A speaker from the Pullman Regional Hospital presented a $40 million plan to Faculty Senate Thursday.

Scott Adams, CEO of Pullman Regional Hospital, also presented a plan to the senate to improve health care services in Pullman.

Adams said the American healthcare system is looking into improving the service experience for future patients. There will be less inconsistencies with personal health records in the local area.

He said health care service for families will improve, and the hospital will provide the best medical technology for patients.

The improvements would cost $40 million, Adams said, and is an opportunity to upgrade and offer the best service to the community.

Deborah Handy, academic affairs committee vice-chair, said faculty can remove the attendance requirement, which is 25 percent of the grading percentage upon request, especially if they are using non-traditional course strategies.

Handy said the reason for an attendance requirement is for students to engage in classrooms, as well as measure participation.

“If all you are doing is taking attendance and you count [students] just being in your room as part of the grade,” Handy said, “then it really shouldn’t be more than 20 percent of your [students’] grades.”

She said if faculty prepare in-class activities and also require attendance, then they can demand greater attendance in their syllabus.

Sinisa Mesarovic, mechanical and materials engineering professor, said every course requirement in the syllabus is now according to the rules, but most syllabuses are copy-pasted and are too long for anybody to fully read.

Matthew Carroll, a natural resource sciences professor, said he thinks they have gotten carried away with dictating policies and individual faculty members’ classrooms.

“Every single syllabus in our whole unit had to be reviewed by two different committees of the senate,” he said, “Mine came back three different times over issues about how I was going to handle rounding error between 91 and a 90 in my own syllabus.”

Carroll said there are certain rules faculty must have. Individual faculty members need to figure out how to reward or punish attendance in their own classroom based on the detail of their own class.

Senior Assistant Registrar Becky Bitter said the plan is to set a common ground so it makes sense for everyone, but there will be situations where something does not make sense at all.