At its Jan. 14 meeting, Oakland University Senate approved a new major, and discussed the need to review policies about teachers giving exams the week before finals and when teachers should turn in students’ grades.

The campus police chief also addressed the Senate and asked its members to help stop ongoing legislation that would let civilians carry concealed weapons on campus.

The Senate is made up of faculty members, administrative personnel and student representatives, and meets monthly to discuss academic affairs and make recommendations to the president.

Its next meeting is on Feb. 11 at 3:10 p.m. in the Oakland Center Gold Rooms, and is open to the public.

New major program

A Bachelor of Science degree in actuarial science was approved by the senate.

This means the senate would recommend this major to OU’s president, whose office would submit it to the OU board of trustees, who needs to approve of the major before it can be offered to the students.

Because the deadline for inclusion in the fall 2010 catalog was in December, it is unlikely that the major would be offered until 2011.

The actuarial science major, a collaboration of college of arts and sciences and the school of business administration eight years in the making at OU, essentially assesses risk in finance and insurance. It’s a very specialized field, which is why proposers only anticipated having three to five students in the first year.

Grade submission change

Senate members generally said it may be time to review the policy that says teachers must submit students’ semester grades 48 hours after the scheduled final exam.

Sumit Dinda, assistant professor of health sciences, first brought up the subject, and said this strict deadline is harmful to academics, because teachers grade too quickly and mistakes can be made.

“It’s forcing too many to adopt a multiple choice final,” Dinda said.

Others agreed with him.

Sean Moran, associate professor of history, said it’s difficult to read thousands of pages of term papers within a couple days.

“When you write an essay, you want your professor to read your essay,” said Virinder Moudgil, senior vice-president of academic affairs and provost, who chairs the senate meetings.

“Times have changed; it’s a different university now,” Moudgil said, adding that any proposed changed would need to keep the students in mind.

He said some students need grades earlier because of internships and other things.

Emily Tissit, a student representative to the senate, said some of her friends got wrong grades and late grades.

“Extended deadlines would create a lot less anxiety,” Tissit said.

The 48-hour grade submission deadline is included in the teachers’ contracts.

To change the deadline, the contract would have to be changed.

The contract will need to be re-approved by the teachers’ union, the OU administration and OU’s board of trustees.

Exams before finals

Senate members also generally agreed to look at the policy of teachers giving exams on the week before finals.

Tamara Machmut-Jhashi, associate provost and associate professor of art history, said she has received complaints from students about instructors who have done this, despite there being a written policy in the registrar’s office that says teachers shouldn’t.

“The senate did this in 1963,” Machmut-Jhashi said. “Is there need for change?”

Some said the phrase “written exam” is not clear enough.

Some science teachers said some lab practicals needs to take place the week before finals.

Some suggested letting some teachers apply for exemption if they need to give an exam the week before finals.

“What the senate does is just recommend,” Moran said. “It’s not binding.”

Lucido on gun bill

Sam Lucido, chief of OU police department, asked for help from the Senate members to stop ongoing legislation in the Michigan state Senate and House that is seeking to let people carry guns onto college campuses.

He said he and other chiefs of campus police in Michigan do not agree with the contents of the bills, and OU has also taken a stance against it.

He said youth and young adults make up the majority of the campus population, and because they mature at different rates, he’s concerned about their judgement with firearms.

He said college students are also known for consuming inappropriate amounts of alcohol, and “I can’t imagine adding firearms to the mix,” he said.

Lucido said people carrying guns on campus, which is illegal now, would add to the danger also because if more people who see someone with a gun call OUPD, the police would have a hard time deciding whether to approach the person as a potential threat, or to let that person be because that person probably has a permit.

Larceny is the number one crime on campus, and “I don’t want to see firearms on that list,”  he said.

He asked Senate members to write letters of support against the House Bill 5474 and Senate Bill 747, as individuals or as groups.

Wage freeze issue

A professor doesn’t think that the 2009-10 wage freeze for OU’s non-unionized employees, announced last summer, was followed to the spirit.

“At that time, we thought that was a sacrifice,” said Joel Russell, professor of chemistry, who was the teachers’ union’s president last summer.

“At least nine members of the athletic department got a raise in the June 30 paycheck, one day before the July 1 announcement,” he said. “The letter was carried out, but the mechanism was made to give raises to some right before, so the spirit wasn’t followed.”

OU president Gary Russi was present at the meeting, and said in an interview after the meeting that he had previously been asked to confirm some charts regarding this and did so, but he had not yet seen the figures that Russell is using now.

For more on the issue of athletic department paychecks and other teachers’ union issues, see the lead story on page 5.