MINUTES OF THE FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING

 

January 19, 2007

 

 

Present: Greg Bassham (Faculty Council Chair-elect), Charles Brooks (Voting Group B Rep.), Joan Coffin (Voting Group A Rep.), Sheileen Corbett (at large), Howard Fedrick (Faculty Council Chair), Dan Ghezzi (A&P Chair-elect), Claire Gilmore (Voting Group D Rep.), Jayne Klenner-Moore (A&P  Chair), Brian Pavlac (C&T Chair-elect), Regan Reitsma (Voting Group C Rep.), Nick Holodick (VPAA) Ex officio.

 

The meeting was called to order at 2:05 PM in the Lipo Room.

 

 

Dr. Holodick made a brief presentation to Faculty council regarding Student Assessment Programs at King’s. Dr. Holodick will invite faculty members to serve on a new Student Assessment Committee to review the current status of assessment across the College. Dr. Holodick also suggested that the Committee be renamed the Student Learning Team.

 

 

Faculty Council Chair, Howard Fedrick opened discussion on the revisions of the Constitution of Faculty Governance. The revised version will be presented to the Board of Directors (BOD) at their February meeting. An earlier draft of the revised Constitution was sent to the Chair of the A&P committee of the BOD at the end of the Fall semester. Howard provided Faculty Council with a list of the major differences between the 2005 Constitution and the current Proposed Draft Version:

 

  1. The Alternate Pool has been eliminated.

 

  1. It is no longer proposed that the Chair of Faculty Council sit on the Board of Directors.

 

  1. The Faculty Benefits Chair will serve on IPARC.

 

  1. The Faculty Council Chair will consult annually with the AVPAA and VPAA to determine appropriate release time and/or benefits for the faculty leadership team consisting of the Chairs and Chairs-elect of Faculty Council, A & P, and C & T. A policy will be developed, in consultation with Faculty Council, to determine standard workload reductions and/or benefits for committee service.

 

  1. A quorum for the Faculty Meeting is defined as 40% of full-time faculty members (not 33% plus one as previously).

 

  1. A super-majority of 60% or greater is required for a revision of a Faculty Council policy recommendation by the Faculty Meeting (not a majority as previously).

 

  1. An expanded role for the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty in various aspects of faculty governance is recognized.

 

In the ensuing discussion several minor revisions were suggested and approved. Claire Gilmore asked about the Divisional location (B or D) of the Computer Science (CS) and Computers and Information Systems (CIS) Programs. In the revised draft, these programs are members of Division B (Social Sciences). Members of Faculty Council will consult with faculty in these Programs regarding their preference for membership in Division B or D.

 

Faculty Council approved the revised draft which will be presented to the BOD. A final version will be sent to all faculty members.

 

 

 

Dan Ghezzi reported on the review of the Student Evaluation of Teaching form, in response to questions raised about the interpretation and/or validity of the mean scores. In the current version, students responses of “unable to judge” are not included in the mean for each item, nor is the percentage of response listed for each item. Dr. Ghezzi proposed that the evaluation would be more accurate using percentages for each item. Following discussion, Faculty Council recommended that the present form and calculations be maintained and that the percentage of responses in each category be added to the evaluation.

 

Jayne Klenner-Moore, Chair of A & P reported that the committee will continue their work on revising the policy for Faculty Travel at their next meeting. The committee will also prepare a report on Academic Integrity.

 

 

Dr. Brian Pavlac, Chair-elect, presented a status report on the proposed CORE revisions. He noted that the substantive changes in the present draft of the revision include the following:

 

 

Dr. Pavlac noted that all questions and concerns about the revisions need to be forwarded to C & T immediately. Dr. Claire Gilmore asked about the status of the CORE course in Economics. C & T will discuss the locus of the course in Economics at the next meeting.

 

The final revised draft of the CORE will be submitted to Faculty Council for review and approval prior to the Faculty Meeting in March. The committee is currently working on descriptions for each category of the CORE.

 

Dr. Jennifer McClinton-Temple, Chair of C & T, will make a brief presentation of the progress of the CORE revisions to the A & P sub-committee of the BOD at the February meeting.

 

 

Minutes of the Faculty Council Meeting of November 30th were approved.

 

 

Faculty Council Chair Howard Fedrick reported on a request by Dr. Marc Marchese, Chair of Promotion and Tenure Committee for a change in the application procedure (noted in bold below). As stated in the current Faculty Handbook (p. 24, Part II, Item D, 3rd paragraph):

 

The candidate must make formal application to the appropriate Committee and the Vice President for Academic Affairs on or before the deadline for application determined and made known by the Vice President for Academic Affairs.

 

Dr. Marchese requested that Faculty Council consider changing that passage to “…on or before September 30…” and add the following statement “If September 30th falls on a weekend, the following Monday would be the deadline”.

 

Faculty Council discussed and approved the proposed change.

 

 

The meeting was adjourned at 3:20 P.M.

 

Submitted by,

 

Joan Coffin