Penn State President Graham Spanier addressed proposals for the Board of Trustees and concerns about the large freshman class at yesterday's Faculty Senate meeting.
Spanier thanked professors for accommodating this year's large freshman class and noted that the higher enrollment is "good in the long run for Penn State."
"[Students] are not coming here because they drew our name out of a hat," Spanier said. "They hear good things about us. They decide to come here because they like it here."
The university sets an enrollment window when admitting students, but Spanier said he could not predict the exact number of freshmen coming to the university next year.
"We won't bring in as many students as we did this year," he said. "We plan on having a more normal year."
Spanier also said he will propose to the Board of Trustees a pay raise for faculty and staff and building plans for Penn State's Dickinson School of Law.
"I plan on proposing a modest, but fair pay increase to faculty and staff," he said.
The Penn State budget office could not be contacted by press time yesterday about the faculty and staff pay raises, and more specific information will not immediately be available until Friday's Board of Trustees meeting.
Spanier also said the Dickinson School of Law had "a good start" to its first semester being located at University Park.
"I wanted to make a law school because of the changes in legal education," he said.
"The best lawyers have backgrounds in other subjects. We're able to provide other experiences and concurrent degrees here," Spanier added.
Faculty Senate also approved an advisory report to continue providing public access computers.
In 2005, the committee considered requiring students to own computers, but they decided to maintain the current policy, which strongly recommends student computers and also provides public facilities.
Faculty Senate also received an update on the implementation of a plan to consolidate course abbreviations within disciplines.
For example, chemistry courses used to appear on the schedule of courses with the labels CHEM, CHM or CHMBD, but now, all courses will contain a course number and the abbreviation CHEM.
So far, the abbreviations have been consolidated for 612 courses in 11 subjects.
