
    5. Charlotte Tritch offered some insight. Her struggle with maintaining the course experience really touches on both issues; it takes up a lot of her time, but she is also concerned that students who miss a lot of class simply are not receiving the same level of rigor and experience.
    6. Weizhang suggested that the policy doesn’t seem to have an issue, but the issue lies more in the procedures. How do we make this process easier for everyone? Can we also provide more training to GTAs to handle these kinds of situation?
    7. Sean added that we could encourage instructors to view advisors as partners who can approach students differently. While advisors cannot verify absences, they may know more about appropriate resources and be able to better manage students’ situations holistically.
  4. Joe suggested that the committee create an additional survey to gather more data about what the actual issues are.
    1. Hollie asked if Governance coordinated with the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition (GTAC) on the survey. Caty sent the survey to the Office of Graduate Studies and to the Graduate Student Body President, but not GTAC. They may be able to help us get a better response.
    2. Joe and Caty will work on a secondary survey, coordinating with Faculty Senate, GTAC, and the University Senate Athletic Committee.

New Business —

FacEx Petitions (Exceptions to University Wide Academic Procedures)

  1. Joe reviewed the policy history and the circumstances surrounding AP&P’s FY2020 review of the policy process.
    1. The committee recommended the discontinuance of the FacEx Petition process for several actions (e.g., late enroll, late withdrawal, changes in variable credit hours), shifting these requests to an analogous, but simpler process solely handled by Student Records. Requests for exceptions to graduation requirements would remain with the FacEx Petition Committee.
    2. We conjecture that due to the pandemic, these recommendations were never fully considered by SenEx. The committee has been charged with revisiting the policy and process to determine what recommendation to make.
  2. Charlotte Tritch, a member of the FacEx Petition Committee, shared insight from her experience.
    1. Reviewing petitions takes a considerable amount of time, and they are almost always approved, as the committee relies heavily on endorsements from the schools.
    2. In addition to graduation exceptions, KU Core exceptions are another more complicated type of request. Caty shared some information about which cases the UCCC will consider, and which are referred to FacEx. FacEx also receives requests for exceptions to other academic policies, but these fall under the “Other” category and, per the FY2020 recommendation, would remain within the purview of FacEx.
    3. Charlotte also noted that the form itself could be vastly improved, even if the policy or process do not change. Caty has made several recommendations, and the Registrar’s Office has historically worked on shifting the form online.
    4. We are also concerned that many people on campus do not know about the process and that there are students who could benefit from getting these exceptions granted.
  3. Karen Ledom, Assistant Dean of the College, reviews petitions at the school level. She noted that if a school does not approve a petition, it never goes to FacEx, but if the school does approve a petition, FacEx can still not approve it. The College would like this relationship re-considered. Karen also brought up the issue of cancellations, which she requested university-level guidance on. The College has their own best practices, but there is no university-level policy mentioning this type of request. Joe asked Karen to send him the College’s best practices.
  4. Caty noted that there two different levels of potential revision to the FacEx Petitions. A change to the overall process or to the jurisdiction of the FacEx Petition Committee would involve a USRR policy change via University Senate. If that is not approved, whether at the AP&P or the senate level, Caty noted that there are considerable improvements that can be made to the process via form revision. This technically falls under the purview of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FacEx). There have also been several times throughout the history of the process and the policy that issues have arisen regarding faculty control over academic exceptions. Caty urged the committee to consider this potential challenge when crafting a recommendation.
    1. Karen shared information about how petitions are approved at the school level in the College. While Karen is the designated approver for the Dean, a faculty committee decides on petitions that involve unprecedented situations.
  5. Sean shared how advisors are trained on this process. The committee discussed how JAA can improve training via an annual refresher and including the Governance Office.
  6. Casey Wallace, University Registrar, reiterated the possibility and benefits of moving the FacEx Petition form online, as well as information about a holistic withdrawal form/process, currently in development, that will help properly route schedule changes. Casey also stated the Registrar’s support for revising the process and making it more accessible to students and less onerous to all.
  7. Joe asked committee members to email him with a summary of their thoughts on the FacEx Petition process. Charlotte urged committee members to review the background packet that Caty posted on Teams. The committee will revisit this charge and potentially make a recommendation at the next meeting, mid to late March.

AP&P - Feb. 9, 2024