Smart classrooms, Canvas and construction headlined Monday’s Academic Senate meeting in the Great Hall.
According to the Academic Senate Vice Chair of the Math Department Edouard Tchertchian, the hiring policy, which is several years old, would soon be updated.
“Such documents are often times updated to reflect changes in the hiring process,” Tchertchian said.
According to Tchertchian, the hiring policy is a document that sets guidelines to use when the hiring process happens.
“Of course our administration and president signs up on it,” Tchertchian said. “We created a taskforce.”
The taskforce is made up of volunteered members of the Academic Policy Committee (APC) and department chairs.
Tchertchian and his team agreed that the document is old and language had to be revised.
Department Chair of Computer Science and Information technology David Schamus, said that the smart classroom update will soon be available. According to Schamus, having a smart classroom would mean having an outstanding network.
“So a typical smart classroom is going to contain a data projector and a smart board style projector,” Schamus said. “Technically, it interacts with the computer.”
In addition, students are able to present anything to the class with their phones.
“If a student has something that they saw, like they did some research on google, then we can actually get their smartphones to display up on the board. So that’s a cool thing,” Schamus said.
According to Schamus, the first round will be up when the new building is ready which will probably come online within three weeks. Every time a new building is opened, a department will move in.
“We do have a couple of delays right now that may delay it, it may not be until spring but originally the schedule was at the third or fourth week,” Schamus said.
Distance Education Coordinator Wendy Bass, said everyone [faculty and students] is officially on Canvas.
Canvas the Learning Management System offers technical support assistance 24/7 over the phone.
“The feedback I’ve been hearing from students is really positive,” Bass said. “We started a pilot in January of this year and everyone moved over during summer of 2016.”
