Humanities and Sciences Senate Meeting Minutes
1 March 02
Present: Baldessare, Brcak, Brown, Maglioni, Schwartz, Stephenson, Swensen, and Trotti
Excused: Kolberg, Lopez-Arias, Moore, and Wasyliw
Guest: Howard Erlich, Dean School of H & S and Michael Taves, ACCS
Meeting called to order at 4:05
Welcome: The Senate welcomed Dean Erlich and Mr. Taves to the monthly meeting
Promotion to Professor: Dean Howard Erlich
Mr. Erlich reported that the requests for promotion to professor was enormous and that next
year there would be at least eight requests for the promotion. He further reported that there
is no school wide standard practice for promotion. Mr. Erlich said that he felt the profile of a
full professor needs to be addressed by H & S.
Mr. Erlich cited a need for two Senate and two Chair representatives to work with him on
reviewing current policy and possible changes.
Questions:
Q: A Senate member asked if the problem was number of faculty or the process?
Ans: Number is a problem. There’s no one to assist people considering promotion.
Academic Computing: Michael Taves
Mr.
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Taves gave a brief account on the development of ACCS.
Have four new people on line to work with the system.
System and support is better than it’s been for four years
Resources don’t always match demand
New system on line
Disconnections are down
Can now send color email and automated response to aid recruitment
Working plans
 New resources to assist the web. Everything is moving to the web
 Hiring a new web support person to assist faculty this summer
 Faculty will receive instructional support
 Classroom tech support will be separate from regular tech support help desk
 Recommending that more people get engaged in priority planning for tech
ACCS liasion program will assist in testing the clean up of glitches
Reports that president has ideas for a task force
Instructional support services. The money, for support, to be diverted from last year
Developing a fair new procedure.
Questions:
Q: How do student workers operate? Is ACCS hiring students for their educational growth or
are they expected to be of help?
A: Training is intensive but the workers are students. The standard should be one call.
Q: Can we have a faculty help line and not just an instructional line?
A: Interesting notion. Students do have supervisors.
Q: Is ACCS understaffed? How can faculty be of assistance?
A: ACCS has a new staff and they are making a huge difference.
A discussion ensued over the use of software and the problems is causes on campus public use
computers.
Q: How can we establish an interface with faculty?
A: Recommendation to the Dean who will then pass it on to the president.
Suggestion: Make the request straight to the president. We, as faculty, should not be
expected to become technicians as well.
Diane: We should first take this concern to the Faculty Council, since we don’t represent the
entire college.
Taves: Resources are going to go where they are most needed, which is not always faculty
development.
Q: Is it the school’s objective to become an inovator?
A: Howard thinks this should be looked into. It hasn’t received much air time by other Deans
or the Provost. This impacts jobs and senior positions.
Q: Any idea of how much the various schools depend on ACCS?
A: Service request trends follows the number of people. The exception is the Park School, who
have in house support for student computer facilities.
Mr. Taves was thanked for his time.
Tech committee in H & S?
- a person from ACCS?
- Should we convey this to the Provost and Faculty Council?
- Marketing is considered a higher priority than faculty
Would a few Senate members like to put together a proposal?
New Ad Hoc committee is Ed and Cory
The Senate is being asked to represent H & S at conferences and other committees.
Discussion ensued about the structure of the H & S Senate.
- each Senator representing specific departments
- H & S Senate web site
- Release time for Senate president
- Newsletter
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Send minute summary to H & S faculty
Q: Who would be reviewing personnel procedures? The person would define promotion to full
professor?
A: The question will be put to Howard.
Meeting adjourned at 5:47 p.m.
We meet again on April 5th
Submitted by Cynthia Baldessare