Approval of Previous Minutes —

Minutes from June 24,2025, SenEx Meeting: Jessica Chilcoat motions to approve. Marissa Marshall seconds. Minutes approved by acclamation. 

Student Senate Report

• Over the summer, Henry and Andrew worked on the “Student Senate Executive Board” and getting students hired.
• Casey Soper is chief of staff and has been working on filling the positions.
• Worked with Alumni Association on “Homecoming”  -- this is one of the Student Senate platforms.
• Looking forward to tomorrow - the first meeting as a Student Senate chamber.

Staff Senate Report

• Marissa met with Provost earlier this month and discussed recent budget announcements and impact of budget cuts.
• Received the results of the Docking Institute’s USS – UPS Staff Survey. Have sent that to Provost and Chancellor for review and getting together a game plan for next steps. There is a Campus Survey Implementation Team now.
• Have updated the Staff Senate D&I Committee name to “CARE”
• Staff Senate has approved charges for all the committees now except for Public Relations.
• Waiting for final approval of the formation of the Staff Senate Technology Committee.
• Staff Senate will be having a session and tabling event at the Staff Leadership Summit.

Faculty Senate Report

Misty is away today but will join everyone for University Senate on Thursday 

University Senate Report

• Poppy looking forward to being University Senate President this year.
• Working on University Senate committees and filling “chair” positions.
• Met with Provost last week and discussed pronouns and e-mail signatures. 

New Business —

Article X: Libraries Committee Senate Code

• SenEx needs to vote today to amend the University Senate Code relating to “University Senate Libraries Committee” so that it aligns with the language of the “Library Faculty and Staff Assembly Code.”
  • If passed today, will be voted on at University Senate.
  • KU no longer has an “Urban Design” unit as currently stated in the code. KU now has a School of Architecture and Design. The vote is to remove the word urban in the title.

• Jessica Chilcoat proposes adoption of the update to the standing committee changes to the Libraries Committee. Brenda Mattingly seconds. Motion passes unanimously. 

   

Ombuds Search Committee Formation:

• SenEx will be working on the Ombuds Search Committee appointments. This is for a new ombuds after Ada leaves. Ada will be a member of the search committee as well.
• Jessica Chilcoat volunteers to chair the committee.
• There is a usually a graduate student representative on the search committee that has previously been appointed by the graduate student body president. Currently there is still a search for a graduate student body president so the graduate representative will likely need to be appointed by either the interim graduate student body president or the Graduate Student Advisory Board. Casey is going to check on this.
• Poppi and Jessica will be in touch with potential committee members.   

Updating SenEx membership to University Senate Code for Student Body Vice-President:

• Request for Student Senate to decide if the Student Body Vice President is an ex-officio or voting member of SenEx, or neither.
• Currently, the Student Body VP is neither, which means the SBVP can’t go into closed session.
• The student representatives feel it would be best for the SBVP to be an “ex-officio” member of SenEx since there are currently 3 elected representatives already on SenEx in addition to the SBVP.
  • Students feel that transparency for the SBVP would be good, and therefore the SBVP should be on SenEx.
  • There are both a Vice-President of “Student  Body” and Vice-President of “University Senate” -- so the language in the code can be difficult to decipher. 

  • SenEx is going to work on the wording and a change to the code to decipher the role more clearly. Hope to have this at the next SenEx meeting. 

     

Competency Based Education Courses – Casey Wallace: 

• Casey Wallace comes to SenEx to give background on Competency Based Education (CBE) courses. There will need to be an adjustment to the grading base so this new model can be accommodated. CBE will be rolling out in the near future.
• The grading for CBE courses will be Mastered and Not Mastered.
• This will be the only grading for these courses but there will also be an “In Progress” during the interim.
• Other adjustments include when students can withdraw from classes, what is considered part-time or full-time,  and how much can be taken in a given semester. CBE students are not on the same January – December timeframe with breaks. A general framework might be 6 competencies every 16 weeks. The academic year for CBE courses starts when the student begins.
• It’s proposed that students in competency-based programs have through the tenth day of their semester to withdraw from all courses they are enrolled in and cancel their enrollment. After the tenth day, they are not eligible to withdraw and will receive the grade earned.
• CBE pertains to “graduate” programs only and every CBE program needs to be approved individually through the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). There is not a blanket approval so the approvals from HLC have been going on over the past 2 years.

SenEx goes into “closed session” to discuss appointment of chairs for University Senate committees. 

SenEx comes out of closed session. 

University Senate Planning & Resources Committee Membership Code Change: 

• Discussion of amending the membership to Planning & Resources Committee so that faculty or staff may chair the committee.
• SenEx motions to vote for code change to membership of the Planning and Resources Committee so that faculty or staff may chair. Jessica motions for this to be sent to University Senate for vote. Sarah Merriman seconds. Approved unanimously. 

Meeting adjourned.