Session of October 27th, 2021
October 27, 2021
Minutes Recorded by: McKenzie Craycraft, Secretary
Visitors: David Erikson, Dean Conn, Ben Caldwell
Call to Order at 11:06 AM
Chairman Crowder prays
Roll Called
Minutes Approved at 11:06
Officer Reports
PPT Moyes: I would like to welcome Ben Caldwell. We will make some time for him to talk and us to ask some questions. We do have limited time and a lot to get done. Please keep things serious and let’s get things done.
Committee Reports
Chairman Crowder: For student life committee, we are working hard to help student body. There will be a floor run this afternoon. I would love to discuss with you all if you would like to come.
Senator Drebot: GoPro we have made changes to the election process. We have that applicants that must meet with GoPro first they must meet with the dean of students two member of exec cab and president of student affairs. They need to get signatures as well. If an applicant is rejected they must be informed why. They have the option to release the information if they would like. If more than 6 applicantsare applying the 6 with the most signature will be given cadency. We just added section five about amending his process, it mut be made within the first five weeks of the semester to keep it from being changed.
PPT Moyes: Just be aware these will be available for GoPro to release. Please reach out the GoPro.
Special Business
VP Avent: I would like to introduce Dr. Ben Caldwell and invite him to the floor.
Dr. Caldwell: Thank you for having me, I am flexible on time. I started here 9 years ago, I taught for 5 years and created a lot of videos of teaching. I have done research on creativity. We did some fun stuff, do not know if we solved it. I have done some research on education. On the personal life side, I have four girls, I have been married for 15 years. She is a teacher by trade, she taught kindergarten and first grade now she homeschools our kids. We moved to Texas for the job here. Students and faculty are great. Overview of provost office, we cover all the academics. Anything instruction and academicallyrelated comes through our office. The department chairs report to the deans, all the deans report to me, we talk though issues and challenges. There are a few other things that report to the provost. In my role before I covered the library, our accreditation office, institutional report, and teaching and doing the things we say we do. There is a lot we have to document. I also worked on contracts and a variety of projects. I work closely with enrolment. We want to recruit great students. Strategic planning has been one of the biggest things we have worked through. Any questions?
VP Avent: Our we thinking about different degrees or cutting back on degrees?
Dr. Caldwell: In the academic area there are two goals to recast our general education. We want program reinvestment. Schools when they go through plans they discuss we have a lot of the majors that schools are discussing. Instead of starting something new lets reinvest and let’s see our good things grow. We are going to reinvest in aviation and engineering. We had an external group come and look at some data and find what is primed for growth. There will be two or three programs that we want to reinvest in. We are always investing but we will focus on 4 to 5 major areas. We want to have a comprehensive outline to raise money to reinvest in some projects. I am excited for all of this. We do not know what that is going to look like yet.
Senator Bright: This outside group, what direction is the student market and job market is going.
Dr. Caldwell: Essentially we have 150 majors, they looked at each one to see what he enrollment is nationally, and see where the growth is. There are not a lot of themes. There is a balance on the return of investment. As we dig through the data I think it will be a handful of programs of things we will think will grow.
Chairman Allen: Where do the finical side of things come from, is there a plan for the reinvestments.
Dr. Caldwell: A lot of that will come from the campaigning. Some things we may be able to do before. The donors have their interests as well.
Senator Rubingh: What will the reinvestment look like?
Dr. Caldwell: It depends on the program. It could be adding faculty, we hope to add or renovate buildings, upgrading equipment. There is no ground breaking anytime soon. There are a lot of opportunities.
Chairman Willis: Do you have any information on the library and its hours? I did hear that next semester the hours will return to normal.
Dr. Caldwell: It is a budget constraint, every year the budget shifts a bit. This backs up a year and a half, there was a vacancy in the library in the budgeting process we felt that we could not afford that. We want to provide the best services. Ms. Ware reworked some things, we can we support all the hours? How do we serve best? The usage between 8-10 are the least used hours. Ms. Ware has reworked to see if we can have a student worker there. We will see if we can have it open for longer. We would prefer a part time employee there. Tell your friends to behave themselves. We think we can do it for a lot less cost. We will see how it goes. We had planned to have it open late during finals week, we did not expect the demand during the year.
Dr. Conn: Thank you for working on that, it is the number one compliant I have heard, and I am thankful that it is being addressed.
Dr. Caldwell: Sometimes we miss the mark, it was also all during COVID.
Senator Bright: If we are going to take a message back to students we represent what is our vision for our campus and higher learning.
Dr. Caldwell: I am passionate about the strategic plan. When I think vision, I think about academics and how they can be included. I am a believer in higher ed, I want to see people thrive. My primary focus is on faculty and students. Collaboration is important. There is a lot of gains to be had there. A competitive advantages is that people are kind and collaborate. Collaboration goes a long way.
VP Avent: If something came up that we felt involved the provost office, what would be the best way to reach out.
Dr. Caldwell: I am new to the roll, I am happy to chat, if you want to filter things up through senate. I am happy to meet. My door is open, but you have to go through a few doors to get through. I am happy to meet and I am grateful to be here.
Old Business
Senator Naranjo: I motion to bring GAGA bill pit back to discuss.
VP Avent: Have there been changes to the bill?
Citizen Bergman: There are no changes.
Chairman Willis: Just as a note you can look at the website to review it.
Chairman Allen: As I was thinking about this over the week, one suggestion I have is to have AO be the owners of the GAGA ball pit, but they do not have to worry about paying for repairs but hey just have to make sure it is in working order.
GAGA ball in trust of AO
Senator Allen: Should this be an amendment or can it be understood.
VP Avent: It seems as is written it is understood.
Senator Naranjo: Motion to vote on the bill.
Approved
Bill approved
Senator Bright: What is the plan for construction?
Citizen Bergman: I will be the main constructor this semester and over break.
Chairman Crowder: I motion to amend the snackage bill and increasing the funds.
Approved
Senator Hofer: Basically we have been buying snack every two weeks, we have looked at the amountthat we are planning to buy and that will cover that cost and any that is not used will be reverted to the general budget.
PPT Moyes: We are changing the stipulation we will have an additional $800.
Chairman Allen: FAC we have approved I motion to bring to a vote.
Approved
New Business
Senator Berry: I motion to bring the SWE funding bill to the floor.
Approved
Senator Branch: I motion to vote on the bill.
The nays have it
Chairman Allen: SWE did not get funding and they came later because they would like to fund t-shirts and they would like to make the initial deposit on a trip.
Senator Bright: Does anyone know of any bills on record when I was putting together the request for funds, I thought t-shirts were not for funding.
Chairman Allen: There was no bill or law that restricts the buying of t-shirts. After looking over our traditions, we think we would not fund t-shirts in the beginning of the semester. We are going to spend money on them anyways. We would give them the same amount anyways.
Senator Hill: Why do they need shirts?
Chairman Allen: Since they are doing a lot of work with the SWE nationally this is what the these shirts are for. They do community work.
Senator Berry: To clarify, the actual trip is October 2022 buying the ticket is next semester.
Senator Debrot: why should we pay or their shirts when we don’t have t-shirts yet?
Chairman Allen: The funding for the polos has been allocated. In the sake of time I motion to bring to a vote.
Approved
Bill approved
Chairman Edwards: With the amendments the election we have two major points. All applicants will have meeting with senate. We want to limit how soon we can change the elections. I will keep it updated it will be a different set in the next meeting.
VP Avent: The one question I have is doing senate interview before.
Senator Hill: We decided to make that decision before so we can know and weed people out before.
VP Avent: If you have people get 25% of signatures and then getting declined would be a big problem.
Sgt. Edwards: We have not discussed it yet.
VP Avent: The signature process will happen before the main interview I think it could be bad to do it before.
Dean Conn: If we remove someone from the process I do not want to do it after they have done a lot of work. The order that it is in is good.
Sgt Edwards: We want to reserve the right to bring the idea back if it becomes an issue.
PPT Moyes: In the instrest of time, I suggest that we refer this back to GoPro and I would like to motion to adjourn
Approved
Meeting Adjourned 11:54 AM