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Highlights of the College Park Senate meeting on October 9, 2006

1. Report of the Chair (Professor Jim Gates)

   Gates sees three major topics for the Campus Senate this semester:

   • Whether to require mandatory health insurance for students

     Premiums for student health insurance are skyrocketing. Students with family health insurance (from family) tend to not sign up for health insurance through UMD, leaving mostly students without family health insurance in the UMD health plan. Unfortunately such students are the most likely to require benefits, driving costs (and premiums) up. Senate is looking into whether possible solution is to require mandatory health insurance, with a lot of student input.

   • Dissemination of scholarly information

     Costs of paper journal subscriptions is going up quickly. Senate is forming a task force to examine how to maintain access to both paper and online journals for UMD researchers.

   • International education opportunities for undergraduates

     Following through attempt to widen range of international educational opportunities for UMD undergraduates, a goal listed by President Mote.

2. Report of the Senate Executive Committee

   Changes in UMD plan of organization passed, to be implemented this year.

3. Report of the Graduate Student Government President (Laura Moore)

   Sees two major issues for graduate students

   • Stipends/housing

     Compared to peer universities, UMD offers almost no graduate student housing (475 units at Grad Gardens/Grad Hills, < 5%). Subsidized rent is still $900/month, or 87% of typical grad student stipdend.

   • TA workload

     Survey showed average TA weekly workload is 29 hours/week, much higher than nominal 20 hours/week. UMD English TAs teach 2 sections of 25 students, compared with UVA English TA teaching load of 1 section of 18 students.

   Believes low stipends, expensive housing, higher TA workloads reduce UMD ability to recruit and retain quality graduate students. UMD thus needs to try to improve stipends, availability of inexpensive graduate housing, reduce TA workloads.

4. Report on the Middle States Accreditation Review (Professor Arthur Popper)
   • 10-year accreditation review being held this year.
   • View review as tool for College Park strategic planning

5. Special Order of the Day

   Report by Brodie Remington (Vice President for University Relations)

   • "Great Expectations" fund raising campaign is in progress, targeting $130 million/year donations

Chau-Wen Tseng