Weather complications rendered the faculty senate one person short of meeting quorum at Tuesday’s meeting for the first time in years, said senate chair John Pommier.

Deciding 10 minutes into the delay to continue with the meeting, Pommier announced that senate members would not recognize the approval of minutes or old business and would not vote on any new business.

Instead, he said the meeting would be purely informational as the faculty senate considered a new proposal, as well as a report on the progress of the Honeywell construction across campus.

Tim Taylor, director of the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative, appealed to the faculty senate for support in requiring all core classes to take the necessary steps in becoming writing-intensive.

The proposal stipulates that 35 percent of each course grade would be based on writing.

“We want to use writing as a mode of learning,” Taylor said. “We want students to use writing to understand content and grapple with content. Having students think about their thinking is a powerful means of retention.”

If approved, the proposal will take effect fall 2010, holding faculty members responsible for altering their syllabi accordingly.

Should the proposal pass, it would also require new students to complete four writing-centered or intensive courses beyond the first-year English sequence, totaling six courses with an emphasis on writing.

Taylor is scheduled to address the faculty senate at the next meeting. He said the deadline to enact the new requirement for next semester is March 18.

Andrew White, chair of the faculty-staff relations committee, expressed a concern that the new requirement would affect the number of hours students would have to complete before graduation.

As a representative of the mathematics and computer sciences department, White also wondered how the potential expanded writing-intensive requirement would apply to mathematics majors.

In response, Taylor suggested using writing as a tool for students to learn how to work through formulas and gain a better understanding of subject matter. He said incorporating journals or short writing assignments would enable students to connect with their disciplines.

White maintained that the proposal would be met with resistance.

“Our syllabi right now are crammed full of material to cover,” he said. “We constantly have to ask ourselves how it’s all going to fit, and I haven’t come up with an answer.”

Similarly, Joy Russell, an assistant special education professor, said the new requirement could be detrimental to new student and transfer enrollment at Eastern.

“We wouldn’t want a group of students caught in the crossfire,” Russell said.

Faculty senate recorder Jonathan Coit, an assistant history professor, said that 7.7 percent of students are currently not meeting the writing-intensive requirement.

“That’s about 85 people out of 12,000,” Coit said.

He indicated that three majors do not comply with the standards used to evaluate a writing-intensive course, including finance, physical education and general studies.

“In a way, those students are sort of sneaking out of here without doing work almost every other student does.”

He said that an emphasis on writing would apply to his subject of history, where large portions of students’ grades are based on written exams.

Robin Murray, an English professor, said most majors are already meeting the requirement.

“I don’t think it’ll be a huge step to take,” Murray said.

Senate members also heard a report from Dave Evers, an engineering executive at Honeywell International Inc.

Evers outlined the main objectives of the campus construction project in progress.

Phase three of the project, which Evers deemed “mission critical,” includes replacing the existing steam plant by spring 2011, as well as implementing self-funding conservation measures and reducing the university’s environmental impact.

“This plan provides an enormous amount of infrastructure,” Evers said. “This generation of students has a real passion for energy and reducing the impact on the planet, and that’s reflected in these conservation measures.”

Evers detailed an additional 22 measures, totaling $80 million that the university will spend on infrastructure. He said the improvements made would save Eastern upward of $144 million in the future.

“To be able to do this project in this economic environment we have is exciting,” Evers said.

Erica Whelan can be reached at 581-7942 or elwhelan@eiu.edu.