The LSU Faculty Senate is considering passing a resolution that would allow professors to grade students on their attendance.
Mass communication professor Louis Day presented the resolution Tuesday at the senate’s monthly meeting, which, if passed, would make it possible for professors to make class attendance mandatory.
“The most effective means of fostering student responsibility for class attendance is a University policy permitting instructors to include attendance among their grading criteria,” the resolution reads.
Several senators said the issue has been debated for years and that many professors use participation grades to get around the rule.
“We just thought this was a more intellectually honest way,” Day said. “I think this would be a step forward.”
The resolution states that “the absence of some class members from this intellectual environment demeans the quality of this shared experience and displays a lack of respect for their classmates.”
Another issue senators brought up Tuesday was whether the University would limit the amount of weight a professor could give to attendance.
But Day said he doesn’t think setting limits is necessary.
“It’s the same as the final exam,” he said. “We don’t limit that, but as far as I know, no professor makes their final exam worth 80 percent of the grade.”
This was the resolution’s first reading. It will be voted on at the Faculty Senate’s meeting March 14.
The senate will also hear the second reading of a resolution titled “Provost Recommendations for Provost Search and Replacement,” which would give the faculty more input in the provost’s decisions.
It would also give faculty more of a voice in administrative search committees.
Ken McMillin, animal sciences professor and Faculty Senate vice president, said the resolution is necessary since Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jack Hamilton plans to step down from his position in the near future.
“The search committees have tended to linger and linger,” he said. “We need to encourage them to move at an appropriate pace.”
Many senators said the resolution was worded too harshly, and the senate’s executive committee agreed to accept suggestions for
amendments and to read the resolution again in March.
The senate also voted unanimously to pass a resolution called “Graduate Faculty Status: Confidence in Colleagues and their Credentials,” which would abolish a policy that would require tenured faculty to be certified annually to keep Graduate faculty status.
The Faculty Senate resolved to reject the policy and call for
its withdrawal.
 
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Contact Rachel Warren at [email protected]