The Sacramento State Faculty Senate meeting on Thursday, April 7, saw the announcement that a tentative agreement had been reached between the California State University and the California Faculty Association.

This has effectively avoided the planned strike. Other topics discussed at the meeting included the amendment of graduate learning goals and objectives, the amendment of the timely declaration policy, and the deletion of the pre-major and expressed interest definition policy.

“This is the third iteration of the Graduate Learning Goals/Objective Policy,” said Julian Heather, the chair of the graduate studies policy committee. “We needed to develop campus-wide learning and graduation goals, so we’ve generated a number of graduate learning goals for the entire campus. There are six learning goals — disciplinary, knowledge, communication, critical thinking, information literacy, professionalism, and intercultural/global perspectives.”

Sue Escobar, a professor of criminal justice, also addressed the amendment of the Timely Declaration of Majors policy and the Deletion of Pre-Major and Expressed Interest Definition policy before the Senate.

“Departments are getting an influx of a lot of students, and these departments have sort of an open door policy – no way to say no,” Escobar said. “The concern was raised from the registrar’s office, so they began drafting a policy that was basically an access denied policy. They eventually decided to scrap it.”

Escobar explained the logistics of the Timely Declaration of Majors policy to the audience.

“[The Timely Declaration of Majors policy will be] requiring students who wish to add into a non-impacted major to meet with an adviser and the chair of the program,” Escobar said. “The policy aims to address the significant need for proactive academic advising for students.”

The meeting ended with Christine Lovely, the vice president of Human Resources at Sac State, informing the Senate of changes made to the Background Check policy.

“We have been implementing the policy since [August 2015]. At first, we tried to have it be a part of our regular process of doing background checks with LiveScan for everyone,” Lovely said. “We have Accurate Background on board now.”

Lovely also gave more details on the revamped program.

“It is a risk management tool, and it is a way to protect all of us,” Lovely said. “It applies to all new hires — current employees do not get background checked. For our protection, it is a good thing that we have this policy.”