Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

11/28/00

SC117

3:00 ‑ 4:45 p.m.

Attendance:����������� Ron Hammond, Grant Richards, Sandy Vogel, President Romesburg, Dr. Stoddard, Luis Arzola, Damon Bahr, John Balden, Paul Bean, Brian Birch, David Brandt, Denza Bruss, Eddy Cadet, Max Christofferson, Karin Davidson, Kathie Debenham, Lowell Glenn, Eldon Greenhalgh, Phil Gordon, George Hickman, Jill Jasperson, Cameron John, David Manning, Tom Perkins, Lori Richards, K.D. Taylor, Lynn Turnquist, Renee Van Buren, Stacy Waddoups, Laurie Wood

Absent: Dennis Lisonbee, Doug Miller, Gary Noll, Merril Oyler, Mike Shively, Joe Strange, Forrest Williams, Malcolm Crawford, Bryan Eldredge, Masoud Kazemzadeh

Excused:����������� Larry Holt

Guests: Mark Spencer, Val Peterson, J.D. Davidson

Call to Order:����������� Ron Hammond called the meeting to order at 3:08 p.m.

Senate Minutes from November 14, 2000:

Minutes were presented from November 14, 2000. No changes were made.

Report from President Romesburg or Dr. Stoddard:

Neither President Romesburg or Dr. Stoddard had anything to report to Faculty Senate.

Information Items:

Strategic Planning‑‑

Communication Subcommittee:

Val Peterson spoke to the Senate about the charge and questions put to the Communications Conversation Group. He focused on the action planned for the final report as prioritized by his committee. There were internal and external plans. The internal plans included: 1) Intranet, an Aupdate@ page that will show up on the computer whenever faculty and staff login, which will provide a better distribution of what is happening on campus. 2) State of the College Address by President Romesburg in which President Romesburg will identify the priorities and goals for the college in the coming year. 3) Wider distribution of newspaper articles, which will allow UVSC faculty, staff and students to see what has been published about UVSC in a given week. 4) Communications Committee, which will focus on ways to communicate better. The external plans included: 1) Integrated Marketing Committee, which will explore what is going out from campus, such as continuing education, newsletters, research, and surveys. This will alleviate duplication of efforts in different schools. 2) UVSC Community Campaign, which will use billboards, T.V., and radio to create a media blitz that will allow the UVSC name to be put in circulation in the community.� Grant Richards asked Val Peterson who is supposed to keep track of updating email lists when new faculty are hired since those hired in the last two years have not been added to the list and are not receiving general faculty email. Val replied that he was not sure who is responsible but will address that issue in his next meeting.

Quality of Instruction:

J.D. Davidson indicated that this Conversation Group is working on Faculty Rewards, Enhancing the Quality of Instruction, and Quality Assessment and Evaluation. The latter is being left for now as the new evaluation instrument is implemented. Scholarship of Learning & Teaching is leaning toward Ernest Boyer=s definition of scholarship. He gives four of them and teaching is one of the concepts of scholarship that Lisa Lambert=s group is going to be dealing with and what the ramifications are for us if we pursue scholarship in research and other areas of applied forms of scholarships. Workload, adjunct, and salary issues have also been discussed. The following determinations have been made: 1) Students have a concern that they need greater access to their teachers. This directly relates to the teaching load issue since faculty need to have more time for individual students. 2) Students also asked that the adjuncts situation be looked at. They feel that the quality of instruction from the adjuncts is on par with contract faculty; however, they feel that the adjuncts need more resources available to them so that students can more easily access them.� It was suggested that telephones and computers would be a good start. 3) The committee realizes that an increase in salaries will be difficult, but recognizes money is a motivator, as well as a de‑motivator. To retain quality faculty, the college obviously needs a plan to pay them better. The question was also asked about reducing workload to 12 credits like SUU and WSU. This has not been resolved by the committee.

General Response to Last Week=s Strategic Planning Presentations

Ron asked for feedback regarding both the Growth & Mission Committee reports given last week in senate. Eldon Greenhalgh said he felt the word Aethics@ is appropriate in the mission statement, but felt that the word Avalues@ should be stricken because he wondered whose values we would be using. Others agreed. Another suggestion made was to move the Aethics & values@ portion to the third paragraph. Ron mentioned� SUU=s mission statement in which President Bennion had added to their mission statement Ato instill ethics and values and to honor thought in all its finest forms.@ Sandy and Ron like the wording of our statement-- Aencourage@B ethics rather than SUU=s wordingBAinstill.@

Ron again asked the senators to take what had been presented to them today back to their departments for feedback. Suggestions for these two committees can be emailed to Val Peterson or J.D. Davidson.

Open Labs & Testing

George Hickman turned the time over to Dr. DeBry for a report on this issue. Dr. DeBry said that when the new computer science building is open, they will be looking at using the bottom floor of the administration building as a possibility for open computer labs. He said faculty should be moving toward doing all their testing on the computer.� He asked for suggestions or questions to be sent to him via email.

Representation Ad Hoc Committee Report

Grant reported that his committee met and thoroughly discussed the options that were presented at the November 14 th Faculty Senate meeting and decided on two variations of the plan Brian Birch and Lynn Turnquist presented on proportional representation, a School model. There was much discussion and concern as to why the department model proposal presented by Dave Manning was thrown out. Several senators were worried about what their faculty would think when they learned that plan had been eliminated without feedback from them. Grant commented that an Ad Hoc committee had been formed at the request of Ron Hammond and had been directed to debate the proposals and come up with the two best, which they had done. K.D. Taylor wondered why the department representation was turning into such a big issue since it never had been before. Dave Manning replied that it has been an issue in his school for several years. His plan was to minimize senator=s efforts in having to report to so many different departments. It can be very time consuming and difficult to elicit discussion from everyone the way it is set up now. Renee Van Buren mentioned that we need to have confidence in our committees and the faculty senate. Denza Bruss stated that her school was very interested in representation by departments. George Hickman=s school was also interested in department representation. Sandy wondered if everyone was clear on what the two plans are that they need to report to their faculty. Paul Bean worried about limiting faculty to serve on committees and if this would affect their tenure track since part of the requirement for tenure is serving on committees. Brian Birch suggested that since there was obviously a lot of support for Dave=s plan it would be fair to have Dave=s plan be added back into the proposals that will be presented to faculty. K.D. wondered if the plans could be presented to the faculty at large so they could hear the pros and cons of each and then vote on it; however, the next general faculty meeting may not be until March. Dr. Stoddard was unsure if there would be a meeting before then. After much discussion, it was decided that the Ad Hoc Committee will meet once again to look at the Proportional Plan and the Department Plan and to refine them so they are ready to present to faculty. These plans will be presented as information items at the next Faculty Senate Meeting on December 12 th and then the senators can take these plans back to their schools for discussion. It was moved that the 1 st proportional plan on the handout be the one that is presented along with the Department plan. The majority of the vote was in favor of this, and the motion passed.

Summative Evaluations

Damon Bahr reported that the committee work was done, and they were waiting for Lisa Lambert and Karl Worthington to decide if the evaluation tool will be the new instrument used this semester.

Committee Chair Reports:

Personnel & Elections‑‑

Laurie Wood asked that those faculty senators that are tenured begin seriously thinking of running for President‑Elect of the Senate. She would like to take a slate of candidates to the school faculty meeting in March. She asked that after the holiday break we begin consideration of candidates for President‑Elect.

Adjournment:

A motion was made that the meeting be adjourned. Voting was unanimous, and the meeting was adjourned at 4:45 p.m.