Approval of Previous Minutes —

Meeting minutes from Nov. 14, 2023. Motion to approve by Chris Wallace. Seconded by Teri Chambers. Motion passed unanimously.

Student Senate Report

Nothing to report.

Staff Senate Report

Nothing to report.

Faculty Senate Report

The excused absences policy survey has gone out to faculty and closes Friday, Dec. 8th. It has received 300 responses so far. Another survey will go out to GTAs tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 6th, and will also be open for 2 weeks. There will be further surveys in the future.

Governance leaders attended the Provost’s All-Teams Meeting.

University Senate Report

1. The spring surveys on excused absences policy will focus more on impact and challenges. Chris and Teri can provide guidance regarding which staff should be surveyed.
   1. Comment: Josh Arpin sent a survey reminder to his colleagues in the Business School and received some comments back from them. Many instructors are feeling motivated to eliminate attendance/participation from their courses as a way of not having to manage excused absences.
2. Kristin and Victor met with the Provost and Chancellor recently.
   1. They spoke with the Provost about the KU Core updates and 5-year dean reviews.
   2. They spoke with the Chancellor about the Gateway District project.
      1. He noted that KU always backs all KU building projects, including those by KU affiliates. It is not a situation unique to the Gateway project. The university has implemented some more specific 5-year budget planning to ensure that an affiliate does not take out more debt than they can cover. It is not perfect insulation, but it keeps financial elements as separate as possible.
      2. They also discussed the lack of KU constituent voices in the project planning. The Chancellor has agreed to send a project representative to University Senate in the spring to provide updates and hear feedback, as well as doing regular check-ins with SenEx. The community meetings are also open to the public.
   3. The Provost’s 5-year review is coming soon. The Chancellor’s Office is refreshing that process and will report to Governance leaders in their next meeting.
   4. They also spoke with the Chancellor about the HLC accreditation and the unionization effort.
3. Kristin reminded members that she will be leaving KU for a new position and to focus on research. There will be a new University Senate President in the spring. Kristin will still support in January.

New Business —

1. We have received a community request for SenEx and the University Senate to amend Article III Section 1 of the University Senate Rules and Regulations (USRR) to integrate a social responsibility and ethical behavior requirement for the bachelor’s degree at KU. This would be a similar edit to the capstone requirement that was implemented in the spring.
   1. There are concerns about how this affects transfer students. Would this be specific to students completing their core requirements at KU? Are ethics and social responsibility separate requirements? There are various nuances to work out and we need to gather more information.
   2. There was discussion about creating a task force that includes folks from Governance and UCCC to research the impacts of such a policy change, and how this task force would fit into the overall process as described in the CODE.
   3. Q: Would the ethics requirement have to be satisfied by a discrete course, or could it be satisfied by degree requirements, such as courses required for the School of Social Welfare programs?
      1. A: The KBOR requirement is that any ethics course counting for Gen Ed would also have to be a humanities course, but we can do this differently and allow it to be satisfied by something else.
   4. SenEx will forward the petition to University Senate and recommends that they discuss these issues further and gather information, so that we can make a more informed decision. Motion to approve by Teri Chambers. Seconded by Kevin Barnes.
      1. VOTE: 6 in favor. 0 not in favor. Motion passes.
   5. Kristin suggested forming a task force at this time to begin information-gathering. There was no opposition. Kristin will coordinate the formation of the task force.