11 September, 2006 FPC Meeting Minutes

Faculty Policy Council Minutes
September 11, 2006

Members present: Elizabeth Bondy, Elizabeth Yeager, Holly Lane (for Diane Ryndak), Jamie Algina (for Rod Webb), Zhihui Fang, Jim Doud, Cyndy Griffin, John Kranzler, Mary Ann Clark, Sondra Smith, Bernie Oliver
Members absent: None

Meeting called to order at 2:03 p.m.

Agenda and minutes

1. Approval of the agenda; moved by John and seconded by Jim. A correction was made to the date of the fall faculty meeting; the correct date is September 18 in the Terrace Room at 2 pm.

2. Approval of the May 1 minutes; moved by Jim and seconded by Mary Ann.

Informational items

1. Buffy made introductions of all FPC members.

2. Buffy read from the COE Constitution about the purpose and role of the FPC and emphasized that our role has evolved over the last few years from procedural matters to more substantive policy issues. She said her goal this year is to collaborate with deans, directors, etc. to achieve the aims of the COE (because faculty participation in the collaborative process is essential), and to help the FPC committees align with the goals of the COE. Another goal of hers is to be as efficient as possible in conducting FPC business. She encouraged FPC members to get the word out on FPC business to as many people in their departments as possible.

3. Fall faculty meeting is September 18 in the Terrace Room, with the focus “Research Across Borders.” Buffy has invited four speakers to talk about their projects (Mary Ann Clark, Catherine Emihovich, Hazel Jones and Linda Hayes, Catherine Tucker); also the head of the Faculty Senate will speak.

4. Reminder: FPC will meet once a month, rather than biweekly. We will meet biweekly if it becomes necessary.

5. Deans’ evaluation results are now available. Reports of the quantitative data went to each chair, but qualitative data (i.e., comments) are not public. Buffy highlighted a few issues from the results:

a. Compliments, concerns, and recommendations were the three categories of qualitative data. 59% of the faculty responded.
b. For only 10 of 47 items, Catherine received a 3 or lower rating, and these fell in 6 of the 9 categories. Promotion of excellence in diversity among faculty and students, promotion of excellence in scholarship/research, and resource development were the three categories with uniformly high
ratings. Strategic planning, faculty/dean communication, interpretation of the scholarship of engagement concept, and promotion of excellence in teaching were some of the categories where the lower ratings were identified. Catherine will address these issues in a State of the College address at the reception on September 14; she also wants to reinstate dean/faculty lunches this year within departments. In addition, there will be a new process for selecting faculty to be recognized for scholarship of engagement activities.
c. Buffy stated that Catherine has already been responsive and proactive in responding to concerns expressed in the evaluations.
d. John said we need to disaggregate faculty and staff responses in the quantitative evaluation results.
e. Provost will be doing a 5-year review of all deans on a rotating basis.

6. Recruitment of minority graduate students: Any plans for this should be submitted to Michael Bowie and Thomasenia Adams; there is financial support available.

7. Selection of award winners for commencement: Questions were raised last year about how some of the recipients were chosen and who made the decisions. Buffy suggested that we continue allowing the Commencement Committee to decide about the alumni awards so that there is faculty input.

8. Fien candidates reminder: Foster coming in 9/12-9/13; Hall 9/20-9/21; Bracken 9/27-9/28. Faculty input is very important in the process.

Discussion items

1. Faculty Mentoring Policy:
Last spring, faculty had concerns about the policy proposed by the Research Initiative Task Force. Based on feedback from the 5/1/06 FPC meeting, Buffy edited the original proposal.
Discussion: Jamie suggested we strike “and negotiate the particular…” and replace it with “possible purpose and goals.” John suggested replacing “effectiveness of mentoring” with “helpfulness of mentoring.” Buffy suggested a change to “the chair shall consult annually with the mentor and the mentee to discuss the helpfulness of the mentor and progress toward tenure,” with the understanding that the chair could meet separately or together with mentor and mentee. Mary Ann suggested that we set a time for this policy to be in place, and Holly suggested we set mentor meetings for once a month, at least for the first year. Buffy suggested language about “kind and frequency” of mentoring in the “mentoring roles” section of the proposal. Bernie said we should let the mentor and mentee decide the nature of their relationship, rather than the FPC dictating it. Buffy said we can use language that is flexible in this regard. Jamie said we may want to delete the part about the mentor commenting on the mentee’s progress toward tenure because this may inhibit the relationship.
This proposal will be an action item for next month’s FPC meeting. Holly, Cyndy, and Zhihui will edit the proposal draft and follow up on getting feedback from departments and from Jeri’s upcoming meeting with junior faculty.
Departmental feedback should be emailed by FPC members to Holly.
All final comments will go to Buffy.

2. Establishing procedure to assess the effectiveness of shared COE governance:
Buffy said a reasonable way to do this may be to get an ad hoc committee together to draft a proposal for this procedure (e.g., past chairs of FPC). UF Faculty Senate wants to know our procedure soon. We agreed to let Buffy approach several faculty and a dean’s rep to serve on this committee.

3. FPC committees:
Buffy made a handout of the committees and their activities, with members listed, what they have been working on recently, and “to do” list.
We need another member of the Agenda Committee; John volunteered and everyone agreed to this.
We also need a dean’s rep on every committee and Buffy will talk with Jeri about this.
We need an FPC rep on each committee to call the first meeting and set the agenda. At all committee meetings, minutes must be recorded. Also, final reports of committee activity must be submitted to Buffy by April 30.
Buffy said we may want to eliminate the Student Recruitment, Admission, and Petitions Committee because this work is already being done in several other places in the COE (e.g., Thomasenia’s committee of graduate coordinators and Michael Bowie).
John suggested we let the FPC rep to SRAP be in charge of convening the SRAP to decide what to do about keeping the committee, appointing a liaison to Thomasenia’s committee, and/or changing the constitution. We agreed to this.

Other FPC committee liaisons:
Rod Webb, Technology
Elizabeth Yeager, Curriculum
John, SRAP and Agenda Committee
Sondra, Faculty and Budgetary Affairs
Diane, Lectures, Seminars and Awards
Bernie, Long Range Planning
Mary Ann, Research Advisory

4. Transfer of credit from masters to doctoral programs
Thomasenia submitted a proposal because we currently have no COE policy on this issue.
Buffy asked for questions and comments to be emailed to her on this proposal; when she gets feedback, she will give it to Thomasenia. We decided to continue this discussion next month.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:10 pm.

Next meeting is October 9.