SAC Report to the Academic Senate

April 19, 2006

Members:Andre Kundgen (Chair), Manuel Arriaga, Ben Cherry, Melanie Chu, Moses Ochanji, Jorge Riquelme

Ex-officio:Aamara Ysrael (ASI), Jonathan Poullard (AVP-SA until 4/14), Bridget Blanshan (Interim AVP-SA starting 4/17)

  1. Student Honesty Policy: SAC is visiting college and department meetings to inform faculty of their rights and responsibilities when reporting student academic dishonesty (such as cheating or plagiarism), as well as the current processes involved. To date members of SAC have visited faculty meetings in CoBA, CoE and the Library as well as 8 department meetings in CoAS, with several more lined up. SAC is also collecting feedback on how faculty perceive the current process. So far a majority of faculty have expressed that the policy does not need to be changed at this time, but several suggestions for improving its implementation have been made. The number of cases reported to the Office of the Dean of students is up from 25 cases last year to over 50 cases this year. As faculty get more involved in the process, SAC will revisit the policy in future years as necessary.
  1. Student Research Competition: There were a record 25 presentations at the CSU San Marcos research competition, and 10 of these were chosen to represent our campus at the system wide competition is on May 5-6, 2006 at CSU Channel Islands: 4 will present in the undergraduate session on Biology and Agricultural Science, and 3 each in the graduate and undergraduate session on Behavioral and Social Science.
  1. Lottery proposals: There were 25 proposals, 20 of which received full or partial funding. Helped by the earlier deadline SAC was able to deliberate more carefully about the proposals than in the past. SAC is passing the insights gained on to the Office of Research in order to improve the forms and processes for next year.
  1. Encouraging faculty participation at commencement: SAC has collaborated with ASI to create a letter that students can use to personally invite faculty to attend graduation. This letter can be found on the ASI webpage and has also been sent to all graduating students by email.
  1. Representation on related committees:
  2. Melanie Chu represents SAC on the Facilitating Graduation Steering Committee
  3. Melanie Chu represents SAC on Disability Access and Compliance Committee
  4. Andre Kundgen represents Academic Senate on Student Fee Advisory Committee: SFAC decided not to support the implementation of lab fees proposed by CoAS
  5. Andre Kundgen represents SAC on University Hour Implementation Task Force