UF College of Education
UF College of Education

FPC Meeting, March 23, 2026

FPC Meeting —March 23, 2026

Time & Location: 2:00pm, Rosenberg Room

Attendees

  • Chair & Chair Elect: Tara Mathien, Caitie Gallingane
  • HDOSE: Sara Jean-Philippe, Tuuli Robinson, Melissa Mariani
  • SESPECS: Nelson Brunsting, Hannah Matthews, Katy Chapman, Kyena Cornelius
  • STL: Suzanne Chapman, Natalie Hagler, Tammy Huang, Avery Closser
  • Absent: Brady Nash, Lindsay Byron

Welcome

Meeting called to order at 2:08 pm.

Approval of the Agenda

Motion to approve agenda by Nelson Brunsting at 2:09 pm. Seconded with consensus of the group. No abstentions or objections.

Approval of Last Meeting’s Minutes (February 23, 2026)

Motion to approve February minutes by Nelson Brunsting at 2:10 pm. Seconded by Hannah Matthews and approved by consensus of the group. Minutes stand approved at 2:10 pm.

Announcements/Reminders

  • N/A

Deans’ Reports

  • Associate Dean Thomasenia Adams

    • Grant activity to date for 2025-2026

      • 33 awards for a total of 6.7 million dollars
      • 122 proposals submitted
    • We know that it’s challenging in the current landscape, and we encourage you to take advantage of college resources. Please reach out for support.
    • Currently working on awards that are under review

      • Limited term professorships and various awards
    • Upcoming events

      • Tomorrow, March 24 11am-12:00pm: All Things Pre & Post Award
      • March 31 11am-12pm: All Things Promotion (Non-Tenure Track Faculty)
      • April 15 10am-11am on Zoom: Faculty, Excellence, & Advancement Overview, Hosted by Thomasenia Adams and Colleen Gaddy – FEA Program Manager (Zoom)
    • Faculty Processes

      • 2025-2026 Tenure-promotion processes in progress at the university level under review
      • 2025-2026 PTR process is underway within the college
      • 2026-2027 T/P process in its early stages – right now we are collecting names from our directors for the next cycle
      • If you have an interest, speak to your director
    • Audrey departed OER. Still working at university.

      • Hannah and Brian Lane took on Audrey’s portfolio
  • Associate Dean Elayne Colón

    • College has done well in campus award season so far

      • International center: International student awards – 2 doctoral students out of only 5 awardees
      • Madelyn Lockhart dissertation award – doctoral student in school psychology won emerging scholar award
      • Swapna Kumar selected as a UF faculty doctoral dissertation mentoring honoree
    • Scholarships

      • Last year 2 rounds of scholarships – messy process and missed a lot of incoming students. The timing may have left some students out in applying
      • This year one round of scholarship awards.
      • Announcement will go out soon
      • Hopefully application will open up this month
      • Give students a couple of weeks to apply for scholarships for next fall
      • Continuing and newly admitted students
      • Valentina Contesse is chairing scholarship committee this year
      • Will review applications late spring, early summer
    • College Research Symposium

      • Thursday, April 2 in Norman Conference Room
      • Graduate and undergraduate executive committee planning and executing event
      • Kent Crippen and EduGator advisor Alexis Dixon are supervising
      • Paper sessions, roundtables, poster presentations
      • Awards given out
      • Informal – you can come and go if you have a chance to stop by
  • Associate Dean Erica McCray

    • Nearing end of search season

      • Only 2 positions with upcoming campus visits
      • 2 new faculty sessions individual check ins
      • Annual evaluation process will go through FEA system. Currently troubleshooting.
    • Spring recess

      • Ice cream on April 21 at 2:00 pm
  • Dean Glenn Good

    • Met with former alumnus Congressman John Micah and VP for government relations

      • Will move forward with Norman Courtyard renovations
      • Estimate ~1.2 million +
    • Raises are in the works

Discussion and Action Items

  • Committee Updates

    • Budgetary Affairs: Tuuli Robinson

      • No updates
    • College Curriculum: Caitie Gallingane

      • Approved many proposals
      • AI squared committee has an approval process for those who have a designation. Deadline is Thursday.
      • Tara Mathien: just to clarify, they would put it through the current system?

        • Caitie Gallingane: there was discussion about whether or not college curriculum committee needed to see course requests. For a while they were being routed differently. We discussed that we still want to make sure everything that goes out of our college looks good. Just put through request through us and it will be routed appropriately.
      • Tara Mathien: Please share this with your colleagues
      • 30th is the deadline for the last meeting
    • Faculty Affairs: Nelson Brunsting

      • No updates
    • Lectures, Seminars & Awards: Suzanne Chapman (alternate for Magdi Castaneda)

      • Before the break, we met and were able to provide recommendations to the Dean for recipients of the following awards:

        • Haines Teaching Excellence Award
        • Primack Memorial Award
        • Dennison Teacher Research Outstanding manuscript award
        • Dennison Teacher Research Excellence award
      • We approved a guest lecture
      • We will meet to review applicants for the Rosser Family Faculty Award before the April 23rd deadline
    • Long Range Planning: Kyena Cornelius

      • No updates
    • Research Advisory: Hannah Matthews

      • Finished reviewing for the excellence assistant professor. Gone to Dean.
      • Now in process of reviewing several professorship positions
    • Technology & Distance Ed: Katy Chapman

      • Jeff Bates talked more about what he presented to FPC

        • I have the slides from the presentation if you are interested
      • Dominic in ETC – upcoming webinars, including one tomorrow. Will also do a “catch-all” webinar.
      • Discussing next steps for next year, possibly a webinar on vibe coding

        • Tammy Huang: explains vibe coding. Generates code for you, follow iterative process.
        • Katy Chapman – Walter is using it for case studies
        • Tammy Huang: reason it is called vibe coding is you are revising and improving
      • We were recommending have Jeff or AI squared to come in next year to speak to college
    • Elections Committee: Nelson Brunsting, Hannah Mathews

      • Tara Mathien: Elections Committee has been working on getting the ballot ready to go
      • Nelson Brunsting: Goal is to send it out today. Needs to be resolved by April 6
      • Tara Mathien: We need 4 senate spots, especially in STL. Within COE, we like it to have equal representation across schools and STL has the most faculty. I have reached out to Allison, but we are asking STL colleagues to participate in shared governance. It’s not required by the senate to have equal representation across schools, but we like to do it within our college.
      • Natalie Hagler: I asked Allison to volunteer for the position.
      • Tara Mathien: We could swap Natalie with someone who wants FPC spot
      • Natalie Hagler introduces self: Program Coordinator for UF online program. Remote from Merritt Island.
      • Tara Mathien: We can consider that
      • Suzanne Chapman: You can put my name in for FPC
      • Tara Mathien: We have someone in consideration for Chair Elect

        • Chris Curran is interested in being Chair Elect
        • He is faculty, but currently serves in an administrative role

          • Associate Director of HDOSE
        • Constitution does not cover situations like this
        • We need to make a decision together
        • Avery Closser: is Chair Elect an election process?

          • Tara Mathien: If we have two people, but right now we have one
        • We bring decisions to the Deans
        • Next year chair will be Caitie Gallingane
        • Next year he would be chair of Curriculum Committee
        • Caitie Gallingane: Constitution says members of dean’s staff and director cannot be Chair Elect
        • Kyena Cornelius: As long as he understands if director position becomes available he will step down
        • Avery Closser: It says in constitution under Chair Elect he needs to be tenured

          • Tara Mathien: By the time he would be chair, he would be tenure
        • Avery Closser may have another candidate up for consideration
        • Tara Mathien: let’s look into that person and if not, Chris

          • Group agrees
        • Nelson Brunsting: If someone on the Elections Committee wants to be on the ballot for something else, they can see the ballot
        • Sara Jean-Phillippe: can be alternate for HDOSE
        • Nelson Brunsting: third place vote is the alternate, so vote based on how the alternate works. Will wait to send out Qualtrics.
      • Hannah Matthews: Ad-Hoc Committee

        • Have collected syllabi
        • Looking at courses that would count towards REM coursework taught by faculty outside of REM
        • We are reviewing syllabi to determine if it is REM course or discipline-specific
        • Will meet April 16 to talk through courses
    • Action items

      • N/A
    • Discussion items

      • Committee annual reports due – Tara Mathien

        • Every committee needs a report of what you did and how you will carry over to next year. So next chair rep has something to work from.
        • If you have final meetings scheduled, you might want to put this on your agenda to complete
        • I will add a sheet for this year
        • Share this with the chairs
        • Like to have this done toward end of semester
      • Committee membership and attendance

        • Tara Mathien

          • As outgoing chair, I work with directors to populate committees
          • I will be approaching directors about different committees that we have and get preliminary names
          • Will try to hand Caitie off a complete roster
          • How was the messaging coming from the school directors regarding service and commitment? I am concerned that people do not realize if you agree to your director’s request, you will need to adjust teaching schedule. We have alternates for FPC. What messaging can I share with the directors so people understand what they are agreeing to?
        • Hannah Matthews: Melinda communicates with us. Maybe make sure they understand FPC is 2-4. Understanding overlaps with existing service/roles/responsibilities.
        • Melissa Mariani: Will be helpful to share commitment level, expectations
        • Tara Mathien: Maybe message to directors is to consider teaching schedule. We want to make sure we have quorum.
        • Tammy Huang: How much service are we expecting faculty to carry per person?
        • Caitie Gallingane: In STL, that’s negotiated with the director in your assignment. It depends on how director has allocated your assignment.
        • Tara Mathien: Depends on how much people have going on and what they are teaching. Some of it is your decision, but I don’t know how the directors make the decision
        • Tuuli Robinson: It must vary between schools since there are different numbers of people
        • Hannah Matthews: Be clear with yourself and when you mentor junior faculty. Part of conversation with FTE
        • Melissa Mariani: also need to consider length of appointment. Would be helpful to know what the commitment levels, amount of time is expected.
        • Avery Closser: Maybe we can have some slides to share
        • Tammy Huang: Maybe a spreadsheet of all the committees. If I have the information, I can put one together.
        • Tara Mathien: I am talking to directors at end of the semester, maybe May.
      • Accessibility progress updates / course leads

        • Tara Mathien: How is it going in your schools? Some schools have hired people to help. We need to keep an eye on courses that haven’t been taught in a while and are on the schedule (or lead by faculty that is no longer here). We want to report back if things are moving along or we need help.
        • Caitie Gallingane: we have a spreadsheet in STL
        • Katy Chapman: I understand that we have to update spring, summer, and fall syllabus
        • Tara Mathien: Simple Syllabus in summer
        • Caitie Gallingane: Simple Syllabus

          • They are piloting a course master program, where you make changes in the master and it syncs to other sections
          • Natalie Hagler: what happens if there are two different versions of the same course?
          • Tammy Huang: There will be different section numbers
          • Caitie Gallingane: if it has a course master, you can go outside the course master into the specific sections. I will find out more about this.
      • Data storage for FPC website(s) minutes and policies – Tara Mathien

        • We have been working with ETC for a solution

          • They will create server space for all of our college work
        • Only designated people will have the right access, but all faculty will have access to historical documents. You just won’t be able to do anything with it.
      • AI event & End of Semester Social / Spring Faculty Meeting plan

        • Dean Good is invested in where our college stands with AI and wanted to have an event. He wants people sharing their perspectives about it to get a temperature about where we are in our college.
        • For the spring faculty meeting on April 20

          • Usually we hear a lot of reports – we will have a shortened version of that
          • From 2-3 FPC spring meeting with state of the college
          • Then we will shift to talking about AI
          • He wants to extend to 4:45
          • Roundtable discussions
          • At 4:45, walk upstairs to Rosenberg Room for reception
          • There will be a Google Form for people to share feelings anonymously to design questions and roundtable topics
        • Usually very short FPC meeting. We might do a 2-2:45 FPC meeting. We will have to talk about it.
        • Avery Closser: Check out the National AI Literacy Days at UF
      • University Chair Council updates

        • Senate is creating a document that will be transcription of resolutions or policies made on senate floor
        • Will probably start next year
        • Students having access to previous Canvas websites – will go away in April
        • Katy Chapman: if you have a document that you created sections ago and it has kept being populated, it goes away from student access.

    Adjournment

    Motion to adjourn by Hannah Matthews at 3:22 pm. Avery Closser seconded with no objections or abstentions. The motion passed unanimously.

    Remaining Meetings

    • April 20th – Spring Faculty Meeting 2-3:30 Norman Conference Center