EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

PRESENT 
Tony Allred, Dawn Gatherum, Michelle Heward, Becky Johns, Diane Kawamura, Wade Kotter, Kathleen Lukken, Laura MacLeod, Molly Smith, Kay Brown - Secretary

EXCUSED 
Sue Harley, Ann Millner

GUESTS 
Johnathan Aubrey, Kathy Herndon, Kyle Poll

MINUTES 
Wade Kotter: Moved to approve the minutes from the January 22, 2004 meeting.
Second: Dawn Gatherum
Outcome: The minutes were approved.

FACULTY EVALUATIONS 
Kathy Herndon, Johnathan Aubrey and Kyle Poll discussed with the Executive Committee the concerns raised by faculty at the December 4, 2003 Faculty Senate meeting.

The Executive Committee proposes that the Senate address two questions: 1) Should the Senate approve the instrument proposed by the committee and as amended by the Senate in the December meeting; and 2) How should the date be disseminated. The student and faculty committee propose that it be disseminated online and restricted through the WSU student portal. The following is a synopsis of the student and faculty committee recommendations in response to questions raised at the December Faculty Senate meeting.

The present proposal is that student evaluations be done in the classroom on paper along with the standard department or college evaluations for the class. If an instructor has the ability to administer their department course evaluation electronically, they could also add the student evaluation electronically. Colleges and even departments within the same college differ regarding when classes are evaluated. The PPM requires two courses per year. The student questions would be added and asked when a faculty member has a class evaluated by their college or department.

The evaluations will not add a significant workload to faculty or staff. Current evaluations take approximately 15 minutes of class time and the proposed student questions would not add to that in a significant way. The student questions require a "checked" response only. Staff currently sort two student questions and the additional proposed responses would not change staff work load significantly.

Institutional Research will complete the data analysis and staff will continue to send the responses to IR for processing as is the present custom. IR estimates that the cost of processing the evaluations will be approximately $100 per year, and posting them online would save some paper costs.

It is proposed that the information be restricted to Weber State students through the student portal, accessible with student passwords. Faculty who wish to see their own evaluations would have access through the faculty portal, accessible with their password. Faculty would not have access to another faculty member’s student evaluations.

Student evaluations would not be part of the online course evaluations, and are at the present time only proposed for face to face classes. If online faculty wanted to report the student responses for online courses, they could do so. Online courses have their own evaluation tools.

Up to three evaluations per course would be posted online at any one time.

Evaluation questions proposed and amended at the December 4, 2003 Faculty Senate meeting -

Kathy Herndon will invite Steve Kerr from Institutional Research to answer questions that may arise at the February Faculty Senate meeting. Steve Kerr will also furnish a sample of the questionnaire. Kyle will invite Ben Barraza to show a mockup of how the information will appear on the web.

PROVOST CANDIDATES 
The Executive Committee discussed possible questions they could ask the provost candidates. Several ideas were presented and discussed. Michelle Heward will type up a sheet of possible questions and email them to Executive Committee members for their input. The first interview is on Monday, February 9 at 3:30 in MA 211K.

ADJOURN 
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 p.m.