On Wednesday, Oct. 9, the Keene State Senate held its 537th meeting in the Mountain View Room of the student center.
The meeting was led by Graham Warder, who is a member of the Academic Policy Committee (APC).
During the meeting, Senator Gregory Knouff, who is also a part of the APC, discussed the pilot Fresh Start program at Keene State.
“As you can see, APC has met twice since the last senate meeting, with the first APC meeting being on September 25th,” Knouff told those present. “The Director of SASS (Student Academic Support Services) joined us and provided us [with] some data to look at regarding the overall numbers of students going through academic suspension and who have been retained in the pilot Fresh Start program. The numbers were pretty persuasive. The overall numbers of suspended students went up consistently over the past three years.”
The Fresh Start program is a support opportunity for students who “require more time to adapt and develop the skills necessary to be successful personally and academically,” according to the KSC website.
Students in the Fresh Start program must achieve a minimum cumulative GPA of 1.5 by the end of their second semester, a fact that was discussed by the senators about the academic standards present in the program. Knouff was optimistic about the Fresh Start program and its goals and found the data provided to him to be quite telling about the whole situation regarding suspended students.
“This was a very valuable pilot that was set to expire at the end of this academic year,” Knouff went on. “We didn’t have to take action, but it was pretty clear based on the data that this was a good program that we should have as a permanent program.”
The senate also discussed the ongoing review of majors, a talk that was led by Senator Kirsti Sandy of the Executive Committee.
“So, for the review of majors, we’ve had a little bit of a delay getting started,” Sandy explained. “But I wanted to tell you that we’re in the process of getting this done. The Senate Executive Committee did review a draft and a most recent faculty meeting got to see an early draft of it as well. We’re hoping that after the Senate Executive Committee provides a second draft we’ll start going through the process where the Senate will get an opportunity to read the chart and discuss it.”
Due to the absence of Senator Karen Stanish, the meeting only lasted for about 25 minutes rather than an hour, as it usually does.
The meeting was adjourned around 4:30 p.m.
Chloe Erno can be contacted at
