Students who wish to carry more than 18 credit hours per semester may soon be able to self-register for those hours after a revision of the policy for course overload.

At this afternoon’s Faculty Senate meeting, Tom Janson said it is unnecessary for students with solid GPAs to go through deans to register for additional

credit hours.

“Currently, students who want to carry more than 18 hours as an undergraduate student must go to the dean’s office and get a signature,” Janson said. “If there is a sufficiently high GPA, the student can automatically register over 18.”

This would mean students meeting GPA requirements could go over the traditionally allotted 18 hours when registering for their courses online.

Previous to the discussion of course overload came comments from President Lester Lefton on “nothing of urgent nature.”

Lefton’s comments focused on student conduct reform, diversity and inclusions, encouraging students to step out of their comfort zones in courses on campus and

infrastructure issues across the campus.

“We are in the process of continuous self-improvement,” Lefton said. “I think that for a number of years, a lot of these everyday things were just not tended to.

“It’s a matter of self-improvement. It’s a matter of continuous improvement.”

The Faculty Senate moved on to adopt the merging of the departments of sociology and justice studies into a single administrative unit to be known as the

department of sociology.

The merging will not affect students in a negative way, said Timothy Moerland, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“This action has been the topic of individual and departmental consultations,” Moerland said. “The combination will be transparent to students.”

Robert Frank, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, said the merging of the two programs was well planned by each department.

“They had done extensive internal conversations so it was appropriate that would be passed easily because they had done all their homework,” Frank said.

After passing the motion, members discussed the inactivation of the Horticultural Technologies and Industrial Trades Technology majors on the Geauga campus. Both motions passed in Educational Policies Council on Feb. 22.

Conflicts from the last Faculty Senate meeting, on Feb. 8, were discussed as well.

After tension between the provost and Faculty Senate members at the last meeting about the wording of Kent CORE, the new LER system, the document was taken to the Executive Committee to be resolved.

Members of Faculty Senate saw the conclusions of the provost and the Executive Committee at yesterday’s meeting and faced less opposition than previously.

“I actually feel that the people who have been misled in all this is not Faculty Senators — it’s the Board of Trustees,” Professor of marketing Pamela Grimm

said. “I suspect their understanding of what was passed is completely different than what was actually passed.

“I do feel badly that the Board may come away with an understanding that is completely different than what we’ll be acting on.”

Suzi Starheim is the academics reporter for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].