Faculty Council approves military course credit transfer

The council also discussed domestic partner benefits for faculty members.

By Kaylen Ralph

Published Feb. 19, 2010

Faculty Council approved a proposal awarding credit for military coursework and introduced several issues regarding diversity at MU at Thursday's meeting.

The proposal states military veterans with at least two years of honorable service are allowed to transfer military course credit accredited by the American Council of Education to MU. The change in this proposal from the transfer credit policy is that military veterans are allowed a maximum of nine credit hours as general electives. Currently, veterans can count up to 20 percent of their credit hours for MU credit.

"We want to limit the number of credits that we're just handing out," Academic Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Parcell said.

One issue raised at the meeting that had not come up in previous discussion was giving credit for veterans who had been honorably or dishonorably discharged. Parcell said he assumed discharged veterans would be excluded from this policy, but the issue had not come up in meetings with any of the military branches on campus.

The new policy will apply to veterans enrolled for the fall 2010 semester.

All items being introduced for discussion came from the Diversity Enhancement Committee. DEC Chairwoman Leah Cohn brought up the possibility of expanding insurance benefits for MU employees in same-sex partnerships, creating a family friendly initiative task force and looking into the policy for reporting sexual harassment.

According to the proposed Resolution on Domestic Partnership, more than 300 institutions of higher education in the United States have same-sex domestic partner benefits included as part of their employees' benefits package. This includes all members of the Big 10 and most members of the Big 12. The UM system is one of the few that does not offer these benefits.

"It's not fair, it's not fair to say to one (employee) we're going to cover your partner but not your partner (to another)," Cohn said.

Vice Chairman Bill Wiebold brought up the possibility of introducing the employee-plus-one system as another option.

"We're looking at this issue and employee plus one as two different issues. They're related but they're different," Cohn said.

Cohn said according to Associate Vice President of Benefits Mike Paden, implementing insurance benefits for partners in same-sex relationships would cost approximately $2.2 million for the whole UM system.

Concerning the creation of a family-friendly task force, Cohn cited issues, such as the absence of places for students who are nursing to pump breast milk and the difficulty for students who miss class in order to care for a sick family member to make up class work. Cohn said improvements in these areas would apply to and benefit faculty members as well.

Regarding the process for reporting sexual harassment, the council discussed possible venues for consolidating reports of inappropriate behavior. The discussion branched off into several different areas and the council decided to table the discussion for a later date.

"It sounds like this might evolve into more than just the data-gathering process," Faculty Council Chairwoman Leona Rubin said.