s ‘ I “"71” "

" " :T‘unsi;Nov;:‘i3.;—:19i3;eagé 3

Kc: mpus K oncern

V.b~’iﬂﬂﬂélluﬂ'.ﬂ'

Senate Sofa ri photo by CROMBIE

e nate of the new trend in The Senate meeting of No-

high school evaluation pr-

ng of scholarships could ocedures, namely the cont-

be presented at a future

vember 7, 1973 was a stra- nge event indeed. Here we- re gathered those that fo-

rm the “elite” of U.P.E.I.3~

that-"elite" which posses- ses the power over the ac- ademic functioning on this campus.

First off, R.J. Baker, the chairman of the Senate, welcomed the new members of Senate that were elect- ed by the faculty, and th- ose elected by the student body. Everyone congratula- ted each other; patted ea- .ch other on the back and . proceeded to their monume- ntal deliberations concer- ning the smooth and effic- ient running of this univ- ersity. ,

The opening debate conce— rned the Tenure Document, of which I wrote two issu- es ago. Apparently Senate has been unable to devise a method to correctly deCide the needs of the various departments; especially the number of professors, each department should be allowed. After the odd co- mment from the odd senator this issue was refined to committee. ("when in doubt, mumble”).

The next item involved the the maintenance of S. A.C.U. exams as a require- ment for entrance into U.P.E.I. It appears that S.A.C.U. is not adding any information that high sch- ool transcripts do not al- ready provide° M. Hennesey, registrar, asked Senate to remove the exams as an en- trance requirement, and Senate complied.. However, the registrar then asked Senate to maintain S.A.C.U. as a means for judging the awarding of scholarships. This quest opened the door for the broader issue of Why there are scholarships! Stan Dalton, newly elected Senator, asked what were the criteria for awarding SCholarships? No one seem- ed to know exactly what they were; except to say. that there exists a commie ttee which handles the pr- Oblem of awarding scholar- ships and if the Senate

desired, a report covering

all aspects of the awardi-

meeting. This suggestion put an end to the debate, and the problem of criter- ia for gaining scholarshi- ps fade away. Yet the S. A.C.U. problem remained! It was asked by Dean Edmo- nds what type of exams we- re used before the advent of S.A.C.U. President Bak—

,er informed Senate that

the university had tried its own set of exams for scholarship purposes and

they were a failure. At any

rate this debate became

very confused and the iss- ue was quickly ended by a vote supporting the useage

' of S.A.C.U. for scholarsn—

ips. In my opinion the wh- ole matter of S.A.C.U. was railroaded through Senate without enough being known by the senators to effect- ively form an opinion on the matter; apparently the senators felt they knew , enough! (I wonder if they even know what S.A.C.U. means?)

The final major area of debate, at the meeting, ~ was the final exam issue. Since I expressed an anti— exam 0 inion in this jour- nal (? some time ago, I was particularly interest- ed to see the majority vi-

. es of Senate.

The discussion opened up with Ron Baker informing Senate that Prof. M. Foley, Dept. of English, is the chairman of the evaluation committee. Why Senate was given this information I do not know because Foley said absolutely nothing to the assembly concerning a

the exam issue. I, for one,

expected a major presenta- tion from that committee

“to help the senators form > a more informed view.

So the discussion opened up with Prof.Ellison offe- ring a very definite pro exam stance. Ellison(busi- 'ness Dept.) stated that u unless some sort of final exam was made compulsory, the standards ataU.P.E.I. would fall drastically in the eyes of other academic institutions.

_Dean Edmonds, Facultv of ‘ Education, countered E111- son'sview by informing Se-

inuous evaluation method. This method, Edmonds note- d, consists of daily reco- rding of a student's prog- ress or regress through * the term with a final mark consisting mainly of the picture painted by this daily record. Edmonds fur- ther stated that the high schools using this method were finding it very succ- essful.

Dean Duffy, Faculty of Science, pushed for depar- tmental control of evalua- tion because of the vast difference of teaching te- chniques in the various

‘departments and courses.

He also offered that stud- ents on entering courses should be told in the fir-

xst week of classes the ev-

aluation procedures being used. He further stated ' that student opinion of evaluation procedures sho- uld be considered. This reporter got the impressi— on that Dean Duffy was a soft liner on the compuls- ory exam issue.

Profo Naylor, Dept, of 5 Philosophy, stated flatly that he abhorred final ex- ams as an effective method for determining a student's mark and if Senate forced exams on the university he would act out the motions of giving a final but wou- ld not consider it in eva- luation of a student.

Prof. Love, Dept. of Mat- hmatics, pushed heavily for compulsory final exams. He agreed with Prof. Elli-

,sonvs view that standards

would go down unless some sort of final exam were given in each course° Car- ol Ward, student union ex- ecutive, eXpressed doubt that exams had anything to do with standards. As far as she could see exams had to do with quality of pro- fessors and content in the courses rather than a fin- al exam.

This was the major porti- on of the debate that occ- ured.

SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS: I was not impressed with the m?-

. :on’f on