EC22aug13

Curriculum Committee – Replace Jared Lisonbee who will be leaving WSU at the end of Fall Semester. Jennifer Ostrowski is being invited to be on the committee. Teaching & Learning Assessment - replace Raji Lauffer, COAST who has left WSU. Vincent Bates, ED has been approved by Executive Committee.

Thursday

August 22, 2013

Betty Lampros Board Room

PRESENT - Eric Amsel, John Armstrong, Patti Cost, Alicia Giralt, Kirk Hagen, Ed Hahn, Kathy Herndon, Carol Naylor, James Turner, Mike Vaughan, Chuck Wight, Brenda Stockberger

GUESTS - Gail Niklason

1. MINUTES – Approval of the minutes from Agenda Setting meeting - April 11, 2013.

MOTION John Armstrong moved to approve the minutes from 11 April 2013.

SECOND Ed Hahn

OUTCOME Unanimous

2. WSU Vision for 2013-14 – Chuck Wight and Mike Vaughan

President Wight

Has invited Faculty Chair and Vice Chair to come to President’s Council.

Will come to Faculty Senate meetings to give a report to the Senate on what is going on in other areas of Weber State as schedule permits.

Mike Vaughan

This year the number of faculty is the largest at 525.

Seventy new faculty have been hired this year.

From the total hired last year and this year, one out of five faculty is new.

Average age of faculty is 41. About eight years older than the national average.

Capital Campaign will be announced in the near future. Arts and Humanities are at the top of their funding goals.

There is an eighty percent probability that the current Social Sciences building will be replaced with a new building.

3. Faculty Board of Review

Nominations for the Chair of the Faculty Board of Review are Molly Smith and Jim Jacobs.

4. Meeting Schedule for 2013-14

The Dates of Executive Committee meetings and Faculty Senate meetings were handed out. Schedule of Program Review meetings were passed out--Sept 5, Sept 26, Oct 3, Nov 14.

Gail Niklason gave information on how many Program Reviews are to be reviewed and what the Executive Committee needs to look for in a Program Review. All information will be available on the Program Review Website.

Curriculum Committee – Jenn Ostrowski, ED will replace Jared Lisonbee, ED who is leaving WSU.

Teaching, Learning and Assessment - Vincent Bates, ED will replace Raji Lauffer, COAST who has left WSU.

Motion to approve the membership changes in Curriculum committee and Teaching, Learning and Assessment by Kathy Herndon

The chair of the ARCC committee stated that charges for 2013-2014 are unchanged from the 2012-2013 charges. (See items 1 through 10 below). He also stated that the ARCC committee has recently created criteria for the evaluation of proposals. (See item 2 below). The committee will fine tune this criteria during the 2013-2014 academic year.

1. Allocate ARCC resources, including Dee Family Technology Grant funds, using consistent, objective, fair and reasonable criteria.

2. Review funding criteria and procedures for ARCC for possible revision or clarification.

Completed ~~3. Continue to improve the means of submitting proposals and decreasing the amount of paper work. Evaluate opportunities for paperless work flows campus-wide.~~

3. Assess faculty and student computer needs, solicit faculty input and lobby for faculty computer-related interests.

4. Examine product implementation in computer labs to determine if some products could be used on a campus-wide basis.

5. Review (with computing support) standards and policies for hardware and software purchases.

6. Maintain close communication with other computer resource entities on campus, including CE and IT online instruction.

7. Research ways to strengthen academic computing, ~~specifically in the areas of visualization, simulation and scientific analysis~~ by exploring opportunities on external grant support.

8. Align ARCC process with the ITAC (Information Technology Advisory Council) process.

9. Investigate and report on the committee reorganizations in IT, specifically the portfolio divisions and its effect on faculty representation on IT committees.

The charges have not changed the last couple of years. We did complete the move of the email system so that could be removed from the charges. We will continue to do the ARCC and Dee Family Grants. We did create criteria for evaluation of each proposal. We do need to fine tune the criteria a little bit.

ASSA – Admissions, Standards and Student Affair’s Charges 2013-14 – Draft

1. Study PPM 6-22, Student Code, and make recommendations concerning students getting permission from faculty and other students regarding taking photographs, recording lectures, and dissemination of such media.

2. Review and consider other outdated PPM’s in Section 6 – Student Services.

4. Insert language to PPM 6-22, VIII, E, 1, d. Procedures for Student Petitions for Academic Grievances, to allow for University legal counsel to take the lead in resolving sanctions from outside entities.

5 Establish a timeline with dates and directives for students wishing to file a complaint against a faculty member (PPM 6-22 ).

APAFT - Appointment, Promotion, Academic Freedom, And Tenure Charges 2013-14 - Draft

1. Review the post-tenure review documents of the four colleges whose post-tenure review plans have yet to be approved. (This should require at least two APAFT meetings in 2013.)

2. Once all college post-tenure documents have been reviewed, the APAFT Committee should provide recommendations to the Executive Committee and Provost regarding future changes or needed clarifications for the University post-tenure review policy (e.g., develop institutional policies for instances when a faculty member fails to remediate identified deficiencies, etc.).

3. In anticipation of the formation of a cross-disciplinary, university committee to evaluate the use of electronic portfolios for promotion, tenure and review documents, the APAFT Committee should investigate and provide a summary report of the following items:

a. the potential uses of electronic portfolios (e.g., promotion, tenure, accreditation, etc.)

b. the potential benefits of using electronic portfolios (e.g., easy to update, backup to paper files, easier presentation of multimedia, etc.)

c. potential pitfalls (e.g., privacy or security concerns, disadvantages for non-technologically savvy faculty, etc.)

e. possible platforms and vendors of software (e.g., homegrown versus commercial software,

4. Review and revise PPM8-26 to address situations in which a faculty member receives a conditional termination. Does "advance notice" as written in the policy cover cases in which the notice includes a condition, e.g. "unless there is substantial improvement in your Service to the University as detailed in your recent mid-tenure review, your appointment will be discontinued twelve months from the date of this notice." If necessary, investigate the legal interpretations of this policy with University Counsel.

CRAO – Constitutional Review, Apportionment and Organization Charges 2013-14 – Draft

1. Calculate apportionment for Faculty Senate representation using the Hamilton Method and present the apportionment figures to the Faculty Senate during Fall Semester. (November deadline).

2. Continue to work on Apportionment Procedures document to deal with the questions: ”Under what types of leave would faculty be counted for apportionment?”

3. Continue to work on the proposed changes to the PPM related to representation of faculty outside of the “organizational units” defined in section B-II as the Library and the Colleges.

4. Possibly consider a modification to the ppm to more carefully define the term organizational unit. Should the colleges all be listed explicitly in the ppm? should there be a broader and more inclusive definition of organizational unit?

5. Research questions and make recommendations that are brought to the attention of the CRAO Committee. (Ongoing)

6. Review PPM for nonsubstantive terminology changes such as department name changes, etc. (Fall)

7. Review PPM policies (20 years or older) to identify possible action. (Time permitting)

2. Offer seminars to faculty (probably through TLA), to help acquaint faculty with the curriculum process

3. Discuss policy on communicating prerequisite changes affecting other departments and to ensure that other departments are aware of these changes (left from previous year)

4. Work with General Education Committee to revise curriculum approval forms to reflect assessment criteria

1. Continue to work to improve WSU’s STARS application, particularly with regard to the education and research section, with an eye to achieving a SILVER certification in the next two years or so.

2. Make a concerted effort to find ways to better reach students with sustainability – related curricular offerings.

3. Advertise and promote on campus, review, and select projects for the 2013-2014 Student Sustainability Research Awards, and the Faculty Sustainability Research Award. EIC would like to shift the time of this process so that the awards could be made publically at the Intermountain Sustainability Summit in the Spring Semester.

4. Work to build a plan, with partnerships across campus to reduce WSU’s commuting – related Scope 3 emissions. This will be an important part of the revised Climate Action Plan. Explore ideas for creating under Administrative Services and “Integrated Transportation Management Group” that would help integrate discussions on public transportation, bike commuting, motor vehicle commuting and parking. Parking Services in the future will increasingly be part of any solution to managing the number of cars coming to campus and also part of reducing the overall WSU carbon footprint, and the EIC would like to encourage Parking Services to begin considering how this office could play a role beyond assigning permits, enforcing regulations and so forth.

5. Coordinate with the Community Engagement Center for the 2013-14 Engaged Learning Series with the theme “On Air” for films/speakers/panel events that the EIC can coordinate and host or partner with the other departments and programs to host.

6. Connect with WSU faculty, staff and students to the Utah Moms for Clean air group by establishing an Ogden chapter. Connect WSU students to the new Utah Students for Clean Air Group.

7. Help to implement the new no-smoking zones and idle-free policies if approved this spring (2013) by President’s Council and the Board of Trustees.

8. The EIC Chair will sit on the Sustainability Fund Oversight Committee to determine next year’s Student Intern as well as approve projects that utilize the $16,000 for the next year.

10. Work with the Teaching and Learning Forum to bring sustainability awareness into their New Faculty Retreat and other TLF sponsored events.

11. Work to partner with the Wellness program (both student and staff) to include sustainability-related components/information in their offerings and announcements.

12. Continue our general efforts to expand partnerships across campus with the WSU Outdoor Program, alumni, student affairs, Community Engagement Center, student organizations, and in the broader community (e.g. Ogden City) to envision and implement sustainability-related initiatives.

1. In consultation with WSU’s deans and department chairs, members of the GEIAC will identify faculty members to fill vacancies on the General Education Area Committees: Composition; American Institutions, Quantitative Literacy; Computer & Information Literacy; Humanities; Creative Arts; Social Sciences; Physical Sciences; Life Sciences; Diversity. (Ongoing)

2. The GEIAC will guide the GE Area Committees as they systematically collect and analyze assessment data and make recommendations for the improvement of General Education courses in their area.

1.      Meet separately and early as the faculty portion of the committee to discuss representing in a unified manner the constituent needs and interests of the faculty in the deliberation of the larger committee.
2.      Ensure faculty involvement in the nomination and selection of candidates for honorary degrees and for commencement speakers through maintaining the important voice of the faculty and the    Faculty Senate as a major force on the institutional committee.
3.      Consider ways to encourage more nominations from faculty for honorary degrees.

4. Encourage the selection of at least one honorary degree recipient each year who has made an outstanding academic contribution to higher education, preferably a retired WSU faculty member or past faculty member who has left Weber State University. Current faculty members are not eligible.
5. Work to achieve a representation of gender and ethnicity among degree recipients and ensure that all recipients are of stature to enhance the image of Weber State University.

6. See that the criteria for honorary degrees are considered, so that the understandable desire of the administration to cultivate donors and potential donors does not overwhelm the deliberations and pass over otherwise worthy candidates.

7. Provide the larger committee with a way to carry forward information so next year’s committee can benefit from work done this year.

RSPG – Research, Scholarship and Professional Growth Charges 2013-14 – Draft

1. Continue to issue requests for proposals (RFPs) for Research and Instructional Improvement grants, and Hemingway Vitality, Excellence and Collaborative awards, and review the proposals in a timely manner.

2. Continue to coordinate deadlines for submission of proposals with the chairs of the Institutional Review Board and the Animal Care and Use Committee.

3. Review and update as needed the proposal guidelines. Clarify and report the criteria for awarding the grant. Explore ways to simplify the process and broaden the criteria.

5. Continue efforts to publicize the committee’s activities. Seek ways to broaden participation campus wide including adjunct faculty. Explore opportunities to disseminate information about the funded projects, including workshops, in order to provide consistent information and feedback to potential applicants.

6. Work with the Teaching, Learning and Assessment Committee to find non-monetary ways to promote and recognize faculty research and scholarship.

7. Work with the Teaching, Learning and Assessment Committee to help faculty identify new methods of scholarship.

8. Keep in communication and continue to cooperate and coordinate with OUR (Office of Undergraduate Research), CCEL Center for Community Engaged Learning, Hall family, and ARCC (Academic Resources and Computing Committee).

9. Continue to coordinate with OUR to provide faculty with funding for research assistants.

SBBFP – Salary, Benefits, Budget and Fiscal Planning Charges 2013-14 – Draft

1. Examine salary options for compensation increases and prioritize recommendations. (Spring)

2. Examine the dollar amounts of equity and merit adjustments each year. (Spring)

3. Review campus salary levels using CUPA data, turnover data, and data from regional peer institutions. (Spring)

4. Assess the current state of compression and inversion within departments across campus in light of recent hires and changes in salary increases for promotions. (Fall)

5. Explore and make recommendations on overload teaching and reassigned time. Are they mutually exclusive? (Fall)

1. Continue to sponsor and promote book discussion groups for fall and spring semesters

2. Continue to sponsor the Faculty Forum along with the Last Lecture during the fall semester (October 2013)

5. Co-sponsor the Teaching with Technology – a Professional Development Program with Continuing Education that will change themes annually; Flipped Classrooms and Blended Learning for this Spring 2014.

6. Sponsor brown bags on topics related to pedagogy weekly during the fall and spring semesters in the Library, Hetzel Hollein Room

7. Sponsor a Summer Learning Series, providing professional development throughout the summer semester to faculty on a range of topics (began Summer 2013).

8. Sponsor professional learning groups for any group of faculty wanting to meet with common interests (Ongoing)

9. Continue to support and maintain the digital technology library, specifically podcasts of training and workshops sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Forum (Ongoing)

10. Co-sponsor ePublishing session during the spring 2014 semester to assist faculty with creating and publishing educational materials. This may involve a small group of faculty with the goal of continuing in the following years (Summer 2014)

12 Sponsor graduate student fellowship for one master student during their second year to help with various TLA events, building and maintaining the digital library, and to help faculty interested in pedagogical research across disciplines. A stipend is provided (All year)

13. Continue to support faculty through technology and conference equipment check out (Ongoing)

14. Fostering scholarship and publications based on teaching and assessment work. Lectures and meetings building on TLF’s past research initiatives to publish the vast amounts of collected data and build faculty collaborations across campus.

- Selection of a Parliamentarian for Senate Meetings to keep the Robert Rules of Order. Ryan Pace was chosen to be asked to serve as parliamentarian. Jim Turner was asked to see if Ryan is available to do this during Faculty Senate.

The draft charges will be reviewed again and discussed at the September 12 meeting.