FACULTY SENATE MEETING
Minutes, November 13, 2008
Senate
Members: C. Bell, K. Cole, L. Dohse, B. Haas, M.
Harvey, G. Heard, J. Konz, B. Larson, L. Nelms,
L. Russell, J. McClain, M.
Moseley, E. Pearson, D. Pierce, B. Sabo, S. Wasileski,
B. Wilson; J. Fernandes; Alt.
G. Ettari.
Excused: A. Lanou.
Visitors: S. Haas, E. Katz, J. Leffe, G. Nallan, R. Pente, J. Pierce, J.
Tieman, R. Waskom.
I. Call to Order, Introductions and
Announcements
Dr. Dohse called the
meeting to order at 3:20 pm and welcomed Senators and guests.
II. Approval of minutes
The
minutes of October 16, 2008, were approved with an editorial correction
(Moseley/Larson).
III. Executive Committee
Report
Dr.
Introduction of John Pierce, Vice
Chancellor of Finance and Operations
Dr. Dohse
introduced John Pierce, our new Vice Chancellor of Finance and Operations.
Mr. Pierce outlined his work history and goals. Since joining UNCA he has had to quickly learn
about State budgets, budget cuts, and how we deal with them. He has tried to be as clear and transparent
as he can be to help senior staff understand the impact of decisions.
Highlights
of goals:
·
Financial reports with Banner
·
Ernst & Young Study on purchasing, payroll,
financial aid, grants, financial report and efficiency.
·
Clarity with the Foundation: make sure we understand
where scholarship money originates, where it goes, what is available, and the
impact decisions have on our investment earnings.
·
Oversee Construction Projects: clarify the
relationship between construction and fund raising, that is, how much a project
costs and how much we have to raise to meet our obligations.
·
Prudently manage the financial affairs of the
institution: make sure we do not accumulate too much debt and that we fully
understand the budget process. The
budget process must be clear, transparent and open.
Mr. Pierce will return to the Senate with a
concise written report in the spring.
Dr. Dohse thanked Mr. Pierce.
Plans for continued Assessment of Administrative
Offices
Dr. Dohse reported that last spring a
task force did an internal assessment of the Alumni and Development
Office. The task force consisted of:
Judy Beck, Robert Bowen, Shirley Browning, Duane Davis, Claudel McKenzie, Ted
Meigs and Linda Nelms (Chair). The task
force submitted a report to the Chancellor and she has responded. The process worked well and efforts are
underway to assess one main office per year.
The Chancellor suggested a timetable for assessing: Athletics in Fall 2010, Student Affairs in
Fall 2011, and Finance and Operations in Fall 2012.
A task force will be assembled to begin reviewing Athletics
next semester; the report will be completed next fall. Dr. Wilson will discuss this during the IDC
report.
Student Rating of Instruction
Dr. Dohse referred to SD0308F passed last month on
the Student Rating of Instruction. The
evaluation instruments will now be
administered in the last week of class.
He received feedback from secretaries who were alarmed at what this
change will mean for them. Some
secretaries, such as Humanities and Mathematics, have as many as 1,000
evaluations to type. Given the new
timeline to administer the evaluations, the results will likely come back
later.
Dr. Moseley asked if faculty had been
notified of the new policy and who is responsible for notifying the
faculty? Dr. Dohse replied faculty have
not yet been notified, but Dr. Fernandes will do so.
Dr.
Moseley said two issues have been discussed: whether or not evaluations should
be given online, and the timing of the evaluations. The new policy does not increase the number
of evaluations, but it does squeeze the time for assistants to type them. He suggested that when Dr. Fernandes
announces the new policy that she ask faculty members to be patient with
assistants who will be starting the process later. Dr. Cole did not foresee a problem as long as
faculty receive evaluation results before they have to distribute their syllabi
for the next semester. FWDC will
continue to look at this new process.
IV.
Institutional Development
Committee Report
Dr. Betsy
Wilson reported for the Institutional Development Committee.
Second
The following document was considered for
Second Reading:
IDC 2:
Program
Assessment at UNC
After
several attempts, a friendly amendment was accepted to the second
sentence: “It is the basis of our growth
as a community of learning.”
Dr.
Sabo suggested attaching a statement saying that it is IDC’s responsibility to
disseminate this to Department Chairs to implement. Perhaps a Sense of the Senate after IDC 2
passes. IDC 2 passed without dissent
as amended and became Senate Document 0408F.
Discussion
turned to implementing the new policy and placing it on websites to highlight
that this is not just for academic programs.
Dr. Fernandes volunteered to ask the Senior Staff to disseminate
it. Dr. Sabo supported sending the
policy to Senior Staff; perhaps the Chancellor will delegate one member of the
Senior Staff to be responsible for calling people’s attention to it so it does
not dissipate in a few years.
Dr. Fernandes said the
policy is in the spirit of what the Senior Staff is striving for with assessment
and she believed they would welcome the document. We will have an Assessment Director this year
and that would be a place to institutionalize it.
It was agreed that IDC will
send the policy to Dr. Fernandes. Dr.
Dohse noted that having it on the internet is important.
Assessment of Administrative
Offices
IDC
is discussing future assessment of administrative offices. They are aware of the Chancellor’s suggestion
to begin assessing Athletics. IDC plans
to distribute a document for first reading at the next meeting.
Dr. Moseley said the
Executive Committee discussed the possibility that the ongoing year by year
assessment of our major programs might require the rehabilitation and
repopulation of the Institutional Effectiveness Committee. IEC may be used to supervise periodic reviews.
Athletics
Dr. Gary Nallan reported that
every ten years every NCAA schools faces a certification process. UNCA is two or three years away from our recertification
process. The Senate may want to keep this
in mind. The Athletic Department will
undergo an internal review by a peer review team that examines it towards
certifying us for another ten year period.
Dr. Dohse said the internal review prepares us for the external
review. We will also have SACS in
mind. This will be our third
certification.
V. Faculty
Welfare and Development Committee Report
Dr.
Merritt Moseley gave the Faculty Welfare and Development Committee Report.
Second
The
following documents were considered for Second Reading:
FWDC 3:
Proposal to
Eliminate the Asheville Institute Advisory Committee
(SD1205S; Faculty Handbook 10.4.25)
This
committee does not function and has proven to be unnecessary.
FWDC
3 passed without dissent and became Senate Document 0508F.
FWDC
4: Proposal to Eliminate the Adjunct
Faculty Committee (SD0500F; Faculty Handbook 10.4.17)
Though
administrative concern for the welfare of adjunct faculty remains important,
the Adjunct Faculty Committee, as conceived, has proven unworkable. FWDC
4 passed without dissent and became Senate Document 0608F.
FWDC
5: Proposal to Revise the Distinguished Scholars Committee
(Revision to SD5500S;
Faculty Handbook Section 10.3.1)
Participation by faculty in the
selection of honorary degree recipients is an important part of shared
governance. FWDC 5 restores a function
that was deleted from the Distinguished Scholars Committee in 1999. The Chancellor is in accord with the
proposal. An editorial correction was
made to the proposal. FWDC 5 passed as amended without
dissent and became Senate Document 0708F.
Dr. Moseley said this committee is composed of four full
professors elected by Faculty Senate from the faculty at large. FWDC will make a recommendation to the
Senate.
VI. Academic
Dr.
First
The
following document was distributed for First Reading:
APC
1: Ongoing Review of General Education
at UNCA
This
document summarizes what APC has determined is the most efficient way to
investigate and examine general education.
In the past such reviews have been done episodically every five or six
years. APC’s objective is to make review
routine. APC 1 is an agenda of how
different aspects of general education and ILS can be sequentially
reviewed. This does not come to the
Senate moved and seconded because APC wants suggestions from the Senate on what
should be incorporated.
Highlights
of discussion:
·
Dr. Moseley asked if the Foundation courses are a subset
of the ILS program called the Learning Foundations.
o
Yes. Departments
do not have their assessment procedures in place yet. The timeline has been adjusted to give departments
time to do this. The new IDC document on
assessment will help. The Review
Delivery Effectiveness is being formalized so that the reports can be
publicized. The report is expected to
come from Dean Katz.
·
Dr. Pierce asked the difference between the Delivery
Effectiveness report and the ILS assessment report.
o
The Delivery Effectiveness report has an
administrative orientation dealing with enrollments, number of courses
available, percentage of courses filled, demand for courses. It gives some idea of whether sufficient courses
are available. An administrator can do
this more rapidly without undue burden on faculty.
o
ILS assessment reports have to do with the
proponents of integrative liberal studies and with student learning. ILSOC is currently designing and implementing
some of their own assessments that will be complete in about a year. APC will review these.
·
The review’s objective is to establish a baseline and experiment with
procedures for ongoing assessment of the program. Its goals are to study ideas which might
strengthen ILS and to consider suggestions as to how resources could best be
allocated to improve general education.
It will not be a quick fix, but will provide a clearer picture of
opportunity costs. That is why APC is starting
with the faculty perceptions. For
example, Dr. Bell came up with a set of survey questions that tap into
opportunity costs. The survey also has a
series of close-ended questions and two major open-ended items: What do you like about ILS? What do you not like about ILS?
·
Dr.
Pierce said one concern is the cost to the Humanities of the rest of ILS. We need comparative data on how many faculty
members were teaching humanities before we instituted the ILS program and how
many are teaching there now. We need to
ask the right questions.
o
These
concerns have come up in APC. Conceptually
APC was aware of these issues and it is trying to figure out ways to
systematically examine them.
o
Dean
Katz said some of these questions are in the 2007-2008 report APC received at
the end of last year that it has not had a chance to look at yet. It is on the ILS website. It shows the distribution and reports on the
intensives in terms of allocations, cluster demand, and data on the
intensives.
·
Dr.
Konz asked if APC expects the Senate to vote on this document – or is APC
reporting and requesting feedback from the Senate on the process.
o
APC
prefers feedback from the Senate on process, but other members of APC may have
different ideas. APC did not take a
formal vote, but members agreed to take it to the Senate. If we decide to go with this as a document,
it will be moved and seconded in December.
·
Dr.
Konz responded: in terms of faculty governance, there are two distinct areas
that would both require Senate approval of process as opposed to feedback:
·
Establishment
of an ongoing review process
·
Review
of the ILS program as it stands.
·
Dr.
Larson asked how APC envisions the identification of a set of learning outcomes
for our university.
o
APC is not dictating learning objectives in any way
– these have been defined by the documents that implemented the ILS
program. APC’s role in examining the ILS
program is to determine whether or not the ILS program is in fact achieving the
specified outcomes that were approved by the Senate six years ago. Rather than establishing goals, APC will examine
the degree to which relevant components of our institution understand those
goals, how they interpret them, how they pursue them, and how effective we are
in accomplishing those goals. APC will
make the information available and develop an ongoing cycle of regular
reporting. Instead of a snap shot report
at a point in time, longitudinal data will be available.
·
Dr. Larson commented: this program was established with specific
goals; enough time has passed that we can begin to examine how well it is achieving
those goals.
·
Dr. Pierce asked for clarification: APC 1 says, “The review’s objective is not to overhaul or redesign
the ILS curriculum, but to establish a baseline and experiment with procedures
for ongoing assessment of the program.”
What if the consensus that APC discovers is that ILS should be
overhauled?
o
That
is something that the Faculty Senate
and the faculty need to decide. That is
what happened after the last review of general education in the late 1990s. The general feeling then was that it was
outdated and we needed something new.
APC will be the review agency that gathers data and provides information
so faculty can make informed decisions.
VII. Administrative
Reports
Academic Affairs
Provost
Delivering the Curriculum
Planning Group
Dr. Fernandes has established a
planning group on delivering the curriculum (
Criteria for Travel Approval
The Chancellor has asked the
Vice Chancellors to review all requests for travel. Dr. Fernandes has assembled a group (Gregg
Kormanik, Alice Weldon, Claudel McKenzie, Bill Miller, Peg Downes) to propose
criteria for evaluating essential travel in Academic Affairs by December 1. The group will present the criteria to department
chairs and program directors so they will have some idea whether travel
requests will be approved or not.
Dr. Fernandes said Dr. Larson
asked an essential question earlier:
What is the locus for developing the learning outcomes for the
university? To prepare for the next
accreditation, we need to agree upon a process for discussing learning
outcomes. Dr. Fernandes will discuss
this with the Executive Committee.
Questions
Dr. Sabo asked when the
announcements for the Deans’ positions will be made. Dr. Fernandes hopes to make the announcement
before Thanksgiving.
Student Affairs Association
Report
Rob Waskom, Executive for
Campus Affairs, reported on behalf of the SGA.
Mr. Waskom reported that faculty
permission for course withdrawal was reinstituted this year and students were
not consulted on this change. SGA is
discussing the change with the administration.
Bill 52: Faculty Permission for Course Withdrawal: Therefore be it resolved, that the permission of the instructor of a
course should not be required for a student to withdraw from that course.
Tuition
and Fees Committees
SGA has representatives on the Tuition
and Fees Committees. SGA is recommending
two additional student fees:
·
Free taxi rides for students. Freshmen currently receive three free taxi
rides per semester from another within 25 miles of campus to campus. SGA wants to extend that emergency taxi ride
service to one per semester for everyone who is older than a freshman.
·
$10 international service learning course fee
SGA
recommended raising tuition the maximum amount allowed: 3.2 percent.
·
25% of the increase in tuition has to go toward financial
aid to hold students harmless to that increase.
·
25% goes toward increasing faculty salaries up to
the 80 percentile of our peers.
·
Given that the State appropriations are decreasing,
SGA recommended the remaining 50% of the increase to maintain faculty and staff
positions on campus or to fill the positions that we have been trying to fill
for a long time. There was a
recommendation from Senior Staff to fund the equipment for the
Textbooks
The Senate discussed SGA’s request that textbook
lists be made available to students eight weeks before the start of class. Dr. Moseley noted that there has been
considerable pressure statewide to go to a system of renting textbooks. Our SGA has insisted that the best education
requires that we continue with our current system. A corollary to that was a request to make the
book titles available to students earlier.
In general, Senators advocated for an administrative solution rather
than asking faculty to send the textbook lists individually. The information is generated through book
orders and could be made available to all students. We are under a mandate to reduce costs to our
students and the Bookstore understands that.
Dr. Bell volunteered to follow up on this issue.
VIII. Old Business
There was
no Old Business.
IX. New Business
Pizza Party for SECC
participants
Dr. Moseley announced that those who
made a contribution to the State Employees Combined Campaign are invited to a pizza
party today at 5:30 at Asheville Pizza.
Kudos
Dr. Pierce thanked Alicia
Shope and others responsible for DegPar the degree progress advising
report. It is an awesome advising
tool. A round of applause followed.
Three Webinars on Student
Learning Assessment
The Center for Teaching and
Learning and the Office of Academic Affairs are offering three webinars on
Student Learning Assessment from 1:30-2:30pm on November 25, December 4, and
December 11. Seating will be limited to
25 people. There are still opening at
this time.
X. Adjourn
Dr. Dohse adjourned the
meeting at 4:35pm.
Respectfully submitted
by: Sandra Gravely
Executive Committee