LSUHSC-SOM Faculty Assembly
Meeting Minutes
December 8, 2011
Opening:
The regular meeting of the LSUHSC-SOM Faculty Assembly was called to order at 4:00 p.m. on
December 8, 2011 in Room 7 on the 6th floor of the Lions Building.
In Attendance:
Present: Ali, Murtuza; Bagby, Gregory; Cormier, Stephania; Engel, Lee; Erny, Eirinn; Foster, Tim;
Gutierrez, Amy; Happel, Kyle; Hollenbach, Andrew; Holman, Stacey; Howes, Richard; Kantrow,
Stephen; Levitzky, Mike; Lo-Blais, Betty; McDermott, Diana; Neumann, Donna; Winsauer, Peter
Absent: Boulmay, Brian; Breslin, Jerome; Hunt, John; Kapusta, Dan
Proxies: Donna Neumann for Andrew Catling; Andrew Hollenbach for Judy Crabtree, Peter
Winsauer for Robin McGoey; Murtuza Ali for Jennifer Avegano; Stephania Cormier for Stephen
Brierre; Kyle Happel for Stephen Kantrow; for Timothy Foster for Joy Sturtevant.
Non-Delegate Faculty Present: N/A
3.
Approval of Minutes for November
Minutes approved unanimously.
4.
Reports
a.
Executive Board – Greg Bagby. Search for chair is moving forward after 3 candidates
have made first visits and second visits are being planned. The Dean was informed of
our recommendation to the Faculty Senate to discuss tenure and the tenure clock. The
Dean updated us on the medical educations programs being planned in Lafayette and
Baton Rouge.
b.
SOM Administrative Council – Dr. Andrew Hollenbach. The new clinical building on St.
Charles will be refurbished to include 30% more office space. Recipients of the LSUHSCSOM Alumni Awards have been identified and awards will be given out in the near
future.
c.
Senate Report – Dr. Mike Levitzky. An active search for a new Vice Chancellor for
Administration and Finance is being conducted and the position is being advertised in
the Times Picayune and on LSUHSC website. LSUHSC-NO has a Text Message Alert
System (TMAS) to advise faculty, staff, and students about emergency matters.
Everyone was and is encouraged to sign up for these alerts, yet it is unclear who and
under what circumstances messages will be sent through TMAS. The Executive Board of
the Senate plans to meet with Dr. Hollier to address these questions.
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d.
5.
SOM Newsletter report (The Pulse) – Dr. Andrew Hollenbach. The Pulse moved to Dr.
Letourneau for approval and should be out before Christmas.
Old business/Discussion items
a.
Department Head evaluations – Dr. Peter Winsauer. Peter met with Dr. Ann Tilton, who
has been working to develop this evaluation using survey monkey. Currently, there is a
fairly complete survey developed that includes 34 questions. Peter had several
questions for the assembly to discuss including: 1) what level of anonymity should be
provided to encourage participation from faculty?; 2) who should receive the results
from the survey?; 3) should only aggregate information be sent to the Dean? A great
deal of discussion followed and several things were decided. Do not include open
ended questions. Most people comfortable filling out the survey without regard to
rank. Similar to the Faculty Forward Survey, when anonymity could be compromised
(e.g., due to small size of faculty), then responses should be aggregated. It became
apparent that many of the remote sites have little interaction with department heads
and more interaction with section heads; therefore, there needs to be some means or
mechanism by which faculty can identify who they are working with at these remote
sites, and it seems logical that their evaluations should be of their immediate
supervisors and not the department head. Regarding the discussion of who should see
the survey responses, the consensus was that the Dean needed to be the primary
recipient of the results; however, the results will also need to be shared, in some form,
with immediate supervisors and department heads. Section chiefs would be reviewed
by clinical faculty that they administer, Department Heads would be reviewed by
Section Chiefs that they administer, and the Dean would use information gathered and
aggregated through this survey to evaluate his Department Heads. It is foreseeable that
this evaluation mechanism could be expanded to cover Center Directors.
Peter asked that further insight or thoughts on the evaluation process be emailed to
him. One thought put forward on this process was that the staffs of most departments
are too small to allow for the evaluation of department heads by staff, although a
question on the survey could ask how department heads treated departmental staff.
The assembly decided to invite Dr. Tilton to the January meeting to address additional
questions regarding the survey.
c.
6.
FA Awards for 2011-2012 – Dr. Stephania Cormier. A committee was appointed to
evaluate nominations for the 2011-2012 FA Awards. Dr. Levitzky volunteered to chair
the committee and Drs. Lee, Ali and Happel agreed to be members of the committee.
Stephania is currently receiving nominations and will forward all nominations to the
committee. A reminder for nominations is to be resent to all faculty when we return
from Holiday break.
New business/Announcements
a.
The FA website needs to be updated and it was suggested that “Obituaries” and
“Faculty Survey” in the left hand menu be replaced with “Actions and Announcements”.
This new menu item would contain information pertinent to the faculty with most
recent items at the top of the page. Information would include obituaries (to include
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b.
links to the Times-Picayune) and items like the FA survey, Links would be to on campus
sites such as SOM calendars and off campus sites such as the LSU Faculty Senate.
Dr. Gutierrez suggested that we webcast or web archive “high” level seminars and grand
rounds to remote campuses. Of course, we would have to obtain copyright permission.
Adjournment: Meeting was adjourned at 5:08 p.m. by Dr. Greg Bagby. The next general
meeting will be at 4:00 pm on January 5th in Conference Room 7 on the 6th floor of the Lions
Building.
Minutes submitted by:
Approved by:
Stephania A. Cormier
[Type name here]
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