University Senate spent most of its second meeting of the academic year Wednesday debating student-athlete academic performance.

The almost 100 senate members in Maxwell Auditorium discussed a report by the Athletic Policy Committee, presented by co-chairs Marc Donabella and Kathleen Hinchman during the 40-minute meeting.

The report included progress of a task force designed to improve communication between SU Athletics Department staff and academic advisors in Syracuse University’s schools and colleges.

The committee showed SU’s NCAA Division I Academic Progress Report for 2007-2008. The average student-athlete GPA was 2.94, and 54 percent of student-athletes had a GPA of 3.0 or higher.

Robert Van Gulick, a philosophy professor and member of the Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee, pointed out that the lowest scores for academic success in student-athletes are for football and men’s basketball players.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor said low academic performance from football and basketball players is a national concern and that universities have to make sure they have effective support systems in place.

‘Our student-athletes are doing very well,’ Cantor said. ‘Obviously, there’s always improvement. We just think it’s really important to help our student-athletes be able to balance the rigorous commitment on their schedules and their academic work.’

Hinchman talked about SU’s ‘slow and gradual’ progress toward Title IX, including the addition of a women’s ice hockey team in 2008. Universities participating in NCAA athletics must qualify for Title IX in one of three ways. Currently, SU qualifies by fulfilling one category: demonstrating effort to expand on women’s athletic programs.

About 46.3 percent of SU student-athletes are women and 54 percent are men, according to SU’s 2007-2008 athletics equality report. But these numbers don’t match Title IX gender-proportion standards for a campus that is 56 percent female and 44 percent male.

The university created a new position, faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, which will be filled for two years by Harvey Teres, an associate professor of English and member of the Academic Affairs committee. Faculty members were notified Sept. 7 of Teres’ appointment.

Teres described his responsibilities as two-fold. The first part of his position is to make the Board of Trustees more visible, he said.

‘I want the community to know a little bit more about this organization and what it does,’ Teres said. ‘Most people don’t know much about the Board of Trustees – who’s on it, what they do.’

The other part of Teres’ responsibilities will be to represent faculty interests and concerns to the Trustees. Teres said he has already started discussing what consequences the remodeling of Bowne Hall will have on current classroom space for faculty.

Other business included:

USen added and removed professors from various committees, including the removal of five members from the LGBT Concerns Committee.

The senate unanimously passed a motion to allow committee chairs who aren’t senate members to speak when their committee reports are presented.

Members received a report summarizing the work USen completed during the 2008-2009 academic year, compiled by USen recorder Teresa Gilman. The report included information on honorary degrees conferred at the 2009 Commencement, a survey on the need for a women’s center at SU, curriculum changes and the progress of a committee created to review the university’s sexual harassment and abuse of power policies.

Larry Elin, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, presented final word-changes to the university’s tenure policies, a process that took more than eight committee meetings last year. The committee first proposed the changes March 18, when one section was sent back to be redrafted. The committee proposed the changes again March 25, and they were approved with the exception of one paragraph related to third-year reviews. Senators voted unanimously to accept the final changes to the tenure section of the faculty manual.

Barbara Kwasnik, chair of the Curricula Committee, presented a list of courses that the university added, changed or dropped. Many of the dropped courses are from the surface pattern design program that was cut from the College of Visual and Performing Arts last year, in a move that angered students in the major.

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Published on October 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm