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TOPIC: Faculty Senate News

Angeline

Date: Nov 15, 2005

Faculty Senate News	Permalink Closed

Faculty Senate Meeting Highlights, Nov. 11, 2005 4.1.4 CoH Tenure & Promotion document The COH administration asked its faculty to Vote on a new Tenure and Promotion policy for the COH. Wording in that new document, placed there by Dean Fos, stated that grant attainment would be a requirement for P&T. The faculty and faculty senators from COH expressed concern to Dr. Fos about this policy stating that policy for T & P needs to be set by academic units (i.e. Departments), not by the whole college. Further, they expressed that Administration and CAC does not have the authority to modify or create T & P policies, that must come from each department (like Nursing). Dean Fos, after conferring with the College Advisory Committee (CAC), halted the voting process and agreed that a process that directly involved academic units would be preferable and more in concert with the Faculty Handbook. The senate discussed the concern that the university's administration will still be using grant attainment as an implicit criteria for judging P&T. 4.1.6 Visit to Hattiesburg & USM by Dr. Belle Wheelan, President, SACS Commission on Colleges In October, Dr. Belle Wheelan, president of SACS, made an overnight visit to Hattiesburg and visited the USM campus in route to a statewide summit of university and community college administrators. No faculty or faculty representatives were invited to participate in this visit nor was mention of the visit was made to faculty at any point by the university's administration. The president of the Senate and the chairs of Graduate, Academic, and Council of Chairs wrote and signed a letter to Dr. Wheelan expressing "disappointment and surprise" by the visit and the university administration's omission to include faculty representation, particularly after the faculty's immense efforts to correct the issues related to the probationary status. The senate voted 31-1 authorizing the exec. committee to write a letter to the university administration expressing the same concern. 4.1.7 Raises The senate had voted last meeting to authorize the senate's budget committee to write a letter to President Thames concerning the recent raises given to select administrators and faculty as well as concerns regarding MIDAS. The budget committee wrote a letter which was distributed to senators who approved the letter unanimously. The letter will be hand delivered to the president Monday. 4.1.8 Discussions with Provost Grimes 4.1.8.1 Tenure & Promotion calendars There are discussions with the Provost to consider granting latitude to faculty who request extensions of the P&T deadlines if they were adversely affected by Katrina. 4.1.8.2 Revision of FAR due date Bill Powell stated that the Provost office will be pushing the FAR due date back to January. 4.1.8.3 FAR qualifying comment Bill P. has also asked the Provost that a qualifying statement be put on all faculty's FAR reports due to SACS and Katrina. 4.1.8.4 Summer Grants, sabbaticals, etc. Because of the budget uncertainties, summer grants and sabbaticals may be canceled. Senators expressed the opinion that if budgetary concerns were the impetus to cancel summer grants and sabbaticals MIDAS should also be canceled for the same reason. 4.1.11 MIDAS The senate is involve in meetings with the administration to discuss some of the inequities of the MIDAS program. One of the more positive outcomes is the consideration of incentives to faculty/staff who attain grants without salary recovery. 4.1.12 Push for online program in each college Bill P. reminded senators to remind colleagues in their respective colleges that newly developed online courses need to go through appropriate councils for approval. Senators expressed concern over the administrations push to force colleges to develop online courses believing that this violated SACS criteria which stated that curriculum is developed by faculty. The senate's Academic and Goverance Committee will review. 4.1.13 Calendar committee Next fall (2006), school semester will begin on Wed. instead of Thurs. and the Wed. before Thanksgiving will be given as a holiday. The senate also voted 32-0 in favor of spring breaks going back (in 2007) to being scheduled in mid-semester and coordinated with public school breaks. 4.1.14 Online evaluation of teaching An online policy has been sent to senators to send out to their colleges for review and comment. All comments should be sent to Bill Powell, Steve Oshrin or Stan Hauer. 4.1.15 Half tuition for spouses Bill Powell asked senators to be sure to fill out the staff survey and to encourage their constituents to do the same. 5.10.2 American Association of University Professors Next meeting November 17th LAB. Also, exec. officers have a meeting with Tom Meredith Nov. 28th. 6.0 New Business There was a lengthy discussion concerning the mini-courses being offered during the winter intercession. A motion was passed recommending that the Academic and Graduate Councils consider a review process for courses offered through an alternative learning mode of delivery. __________________

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