FACULTY SENATE MINUTES

SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

Present: Bandy, Bolter, Boniecki, Bradley, Bratton, Christman, Frederickson, Glenn (for Esteban), Holden, Horton, Lance, Lichtenstein, Mehta, McCullough, Mosley, Murray, Musser, Parrack, Powers, Satterfield, Seifert, Thiher, Wiedmaier, Young

Absent: Johnson, Wilmes

President Bolter called the meeting to order at 12:46.

Minutes

On a motion by Mosley with a second by Lichtenstein, the minutes of the August 24, 2006 meeting were unanimously approved as submitted.

President’s Report

President Bolter introduced Robert Musser as the Faculty Senator representing part-time faculty.

President Bolter updated the Senate regarding evaluation of on-line courses. The Academic Planning and Assessment committee is currently reviewing the existing instrument for student evaluations and will add this task to their agenda.

President Bolter reported that she had received a concern regarding comparisons of faculty salaries at UCA to peer institutions made by President Hardin in his recent address to the faculty. That has been referred to the Salary Review Committee.

Committee Reports

Executive Committee

President Bolter reported that following a request from the Provost’s Office for a representative to an Ad Hoc Committee on the Study Abroad Program, she had forwarded the names of Jamie Zambrano and Gary Lewers with the approval of the Executive Committee.

During the monthly luncheon with President Hardin and Provost Esteban, the following items were discussed: the total amount in the salary pool for last summer’s raises was 4.35%, a university policy regarding the salary for administrators that return to teaching, an inclusive planning process for faculty support and recruitment, the upcoming bond issue election, the general election, and the dedication of summer school 2006 profits for travel rather than for equipment.

Committee on Committees reported that its work was in progress.

Faculty Affairs I reported on its charge regarding concerns about United Health Care. Faculty Affairs Committee I was charged with the task of discovering what recourse there is for faculty when our health care provider does not provide the level of care and/or service that is reasonably expected. After conversations with Rita Fleming, who is Assistant Vice President of Human Resources, and Jeff Young, Chair of the Fringe Benefits Committee, it is our understanding that the health care provider is reviewed internally each year during the summer and the requests for bids from other companies is made at that time. The primary criteria for deciding on which company to go with is cost. As far as can be determined, there is no standard system for faculty/staff feedback for concerns about United Health Care nor is there any on-going assessment mechanism to determine whether UHC is meeting the needs of faculty/staff. The timeframe for voicing concerns with the hope of influencing the selection of the health care provide for calendar year 2007 has already passed. However, there is still time to make recommendations to the Administration as to how to address any concerns we have about the performance of UHC. With that in mind, the members of Faculty Affairs Committee I suggest the following: 1. Because of the diversity of needs of the faculty at UCA, we need more diversity within our healthcare plan in terms of deductible levels, specific line item coverage, ability to opt out of certain services, etc. 2. The criteria for selecting a health care provider should include not only overall cost, but also the quality of administrative service and the balance between the emphasis placed upon preventive care versus emphasis placed on curative medicine. 3. There needs to be better timely communication concerning choices of possible health care providers and the benefits they provide so faculty can express concerns about them. 4. We need more information about our health care provider and more time to fully appreciate changes when they occur. 5. Can there be a mechanism or forum devised that will allow faculty/staff to voice a preference for health care providers? 6. Can a mechanism be devised that will allow faculty/staff to evaluate a current health care provider’s performance?

Brief discussion followed this report with various opinions given on what actually takes place when the bidding process is undertaken.

Faculty Affairs II and Academic Affairs Committees had no report.

Announcements and Concerns

A senator who was present at each of the August 24 meetings read to the Senate a list of the items that were raised by faculty members who attended each meeting. The lists of those concerns follow these minutes.

Bradley expressed concerns over the cap on summer school salaries as well as a concern about faculty not being affiliated with a college.

President Bolter gave out lists of faculty for the purpose of assigning constituents to each senator.

Mosley moved adjournment at 1:35.

Here are the items brought up at the College of Business meeting or by faculty who could not attend it. I was asked to send you the list and have been waiting for clarification of one item.

1. Pay for administrator who "returns" to the faculty. Suggested it should be 9/11 of his/her salary as an administrator. It is important that it be known in advance for new administrators and current administrators should be grandfathered at past practice, believed to be 9/11.

2. Who can admit a student to closed class or a student who does not meet usual prerequisites? Should faculty member be contacted? Should we require the professor's signature for drop/add?

3. Admission ;of students who do not have ACT scores.

4. Should there be a Faculty/Staff Club, an informal place for faculty and staff to meet, talk, relax, possibly serving food?

5. Telecommuting faculty, status, hiring decisions, office hours, committee assignments and service requirements.

6. Should faculty have to attend sexual harassment and diversity seminars on an annual basis? Unless there are changes in law is this needed?

7. Several questions on health insurance. A faculty member should have to tell the insurance company only once that they do not have other insurance. This seems to be a tactic to delay paying claims which leads to demands from providers for the faculty member to pay. Should we reduce the deductible on the health insurance? Should the University have Health Saving Accounts?

Faculty Meeting with Senators

College of Liberal Arts

August 31, 2006

The faculty of the College of Liberal Arts voiced and requested that the Senate address the following concerns, presented chronologically.

Travel Funding. Funding in the College is currently around $400 per faculty member and may vary slightly between departments. Domestic conferences routinely cost $1000 and international conferences $2000+. The use of summer profits only restores funding to the level of a few years ago. The funding needs to be dramatically increased to account for inflation and a reliable revenue stream identified.
Torreyson Library Budget. The budget remains insufficient and has been cut in real and inflation-adjusted dollars. The increasing reliance on electronic sourcing for journals carries risk since the cost of future subscriptions is unknown.
Plagiarism. There is an ad-hoc committee in the College working on drafting a policy statement that will be submitted to the Senate for its consideration as the basis for a campus-wide policy.
Concurrent High School Enrollment. CLA faculty are very concerned that this initiative is ill-conceived and that appropriate faculty groups such as the Senate and the General Education Council were not consulted at all.
Honors College Faculty Hiring. Many CLA faculty believe that students and Honors College faculty are isolated by the shift towards a proprietary faculty within the Honors College. The most effective way to integrate the Honors College into the University and build upon its successes is through the continued and expanded use of joint appointments, faculty exchanges, etc. Tenure is predicated on performance in a discipline and should reside in an academic department.
International Programs. The housing of International Programs in the President’s Office is in conflict with standard practice nationally and undermines the integral relationship between study abroad and academic departments. Academic departments should grant degree credit, not the Office of International Programs.
Senate Communication with Faculty. CLA faculty feel less engaged and aware of the Senate issues. Communication needs to be improved perhaps through the use of a listserv that would alert faculty to the posting of Senate agendas and minutes.

8/31/06

Meeting with the College of Education Faculty and Senators.

Seventeen tenure-track faculty members and instructors were present from Leadership, MIST, ECSE,

Areas of Concern:

1. Professors not being consistent with class dismissal times. Letting class out late interferes with students getting to the next class punctually, especially from one building to another.

2. Instructors upset with remarks at general faculty meeting.

Several faculty members were concerned by the remarks made by the Faculty Senate President at the general faculty meeting regarding tenure track positions. Instructors in the college said they felt they were not valued or clearly acknowledged as faculty members. They believe the faculty senate should represent them and value their contributions to the university. College of Education instructors perform community service, apply for grants and complete collaborative research projects, provide service to the college and university and make professional presentations at conferences and meetings. One instructor asked, “Does this represent the faculty senate’s feelings about us?” Some of these individuals say they were so upset that they may not attend a general faculty meeting again.

One of the finalists for the last year’s university teaching award was an instructor in the College of Education. A tenured faculty member stated, “We cannot get along without our instructors. We need them.”

3. Faculty members have concerns with the health insurance, possible retirement medical insurance options, and a prescription drug plan. The current skeletal plan does not cover many needed procedures, medications prescribed, and other necessary medical care. Also, the amount of paperwork for some doctor’s visits is overwhelming and must be completed each time a visit is made. Final decisions for drug prescriptions should be made by the physicians and not the insurance company. Often a particular drug MUST be used. Of special note was the question of continued benefits and coverage for retiring UCA faculty, benefits which are commensurate with benefits awarded at institutions similar to UCA.

4. Equipment Issues/College of Education Issue. Often no projectors are available in some rooms. Compressed video technology is needed for some courses and is not available in assigned classrooms.

5. Committee Appointments. The Committee on Committees should let people know of their committee appointments before the first scheduled meeting of the committee assigned.

6. Publishing Lists/College of Education Issue. Directories and lists for refereed journals should be placed on the pool drive. Colleagues who are not located in the same building should be able to access this information from their offices.

7. Bad odor. There is a very offensive odor coming from the cafeteria waste disposal are in the parking lot behind the cafeteria.

8. Night Class Parking. Those who teach night courses are penalized by the policy of allowing parking in all areas at 4:30. Faculty members then no longer have the opportunity to use the parking reservations they paid for. Also, although the campus police department is open later for paying for parking permits, they only accepting a check which doesn’t assist those who use a debit card or credit card. Also, some who have cash may not have exact change.

9. Instructional Technology. Faculty members commented that instructional technology staff need more training and professional development to be better able to help those who need assistance with technological problems. This is especially true for online class issues and night classes.

10. Dangerous Crosswalks. On the street between the HPER Center and Mashburn Hall, the crosswalks are placed directly before stop signs and cars are pulling into the crosswalks and stopping where people walk.

Notes from Faculty Senate Meetings with colleges:

College of Fine Arts and Communication.

8/31/06

1. Procedural transactions for committees. Could there be a process by which heads of the committees are e-mailed regarding who is rotating off or on to a committee in any given years. This could also be extended to all members of the committee so that they are also aware of who is rotating on and off.

2. Faculty Technology Associates – how are they to have equipment updated and whom should they contact. There should also be a list provided to dept. chairs as to which faculty members are to receive computers from the department and which faculty members are already receiving a laptop from FTA.

3. Wording by President of FS about tenure vs. non-tenure faculty in relation to quality of teaching. Areas that should be addressed regarding a rise in quality for faculty across the board are faculty development, reduction of loads, and studies done on the effect of emergency hires vs. permanent hires.

4. Within the tenure process, it is still very vague as to the weight of teaching process and faculty load vs. requirements in research and service. There are no stated ratios which leads to questions of arbitrary and capricious stances when ratios are not based on standards.

5. Tenure/promotion consolidation. Can the process be done not only at the same time, but with the same documentation? Could the senate address the possibility of handing out promotion as a result of receiving tenure? Why would someone be able to receive tenure and not be promoted?

College of Health and Behavioral Science Concerns

Health Benefits-

General overall disappointment
Specific-If I don’t use the standard health benefit afforded to all, can I apply the money from this benefit to something else? Increase diversity of choices.

12 hour teaching load

What are other equitable universities doing, on average?
Administration perks for increase in research, increase in scholarship-but still 12 hour.

Lack of funds for travel

Travel for professional development not available (must present research to have travel paid for).
Set an amount that every faculty member is allowed.

Student Evals-Overall displeasing

What is status of forming new task force and starting over?
On-line courses-New student evaluation is needed.
Faculty handbook should include options for evaluating teaching-peer review, student evals, other.

Notice to faculty that minutes of Faculty Senate are posted. Notice of upcoming Faculty Senate meetings with agenda attached. Send minutes to all faculty.
Accessibility problems at UCA

Specifically-Farris Center and bathrooms within Farris Center
Where should these be reported?

Committee Structure

-No chair, therefore, no meeting is being called. Possible policy that outgoing chair calls first meeting to elect chair.

Parking

Why are HPER employees allowed reserved parking?

NSM Concerns

Can we establish a 3rd level of Lecturer, perhaps called Sr. Lecturer, as the equivalent of Full Prof for teaching faculty with many years of experience and a deeper skill set?

With increased faculty, we need more faculty parking spots near our building (Lewis).

Dr. Runge in Biology stated that non-tenure track faculty would be receiving a letter of the Provost about the possibility of the "exchange" of research for teaching contact hours. Is that still in progress?

Part-time adjunct salaries have not been adjusted from $2600/lec, $1300/lab; even for adjuncts that teach a course repeatedly.

Can the calendar committee work with Conway schools so that our spring break corresponds with public schools? If public schools are out, and UCA is still teaching, then day care for children can be problematic.

Budget and staffing; Biology Graduate Assistant salaries are not in instructional budget. They should be put into the dept faculty budget, like PAFs for faculty. Instead, Biology overspends their account each year, even though this is a known expense. In addition, this is a large cost savings over hiring tenure-track faculty to teach the numerous introductory lab sections.

Can we provide more stability to non TT jobs; for instance get approval for rehire before Aug 15, esp. for instructors in math dept. Can instructors convert to Lec1?

Can we ensure that every dept's faculty averages12 contact hours as intended?

Is spam filter being updated? Can we get a better spam filter or one that can be adjusted by the user?

Why not IMAP not enabled for email? This would allow users to use any software to check their email, and not have to use the Groupwise client exclusively.

Please establish online voting for senate.

If we are teaching with more non TT, then where is the cost savings going?

Biology department desperately needs more staff support since faculty has increased dramatically with no increase in support staff.

Concurrent enrollment concerns. Is the content and teaching at high schools really up to UCA standards?

Last year the senate brought up the contention that student evaluations were originally intended to be private feedback to the faculty and not meant to be use in tenure and promotion. Is their use in T&P consistent with our faculty handbook and the original intent?

Meeting of Non-college affiliated faculty (NCAF)

Present: All Six At-Large Senators plus 11 Meeting Attendees.

▌ Issue #1: Representation for non-college affiliated faculty (NCAF):

Is there enough commonality among the NCAF to justify forming a unified voting block?

Issue was discussed at last year's meeting but never pursued.

Would the Senate consider giving full and fair hearing of this issue? Never made it out of committee when raised two years ago.

The At-Large representatives are not supposed to represent only the NCAF; rather they are supposed to represent all faculty.

Perhaps the NCAF are primarily inter-disciplinary faculty and should be represented as such as if they were a college.

The traditional assignment for college representatives is based on the idea that faculty within a college share common interests. Do the non-NCAF really share sufficient common interests to justify being represented as if they constituted a college?

(response to above) The Senate is essentially a political entity, and political entities frequently represent very diverse constituencies. e.g. U.S. Senate.

Although the NCAF don't share subject interests (as compared to, for example, Life Science faculty, or Liberal Arts faculty), they do share programmatic interests such as student success and retention rates.

Who are the NCAF? Honors College, University College, Residential Colleges, Undergraduate Studies, Library.

[general discussion]

Perhaps designate one of the existing six At-Large Senators to represent the NCAF. (total = appprox. 40?)

Perhaps create a new college comprised of the NCAF and give that college its own Senators.

Any creation of new Senate positions would require a constitutional amendment.

▌ Issue #2: Will the Faculty Senate address the issue of high school con-current enrollment? [general discussion]

▌ Issue #3: Will the Faculty Senate address the issue of athletes being able to attend classes only on Wednesdays for Mon/Wed/Fri sequences and/or only on Tuesday for Tues/Thur sequences? What are the ramifications of this situation? [general discussion]

▌ Issue #4: Will the Faculty Senate seek clarification on what President Hardin intends to do to increase the number of tenure track faculty lines?

If tenure track lines are increased, what affect will there be on individuals currently in non-tenure track lines such as emergency hires and non-tenure track positions?

▌ Issue #5: Are our admission standards too loose? Are we moving in the direction of open enrollment? What is the plan? The Faculty Senate should get involved in this issue.

▌ Issue #6: The Faculty Senate should address the issue of promotion pathways for non-tenure track Instructors. At present, there is no procedure by which they may seek promotion.