Faculty discuss intellectual property, military transfer credit
Disagreement centers on whether the university owns publications.
Published April 9, 2010
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Professor Doug Wakefield laughs after a joke made by his colleague during the Faculty Council meeting Thursday at Memorial Union. The council discussed various topics, such as problems with academic honesty and potentially honoring military transfer credits.
Thursday's Faculty Council meeting focused on intellectual property and military transfer credit, as well as revisiting the previous meeting's discussion on academic integrity.
Under MU's rules of classroom intellectual property, even if a staff member's college or department puts resources toward its course materials, he or she can negotiate with the department chairperson for copyright ownership.
But the university would like to change that rule to implement multiple levels of approval. After getting chairperson approval, the request must then go to the dean of the college and must be signed off on by the chancellor's designee in order to receive intellectual property.
The newly proposed policy troubled some Faculty Council members.
"If the university puts a significant amount of resources into your material then the university owns the material," Faculty Council Chairwoman Leona Rubin said. "With the use of technology, software, IT staff and instructional designers to help you with your coursework it becomes a gray area about who owns the final product."
The council agreed the proposed intellectual property policy needed to be revisited at the next Intercampus Faculty Council meeting.
"I think this is creating a major issue for us to consider," nursing professor Rebecca Johnson said. "How much of the work that I'm expected to publish becomes university property?"
During the meeting, the council also examined the option of authorizing military credit for veteran students.
Rubin said MU would logistically deal with the American Council on Education transfer credits from the military in the same manner as any other transfer credits are dealt with.
She said the chairpersons of all the academic departments would be receiving a letter asking them to authorize courses they were willing to accept as military transfer credit.
"If you decide that nuclear physics is similar enough to a physics course taught here based on what you read in ACE and you accept it for credit, when another student comes on board and wants credit for the class they will receive the credit," Rubin said.
On the topic of academic integrity, the majority of the council agreed the MU academic honesty policy still needed more clarification.
Although the academic integrity policy aims to eliminate punitive action on the part of professors, not all agreed with the proposed standards to fail a student.
"You can only fail a student for the element of the course where they were found to cheat on or exhibit academic dishonesty," management professor Arthur Jago said. "It is the College of Business's view that they should be able to flunk the student for the entire course. Ignorance is no defense."
But electrical and computer engineering professor Harry Tyrer agreed with the document's goal to eliminate the possibility of capricious behavior.
"You determine what the grades are and you determine how important grades are," Tyrer said. "If a student cheats on 10 percent they get a zero on 10 percent, if a student cheats on 90 percent they get a zero on 90 percent."
Other topics briefly mentioned during the meeting included the creation of a family friendly task force and the agenda for the general faculty meeting to take place April 29.
The meeting will focus on intellectual property with commentary by biology professor Tom Phillips.