Central Michigan University's Academic Senate announced a pause of the implementation of a $50 withdrawal fee, which could have been effective starting in the Spring 2024 semester.

The Senate also voted on deleting majors broadcast and cinematic arts, changed elective requirements for bachelor of applied arts degree and passed new teaching syllabi during the Nov. 14 meeting.

Registration and withdrawal fee

David Patton, interim senior vice provost for academic affairs, delivered the President and Provost joint report. In the report, he said that the drop-withdrawal and offset policies implementation has been paused after students’ and faculty feedback.

The administration will gather more information and provide recommendation to the President’s Cabinet, he said.

“They've heard everybody in the concerns, and they're gonna go back and look at it,” Patton said.

The future of the new policy fee is now in the President’s Cabinet hands.

Changes in majors offered at CMU

The Senate motioned to approve the changes in elective requirements to get the bachelor of applied arts degree.

Now the number of electives will vary depending on requirements for the major or minor. Before, students were allowed to take no more than nine electives from the same department to count towards graduation.

Two academic programs were also deleted: broadcast and cinematic arts (BCA) major with a concentration in fine arts and speech major BCA with secondary emphasis.

“(The program didn’t have) enough students,” Senate Chair Tracy Davis said. “And there's another program that sort of replaced it.”

To learn more about BCA programs, visit CMU website.

Teaching syllabus

The Senate voted to approve a proposal of a teaching syllabus made by Patton. The teaching syllabus will contain recommendations for faculty to include in the syllabuses they give out to students.

“We really just thought this would be helpful for a new faculty member or anybody else (who is) starting a new class,” Patton said. “Now was it hard to give people some advice, realize there was nothing out there saying what should be in. … Everybody that's teaching were students at one time, we all have a pretty good idea what needs to go in (the syllabus).”

Before this proposal, the only guidance for a teaching syllabus was that faculty members have to send their copies to the department, and the department saves the copies of the syllabuses for 30 years, Patton said.

“It's really important to have some kind of archive for a student that this is the course they actually took in that semester,” he said.

Other announcements

President Robert Davies will deliver the State of the University Address at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 16 in Plachta Auditorium.
CMU Board of Trustees will have a public meeting on Nov. 29 and a formal session at 11 a.m. on Nov. 30.
Senate Chair Davis announced the elections for the governance and communication committee as well as the Senate chair committee. No Senators have yet volunteered for the position.