During the meeting, Craig Tovey, chair of the Student Academic and Financial Affairs Committee, which was proposing the change, explained that although the Institute would no longer be able to grant the absences, individual faculty members would be.
The group agreed that the committee should reword the sentence to allow the Institute more flexibility when a decision needs to be made.
Separately, a decision to revise Georgia Tech’s Policy on Competitive Admissions to ensure that it is in line with current legal standards regarding discrimination, diversity and admissions was approved.
Some of the changes in the revised version include deleting a sentence stating that admission preference may be given to nonresident applicants who are legacies of the Institute and deleting a sentence that states those offered admission will be selected on the basis of “recognition of the Institute’s special responsibilities to the residents of Georgia.”
The audience did provide one stipulation to its approval; a sentence in the new policy needed to be modified. The group was uncomfortable with saying that the admissions process should be structured to require students to “provide substantial evidence” of their potential to “embrace the diverse campus community,” among other things. So, the sentence will be modified accordingly by Tovey’s committee.
In other meeting news:
To view open faculty governance positions, the agenda for this meeting and the supporting documents that were provided for each meeting item, click here.