FACULTY SENATE

April 13, 2016

346 LEON JOHNSON

4:10 PM – 5:00 PM

MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY-BOZEMAN, MONTANA

Minutes

 

Members Present: Adams (Art), Anderson (Film & Photo), Arnold (Ag Ed), Babbitt (Chair), Babcock (Chair-elect), Berry (CE), Bolte (Music), Brokaw for Martin (Mod Lang), Brown (JJCBE), Burrows (Ext), Davis for Greenwood (Math), Downs (English), Gannon (ChBE), Herbeck (Ed), Lawrence (Biochem), Lu (PSPP), Meyer (Hist & Phil), O’Neill (Arch), Olson for Mosley (ARS), Repasky (ECE), Rossmann (Library), Running (Nursing), Scott (Psych), Smith (HHD), Swinford (Soc/Anthro), Wilmer (PoliSci), Zabinski (LRES)

 

Others Present: Waded Cruzado, David Singel, Brock LaMeres, Elizabeth Hurst, Jenny Bryan, Zach Fent, Connor Glesner, Tyler Worthen, Lilly Brogger, Anson Negaard, Jack Seeger

 

Chair Babbitt called the meeting to order at 4:10 pm, and a quorum was present.

Chair Babbitt announced that open business will transpire during the first half of the meeting; it will be closed to senators only when President Cruzado speaks; the meeting will then be open again, after the president speaks.

The April 6, 2016 Faculty Senate minutes were approved.

Announcements – Chair Babbitt

  • Administrative Reviews
    • The deadline for the Dept Head survey has been extended to Thursday, April 14, 2016, 5:00 pm due to many challenges senate has experienced in distributing the reviews: The 365 spam software is dumping the survey into spam folders; MSU emails were updated but not provided to Faculty Senate; and, Survey Monkey itself. Senate will use a new survey instrument, Qualtrics, next year. 
    • The President, VP’s, other Deans and Department reviews will be postponed until next year. This also helps that the results may be discussed closer to the survey time. It also is more in sync with faculty schedules.

Montana Engineering Education Research Center (MEERC) - Brock LaMeres

  • Justification:
    • Faculty in the College of Engineering who have recently won NSF awards have done so individually. Funding agencies are trending towards larger interdisciplinary proposals aimed at transformational research in engineering educational research. The COE, therefore, believes it is time to form the proposed center, as it will enable faculty to become a cohesive collaborative group, it will afford them more opportunities to pursue larger grants, and a center would allow MSU’s engineering college to be more competitive.
    • The Dean of the COE has pledged financial support to get the center started. 
  • Chair Babbitt reminded attendees that Faculty Senate does not approved Centers; it endorses them.
  • Motion to endorse MEERCàsecondedàall in favoràunanimously

CLOSED MEETING: During this portion of the meeting, Faculty Senators will be discussing matters of personnel and therefore necessitates a closed format. The discussions and deliberations could potentially relate to matters of individual privacy and the demands of individual privacy exceed the merits of public disclosure, particularly in the case of our desire to maintain strict confidentiality.

 Discussion with President Cruzado of President’s Review

OPEN MEETING:

Faculty Handbook – Promotion & Tenure Document – Chair Babbitt

  • Chair Babbitt presented the P&T document changes made in the most recent April 11 JAGS meeting.
  • Deans’ Council would like to modify the response time for faculty to address a negative recommendation (or tie vote) from a review committee or an administrative reviewer from three (3) days to three (3) business days or five (5) actual days. JAGS will discuss these suggestions during their next meeting on April 18.
  • Faculty may now respond at every negative or tied review level; previous language only allowed one response at first negative/tiedn review. 
  • Intermediate level, (e.g., college level) if you are from the candidate’s primary unit, you may not deliberate or vote; but now just like in UPTC level, you may answer questions about your primary unit.
  • Where it says “a majority of the member must be” it will changed to “at least half".
  • For smaller, or perhaps all units, we should set the minimum committee at three (3) rather than four (4).
  • Faculty may provide input during the two scheduled meetings:
    • April 18, 2-3, Alumni Room in the SUB and at which time those edits will be brought to JAGS at 3:00 that afternoon; and,
    • April 20, 3-4, 346 Leon Johnson and right before the regularly scheduled Faculty Senate meeting, 4:10 – 5:00 pm.
  • During the next few senate meetings, senators receive priority to speak and then guests. Therefore Chair Babbitt encouraged all faculty to attend the April 18 and April 20 outside meetings.
  • Senate’s input will go to next Deans’ Council 5/10/16; if they have input or edits, those would come back to senate next
  • Some of the edits in the documents coming will be addressing Extension
  • Senate leadership will present a list of changes and how those changes have been incorporated into new P&T documents on the Faculty Senate web site before April 20.
  • For effectiveness, faculty are to integrate teaching, research and service. Does that allow for someone who doesn’t make it in research to bring in some teaching and service and get a better area of scholarship for accomplishment? No. Standards are not being lowered. Rather, the option to allow standards to be applied in different ways is what the new documentation is purporting. A faculty member needs to be recognized and awarded tenure based on their defined combination of teaching/research; teaching/research/service; teaching; service; research,e. g.
  • Senator noted that integration creates five different options to go for tenure. What does integration accomplish, as faculty are evaluated in all three areas anyway? Qualified and quantified criteria will have to be written and used to evaluate all five (5) and it will become complicated. Can integration be taken into account without all this?
  • Chair Babbitt responded that research/teaching is not definitive for some faculty. Having the integration option is good. Including service is a good option as well, as in the case of service/learning. Departmental Role & Scope may be set up to handle all integration challenges. 
  • Being evaluated for all three areas separately in effectiveness is very different from evaluating the combination/integration of these into an Area of Scholarship, which has to be accomplished or excellent.
  • Chair Babbitt asked senators to submit comments to him or Chair-elect Babcock

 

The meeting adjourned at 5:01 pm.

 

Randy Babbitt, Chair

Michael Babcock, Chair-elect

 

A printable PDF of this information can be found here.