April 7, 2015
Executive Summary
1. Call to Order
Chair Zonderman called the twelfth meeting of the sixty-first session of the NC State Faculty Senate to order at 3 p.m.
2. Remarks and Announcements
Chair Zonderman welcomed Senators and guests.
Secretary Daley announced the passing of retired political science professor William J. Block. Among other accomplishments, William J. Block, Professor Emeritus Political Science, was a former Faculty Senate Chair, served as Department Head, and created the Public Administration program at State with an emphasis on practitioner students.
3. Approval of the Minutes, Meeting No 11, March 24, 2015
A motion passed to approve the minutes
.
4. Remarks from Provost Arden
Provost Arden reported on some leadership reviews that will take place within the next few weeks. The interview process for Vice Chancellor for Research will start today, and the interviews for the Dean of the College of Sciences will begin next week. There will be four candidates coming to campus. He encouraged the faculty to participate in the interviews.
Provost Arden announced that the Board of Governors determines how to allocate the budget cuts that the institutions receive. There is a 2% cut that was proposed in response to a request from the State Budget Office and for NC State that equates to approximately $9.5 million.
Provost Arden stated that there is concern about a bill that is being placed in the Senate regarding faculty workload. The bill requires faculty at all constituent universities to have all four course teaching loads each semester and that anything less than that would result in salary reductions.
5. Presentations
Internal Transfers
Louis Hunt, Vice Provost and University Registrar, stated that in 2012 they created a centralized system where students would fill out forms on one website. He said before students can put in an application to change majors, they have to run a “what if” degree audit so they will know how far away from a degree they would be. Hunt stated that they are planning to centralize it in June. To have an efficient system they have to have good technology and more importantly good information. He stated that the requirements for changing majors is 38 pages long. He noted that a lot of the requirements are to control capacity and don’t have anything to do with a person’s potential for success in the major.
University College and General Education Testing
Vice Chancellor Mullen explained University Colleges as organizational constructs that are pretty common across the United States. He said what is also common about them is there is almost no commonality among them.
Mullen stated that one of the goals is to unify those disciplinary academic pieces that are already in DASA into a single organizational structure to better serve students. He explained that it would still be the place where 20% of exploratory students who aren’t sure what they want could come to the university. It would also be a place for unifiable successful resources for students, who after they come in with a major, might want to explore further.
Independent Studies
Dr. Barbara Kirby, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Services, gave an update on university course and curriculum. She also addressed the Academic Integrity Policy.
Kirby stated that the first part of the policy is all campuses will have course numbers and reporting conventions that utilize separate section numbers to identify independent study courses taught by individual faculty members. Vice Provost Louis Hunt has worked with Registration and Records to identify a way for students to register or drop down to the mentoring of that section of the course that the student is taking. They could then match students with faculty members. She said they are currently consulting with R&R and CEST and scheduling officers to be able to do that in an efficient way.
6. Old/New Business
Resolution on a University Standing Committee on Lectures and Speakers, 2nd Reading
The resolution passed with unanimous support.
Resolution on Board of Governors Teaching Award
The resolution will be presented for a second reading at the next meeting.
Resolution on Funding Library Services/Resolution on Funding Library Collections
The motion passed unanimously to waive a second reading to vote on the resolutions.
After much discussion, the decision was made to bring the resolutions back for a second reading.
Statement of Concern on Chancellor Search Policies
Chair Zonderman and Senator Fleisher, Chair of the Governance Committee, drafted a statement of concern on behalf of the Senate to echo where the faculty agrees with the BOT. He stated that they also included some of their own concerns.
A motion passed unanimously to approve the statement.
Discussion of Revised Post Tenure Review Policies
There was much discussion on the revised policies from both senators and guests. The discussions will continue at the next Senate meeting.
Chair Zonderman instructed the faculty to send specific ideas on the revised policy to Senators Lunardi and Holden.
7. Adjourn
A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 5:10 p.m.
Meeting Minutes
Present:
Chair Zonderman, Secretary Daley, Chair-Elect Moore; Parliamentarian Fath; Provost Arden; Senators Auerbach, Banks, Barlett, Bernhard, Borden, Davidian, Devetsikiotis, Fleisher, Gunter, Holden, Knopp, Krause, Levy, Lunardi, Nfah-Abbenyi, Orcutt, Sotillo, Steer, Williams
Excused:
Senators: Baumer, Bird, Byrnes, Cubbage, Smith
Absent:
Senators: Allaire, Ash, Brady, Bullock, Edwards, Fuentes, Heitmann, Laffitte, Moore, Scearce, Spontak
G
uests:
Eileen Goldgeier, General Counsel; Louis Hunt, EMAS; Roy Baroff, Faculty Ombuds; Betsy Brown, Provost Office; Mike Mullen, Vice Chancellor/Dean Academic Student Affairs; Barbara Kirby, Associate Vice Provost, Academic Programs and Services; Catherine Freeman, Director of University Courses and Curricula/University Standards Coordinator
1. Call to Order
Chair Zonderman called the twelfth, meeting of the sixty-first session of the NC State Faculty Senate to order at 3 p.m.
2. Remarks and Announcements
Secretary Daley announced the passing of Professor William J. Block. Among other accomplishments, William J. Block, Professor Emeritus Political Science, was a former Faculty Senate Chair, served as Department Head, and created the Public Administration program at State with an emphasis on practitioner students.
3. Approval of the Minutes, Meeting No. 11, March 24, 2015
Minutes of the March 24
th meeting were approved as submitted.
4. Remarks from Provost Arden
Provost Arden reported on some important leadership interviews that are going to take place within the next few weeks. Today the Vice Chancellor for Research interview is starting, and the interviews for the Dean of the College of Sciences will begin next week. There will be four candidates coming to campus. He encouraged the faculty to participate in the interviews.
Provost Arden announced that there will be a Board of Governors meeting at the end of the week. The Board of Trustees will meet next week. He stated that every year GA and the Board of Governors determine how to allocate the budget cuts that the institutions receive. There is a 2% cut that was proposed in response to a request from the State Budget office and for NC State that equates to approximately $9.5 million. If there are allocations across the system, which are likely, there could be several million dollars more.
Provost Arden stated that there is some concern about a bill that is being placed in the Senate regarding faculty workload. The bill would require that faculty at all constituent universities have all four course teaching loads each semester and that anything less than that would result in salary reductions. He said he has heard from reliable sources that there is little support for the bill.
5. Presentations
Internal Transfers
Louis Hunt, Vice Provost and University Registrar, stated that in 2012 they created a centralized system for students filling out forms. They combined and created one website, one centralized system. For example, before students can put in an application to change majors, they have to run a “what if” degree audit so they will know how far away from a degree they are. Hunt stated that they are planning to centralize it in June. He said a lot of students change majors on this campus. To have an efficient system we have to have good technology and more importantly good information. The requirements for changing majors is 38 pages long. A lot of the requirements are to control capacity and don’t have anything to do with a person’s potential for success in the major.
Hunt stated that they have had this decentralized for quite a while. The committee came up with some guidelines of what would an internal transfer process look like. He said it is essentially things like an undergraduate student in good standing and making satisfactorily progress should be able to pursue a course of study toward a baccalaureate degree as consistent with their academic interest and aptitude. The reason we are doing this is that the enrollment planning process needs to take into account how many freshmen are coming in, how many new external transfers, and how many internal transfers.
Hunt stated that they have admitted a lot of students to the university through the First Year College, for example, but they have more obligation to those students than they do to community college transfers. “We get marching orders from enrollment planning that we submit to General Administration and it says that we are bringing in 4260 freshmen, 1181 through transfers. We want to make sure we get those in the FYC in their majors first. We are going to centralize it in June. We have three cycles that run throughout the year.”
Hunt stated that the real goal for the centralized process coming out of the gate is to replicate what the colleges would have done themselves. He said once we get past that, we will work with the colleges to establish targets and to also look at the requirements we have. Some of them are fairly arbitrary. They were set up maybe to control capacity. We will be centralizing in June. We will be working very careful with departments or colleges to make sure that we have the same outcomes. We have had good feedback. We are going to have to make some modifications to our current system, because we know there are some things that the current process doesn’t accommodate.
Questions and Comments
For majors where there are too many students to be admitted, will that in the future bring us more teaching faculty?
Hunt stated that the real challenge will be matching resources with demand and also that demand have to be consistent with university objectives.
Provost Arden added that the reality is that at the moment we have the system where first time, full time freshmen are run through the admissions office, transfers are run through the admissions office, but we have many of our own students that was already accepted, sort of relinquishing not being able to get into desired majors and many are leaving the university and never graduating and never get credit because they decide to go somewhere else. He said we owe it to our students to do a better job.
Chair Zonderman commented that there really has to be sort of a university wide process.
Hunt stated that he thinks that is what we will see happen. We will identify some capacity from strained majors and those are going to have some sort of control of that in flow and it probably shouldn’t just be GPA, there should be other things. There may be no capacity constraints.
What methods will you use to determine that this has been successful?
Hunt stated that you will see more students graduate. We find students that are in good standing and can’t get into their majors. They leave here and go to ECU or somewhere else. There is not a short term solution for that because there may be real capacity constraints there. One thing we talked about is if you applied for a capacity constrained major you have to also apply for a non-constrained major and that was just one direction where we could move. Another benefit of centralizing is we can have some transparency, take time to collect data.
University College and General Education Testing
Vice Chancellor Mullen explained University Colleges as being organizational constructs that are pretty common across the United States and what is also common about them is there is almost no commonality among them.
Mullen stated that there are 1584 students in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs (DASA), and the vast majority of the students are in the First Year College. We have university internal transfer students that are flowing through this unit on a day to day basis as they change majors. We also have the Environmental Science degree program, which has 200 majors. When Student Affairs and DUAP came together we had the Health and Exercise Studies Department with faculty and minors and a tremendous number of classes. We had a Music Department that was reporting through another Vice Provost within Student Affairs and we also have minors in ROTC and recently we inherited the Interdisciplinary Global Studies Certificate from Study Abroad. We also have a minor in a certificate. We have honors and scholars and research and tutoring and writing in TRIO.
Mullen stated that one of the goals is to unify those disciplinary academic pieces that are already in DASA into a single organizational structure to better serve students. How do we provide if not a physical one stop shop, which would be the idea goal, into a virtual one stop shop that makes it very apparent to all students regardless to where they are? It would still be the place where 20% of exploratory students who aren’t sure what they want could come to the university. It would also be a place for unifiable successful resources for students who after they come in for a major, might want to explore further.
Senator Knopp commented that this raises two fears—the first fear is from the First Year College, as soon as you hear college then you will think that this is going to become a university studies major. What can you say about that? The second thing would be many colleges have a lot of committees on them, are they going to be in place as well?
Mullen stated that they already have a Division Curriculum Committee with representation from Health and Exercise Studies, Music, Theater, and ROTC and that will continue. He said one thing he would like to do is some university colleges have faculty fellows and they have them now. They have people who are interested in the work of the First Year College and University College who will be listed on the website as the faculty fellows that work with us to help students find their future.
Mullen stated that he has included in the document that this is not a structure that is designed to bring in new faculty unless it is hired into Health and Exercise Studies or Music. It is not a place to develop new academic departments unless you as the university community decide this is where I should go. This is not an opportunity for us to try to mimic other academic colleges, it’s really an opportunity to bring the services and functions that we already have reporting out through three different people to one place for better cohesion among those programs to make it visible to all students that this is the place for them.
Mullen stated that on the question of undergraduate studies, there is a group that is looking at multidisciplinary degree programs and that will have to be decided on as well, how that would work.
Provost Arden stated that he is also very supportive of this. This is a very unique organization. This is really taking the academic oriented component out of DASA now and essentially putting them under the University College instead of the First Year College. This really is about internal reorganizing.
Vice Chancellor Mullen stated that the GA formed a General Education Council in March 2013. He updated the faculty on what that council has been doing.
In March of 2013 President Ross appointed people from across the system to form the General Education Council, a working group composed of faculty and administrators from each of the 17 UNC institutions. The charge of the GEC had two major goals. They were to develop a recommended set of learning outcomes that are appropriate for all of the UNC institutions, and explore methodologies appropriate to assessing these outcomes.
Fall 2013 the GEC compiled a comprehensive list of the competencies implied in each UNC institution’s general education program and developed a survey to solicit faculty input. More than 3,000 faculty participated in the survey that allowed the subcommittee to identify two competencies that were h3ly endorsed by the majority of participants: Critical Thinking and Written Communication. The UNC Faculty Assembly endorsed these competencies, and they were also approved by each of the 17 university Faculty Senates.
Mullen said as a committee we felt that we could sell written communication and critical thinking not only internally to our constituent campuses, but also to the Board of Governors and while they have a lot of questions they finally accepted that we could get by on two competencies rather than four, five, or six.
The committee has looked at numerous ways of doing this. Educational Testing Services (ETS) are now putting together one instrument that will be used to assess against those two competencies and there is a vast array of sub-competencies. This instrument is not without its controversial elements. This instrument will have fifty minute critical thinking section and then a 45 minute written communication section. This will include open ended response questions and multiple choice items. The end point is that we would end up with ratings across the system.
Mullen announced that there is an effort to have faculty involved in workshops. One will be held here on April 24
th that will introduce you to the test and how to write items. He encouraged the faculty to be involved.
Questions and Comments
Will this only be for first year students?
Mullen responded that they would really like to do it across the classes. Currently only 191 students have agreed to do it.
Who determines what is proficient and what is not proficient?
Mullen responded that ETS will accept the scale, which will be a system-wide scale. Based on some of the pilots that have been done, Chapel Hill and NC State would be at the very top.
Independent Studies
Dr. Barbara Kirby, Associate Vice Provost, Academic Programs and Services, gave an update on university course and curriculum. She also addressed a policy that deals with academic integrity.
Academic Integrity Policy 700.6.1
Kirby stated that the first part of the policy is that all campuses will have course numbers and reporting conventions that utilize separate section numbers to identify independent study courses taught by individual faculty members. Vice Provost Louis Hunt has worked with Registration and Records to be able to identify for students a way to register or drop down to the mentoring of that section of the course that the student is taking. She said they could then match students with faculty members. They are currently with R&R and CEST and scheduling officers to be able to do that in an efficient way.
Numbering
—Kirby said, for the most part, the graduate school has specific numbers for specific independent studies, research, and those types of courses. At the undergraduate level there are more of a buffet of things that are out there and as they look at Registration and Records they would like to come up with courses that are numbered like a 295 independent study or research.
Kirby stated that the piece that UCCC was tasked with is that all forms of individualized studies have to pertain to guidelines that are similar to undergraduate classes. She said they approve courses at UCCC and there is a syllabus, there are learning outcomes and the course description, but for the independent studies or research it is not quite as simple to provide a syllabus for that. Many of the colleges have a contract for some type of individualize learning agreement with the student.
The Non - Standard Course Agreement
Kirby reported that in spring 2013, UCCC approved and defined non-standard instructional formats that require a student contract to include:
- Research
- Independent Study (Individual Study)
- Special Problems
The Non-Standard Course Agreement Template was developed to incorporate requirements that UNC-GA set forth. Faculty/Departments can add more detail to the contract or use their departmental agreement but must complete the template detail.
The Non-Standard Course Agreement was reviewed and revised by Registration and Records, Academic Policy Committee (APC) Faculty Senate, Academic Associate Deans and Legal.
- The
Agreement for Non-Standard Courses
is posted on R&R forms web page
http://www.ncsu.edu/reg-records/forms/index.html.
- A Note will be added to non-standard course offerings to inform student/instructor:“Non-Standard Course Agreement must be completed by the student and faculty member prior to registration by the department."
- A DAR (Departmental Approval Required) restriction should be placed on course by scheduling officers.
- The Agreement must be signed before student registration occurs.
- The Agreement is to be retained in the departmental student records.
- R&R will submit a list of non-standard courses to the College/Department for verification. Other non-standard courses, not identified by obvious titles, should be added to the list.
- Drs. Hunt and Mullen will send a communication to Associate Deans, Scheduling Officers, Department Heads and Advisors.
UCCC and Registration and Records revised Instructional Format standards that define each type of course (lecture, research, studio, seminar, special topics, etc.). Departments are encouraged to organize courses by these standards to better capture the nature of the experience via renaming or renumbering. The Instructional Formats are consistent with GA reporting requirements and included in the Course Inventory Management system (Course Leaf). The handout also makes clear under which circumstances a syllabus or contract/agreement is required and defines instructional components, contact/credit hours.
Kirby stated that if faculty are already using some type of agreement for independent studies or research, they need to make sure that the agreement includes those items that the template has, in particular the learning outcome, credit hours, expected hours of work, faculty member, project and work assignment, and the method used to determine the grades.
6. Old/New Business
Resolution on a University Standing Committee on Lectures and Speakers, 2nd Reading
The resolution was presented for a second reading.
The resolution was voted on and passed unanimously.
Resolution on Board of Governors Teaching Award
Senator Knopp spoke against the resolution. The reason being that the expectations of tenure track faculty and non-tenure track faculty are vastly different. He said it is an unequal competition at this time. He is not against non-tenure track and believes that they should be recognized, but believes it actually makes it harder for tenure track to be successful in the awarding of this award.
Senator Borden wanted to know if this is the standard for other universities in the system.
Vice Provost Brown responded that non-tenure track faculty are not eligible for this award.
Senator Borden suggested establishing an award for non-tenure track faculty. He agrees that it is not a comparable comparison of the job expectations and the activities.
The resolution will be presented for a second reading at the next meeting.
Resolution on Funding Library Services/Resolution on Funding Library Collections
The motion passed unanimously to waive a second reading to vote on the resolutions.
After much discussion, the decision was made to bring them back for a second reading.
Statement of Concern on Chancellor Search Policies
Chair Zonderman and Senator Fleisher, Chair of the Governance Committee drafted a statement of concern on behalf of the Senate to first echo where the faculty agrees with the BOT. They also included some of their own concerns.
Chair Zonderman stated that if the statement is endorsed he will forward it to the Chair of the Faculty Assembly who will in turn provide a copy to the Board of Governors before their meeting on Friday.
A motion passed unanimously to approve the statement.
Discussion of Revised Post Tenure Review Policies
Senator Auerbach suggested discussing two issues separately with one being what is mandating and the other is what part of this policy is a good idea?
Chair Zonderman stated that the big points as he understands it is the new post tenure review must include three reviews, which are peer review, review by the department head, and review by the dean. It is required that the dean be involved. There also has to be these categories of “does not meet, meet, and exceed.” He said we have to develop a policy on how to work those three categories.
Chair Zonderman added, “We as a Senate are on record saying all of these things are unnecessary, including the Chancellor and Provost, but we were overruled.”
A faculty member commented that with respect to what occurred with the eight courses that the Legislature is considering, is the Legislature or Board of Governors thinking that faculty are not working enough so that these are issues of concern to them? Are they targeting faculty as some type of nuisance or noise in the system? This is outrageous. I think it really sets us up for a very bad precedence in the State of North Carolina to say that faculty cannot govern themselves, so they need to be governed by someone else.
Chair Zonderman stated that Steve Leonard, Chair of the Faculty Assembly, was hearing from the BOG that in the private sector, five to ten percent of people every year wash out on annual reviews and yet you guys with tenure seem to wash out so much fewer, so clearly you are not doing a good job. If you think that is the message from the BOG, it is, and the problem is we can’t stop the BOG policy. Our question is, what do we do to meet it in the best way possible? We can’t say we refuse to have a dean’s review, so certain things we have to have.
Senator Levy: Is it required that the dean’s review be final?
The response was no.
Senator Fleisher stated that this is already being done in his department. The department head reviews it, and the dean can also review it but he doesn’t have the final say. As far as going after people who aren’t meeting their expectations, it is a horrendous process.
Senator Lunardi stated that in the private sector there are cases where they have to go through a process.
Senator Borden: In the promotion and tenure process at the university, does the last judgement sit at the Provost desk?
Vice Provost Brown responded that the Provost makes a recommendation to the Chancellor.
Senator Borden stated that he is surprised that we wrote something that says the dean’s determination shall be final on post tenure review, because that is not the way it is on promotion and tenure.
Senator Lunardi stated that in her view it is not final because there is a plan for the department head.
Borden: The point of it is who decides that you do not meet expectations.
Vice Provost Brown stated that they did not want this to look like re-tenuring.
Senator Lunardi stated that she didn’t want to have another committee. Because if you were upset that we are going to have a committee like at the Provost level, we are telling the Board of Governors that we don’t have tenure any more. That is my point. Right now if we are going to have another committee to re-tenure us we are throwing in the towel to the Board of Governors. Every five years if we have a disagreement we are going to have a committee that will re-tenure us and we don’t want that.
Senator Auerbach stated that part of this is usually when the dean and department head reviews it. What are they reviewing? The lanes currently set up with tenure is once you get out of the department all you are reviewing is where the procedures follow. You are not allowed to evaluate qualifications of the candidate for tenure and this procedure should incorporate that fact. The dean should not be allowed to evaluate the qualifications of the candidate. The dean should review that procedures were followed because the dean is typically more competent and we don’t want to introduce a decision being made in the first level of the competency.
Senator Lunardi stated that the committee discussed what could happen if you don’t trust your dean. She said it is going to be very hard for a dean to go up against the faculty in one full department.
Professor from Forestry stated that he has been here for 35 years and he is very concerned about giving absolute power to anyone in the chain of command with respect to these decisions because of the opportunity for reviews. “I will simply say that I have seen examples where the opportunity has been taken. The idea that there would be no recourse, that there would be a final decision made by the dean, which seems to be an extremely dangerous thing.” He said if the procedure is good he will propose that it should be reversible that the faculty be allowed to re-evaluate the dean whenever they choose to do so, and let’s see by looking at it reciprocally whether it seems so comfortable.”
Senator Levy stated that he doesn’t see how this policy as written is not going to have a chilling effect especially among junior faculty. He said he sees this as having a chilling effect, and he doesn’t like it.
Senator Williams stated that if you have tenure the dean cannot dismiss you because of malice, but for post tenure review, there are no provisions against using personal malice as a justification for whatever evaluation.
Vice Provost Brown pointed out that there is.
Chair Zonderman stated that to say that the dean’s decision is “final” is actually a misnomer, but remember, first of all if the dean disagrees with the department committee and the department head, he or she “must” go back and talk with them and give them reasons why. Secondly if the dean’s decision stands, it is subject to the grievance procedure. The grievance procedure is not easy.
If a dean’s decision says you don’t meet expectations, which then results in a development plan, it doesn’t immediately lead to dismissal decisions.
A motion passed to extend the meeting.
Senator Knopp asked what percentage of the grievance procedures have been favorable.
Vice Provost Brown stated that they have had one and the committee supported the claim and the Chancellor concurred with the committee.
Chair Zonderman stated that he has been told that the current Chancellor takes a much more careful review than some of the past Chancellors.
Chair Zonderman asked the senators to send specific ideas on the policy to Senator Lunardi and Senator Holden.
7. Adjourn
A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 5:10 p.m.
