Faculty Assembly meeting, 1-29-16: MINUTES
I. SPE; report from Associate Dean Michael Horswell:
Since last fall, the committee has met 2-3 times to respond to faculty concerns.
THere's now a new version, but it's not yet ready to be sent to all the faculty, but it will
come out soon. Key points:
--recommended that the review take place every 7 years, not every 5
--still a peer review, a peer committee set up by the college and according to
college standards
--the expectations will also be established by the college units
--they will say whether faculty members meet, exceed, or fail to meet
expectations
--if they exceed, their salary will be raised by 3%
--if they fail to meet expectations, the faculty member shall, with his chair, a
multiyear plan to reestablish ability to meet them
--Dean may meet with the peer committee but may not override their judgement
Question: When will this be implemented?
Still a lot of work to be done.
II. Diane Alperin on Faculty Evaluations (FAIR assignments and definitions)
Two things happened last year:
an effort by the president and his team to move us to standard times of evaluation
attempts were made to provide salary increases but there was a lot of disparity in the
measures used to assess performance. Jeff Buller led the attempts to standardize.
Everyone now has given us new terms for evaluation, and now we are all standardized.
DA started working on FAIR about 4 years ago. The FAIR assignment module was
purchased from USF. Prior to that, we did assignments by hand.
Questions have arisen:
Where do I put student research?
Where do I put community engagement?
Service was initially instruction-related.
We put Service under Service.
"Other assigned duties" means academic administration.
Part of this has to do with reporting, which goes to the governors. We are compared with
other institutions, and in case of performance funding, we want to be judged by the same
measures as other schools.
Question/comment: It's important that participation on university committees and
departmental committees be categorized as service, not "other assigned duties" b/c our
university documents specify that we'll be assessed on teaching, research, and service.
No category for "other assigned duties" is given in our assessment.
III. Report on replacement for Blackboard, from Stacey Rossow (Department of Music):
A statewide university committee was looking at alternatives to Blackboard and
considered three:
"Desire to Learn"
"Canvas"
"Blackboard"
The committee chose "Canvas," but each university was given the option to opt out. But
there are different versions of Blackboard. Please respond to the link ASAP so that we
can try to decide. "Canvas" and "Blackboard" personnel will be spending the week of
Feb 22 (BB) and Feb 29 (Canvas) to tell us about their brilliant products. Canvas has
more synchronous communication options. Blackboard's newest possibilities, with their
program Ultra, will be explained as well. We will lose our self-hosting. We have saved
$70,000 by doing this, but that option will no longer be available. OSP (?) would prefer
to have it, but it's not possible.
There are 8 university institutions in the state that will have whatever is decided. The
criteria that the state used in their evaluation included customization, student grades,
collaborating with students online, and intuitive ease of use.
You may ask friends at other institutions who use these; contact them to find out.
Q
Will there be an opportunity to try it out, and not just see a presentation?
A
Maybe.
Q
How can we assess a system that we have no opportunity to try out? If I teach
online courses, I need to see how it works. I can't do it on one day at one appointed time
in one room. Without that option, you won't get good faculty feedback.
A
They will try, and we will try to get a sample time--perhaps 4 weeks.
Q
Once the choice is made, what is the schedule for implementation?
A
There will be a tier thing. First there will be a call for people who want to switch.
Over the course of 18 months, the whole switch-over will occur.
Q
What about technical problems? Right now we have a help desk and locals who
can help.
A
We will still have people--Crystal, for example.
IV: Kimberly Dunn, our athletics representative; report on her role as a liaison to the
academic community, at the request of the provost:
As Faculty Athletics Rep, she is in a position required by the NCAA. She has 3
main jobs:
--academic integrity
--institutional control
--student athlete welfare
The Intercollegiate Athletics Committee is mostly made up of faculty. Our rep is Lynn
McNutt in Theater. There is one from each college and some administrators.
Our student athletes are doing quite well: their graduation rate exceeds that of the
general population of FAU students.
Student Athletes here graduate at a 58% rate.
The rate for all FAU students is
41%.
Compliance Education: Student athletes should be treated the same way as every other
student. They should not receive favorable treatment.
Academic Integrity Issues: Follow the same procedure for them as for anyone else. Do
not provide extra benefits of any sort to student athletes.
V. Dean's Report:
VI. Upcoming elections for Faculty Assembly officers:
If you want to be an officer for Faculty Assembly or a member of the Faculty
Senate, contact Kevin Wagner. For Faculty Assembly, we need a president, vicepresident, and a secretary.
VII. Open forum
Mike Harris: On "Outside Activity Reports," I am not clear when such a report needs to
be filled out. It still seems to be ambiguous.
Jennifer Low: There is general agreement that the language of this regulation is
ambigous and needs to be clarified. This point has been admitted by the people who
created and who administer this policy. Until the language has been clarified, this policy
should not be enacted. It is unreasonable to administer a policy that has been admitted to
be unclear and faultily defined. Faculty cannot comply with this policy until its
parameters have been clearly defined.
Questions were asked about how the policy should be applied. The Dean attempted to
answer these questions on a case-by-case basis.
The Research office and the Provost's office are creating the policy.
The meeting was concluded at 1:55 p.m.