Minutes
Faculty Senate Meeting
September 18, 2013
Professor Nelson called the meeting to order at 2:35 PM
Present: Professor Candice Nelson, Lacey Wootton, Barlow Burke, Daniel Abraham, Sheila
Bedford, John Douglass,Todd Eisenstadt, Larry Engle, Bryan Fantie, John Heywood, Alex
Hodges, Iris Krasnow, Jun Lu, Gwanhoo Lee, Stacey Marien, Glenn Moomau, Mohamed Nimer,
John Nolan, Arturo Porzecanski, Gemma Puglisi, Jerzy Sapieyevski, Matthew Taylor, Schirs
Simpson, Elizabeth Wordon, Provost Scott Bass and Dean Phyllis Peres
Chair’s Report – Candy Nelson
Professor Nelson welcomed everyone to the meeting. She announced to the senators that the
agenda and minutes will be sent out to the entire faculty a week ahead of the scheduled meetings.
This will be done as a mass mailing through OIT and will be from Candice Nelson.
Professor Nelson asked for the approval of the minutes from the May 1, 2013 meeting. The
senate VOTED and the minutes were approved unanimously.
Professor Nelson informed the senators that at the beginning of each year the Executive
Committee elects one at-large and one general senator from the senate body to serve on the
Executive Committee. This year they have selected John Douglass and Elizabeth Worden.
Professor Nelson asked if there were any other nominees. There were no other nominees so the
senate VOTED by acclamation and John Douglass and Elizabeth Worden were elected
unanimously in favor.
Professor Nelson announced that this year's faculty retreat is on October 11, 2013. This year is
the small retreat for leadership. Every other year the retreat is off campus usually at the Eastern
Shore, but this year it will be held at WCL and the invitees will be a selected group of leaders.
The senate body is invited and Professor Nelson asked that all members try to attend.
Professor Nelson stated that in an attempt to follow the Green Campus Project the senate will no
longer be printing out the handout packets for the meetings. She asked that the senators either
print and bring their own copies or bring a laptop, Ipad or some electronic device of choice to
have them digitally available while at the meetings. Concern was expressed that not enough
electrical plugs would available but the senate staff assured the senators that this would be
worked out with Audio Visual.
Professor Nelson presented the update on the Family Work Life Balance. This included that
lactation rooms are now available on campus. There was an announcement in Today@AU last
week. The information was made available for the chairs and division directors at the meeting
last week. It is also available by typing lactation rooms on the AU website. The benefits office
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has been working on establishing an emergency care provider. They will be meeting with the two
finalists next week to make a decision and begin getting this benefit available soon.There will be
a website specifically for Family Work Life Balance Issues which should available soon.
Professor Nelson stated that she has seen a prototype and it will make it much easier to find
information. This site should be up and running in mid October. Professor Nelson stated that she
is working with Karen Froslid-Jones on the work life balance survey, but due to middle states,
she has been unable to get much time with Karen.
Dean Peres and Professor Nelson have been working on the delay of tenure procedures that the
senate passed last May and will be bringing those to the Executive Committee and the senate in
October.
Provost Report – Scott Bass
Provost Bass stated that he wanted to give an overview of the enrollment status:
•
Undergraduate online learning during summer has grown every year for the last three
years in a row. He stated he anticipates it will continue to grow and be as large as the face
to face classes which will eventually exceed the face to face classes.
•
The shortfall was at the graduate level. There was a technical error in CAS’s target
numbers. It was larger than was realistic. As a result of that single error the shortfall was
about 1 million dollars in the summer revenue target. It was still a strong summer.
•
The target for freshman has exceeded expectations. The diversity in this class remains
about 19% Pell eligible, 10% first generation and 30% are minority.
•
Attrition has increased. From freshman to sophomore it was 1.5% higher than exactly one
year ago. The concern is that attrition appears to be in the most vulnerable populations.
This year almost as many students are here from California as from New Jersey. This
brings issues of homesickness especially from the first generation group.
•
Mentorship of the freshman class is the highest it ever has been. A quarter of the
mentorship program is for the international students.
•
Transfers are 29 students shy of the target. More articulation agreements are being built
with community colleges. Study abroad is a little shy of projections.
•
Graduate student shortfalls were in SOC and CAS. SIS was very close, just slightly
under. KSB exceeded their numbers and SPA just slightly exceeded their numbers.WCL is
slightly under for full time students but much higher for part-time.
Provost Bass stated that overall, the graduate level met 97.5% of the target numbers. From a
budget point of view it will probably be a near wash. When added together summer and fall
shortfalls are estimated at about the 4 to 5 million dollar range. For an institution with about a
600 million dollar budget, this is less than about a 2% item. Last year we had a somewhat similar
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situation and closed with a balanced budget. Provost Bass stated that he would have liked to have
seen a surplus this year but that does not look like it will happen. Next year this might be more of
a challenge because we pushed the enrollment targets harder at the graduate level. For SPA their
target number is about 1million dollars more in revenue, for SPExS a million in revenue and for
CAS $750k more in revenue over and above what their target would have been this year. In
SPExS, the Washington Semester Program did not have a good year. This was anticipated. The
target was 200 students and there are 119. It is anticipated that the numbers will be met next
year.
Provost Bass stated that it is next year he is concerned about. The graduate level has only grown
80 students over ten years. What is happening in this region couldn’t be more different with
other competitors expanding and building. We really need to expand the AU footprint at the
graduate level. Overall this year has a good story but next year it will depend on what is done
with development and enrollments.
Provost Bass informed the senate that he will have the opportunity to speak the BOT at their
upcoming retreat. He will speak with them about areas that he wants to focus on. These are long
term multi year agenda items. Provost Bass stated the following:
1. Diversity and inclusion in the community. It is a challenge to be a inclusive community
where students stay and feel welcomed and have pride in the institution. The university
has done many interventions to understand. Map Works is one and 54% of freshman have
completed a survey. Additionally we have the Care Network, and the residents hall
advisors input,which all help us to understand the experiences of our students, but we are
not where we would like to be on retention. Provost Bass stated that he has asked two of
our leading research faculty members, Professors David Pitts and Seth Gershenson, to
assist in terms of doing a major study that would look at admission, success in courses
and what are the factors that are causing students to leave or do poorly. This study is
waiting for IRB approval.This will allow us in a year or more to target some interventions
that are more precise to our students.
2. University wide discussion on learning outcomes and integrating our academic
learning outcomes with skill sets that are designed for the workplace. What is being
seen from surveys from employers is that there is a disconnect between what employers
say they want and what is being done at the universities. Teamwork, integration of
information and creative problem solving with the ability to have these broader set of
skills and insight is more valuable than having a specific accomplishment in a discipline
or profession. They are looking more for the application. Additionally, students are
saying that they are not comfortable with the preparation with their quantitative skills and
depending on the school or college students are not comfortable with their writing skills.
We are already looking into writing within specific fields or areas that is distinct from the
general writing that is already required.
3. Undergraduate access to content. With the use of individual hand held devices
students are able to challenge information that professors are experts in. Students are
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often using information incorrectly and misreading the information. There will be a new
initiative in the honors program that will have three faculty from different disciplines
working together to address this problem.
4. Interdisciplinary research is an area that has been talked about for a long time. This is
very hard to put together but because AU is a mid size institution we have been making
an effort to spread resources across the campus to assist with this effort. We want to
reinforce and support faculty who want to work together on larger scale projects on
important questions and are providing support to make this happen.
5. High impact research is something that was worked on this summer. We had an
opportunity to work with The Brookings Institution. Brookings does scholarly work and
they publish studies just like AU does. They put them in journals and book format but
they also have high visibility for their work. They present materials to congress, they
influence public policy and they have real traction in their work. The university would
like to bring more clarity to the support of the individual faculty member’s work. What
was learned at Brookings is that it is early in the work not at the end of the work that a
strategy is found to move the work into high impact.
Provost Bass stated that these are the five long term areas that will be discussed for several years
and that he will be presenting briefly to the BOT. These are challenges all universities face. He
stated that the university has arrived at the overarching academic stature as an institution but to
distinguish ourselves it is not enough to be very good or to be similar to other fine research
universities. What distinguishes a great university is tackling some of the problems that everyone
else knows are very hard and doing it in a way no one else has done before.
Professor Nelson said that typically the senate committee reports are done at the last meeting of
the year, but because of the full agenda last May, the presentations will be today.
Committee on Faculty Actions, (CFA) - Stacey Marien, Co-Chair - Librarian Marien stated
that the CFA reviewed many files in AY 2012-2013. The CFA web site has been redesigned to
make the process easier for the faculty coordinators, faculty and CFA members. The CFA
guidelines that are reviewed and revised annually have already had some corrections submitted
for next spring’s revisions so she asked if over the course of the year if any more concerns or
changes come up to please submit them to the CFA by early Spring.
Committee on Learning Assessment, (COLA) – Sheila Bedford, Chair – Professor Bedford
stated that in one word to describe the committee if asked she would use growth. The committee
has seen growth in the overall level of assessment reporting on campus. There was growth and
improvement in the number of outreach oppurtunities on campus so the committee made a
conscious effort to reach out to faculty on campus by offering workshops, office hours and one
on one faculty consultation to help improve the overall assessment of student learning. The other
area that growth was seen in was the use of assessment results. There were more programs
incorporating changes into their curriculum and courses. We are at a stage where if we look back
to last year to what the overall reporting levels where, there was overall growth from years past.
There were over 90 programs that reported some level of assessment activities. Upcoming we
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have the assessment reporting deadline for all units on October 1, 2013. There has already been
positive feedback from units. Over 70 units have reported that they have been engaged in
assessment activity. The committee is looking to review the activity but to also provide feedback
and to have the summary of results documented for the middle states review.
There will be an open office hour workshop on September 25, 2013 in the Provost’s Conference
Room from 2 PM to 4PM. Kathy McAdams will be there as the assessment advisor as a resource
as well as other committee members to be sure that everyone has the help that they need to
document their assessement activity.
Committee on Academic Budget and Benefits, (AB&B) - John Nolan, Chair – Professor
Nolan stated that last year was the active year for the two year budget cycle. The committee met
seven times starting last summer to get ahead. The committee worked to get some budget
recommendations from the senate. The Committee on Information Services was the only
committee to provide recommendations. In the future it is the hope of the AB&B Committee that
the faculty as a whole or the senate committees come up with more recommendations to take to
the table for negotiation. The process was long and very involved. For the first time the faculty
had four voting members on the University Budget Committee. Some of the items that the
committee presented were for the emergency family care, modest adjustments to the fee schedule
for health insurance for the lower paid university employees, work life balance and a range of
topics for benefits for various faculty and staff. Professors Nolan and Douglass met with some of
the students that were protesting against the tution increase and felt it was important to listen and
work with them on this issue. The committee tried to include the undergraduate and graduate
students in the budget issues. It took time to get an undergraduate student but once the seat was
filled it appeared that the student learned and moderated his stand after learning about the
university. The graduate seat was harder to include as graduate students work and finding a time
to include them in a meeting was very difficult. Additionally, the committee would like to be a
part of the recommendation process early on in the process as well as be able to have access to
more budget year information to look at multi year trends to see how things are developing.
Discussion needs to take place about a course release for the chair of the AB&B Committee
during the active budget cycle since they are involved with two budget committees, the senate,
the senate executive committee and the senate roundtable, all of which have meetings making it
very difficult to carry a full course load. The committee also expressed concern about the amount
of money that is borrowed expecially in the construction area and if this might be something the
university takes a look at approaching differently.
Graduate Curriculum Committee, (GCC) – Jun Lu, Chair - Professor Lu stated that the
committee consists of 9 members from across the campus. Curriculum was moved online into a
Sharepoint site. The committee would meet face to face when a proposal was difficult and
needed more conversation to complete. The committee managed to complete a two week turn
around for an approval or contact was made to the teaching unit within two weeks for revisions.
In the spring and summer sessions alone the committee reviewed and approved 23 program
proposals and 36 course proposals. Professor Lu said about 10 proposals were related to online
programs and 8 proposals were related to the changes that happened in the graduate regulations.
The GCC had their first meeting of the year and re-elected Professor Lu as the chair for this
year. The committee also decided to take on the survey that the UGC created to assist with the
approval of the GCC proposals.
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Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, (UGC) – Larry Engel, Chair – Professor Engel
stated that he was on sabbatical the second semester of last year. He was replaced by Professor
Mary Hansen. It was the intention for Professor Hansen and Professor Engel to co-chair together,
however Professor Hansen had to resign due to a very large work load that would conflict with
the responsibilities of the UGC. The hopes to set a calendar for proposal approval was not
approved by the Executive Committee, and the Executive Committee requested that approval be
made in a two week turn around time frame. The committee met and agreed to this schedule.
Professor Engel stated that he informed the committee that at anytime a member felt the need to
have a face to face meeting he would be happy to schedule one. There were 31 proposals
reviewed of which 28 were approved, 9 were approved after revisions, (the majority of the
revisions involved learning outcomes), 3 were not approved for failure to respond to requests for
revisions and major conceptual problems with individualized major proposals.
Committee on Information Services, (CIS) – Chris Simpson, Co-Chair – Professor Simpson
stated that the committee did quite a bit of work last year which included contributions to the
academic technology budget. The committee did provide material to the AB&B Committee for
review. The last three years the committee has put forward a proposal concerning Fair
Information Practices Policy which is not the same as the Fair Use Policy. This is not about
intellectual property question, it’s about accountability for gathering and using data. This was
originated by the Federal Trade Commission and is used by the Federal Government. OIT agrees
this is a good innovation. The committee contributed to the discussion of the digital files for
actions and a few of the members were involved with the discussion of MOOCs at AU. To
improve the communication of the committee with the various types of information technology
issues, the committee has three co-chairs. One is the liaison to the senate, one for the Academic
Technology Sterring Committee and the third liaison is on any other type of committee
communication. This year the committee will be doing an indepth report on some academic
technology issues which are of immediate interest and concern to the senate so we will ask you
to provide any of this type of information. The committee plans to improve the digital resources
for committee meetings both for remote participation and the use of sharepoint as an archive and
digital meeting space. Professor Simpson also stated that they plan to create an “opt in” list serve
for the campus community on academic technology questions, news and policy debates. This
will be available if someone is interested in getting regular news from several sources on this
topic. The committee hopes this will roll out in the next month.
Beyond SET’s – Naomi Baron, Professor and Executive Director of CTRL
Professor Baron stated that she would like to begin by thanking Marilyn Goldhammer whom she
has worked with together as a team for a little over a year on this report. The goal of this task is
to figure out what role SETs should play in the ways we evaluate teaching at AU. It is not clear
that this mechanism is working as productively as we think it should be. We have been working
with the mind set that not “one policy fits all” for tenure line faculty, term and adjunct faculty.
The roles as teachers are very different and we need to think about them differently.
Professor Baron stated that when the revisions to the Faculty Manual were made they very
explicitly say that evaluation of teaching needs to go beyond what the students say for the SET
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scores. The university did some very nice clarification a couple of years ago of what the
standards are for promotion and tenure within each unit and those are available online on the
DAA’s web site, and it is this level of clarity that we might need to bring to the specific issue of
teaching because it was found that this level of clarity does not exist. It was noted that faculty
came to CTRL asking how to raise their SETs, not how do I improve my teaching. Because we
knew that pressure had been placed on professors from their leaders, we knew more so that we
needed to address this issue. It was also clear that SETs can be useful for faculty when they are
looked at carefully. What can be learned from them is very different from how they are being
used to decide if one will remain at this university and merit. In the Spring of 2012 CTRL had
noon time conversations throughout the year and going beyond SETs was discussed. Information
was gained from WCL and their very careful peer observation evaluation of their faculty
members. This is very rich and time consuming but it is something that might be useful on main
campus. We had other meetings in the fall and then in the summer of 2012 with the Senate
Executive Committee to ask how to go about this project. What was decided was to undertake a
survey. The survey was from all the chairs and division directors who we could get to answer.
There were requests sent to 34 units and there were 27 responses. We are also going to look at
what other universities do in more detail hopefully in the near future. Information was obtained
of what other sources are done beside a SETs form, but to actually find out the data of how much
SETs count; this is very difficult as other universities like AU do not know either. Professor
Baron referenced the report and highlighted some of the data from the survey. It was clear that
faculty’s perception is that SETs are what really matters.
Professor Baron discussed the recommendations in the report on page 5 that she stated were
partly created by herself and Marilyn Goldhammer and some by her alone from her experience.
Some of the highlighted items are as follows:
•
A cap or maximum on how much student evaluations of how we teach are the
best evaluation of how we teach. Coming to a number is the question and what
other parts of being a good teacher should be included
•
CTRL would continue to give workshops on how do you productively read and
use the students’ opinions
•
Work with faculty on issues of peer evaluation if they are interested. This is not
suggesting that every academic unit needs to have peer observation/evaluation as
part of its evaluation of teaching metric. CTRL is available to assist with this
process on a volunteer basis
•
Faculty teaching portfolios could be another tool and has been discussed here at
AU in the past. This can be a very productive tool but what information is needed
to create it. Or, providing a statement from the faculty member on how they felt
the course went and what was important and what didn’t go well
Professor Baron stated that there is one more piece that she would like to add to the puzzle and
referenced page 6, which is about, “Distribution of Responsibilities in Pedagogical Mentoring.”
She stated that after consulting with other valued members of the community the question is
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where the responsibility of mentoring for teaching faculty lies. It was stated that it should be
within the unit. CTRL is available to assist.
Professor Nelson asked if there were any items to discuss for the good of the order. No
discussion was had.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:40 PM
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