Inside Iowa State
December 21, 2000
Senate lets admission policy on "unmets" stand
by Linda Charles
After considerable discussion, the Faculty Senate reversed
itself Dec. 12 and left the procedure for admitting students
who do not meet high school preparation requirements as it is
now.
Currently, students who do not have all 12 of the high school courses required to enroll at Iowa State, but who otherwise are well-qualified, may be admitted after staff in the Admissions Office review their applications. There's no rule on how many unmet requirements are too many for admission, but assistant vice president for admissions David Bousquet said students with three or more unmet university requirements are not admitted.
Earlier this year, the senate passed a motion that would prohibit admissions staff from admitting students who lacked two or more requirements.
The university has four requirements for English/language arts, three for mathematics, three for science and three for social studies. (The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has an additional three requirements.)
Bousquet told the senate that of the 4,354 freshmen admitted fall semester, only 39 (or 1 percent) had two "unmets." Of those 39, 10 already had college credit when they entered Iowa State. Six ranked in the top 20 percent of their high school classes, and eight ranked in the top 21 to 30 percent.
Bousquet said there were several reasons why good students might have unmets. They may have attended a very small high school or had learning disabilities or scheduling problems. They may have been home schooled. Or they may be older students or students who were gifted in a certain area and had concentrated on that specialty.
Some senators questioned whether admissions staff should decide who could be admitted with unmets or if faculty were better judges. And others thought the senate needed to know what the graduation rate was of students who entered with unmets.
For now, the senate agreed to leave the procedure as it is (requiring the senate to vote to rescind its motion that set the requirement at one unmet) and study the issue.
Faculty leave
Senators asked Provost Rollin Richmond whether it was
policy to exclude junior faculty from faculty development
leave. Richmond said it was not a policy, but that in many
cases, it was not in the best interest of junior faculty to
take such a leave.
Richmond pointed out that junior faculty often are better off concentrating on setting up their research on campus and attracting graduate students. However, he said, there are exceptions, such as English junior faculty members who need to turn a thesis into a book as part of their research.
Richmond took exception to comments that his office was being "paternalistic" in discouraging junior faculty from taking the leaves. The provost noted that proposals for leave are ranked by faculty committees and deans before his office receives them.
In other business, the senate approved changes to the next university catalog. In all, 327 new courses will be added to the catalog, while 347 courses from the 1999-2001 catalog will be dropped.
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