Agenda
December 8, 2021, 3:30-5:00PM
Physical location: Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall
Zoom location: Contact your department Faculty Senator for the zoom link.
Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ Land Acknowledgement
Senate Speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Architecture [1 minute]
Call to order
Senate Speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Architecture [1 minute]
Approval of Minutes
Senate Speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Architecture [3 minutes]
Senate Announcements and Updates
Eve De Rosa, Dean of Faculty [15 minutes]
Proposal Presentations
Draft proposal for Part-time Bachelor’s Degree for Non-traditional Students
Presentation — Avery August, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs or Lisa Nishii, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education [10 minutes]
Senate Discussion [15 minutes]
Award of Honors and Distinction Proposal to Cornell’s Undergraduate Students Pending Resolution
Presentation — Lisa Nishii, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education or Carol Grumbach, Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education [10 minutes]
Presentation — Chair, Education Policy Committee; Senator David Delchamps, Electrical and Computer Engineering [5 minutes]
Senate Discussion [10 minutes]
Good of the Order
Compliance of the central administration with University Bylaws – Department of Government Senator, Professor Richard Bensel [3 minutes]
Omicron variant update – Gary Koretzky, Vice Provost for Academic Integration, Professor of Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine and Professor, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine [3 minutes]
Adjournment [1 minute]
Senate Speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Architecture
I’ve been confused by the proposal on honors since first having read it, and that confusion only grows.
Firstly, I don’t understand the procedure; is this a proposal, a pre-proposal, an outline of a something that will come up later for discussion?
More substantively, while I understand the “preamble”–that there is a problem with latin honors as currently implemented–the bulk of the problem seems to be that the different colleges have wildly different understandings of what constitutes honors. This proposal solves that–but at great cost.
First objection: If latin honors are rigidly defined by GPAs, then what independent information is provided by the honors? I’d argue–nothing.
Second: If latin honors are rigidly defined by GPAs, won’t that encourage our students to dig even more deeply into the file which lists course medians–so that any/all courses can be chosen from those which give almost exclusively As? Is that what we wish to encourage?
Third: in our major, and I believe many others, there are alternative pathways to the major; we have one with call (whether formally or informally I don’t remember) the “honors path”. Generally more challenging and thorough versions are found in the honors path. Do we really wish to encourage our students to “go for honors” by choosing the less thorough version? None of this seems like a “good idea”.
If we were to insist on this improvement might I suggest one modification? At a bare minimum, instead of assigning honors based on GPA I would argue it would be more honest to assign based on “median-adjusted GPA”–before calculating the GPA adjust all grades by dividing the assigned grade by the course median grade. Thus in a course where the median grade is an A+, for example, the median-adjusted grade would range from 0-1; where the median grade is a B, the median-adjusted GPA ranges from 0-1.44 or so. That at least would encourage our students not to look to only classes with high median grades.
Hello,
I don’t have a lot of experience working with the populations mentioned in the proposal on Part Time Bachelor’s degrees but I wonder if anyone has done a needs assessment with them on what type of degrees or training would be useful. If we are hoping to be helpful, and truly want to serve the populations listed, rather than just listing them, it seems that the first step is dialogue.
Elizabeth Lamb