By SHANNON O. WELLS
Senate Council President Robin Kear’s enthusiastic announcement of Pitt’s new Winter Commencement ceremonies met with some pushback from members of the Student Government Board attending the Senate meeting on Nov. 9 in Posvar Hall.
The meeting also featured announcements from Chancellor Joan Gabel (see related story), and passage of an amended Bylaws resolution.
Winter Commencement for students who earned their degrees between May and December 2023 is scheduled for 2 p.m. Dec. 17 at Petersen Events Center.
Student government representatives reported that some graduates are disappointed that they aren’t invited to collect their diplomas with others in the traditional spring ceremony.
“I very much look forward to that hopeful and joyous event, as I always like to get to the commencements. They're wonderful,” Kear said, noting that the deadline for students to RSVP is Dec. 6. “After that, they won't be taking anymore. So please, if you are graduating this month, please get your name in to be at that event.”
The second graduation ceremony was added to alleviate capacity challenges at the Pete during the previously all-encompassing spring commencement event. Students graduating in summer and fall semesters were notified of the two-ceremony plan in January 2023.
In an effort to align their graduation closest to when they completed their degrees, they were invited to the December commencement, interim Provost Joe McCarthy said in a message regarding the new ceremony.
However, Student Government Board member Braydan Issermoyer said, “a number of students” have reached out to him who are “upset or concerned” about the Winter Commencement plan. “They feel that it wasn't adequately communicated to them. They have the expectation that they would walk in the spring with the rest of their classmates.”
After being informed about their commencement event, Issermoyer said students have contacted the Office of Special Events asking for exceptions because of travel challenges or other extenuating circumstances that have “caused quite a bit of concern for many students.”
Recognizing that it’s “logistically harder to hold just one commencement ceremony for all these students,” he asked Kear and Senate Council for recommendations or suggestions to offer students upset or confused by the decision.
Kear said she understood the ceremonies were split strictly because of demand and available space, acknowledging that, for the first time, commencement tickets were issued last April.
“I think, in order to alleviate that pressure, that's why the winter decision was made. I'm not sure how often or how it's been communicated to students. I don’t know all the logistics.
“I mentioned it because I think it's a positive experience — and a good thing,” she sheepishly added, drawing laughter in the room. “… This is the first year, so now the expectation will be different for next year. But it is the first time. I can see why there are some growing pains.”
While some students learned of the new event through the Office of Special Events newsletter when it was announced last winter, Issermoyer noted, others he’s heard from found out only indirectly.
“They are just being told by their advisors, (and) in one case the advisor didn't even know until the student had found out from one of the other faculty members,” he said. “The advisor had to go back and follow up with the rest of the graduates in that department, and this was just a few weeks ago. So, this is kind of surprising to a lot of students.”
John Stoner, undergraduate advisor and teaching professor in the Department of History, echoed Issermoyer’s concerns about communication through advisors. “I don't believe we heard about it until about a month ago or so and had been telling students, at least in History, that the traditional practice had been to allow students graduating in December to walk in April. (We) got that news … fairly late as well, seemingly.”
Kear said she would follow up about how the event is communicated and encourage improvements to the notification process, but emphasized that, “since the deadline hasn't passed … we can try to get better communication to those students it will affect.”
Policies update
Moving to other topics, Kear reiterated some items she shared during the Nov. 1 Faculty Assembly meeting, including a Senate committees update, decommissioning of the original COVID-19 vaccination policy and a draft policy of an updated one.
She noted that the Educational Policies committee will be discussing five University policies “related to the provost’s area or registrar topics,” at its Nov. 17 meeting, she said.
“The same thinking for Educational Policies applies now as it did in the spring, that these items should not be University ‘capital P’ policies, but they should be part of the guidelines and regulations directly from those areas.”
The policies in question cover: meeting times, credit hours, cross registration and GSA/TA/GSR (teaching and research appointments) scholarship procedure, and the University cumulative quality point average, and would be discussed at the committee meeting, Kear noted.
Also up for decommissioning is Policy R102, Consultant Conflict of Interest. Enacted in 1994, it was identified because its requirements “are duplicative of other conflict of interest policies,” and the processes it describes are “no longer relevant since implementation of MyDisclosures, which were revised last spring.
Those seeking to comment can go through the Policy Development and Management Office through Dec. 1.
Phishing scam security measures: Pitt Information Technology presented new measures at the Oct. 27 meeting of the Computer & Information Technology Committee.
The measures will be discussed at the next Faculty Assembly meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 29. Kear encouraged anyone with questions or concerns to read the University Times story, or plan to attend the Assembly meeting.
“I wanted that information to be widely available,” she said. “So that's something we'll talk about in a few weeks.”
Bylaws resolution
Senate Council passed an amended bylaws resolution that Faculty Assembly discussed and passed at its Nov. 1 meeting.
The main thrust of the proposal eliminates the current need for part-time, untenured faculty to opt in to Senate membership rather than being automatically included as members, as well as a requirement that part-time faculty must teach at least six paid credits per year for eligibility.
The amended version also makes part-time faculty members ineligible for officer positions and limits Faculty Assembly eligibility and committee chair positions to part-time faculty with a one-year appointment.
“The feeling was … part-time faculty should be excluded from serving as officers because it is an enormous amount of work, and to the extent that someone might want to pursue that, there was a strong feeling that that was an undue imposition,” said Nick Bircher, Bylaws and Procedures committee chair
Faculty Assembly representatives and committee chairs also expressed a “strong feeling” that faculty hired on a term-by-term basis were unlikely to adequately perform duties as a representative or committee chair.
“To correct that problem, the language that we've inserted is that only part-time faculty who have an annual appointment will be able to serve as representatives in Faculty Assembly or as committee chairs,” Bircher said.
Senate Council passed the Bylaws resolution with 30 voting yes, one voting no, and two abstentions.
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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