1. Farnsworth Pavilion; 01.23.17 9 PM
Senate Meeting
Farnsworth Pavilion; PM

2. Agenda Roll Call Attendance and Approve Minutes/Agenda
Vote on Student Athlete Advisory Legislation
Updates or Questions for SA Credit Override Committee Reps
Presentation and Discussion about the Current State of Distribution Credit System
Presentation of Drug Culture at Rice
Update on the State of the SA budget
Announcements:
V2C2 Members
Thursday lunch: Higher Education Under the New Presidency
Applications for Health Professions Task Force

3. Faculty Senate Working Group on Distribution Requirements

4. Purpose
Inspect distribution requirements and context and issues surrounding it
Routine process conducted every 5-10 years
Draft recommendations for resolving these issues to CUC
First meeting held in mid-December
Identified common issues surrounding distribution requirements and brainstormed potential solutions to them
Next meetings scheduled for Jan. 30 and Feb. 6
Rushi Bhalani (SA) and Palvasha Deme (SA/CUC) are student reps
Other members are professors and administrators

5. Context Discussion Rationale for gen ed is weakly defined
Insufficient number of distribution courses
36 hours of distribution may be difficult with the 18-credit hour cap
Distribution being used to control class numbers
Lack of proper resource allocation towards gen ed
Departmental issues with students largely preferring to take distribution in certain subject areas - creates gaps
Inconsistent conformity of distribution courses
Specify the principles and competencies desired to determine the purpose of general education
Review processes of allocating distribution credit to courses
Decrease distribution requirements from 36 to 30 credit hours
Implementing thematic requirements (i.e., FWIS, Quantitative Reasoning)
More specifically define D1, D2, D3

6. Feedback/Questions?

8. Diversity in SA Elections
Why is it important?
Plan
Sonal to attend multicultural council club meetings to describe what Election Process/positions are
Contact QuestBridge, SS
Form to be sent on Listserv with more details of positions
Ideas?
Vision and Mission of SA Exec team this year is to increase diversity on campus, and to make sure each individual, not matter what socieconomic class, culture, sexuality, etc. feels safe on campus. Especially important in this time period we are in