Points of Pride in Student Affairs:
• Dining Services and Programs. VT satisfaction score was 4.19; national average is 3.70. Cutting edge facilities. Multiple national dining program awards. Sales of optional dining plans to off-campus students has doubled since 1999.
• Residential Learning Communities. Involve more than 26% of our students. Collaboration between academic and student affairs. Nine Learning Communities (WING, Hypatia, Galileo, Honors, The World, Corps of Cadets, Oak Lane, etc.)
• UUSA. Put on over 1,000 events. 80% of its revenue comes from student fees; 20% from user fees. Employs 65 fulltime staff; 200 student staff. Improvements include online ticket capacity and new software used in scheduling, etc. Sponsored events involved 590 student organizations, major name speakers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Ventura, and Elie Wiesel. There has been a 9% increase in attendance since 03-04.
• Cranwell International Center. 12,000 people at this year’s International Street Fair. $50,000 + raised for Tsunami relief (over 700 VT students effected).
• Town/Gown Community Relations Committee. A new committee comprised of members of Blacksburg Town Council, VT Administration, SGA, GSA, IFC, neighborhood associations and the Blacksburg Police.
• Graduate Life Center. Opening in fall, 2005 with housing, offices, seminar room, classrooms, computer lab, coffee shop, multi-purpose room, etc.

Concerns:
• Students and families. Students more sheltered, protected, pressured, consumer-oriented, high expectations. Parents well-meaning, over-involved, need to involve them in constructive ways.
• Housing. Competitively priced, low cost for room and board. Low cost and low fees lead to a lot of facility needs – renovations and improvements – which are very costly (approx $300-400 million).
• Freshman Seminar. Students are brighter, but less prepared. Only 34% say they studied 6+ hours/week in high school. There is a crying need for “University 101”, but the curriculum is already packed, takes $$, faculty, space, etc. Should it be an online course. There are problems, disengagement from the academic process. Students get lost, don’t know where to turn.
• Staff recruitment and retention. Demands, fewer in the field, high turnover, competition from other institutions. Problems with salary compression resulting from recruitments of good people.

Discussion/Responses from Senators:
• Students don’t use office hours or advising effectively.
• Faculty prior experiences as RA’s etc. makes them more effective in helping students. How do you bring academics into student life?
• Faculty advisors for student organizations are hard to come by.
• This is a generation of students looking for mentors, surrogate parents.
• We’ve lost our focus on UG education. Budget cuts have hurt ratios, class sizes. We need more faculty.

• Elections to be held at next month’s meeting – our final meeting is a dinner meeting. We have invited the president, provost and the deans. Please RSVP for the dinner.
• The proposal to make changes in University Council membership has received its first reading.
• Search for the new Dean of Engineering is in its final stages.
• There is a bit of a rift developing between the undergraduate and graduate student leadership. Undergraduates are perceiving attention to graduate program as a negative. Sam and Susanna will be meeting with undergraduate leadership.

• At its April 8th meeting, the CFA was briefed by David Travis and Fain Rutherford on Policy 1025 (Anti-Discrimination and Harassment Prevention) with an invitation to identify any concerns before introduction of the policy at University Council. The policy had already been approved by the Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity as the host commission. The revised Policy 1025 creates a unified policy regarding prohibition against unlawful and discrimination/harassment on all grounds consistent with Virginia Tech’s non-discrimination statement. The policy also clarifies the rights and responsibilities of those who are victimized and provides guidance to supervisors and others who learn of unlawful discrimination/harassment. Revision of Policy 1025 should contribute to a more welcoming climate by clearly stating the university’s intolerance of harassment and discrimination.
• Need for Faculty Gathering Place: When the issue of a faculty gathering place was raised at an earlier meeting, there seemed to be a great deal of interest from faculty for a designated space that would facilitate interaction among faculty members outside of their immediate department or college. Faculty expressed the need for the space to be centrally located. CFA members also suggested renovating current space. One idea was to convert the Torgersen Museum into a coffee shop. Rinehart will contact David Ford to determine whether this would be feasible.
• Yearly or Semi-yearly Meeting with Untenured Faculty:
CFA discussed requiring yearly or semi-yearly face-to-face meetings between department heads and/or promotion and tenure committees and untenured faculty members to demystify the promotion and tenure process for junior faculty and provide untenured faculty with a clear sense of whether they were meeting expectations for promotion and tenure.
• A proposed increase for promotion stipend associated with advancement in rank: assistant to associate = $3,000 instead of $2500; associate to full = $4,000 rather than $3,500. This change will need to be approved by the Board in June and will be applied to promotions that were just approved.
• Retirement benefits for part-time faculty will be taken to the Board for approval at their June meeting.
• The Provost has funded a base salary increase for instructors to $31,000 from $28,000.
• Textbook legislation was approved by the General Assembly.
• Faculty focus groups to address faculty work life issues will be held over the next couple weeks.
• Hokie Passport IDs which use the individual’s social security number must be
replaced by summer 2006 according to state law.

• Question of changing the regular FS meeting time. Susanna will conduct a straw poll.
• Space and staff support for the Senate – update at next meeting.
• Workgroup on Sabbatical leave – report at the next meeting.
• We still need senators to serve on the Academic Support Committee and the Building Committee.