LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY SENATE
Volume 17 January 2008 Number 5
- Call to Order - Debra Blackman
TheJanuary 14, 2008 meeting of the University Senate was called to order at 4:00 p.m. in the Ropp Center, Room 105, by
Vice-President Debra Blackman.
2. Roll Call: Marie Pipes
Senators absent from the meeting: Peter Gallagher, Randy Parker, Mihaela Paun, Andrei Paun, Chester Wilson, Jeff Hankins, and
Aziz Saber.
3. Adoption of Agenda:
A motion was made to accept the agenda. The motion was seconded and approved.
4. Adoption of Minutes - December 10, 2007:
A motion was made to approve the December minutes with one correction under the Faculty Advisory Council report. The minutes
should read "Southeastern"rather than "One university in south Louisiana". With this correction, the motion was seconded and
the minutes approved.
5. Announcements:
● Administrative and Planning Council -
Dr. Saber represented the University Senate at the December meeting of the council. In that meeting, Dr. Reneau and
others recounted Louisiana Tech's accomplishments for the year. Dr. Saber, on behalf of the Senate, thanked Dr. Reneau
for his hard work and leadership. Dr. Reneau said he has submitted the budget for 2008-09 and that, in it, he has
requested additional salary increases for faculty and staff.
● Faculty Advisory Council - Dr. Debra Blackman stated there was no meeting in January and the next schedule meeting is for
February 29, 2008.
6. Treasurer's Report: Ron Cathey
A motion was made and seconded to approved the treasurer's report.
7. Unfinished Business:
a. Turnitin - Brian Etheridge and Derek Lowe presented an overview of Turnitin and provided some basic instructions/information:- Students upload their paper to Turnitin.com not the teacher.- The teacher will have to use learned interpretation skills to evaluate the results A teacher's skills will become stronger the
more the software is used.- Turnitin uses three types of sources for checking matches in text of papers (Internet, publication database, and student
paper database). Therefore, this software is a good tool for teachers as it checks against sources in addition to Tech
student papers.- iParadigms web page states that Turnitin takes every paper submitted and returns the paper in the form of a customized
originality report. Results are based on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current and archived instances
of the internet, millions of student papers previously submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of journal articles
and periodicals.- Teachers receive a % match score - the higher the score, the more of a chance of plagerism.b. Blackboard feedback: Debra Blackman- Roy Waters reports that the contract for Blackboard to provide Blackboard Enterprise Edition Version 7 hosted for us was
signedDecember 28th.- The expected benefits of Blackboard Enterprise Edition Version 7 are:▪ improved response time▪ fewer "hang-ups
▪ fewer outages- Danny Schales is working with Blackboard technical to set up a test environment.- A planning meeting with Blackboard technical representatives on conference call is being held Tuesday, January 15 at 2:15.- Training sessions are being planned for mid February.- The goal is to be ready to change over to the new system for Spring Quarter.- Computing Center and CITDL would like some input from the faculty as to whether we want to go to the new system for
Spring quarter or wait until Fall, 2008.- Senator Blackman also stated that this version has been on the market for over a year and already had some shakedown
out in the field.- Some senators indicated that if there are some problems internally when the testing is done, that we wait until the Fall to
implement the new system.- The new version is compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and should be compatible with Macs as this was the type of
computer being used during the demonstration of the new version.
8. New Business: none
9. Voluntary Remarks:
Debra Blackman encouraged senate members to use themselves as a vehicle of communication to other faculty. She encouraged
the senators to share information from the meetings with their fellow faculty and also to bring ideas back to the senate from
their co-workers.
Senator Marilyn Robinson inquired about senate representation on committee vacancies that Dr. Saber had announced at an
earlier meeting and as to whetherthese vacancies had been filled. Dr. Saber will respond to this request.
The meeting adjourned at 4:35 p.m.
Marie Pipes, Recording Secretary
