Faculty council looks at student privacy concerns, credit transfers

The University Faculty Council met Tuesday in Indianapolis to discuss, among other things, student privacy issues and credit transfers at all of IU's campuses.\nThe general meeting -- the year's first for the UFC -- was to discuss issues that will be brought up throughout the year, said Eileen Klingman Pettay, the committee's secretary.\n\"This meeting is a once a year meeting, when committees meet and introduce themselves and talk about the issues,\" Pettay said.\nThe goal for the meeting was to set the agenda for the year, said Professor Geoffrey Conrad, a member of the University Planning Committee.\nPaul Galanti of the IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis campus said the UFC focused on issues of student privacy.\n\"There was voting on a change of documents to make sure of compliance with federal regulations dealing with student privacy,\" Galanti said. \"There are a couple of things we are going to look into to see if further changes are necessary.\"\nBloomington Faculty Council President Robert Eno said the council was charged with updating 20-year old policy to align it with changes that have been made in laws governing student privacy issues.\nAs to recent computer breaches involving students' Social Security numbers, Galanti said the committee was looking into the matter.\n\"Everyone, including (IU President Myles) Brand and the trustees are very sensitive to that issue,\" Galanti said. \n\"We can't guarantee that it won't happen again, but we are working on a caveat, a warning, to those with access to sensitive material like Social Security numbers to take whatever steps needed to prevent break-ins again.\"\nThe UFC also met to discuss inter-campus transfer credits.\n\"We talked about the process of inter-campus transfers of 300 to 400 level classes to make the whole system ... transferable,\" Galanti said. \nGalanti said the UFC wanted to make sure that a class of the same number at any of the IU campuses would transfer easily to any other campus. \nAs it is now, 100 and 200 level classes transfer easily, but getting 300 and 400 level classes to transfer is more difficult.\n\"We were just continuing work on the inter-campus transfer policy,\" Conrad said.\nThe first UFC meeting was for the committees to meet each other and set their agendas, and decide what issues are going to be discussed in the coming year.\nThe sub-committees will meet throughout the year, without having a mass UFC meeting.