Oct 30 2006 Draft

From MWCSWiki

Minutes were approved from the Oct 2nd meeting.

First off, the entire department wishes to give our warmest congratulations to Jennifer and Karen for a successful CCSC conference. Kudos for all their hard work!!

ACM had a great "game night" event with lots of participants. Everyone was really happy about that. Doug Axelrod will explore the feasibility of a giant outdoor game screen, possibly in a joint event with the math club.

Karen introduced the idea of a voluntary $5 donation so that we can have a faculty lobbying presence in the state of Virginia. All faculty present seemed cheerfully in favor of this idea, and all vowed to give Karen their contributions as soon as possible.

Karen mentioned a motion currently before the Faculty Senate which would make it possible for a student to retake a prerequisite after taking a course that required that prerequisite. (This is currently impossible.) No strong opinions on this were voiced by the department.

There is also a Faculty Senate motion for the Promotion and Tenure Committee to consider work done before a faculty member joined UMW in their tenure case. (Currently, only work done while a UMW employee is considered.) In general, the consensus among the department members was "no," especially since the handbook specifies that a "pattern" of contributing be present, and how could such a pattern be present if it required pre-UMW work to substantiate? The department was against this motion, though Ernie recommended that it be simply deferred to the Promotion and Tenure Committee instead of being considered by the Senate as a whole.

Someone noted that lab aides need to be reminded that students must obey the honor code regulations for their particular course. It is not automatically the case, for instance, that all students in the lab can work together in groups; this is up to the professor for their course.

Stephen presented his report [1] from the NSF Regional Grants Conference and noted several opportunities.

Action items:

• Karen - find out why the budget person hasn't yet contacted Ernie.
• Jennifer - remind the lab aides that they can't just tell anyone in the lab that it's okay to work together; this is up to the professor for their particular course, and how the honor code applies to that course.
• Stephen/Karen - contact the NSF "CPATH" Program Officer for whether we might be a good candidate to receive a grant from that program. Find out which kind of institutions tend to receive such awards.
• Jennifer - figure out the deadlines for NSF Scholarship submissions