The February minutes were considered a motion to approve was seconded and passed with no corrections.

Transcription

1 Faculty Senate Minutes March 20, 2018 President Meinhold presiding McNeill Hall 1051 Meeting called to order 2:02 The February minutes were considered a motion to approve was seconded and passed with no corrections. Individual reports: the Chancellor is not with us today. I. Provost s report: a. I ll report on the Chancellor first he s sort of back. His doctor has approved him to spend some hours back on campus. It s not clear when he ll be back full time; we ll send an announcement when that happens. b. The BOG will be here Thursday and Friday. There is an address by Spellings tomorrow in Lumina at 1:00, and a reception for her at the Chancellor s home. He will be making a report to the BOG at CMS on the UNCW strategic plan. The BOG doesn t see much of us when they meet here, but the Chancellor does get a chance to report on what we re up to. It s a chance for them to hear about us. The Chancellor is doing quite well, and he s walking the track in good weather he s amazingly resilient. c. Regarding the search for VC of Business Affairs, we sent forward candidates to the Chancellor, who will make the decision and the offer, which will have to be approved by the BOG. Our Associate VC moved, so Stephanie Powell has moved into that position. She s a CPA and is very collaborative, so we re pleased that she s taken the interim position. d. Dr. Vetter is moving back to the faculty in the fall. We ve discussed his position, and his jobs will be separated into two positions Dean of the Graduate School and VC for Research. Both positions will be filled by interims for now. I m letting you know that this will be happening. e. Steve asked me to address optimized scheduling. A number of people have reported to us that we re not utilizing our large classrooms well. We only have about five, and they sometimes have small groups meeting in them. We ve worked with the Registrar it s been challenging and there have been multiple iterations. The System Office also reviews our space utilization. Many departments have Friday afternoon meetings I think we use our space well, but that s not what others are seeing. We ve been going to each department and college to discuss this. Another draft will be coming out of this. We keep cutting back on the number of rooms involved. One of the issues is that if you sort of own the room as a department, then the department usually covered costs in those rooms. When we put those rooms into a centralized rotation, who covers the costs? And what about keys? Swipes cost a lot. At some point, we may need to do that. We know we ve created some havoc, but it was well-intentioned havoc. The task force and Jon Reese are continuing to work with the department; they are meeting with chairs to iron out problems and to address issues created when the schedules were entered. This third iteration should be better because it s taking a lot of these issues into consideration. Right now 42% of the rooms we have are centralized the rest are still under department control. There is some sense that this might be too many rooms.

2 We probably erred on the side of more rooms to start. The whole team is still discussing how to make this work. f. Questions: i. Meinhold: OUR invited feedback from faculty on the candidates for VC will this feedback go to the Chancellor? Response: Yes it will go to the committee and to the Chancellor. It has already been relayed. Meinhold: If you went to the open forums or watched the videos, please forward feedback. ii. Will the searches for the interim positions be internal only? Response: Yes eventually there will be open searches perhaps. We could still discuss that, but the interims are internal only. Ron would welcome some overlap if someone could start earlier. II. III. IV. President s report: a. I encourage you to attend Spelling s address in Lumina theatre. It would be nice to have a sizeable faculty presence if you re available. b. Autonomous Committee ballots will be coming soon. Very soon after that, you ll also get an invitation to indicate your interest to participate in standing faculty committees. We often have only a couple hundred faculty who participate in this process. The survey is important to populate lots of committees our standing committees, AA committees, and Chancellor s committees. We gather interest for all of these. The COACHE survey is out now please participate there too. We need one or more faculty members to serve on a committee to analyze and report on the results of the survey to the university community. Faculty Assembly Report Jeanie Persuit (FA delegate) a. The Faculty Assembly passed a resolution on diversity and inclusion, reinforcing that these should be handled at the university level rather than at the system level. Meinhold: We often endorse FA resolutions, so we ll probably consider this for our next meeting. b. There is a committee to evaluate K-12 preparation; we have submitted two faculty to serve. c. We re looking at the funding model, and for the first time have a faculty member (from NC State) serving on that system-wide task force. d. Please vote for the new FA delegates we have to forward names by April so that our faculty may be considered for FA committees. e. Please reinforce the BOG visit this is an important opportunity for our delegates to attend all the meetings. FA President Lugo: It would be good to have as many faculty as possible. Steve will circulate the agenda for the meetings. The meetings are all open. Committee Reports: a. Faculty Welfare Committee Kim Cook i. We ve been busy trying to serve the faculty. Stuart Borrett is chair. We had a First Friday gathering, which was a lot of fun. It was catered, with adult beverages and games about 30 faculty attended. We invite you to the next First Friday on April 6. The catering is thanks to Business Affairs, with special thanks to Sharon Boyd. We re holding this event to foster community it s an opportunity to have some down-time together. We hope you will come and

3 help to continue building our community of scholars. There will be another on the First Friday of graduation. Shoot an to me or Stuart if there are ways in which the committee could serve your needs better. ii. Senator Lugo I request that the committee get the survey from HR about the faculty engagement results. iii. Meinhold: I d like to acknowledge the hard work of the committee, and congratulate them for setting a goal to start this. They went right at it, and the pictures looked fun. They even had local beer. I hope you ll go. An electronic invitation will be sent out next week. b. University Curriculum Committee: i. Motion M01 Establish BA-MAT program in Secondary Education: 1. From the Graduate Coordinator - there s a shortage of teachers in science and math. Our numbers are down. All of our majors have other majors it s hard for science majors to take our classes too because of the number of hours involved in those disciplines. The proposed program would allow us to keep them here after finishing their degree to earn teaching credentials. 2. Associate Dean McNulty: This is one additional way to get students to consider teaching as a career. It s different from the current MAT degree. The curriculum doesn t change, but undergrad courses can be included in counting toward the degree. This doesn t replace the old ways to earn teaching credentials it just adds a new one. 3. A voice vote was called; the motion carried. c. Steering Committee: i. Discussion topic consideration of a proposal to add a Clinical and Practice Faculty position designation. ii. Meinhold: This discussion is principally to allow all senators a chance to understand the thinking behind the issue, which is likely to become a motion. This should allow you to discuss the possibility with your departments and colleagues. The language was presented to us jointly by the administration and by faculty from Watson and CHHS. Dean Hardy will speak on how this might be useful. iii. Dean Hardy: We are requesting that we add Practice Track Faculty as a designation for faculty whose primary role is instruction or supervision of practice, lab, or field instruction. This reflects a strong commitment to professional practice and community engagement. Primary drivers include; 1) professional need (the position would allow us to meet a college need for clinical faculty; such a position could be expanded across the university); 2) the proposed designation would allow a promotion scale with the possibility of professional development; this would be consistent with all other universities in the UNC system. These would be non-tenured positions at the rank of instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, or full professor with the Clinical Practice designation. The criteria for promotion are specified with renewal of appointments once every five years. As with the Research Faculty designation that we have currently, Practice-track Faculty will be considered as special faculty. We re currently at a competitive disadvantage in not having this

4 option. The proposal was brought to me in 2012 by our faculty, so we drafted a model and circulated it. There has been lots of feedback and multiple iterations. We sent it next to the Provost, HR, and the Office of General Counsel. Our College faculty advisory group then reviewed it. We had a very focused target at that time. As we moved through the process, an open vote of the entire college endorsed the model, which then went to the Provost and the Deans. The deans unanimously approved it with the addition that the model be used across campus. We wanted to add Professors of Practice across the landscape of the university. We received feedback from the Steering and Academic Standards Committees, and now we re here. The Idea is to put this in as a faculty status, and each college can activate it with their preferred title as appropriate, by working with the Provost. iv. Questions and comments from the floor: 1. There are no SACS concerns, right? Andy Mauk: Many campuses have these. There are no problems we see. 2. Should we be concerned about any kind of slippery slope involving nontenured faculty and implications that tenured faculty aren t needed. Hardy: We re proposing a threshold that we will not exceed 25% of our tenured faculty. We already have a significant number of lecturers. We believe that about seven of our lecturer lines would convert to this practice status. It s unlikely that we would convert tenure-track lines. We have a need in this area especially because of our practice degrees. 3. Does everyone else have this position as non-tenure, and why is that? Hardy: Yes, in my examination of the model, this is non-tenure track position. My assumption is that the discovery of new knowledge in not placed on this position; applied scholarship is required instead. 4. As another example of benefits, we re training future superintendents, etc. Finding individuals who have relevant experience and also want to do original research is difficult. This allows more individuals to serve. 5. Would these hires require an external search, or could appointments be made internally by a department chair? Hardy: My assumption is that the process would work just like with lecturers. There would be a hiring process. 6. I m speaking in support. This would benefit people like me who want to be more clinically based. People with DNPs look more at quality improvement. Degrees can vary but there needs to be an opportunity to advance their careers. This might also give more security than yearto-year contracts. 7. A couple of thoughts as a new type of faculty member - we need to be thoughtful about exactly what our expectations would be, and not judge individuals in this position by the criteria we re already familiar with. 8. If we re going to have a new type of faculty member, how does that impact faculty governance as a whole? Hardy: We say that would be determined at the school level. Lecturers have voting rights across the schools on certain issues (e.g., curricular not on tenure decisions). 9. So they d just be super-lecturers? Hardy: We think it s a totally different skill set. Although we have been using the lecturer designation to cover these needs.

5 10. Meinhold: We don t currently count research faculty as members for purposes of Senate representation, although we do count lecturers. Nursing has 70 faculty, so next year they will have seven senators. What individual units would do, I don t know. The language leaves that open. 11. I m also in support. This critical to our growth. The nursing shortage is real. Ove 600,000 replacement nurses will be needed by It s estimated that in 2016, 64,000 students had to be turned away because of faculty shortage. I was told when I graduated with my PhD that I was one of 3% with a PhD, but our degrees are clinically focused rather than research focused. We re having to turn away qualified nurse educators, so they go somewhere else. 16,000 faculty vacancies are estimated. This is critical to filling our needs. 12. A practice track would benefit CAS as well. 13. I hear how this would be beneficial, but my concern would be that if applied across the board, if a department didn t want to adopt this designation and then had retirements, could it be that a tenure-track position would not be renewed and a position of this type given instead? That could hurt us in trying to attract the type of faculty we need. Hardy: I would think that the department needs would take precedence. An appropriate rationale would be needed for any position. 14. UGA has had this in place for many years and it hasn t caused problems. It gives more flexibility for the schools to choose what s right for them. I see it has faculty-friendly because it provides a promotional ladder and provides more security. 15. At another university, searches for positions like this were always external and in some cases could be tenured. I do understand the concern that in tight financial times, positions can be switched to this category. 16. Appointments will be for a specified period of time there s no cap on that? Hardy: The cap is five years and it s specified earlier in the document, I think. 17. How do these people go about getting promoted? Hardy: We would mimic the RPT process in terms of timing. You d be eligible for consideration for promotion at similar times, and minimal criteria are spelled out, with escalating expectations. The applied scholarship has to join the actual clinical instruction as the individual advances, in a similar timeframe. 18. So each college would have its own committee? Hardy: That s how I would see it. Each college would submit their model, to address their issues. 19. In a lot of different programs, there are public factions of the field. That s happening a lot, and currently these specializations are tenuretrack faculty. I don t see why they can t have tenure. It could be relevant to many faculty who are already hired. Why can t practicetrack be tenured? Hardy: The type of scholarship is different.

6 V. Old business? None VI. New business? None VII. Good of the order? None Meeting adjourned: 3: For forensic science, these are practitioners and not researchers. Tenure doesn t apply in the same way, plus we re likely to hire MA level individuals because there are no PhD programs in the specializations. This wouldn t impact regular PhD tenure positions, but it s designed to fill a particular niche and need. 21. We have to be sure exactly what we re proposing the thoughtful conversations about evaluations, etc. is necessary. Hardy: That s the critical model we came to, that the conversation needs to happen at the college level. 22. Meinhold: Thanks, Dean Hardy. There may be additional questions. There was discussion of research faculty. My impression is that this designation is infrequent and used mostly for positions funded externally is that right? Heads nodding. Provost: That s generally true. 23. Meinhold: And I don t think that research faculty vote in departments. Comment: But units could do that. Hardy: The extent of voting privileges is determined by the department or college. 24. Meinhold: I also think about the fact that some number of part-timers are, for all purposes, being used as full-time faculty but kept just under the criteria for benefits, which creates a two-tiered faculty with different rights, responsibilities, etc.