The Faculty Senate Tuesday discussed a proposed revision to the Board of Trustees’ Regulations that redirects the responsibility of determining tuition rates for online courses.

Currently, the BOT must decide how tuition should be charged, but the revision would transfer that authority to the president. The revision states that “other program-specific market-based academic credit program tuition rates may also be approved by the president.”

While the wording of the revision caused confusion among senate members, the proposal garnered a more important concern. Senate member Steve Scher, an associate psychology professor, expressed concern that the measure would make it cheaper for an out-of-state student to take the bulk of his or her classes online rather than in a classroom.

The BOT heard its first reading of the revision at their Jan. 29 meeting, under board policy, the trustees cannot vote on the revision until their next meeting.

In other business, senate members reviewed the discussions of last week’s Faculty Senate-sponsored Spring 2002 Faculty Forum, and agreed that the the forum yielded productive discussion. The senate reviewed topics like mentoring and grant writing that were covered at the forum.

One concern that seemed to come up in all of the three of the forum’s breakout session groups was the lack of an actual Faculty Development Office and faculty development’s current link to the College of Continuing Education, which some senate members consider a senseless affiliation.

Those who attended the forum will work to come up with recommendations based on what was discussed and present them at next week’s Senate meeting.

Senate Chair Bud Fischer, biological sciences professor, addressed a pile of communications that accumulated during the senate’s week off. The senate held last week’s forum in place of a regular meeting.

Andrew Methven, chair of the Council on Academic Affairs, sent the senate a reminder that students planning to walk through commencement under exceptionality must apply to do so by March 20.

Roy Lanham of the Newman Center sent a request for the university’s backing of the Fair Trade Coffee Campaign, which ensures that more of the cost of the coffee goes toward living wages for farmers.

Bill Witsman addressed the senate’s concerns about the slowness of Eastern’s network, saying that while the actual problems are too technical to explain, answers to frequently asked questions may be found at ux1.eiu.edu/~cswmw/netques.htm.