University Senate clarifies Honors College requirements, workload changes

Miami University’s Senate met and heard proposals on changes to the Honors College and Farmer School of Business faculty policy at its meeting on March 10. Additionally, Provost Elizabeth Mullenix addressed the senate regarding changes to the workload policy set to be implemented this fall.

Zeb Baker, dean of the Honors College, proposed changes to requirements within the college because much of the language is left over from the honors program.

“Now, we have an Honors College with an entirely different set of graduation requirements,” Baker said. “It aligns policy with practice, which is necessary.”

Baker also proposed lowering the GPA requirement to receive an honors transcript notation from 3.5 to 3.25. Currently, Honors College students must maintain a minimum 3.25 GPA to remain in the college; however, they must maintain a 3.5 GPA to receive the university honors on their diploma.

Baker said the current system isn’t fair because some students can remain in the Honors College and complete all the requirements, but will not receive acknowledgment on their diploma.

“Of the students that graduated having done everything the Honors College asked them to do last May [11.45%] didn’t earn anything,” Baker said. “So why did they even bother to complete the program?”

However, Baker said the average GPA of Honors College students is 3.74.

This proposal was met with mixed reactions. Some senators questioned the phrasing of the new policy, which did not make it clear if Honors College students were required to maintain the minimum GPA for their cumulative hours or their required hours.

If students are required to maintain the GPA for cumulative hours, it would include extracurricular classes students take for fun. If the GPA requirement only exists for required hours, this is only the hours required for students to graduate.

Jack (John) Greneir outlined a proposal for a new policy change involving the number of teaching clinical professors and lecturers (TCPLs) that can be hired in the Farmer School of Business. Greneir said the proposed policy would help to protect tenure and tenure-track faculty, therefore protecting the teacher-scholar model.

“We saw no reason to cap the number of TCPLs as long as we are protecting the tenure and tenure-track lines,” Greneir said.

Many senators agreed with Greneir that Miami’s current TCPL policy needs reform; however, they were confused by some of the wording and said the policy needed to state what its intended purpose was to avoid misinterpretation.

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“I just think you should look at the policy in context of the other ones,” one senator said. “I’m just afraid this is going to confuse people in the future … because it puts one policy on all the colleges and then has a different policy for FSB embedded in that overall policy.”

Senators also said they felt uneasy about a hard cap on the number of visiting assistant professors (VAPs) they could hire, citing a need for flexibility in hiring practices to be able to teach all necessary courses.

“It scares me a little bit that there would be hard caps on VAPs,” a senator said. “You could have a situation where you had some leaves or illness or something like that, you just really need a VAP in a year, and then you couldn’t get it.”

Mullenix addressed the senate about the workload requirements for the coming fall semester. She said the decision to update the workload policy came because this past fiscal year was the last year the university could use reserves to balance the Academic Affairs Budget.

“I do expect that there will be discussion and tweaks as we work to get this right,” Mullenix said.

The new system to assign workload was based on the systems currently used by Kent State University and Ohio University.

Mullenix also clarified what would be considered “workload” and said publishing books would count towards calculations.

The discussion over workload will continue at the next meeting.

The senate is slated to vote on policy revisions to the Honors College and TCPL hiring practices at its next meeting at 3:30 p.m., March 31 in 111 Harrison Hall.

mahones5@miamioh.edu