April 20, 2016 Minutes
FACULTY SENATE
April 20, 2016
346 LEON JOHNSON
4:10 PM – 5:00 PM
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY-BOZEMAN, MONTANA
Minutes
Members Present: Anderson (Film & Photo), Babbitt (Chair), Babcock (Chair-elect), Berry (CE), Bolte (Music), Brokaw for Martin (Mod Lang), Brown (JJCBE), Greenwood (Math), Downs (English), Gannon (ChBE), Herbeck (Ed), Karczewska for O’Neill (Arch), Larson (MIE), Lawrence (Biochem), McMahon (Ecology), Meyer (Hist & Phil), Mosley (ARS), Repasky (ECE), Rossmann (Library), Running (Nursing), Smith (HHD), Swinford (Soc/Anthro), Wilmer (PoliSci), Zabinski (LRES)
Others Present: Lukas Geyer, Susan Dana, Garrett Leach, Levi Birky, Maureen McCarthy, Chris Fastnow, Ron Larsen
Chair Babbitt called the meeting to order at 4:10 pm, and a quorum was present. The April 13, 2016 Faculty Senate minutes were approved.
New Courses and Programs – Chair-elect Babcock
- Undergraduate and Graduate courses are posted on the Faculty Senate website for review. If no comments come forward, they will be approved in the April 26, 2016 Steering Committee meeting.
Announcements – Chair Babbitt
- Task Force Reports
- Three task forces are in the process of reporting to the president.
- Chair Babbitt asked senators if they would like to see the reports and the answer was affirmative.
- Wilmer wants to clarify if discussions will be transpiring with dept heads once the reports have been distributed, over the summer. Wilmer will follow up and bring information back.
- The only other things on our agenda are handbook items unless faculty have other issues to discuss.
- One more FS meeting during finals week and where graduates are conferred.
Faculty Handbook – Promotion & Tenure Document – Chair Babbitt
- Input from the faculty meetings is copious. To include all new information in new
draft documents and review is probably more than senate can handle before the end
of the semester and, therefore, the documents will not be approved by April 27.
- Babbitt suggests JAGS continues to work on those inputs, place them in a coherent list and come up with new draft documents to review in summer or early fall.
- What Chair Babbitt would like to accomplish in the next two weeks:
- Don’t focus on small things, but the overall things of where should the P&T documents go over the next three months so there is something coherent with some consensus that it takes a few more tweaks in the fall rather than having the documents go on ad infinitum.
- The major concepts guiding these documents include:
- Area of Scholarship
- Concept of the word “integration.”
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- Review Committee composition
- How we deal with external and internal letters.
- In the previous hour, today, and on Monday, April 11, 2-3 pm, there was good open
faculty discussion about what the Area of Scholarship (hereinafter referred to as
“AoS”) means. The main objection to the concept was:
- There are six different combinations to choose from, and it is daunting to assign quantitative and qualitative measures to them that are consistent.
- Babbitt believes the goal was missed, which was to eliminate the very narrow choice of checking a box. Now, the faculty get to define what their area of scholarship is and it does not have to fall within a particular category but it cannot be random; one must have a coherent AoS. If you have a unique way of combining things listed under teaching/research and service. You cannot get tenure based on only service. But any other way you want to combine and meets your departmental criteria, faculty may go up for tenure.
- Larsen stated that faculty may not get it only on integration, either. It has to be founded in either teaching or research with anything else you want to include.
- When we speak of effectiveness of teaching, research and service, it does matter what is listed in those three areas.
- In the previous meeting and in the AoS, faculty discussed removing the word “integration” as it applies to effectiveness: That is one discussion.
- The other discussion is that faculty believes it is more of a coherent AoS – don’t
think of it integrated between different things. Remove integration under that definition.
- Downs prefers integration, as one would have to take a large overview of his work to find something that looks like coherence; by the time you do that, Downs would be putting it in terms of integration any way.
- Babbitt said to consider the case where one publishes 10-20 random papers in research that are not coherent. If the papers concentrate in three major areas, that is coherent – common coherence. Writing a great textbook in one subject, doing great research in another subject, writing a paper on pedagogy and conducting an online class in a third subject– that is not coherent. Your department has to define how coherent, coherent is. One department stated that if someone has ten (10) different papers, then they view those as tenure-worthy. Other departments may not view that as tenure-worthy.
- Meyer asked if MSU has information about concepts of integration and coherence in defining P&T from other peer institutions. If they do not, his departmental faculty have expressed concern about how to ask someone at another university to write a letter of recommendation for tenure or to full professor if they don’t know what we are talking about. Is this something that is common among universities or are we inventing this and hoping people understand us? It appears as though integration, itself, is a value. It seems that MSU should be using examples that are accepted and normative instead of coming up with our own vocabulary that isn’t used elsewhere.
- Babbitt – Is our process coherent, now? If someone goes up under research or teaching, now, how did they get evaluated? If you told the external reviewer this faculty member would be going up under research, now evaluate it, they would want to know what kind of research was done in what area. The language as we are discussing it now, if someone goes up under a combination of areas I believe it is clearer than it was before. Is it something novel in that some reviewers might not have seen such a thing? Maybe. For evaluation of accomplishment or excellence, I did not interpret the new language as saying that “integration” of areas was an extra “value” in one’s review. There are no extra points for combining.
- Addressing your point about coming up with something normative, there are a whole
range of options. For example, at one university the candidate does not assembled
their own dossier; their department does and they are not involved in that process at all.
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Larsen – When you were choosing a box and had to show promise of excellence, if faculty struggled with that, MSU has a history of including what that means in the letters going to outside evaluators. We have been doing that for years, and we will have to continue to do that.
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Babbitt – We looked at one university where the department is the one that puts the dossier together and the faculty member is not involved.
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Brokaw – The new document will require qualitative and quantitative criteria for areas of scholarship. Integration doesn’t just show up in effectiveness but in the different options. I realize the intent wasn’t to create six (6) boxes, but that is what is happening. The wording states, “The University recognizes the following a sacceptable areas of scholarship.” and then it goes on to list those six (6) areas, four (4) of which are integrated.
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Babbitt – Think of it as infinite; not just six (6). Come up with one option with a coherent area of scholarship that includes things as teaching, research and service and show why you are accomplished in that area of scholarship. The departmental Role and Scope might say if someone was going up in research we would expect them to look like this a typical tenurable person would look like this…and then anyone may trade things off. If they went up in teaching, the R&S might describe how they value a textbook and might compare it to a journal. If someone wants to combine research/teaching, a textbook might be worth 2-3 journals; developing an online classroom might be equivalent to developing a conference. Nowhere in these new documents does it or should it say you must do these in six (6) different ways.
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Brokaw – Contents of Role & Scope documents, Section 2, Prgh 4: “The performance indicators and associated quantitative and qualitative expectations in the areas of teaching, research/creative activity, and service and appropriate discussion of the weighting of the indicators in the review for demonstration of effectiveness, accomplishment, and excellence.” The document, now, only explicitly requires us to come up with quantitative and qualitative Criteria for each individual one. There seem to be a disconnect between what we are going to specifically say about what is required vs. what is allowed.
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Babbitt – The intent is to get rid of the check boxes and allow the candidate to define their AoS. If someone defines an AoS and does not meet the departmental requirements for an AoS, does the review stop at that point? Does the department redefine the AoS or does the department send it back to the candidate to redefine their AoS.
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Repasky – Perhaps we can have personal statement that states what the AoS is and hopefully, the reviewer will see it and know what to review. Letters to internal/external reviewers would be pointed to that personal statement.
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Brokaw – It would be up to the candidate to make the point of AoS,
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Wilmer – At every level of RTP, we have a baseline that has to be met in both areas of teaching and research (not going to talk about service). Then you have to show something beyond the baseline and that was the old checking of the box. Now, we’ve added a third box that says “My baseline for excellence is because I have integrated.” Is that correct for each stage? Could we add a third box for excellence?
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Babbitt – Under the old system, one could check research and discuss all types of research. Now, the candidate may say that “I have great optics and great pedagogical textbook writing.” They aren’t integrated, yet I am good in research in optics and in writing textbooks. Just like one would take two research areas and combine them in the past, one could now take scholarly products under research and teaching and combine them. I don’t want the candidate want to be able to take multiple 25%, 25%, 25% (all from different research/teaching areas) and combine them to make over 100% in one area by combining, unless the collection is part of a coherent scholarly areas.
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Wilmer – You are talking about getting tenure in research and having two different research agendas going on. I am talking about the two boxes that still exist, only we have reconceptualized them, and they are no longer boxes; you have to describe them in your personal statement of either research or teaching, as beyond the baseline; effectiveness in both and beyond excellence and accomplishment in one. What is the integration piece? It is not that just my research agenda is integraded. We keep using “integration” in two different ways: One is the coherence of my research agenda and the other is some combination of research and teaching that warrants my promotion or tenure.
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Babbitt – Under effectiveness, we have effectiveness in teaching, research and service; satisfactory performance of integrating those. I believe we should eliminate the word “integration” under accomplishment. Integration should not be extra points for accomplishment or excellence.
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Larsen – It would be a rare faculty member who does that. The idea is that it is the combination of the two that has value and is allowed.
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Babbitt – If I write an optics textbook and do optics research, I would probably be more renowned to my respected authorities, not because of integration but because it was more coherent.
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Wilmer – You could go up under teaching with that portfolio.
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Mosley – Does an AoS have to be defined by the words teaching, research, service or a combination of those?
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Babbitt – No.
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Mosley – You have the standards for effectiveness and they are specific for those areas. You have an AoS in optics and you are known for your expertise in that If that is the case, why do we even need those boxes and why do those terms (teaching, research, and service) need to be in there when you describe your AoS?
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Babbitt – I would like to propose this: When we use effectiveness, we still use teaching, research, and service. When we talk about AoS we just lump the scholarly parts of all those together as indicators and don’t separate them. If you are judging someone in their AoS and they have lots of indicators (textbooks, journal articles, conferences, development of online classes, etc.) to use in a coherent area of scholarship. One question is, can Knapp scores/teaching evaluations be included as an indicator in your AoS?
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Brokaw – Research have shown that student evaluations are not good indicators of good teaching. I don’t know why that would be an indicator in good teaching.
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Babbitt – We use them in effectiveness in teaching.
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I know we use it; everybody does but I don’t know why.
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Babbitt – How about in-depth teaching assessment? Could that be included as an indicator under your AoS? How well you teach your class - is that part of your AoS or just one of your areas of responsibilities that you need to be effective in?
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Brokaw – It depends on how you want to define your AoS as this document allows you to define it anyway you want. This will still be difficult for external evaluation, no matter how consistent we make this document.
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Zabinski – Shifting the conversation. I have not heard a great reason why we have integration as part of our definition of effectiveness.
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Babbitt – For accomplishment and excellence, do we like the proposed AoS concept or should we go back to the check boxes?
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Karczewska – The way that you gave your example where someone writes a textbook and has research in optics and want to use. Does that mean that accomplishment and excellence has to be demonstrated in both as an accumulated entity?
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Babbitt – If one has two main research areas they are good in, but one alone wouldn’t have gotten them tenure, but both areas combined would, the may not need to be excellent in both. Now, do we want the same for someone going up in research and teaching. If one does work in research and teaching, do they have to be excellent in both to get tenure.
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Karczewska – Aren’t you lowering the standards with this approach?
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Babbitt – If one goes up in research in two different areas and neither one would have gotten them tenure but the fact they did both, in some depts. that would get them tenure. Anyone want to argue with that?
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- Zabinski – My understanding of effectiveness is that 1. It be consistent with the strategic plan and we would like to put it in R&S. 2. If I can’t come up with a scenario where I would be able to prove integration but because I can come up with an artful paragraph that somehow integrates my CORE level teaching and my very focused research, then I have two comments about this: 1. If it’s not really a tool to help us evaluate whether someone is effective when there is a way around it, it does not belong in the documents. 2. If we need PR for Montana Hall to use to say what a university does for a candidates’ review because they integrate, we might do what I do when I apply for an NSF grant: I have to write a paragraph summarizing what I am doing and NSF can use that for the general public. We can do the same thing with our dossier. It should not be part of the dossier because it is a confidential document but it could be a paragraph on how we integrate (it doesn’t have to be included in promotion and tenure). It does not have to be criteria for retention. I could write a paragraph that is outside of the dossier and turn it in at the same time or do it every fifth year as part of my annual review rather than having it as a criteria.
- Babbitt – You say Montana Hall wants to show something to the BoR. As faculty, we should also think about what we want to show to the BOR.
- Zabinski – It is in our Prioritization Document about better communication with what we do at the university so the public understands, so I agree.
- Bolte – You should consider that there are departments on campus that have this integration already. It is a struggle for many faculty in music; we do a lot of teaching and research/ creative activity. For us, I think this really allows us to design an AoS that can show what we actually do. Right now, if we check a box, it pigeon holes us and makes it difficult to balance the relationships in teaching, research/creative activity and service.
- Babbitt – I believe this can be handled in R&S because they can have more stringent standards.
- Meyer – You asked us to speak about big picture issues. Bolte’s and Karczewska’s comments underscore what are the main big picture problems. Administration is trying to micromanage many different departments in different fields.
- Babbitt – I would say just the opposite. They are opening it up so that under the departments R&S, each department can define the requirements for tenure differently, as long as their standards are higher.
- Meyer –Faculty in my dept have also expressed that through this process, administration is trying to impose uniformity.
- Babbitt – Uniformity has been put into the process because some people complained
that the randomness in previously caused confusion. Reducing the uncertainty was a
good goal. However, we are hearing from some depts is that uniformity doesn’t work
for them and they need flexibility.
Karczewska – I would argue with that and I hope that I would argue with that.
- Addressing Zabinski, effectiveness which has also satisfactory performance in integration.
- Babbitt – The thought behind putting integration into standards is that it is already something we do and that we want faculty to do. So, it is pretty easy to write something. Some unfavorable consequences might be if a faculty member informs a dept head that they can’t teach a course because it is not integrable. Is it worth having in standards? If you want to get rid of integration under effectiveness, I would not suggest requiring an ancillary document about integration that would not play a role in one’s review during P&T. One suggestion was made that the integration of research, teaching, and service should only be in the retention review but not in the tenure and promotion review.
- Swinford – In the definitions it states that “integration” as recognized in the university’s strategic plan. What happens when the strategic plan changes in five years?
- Babbitt – We can ignore the strategic plan, but copy the definition from the strategic plan as what we recognize as integration in RPT.
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Anderson - Effectiveness should be taken out. We need to make a clear, concise, and coherent case for scholarship. We don’t make it coherent scholarship. We need to make a clear case for it and is a question of semantics.
quantities. As a person on a P&T committee you examine the candidate’s job description and what they have done and it is not quantitative.
- Downs – Doesn’t understand why effectiveness is good on one level and not at all levels unless it is used as a crutch to help at a lower level and it goes away once scholarship is developed. If it can exist, it should be able to exist at any. Regarding integration and if the check boxes are six (6) or infinite – the only drawback of six is the cognitive load it puts on the UPT. Wouldn’t there be some kind of fatigue the committee would experience trying to review 50-60 different areas?
- Babbitt – Currently, under research, everyone has an individual argument for how they satisfy that. For ninety percent (90%) of those going up in research in the future, nothing is going to change; those in teaching and have a coherent argument why they are going up in teaching; that isn’t going to change. The question is what combinations will we allow? Hopefully, it won’t be many who choose the combination and probably will be only one (1) or two (2) per cycle. Are we allowing something new to happen or are we confusing everyone?
- Wilmer – Could we insert a reference to the dept’s R&S. or wording that says, “As described in the departmental R&S.” ?
- Babbitt – That is implied, but it should be made specific.
- Wilmer – Is the new system better than the boxes? Everyone went up for research and not for teaching and it did not take into account that we value integration. If we want to show that we value integration, is that best done through the RPT process? Is it obsolete to have boxes, where no one checks the teaching box? Do we want to give depts. move leeway to define what would constitute a tenurable dossier broadly given that teaching/research/service are our responsibility? If in the end, it is desirable and it does that, then it is an improvement over the boxes.
- Babbitt – To be clear, we are not saying that there is a requirement for “N” papers. We are saying that a typical person going up would have ten (10) papers. The R&S would have weights to guide the review of a person that has half that many papers, but then has five (5) textbooks or conference papers, instead of the journal papers – how would you weigh that? In R&S is an example of what it takes to get tenure in your department, as well as how the department would weigh different indicators.
- Zabinski – The reason you would oppose the quantification or even the description of that - In my dept are 100% Extension; 70% research/30% teaching; 85% research/ 15% teaching, some do really basic work and are publishing in a certain kind of journal, others are giving talks to farmers.
- Babbitt – How do you judge if someone is accomplished?
- Zabinski – There is a list of activities and if someone does excellent work that they participate in We don’t have any judgment about which is better than what and quantities. As a person on a P7T committee you examine the candidate's job description and what they have done and it is not quantitative.
The meeting adjourned at 5:05 pm.
Randy Babbitt, Chair
Michael Babcock, Chair-elect