FPC Meeting- October 21, 2024

Welcome

Chair & Chair Elect: Angela Kohnen, Tara Mathien

Dean’s Office: Glenn Good, Thomasenia Adams, Erica McCray, Elayne Colon

HDOSE: Lindsay Byron

SESPECS: Katie Maki, Katy Chapman, Alisa Hanson

STL: Anthony Botelho

Attended Via Zoom:

Magdi Castaneda, Sara Smith

Absent:

Chris Thomas, Jinnie Shin, Sondra Smith, Sara Jean-Phillippe, Nelson Brunsting, Alice Kay Emery, Caitie Gallingane, Vicki Vescio

Approval of Agenda

Meeting called to order at 2:05 pm. Motion to approve by Anthony Botelho at 2:06 pm. Sara Smith seconded with consensus of the group. No abstentions or objections.

Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes (September 16, 2024)

Motion to approve September minutes by Anthony Botelho at 2:07 pm. Seconded by Katie Maki and approved by consensus of the group. Minutes stand approved at 2:07 pm.

Leadership Update

  • Angela Kohnen and Tara Mathien taking over as Chair and Chair Elect for remainder of term.
  • Tara Mathien has agreed to take over and chair next year
  • They will co-chair the curriculum committee for the rest of the semester

Deans’ Reports

Associate Dean Thomasenia Adams

OER – Office of Education Research

  • 39 sponsored projects awarded this fiscal year to date, totaling about $8 million
  • 104 proposals submitted by the office
  • Recently sent announcement for sabbatical process and professional development process
    • Sabbatical for tenure track faculty
    • Professional development for clinical faculty
    • Both applications due Nov. 11
  • Teacher’s scholar of the year award is also out
    • Due Nov. 13
  • Due to hurricane Research Opportunity Seed Fund deadline has been extended
    • Now due Nov. 13
  • Upcoming professional events out of OER
    • All Things Pre and Post Awards has been rescheduled for a later date
    • Post Tenure Review
      • Nov. 13, 11am – 12pm
  • COE is hosting Council of Research Associate Deans
    • Feb. 27, 2025
  • OER has been very busy on the pre-award side, supporting our faculty to be successful, meeting with center directors, visiting schools, and having time to share with our schools

New Committee members for sabbatical and professional development leave committees

PDL Committee

  • Helena Mawdsley
  • David Theeiault
  • Hannah Mathews
  • Lee Purvis
  • Blake Beckett
  • Wanli Xing
  • Grisel Santiago

Tenure/Promotion Committee

  • Sevan Terzian (chair)
  • Walter Leite
  • Melinda Leko
  • Albert Ritzhaupt
  • Stephen Smith
  • David Miller

15 candidates for tenure and promotion process

PKY Assistant Professor

  • Jennifer Bennet
  • Leigh Anne Brewster
  • Lindsey Franklin

PKY School Professor

  • Ashley Pennypacker Hill

PKY Associate Professor

  • Tredina Shepherd

STL Professor

  • Julie Brown * Professor
  • Maya Israel * Professor
  • Tim Veter * Clinical Associate
  • Bojan Lazarevic * Clinical Associate
  • Mark Pacheco * Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor

SHDOSE

  • Helena Mawdsley * Clinical Professor
  • Justin Ortagus * Professor
  • Chris Curran * Professor

SESPECS

  • Holly Lane * Full Professor
  • Tara Mathien * Clinical Associate Professor

Associate Dean Elayne Colon

EduGator Central Updates

  • The Education Sciences Bachelor’s degree enrollment is up 7% from this time last year
  • As part of the degree requirement, students must engage in experiential learning and complete a capstone project
  • Over 90% of students are electing a field experience to meet that requirement
  • Program faculty are engaged in ongoing conversations to seek systematic ways of connecting students to opportunities.

New 4+1 combination degree in Ed Tech

  • Allows students to complete graduate-level coursework and apply it toward their Bachelor’s degree.
  • Students can then apply for the Ed Tech Master’s and those credits will transfer
  • Benefits include cost savings and quicker time to degree
  • Currently 4 students enrolled in the program

International Student Achievement Awards

  • 9 nominations
  • The college has forwarded 6 for campus consideration
  • Notifications of award winners should go out in early November

College Curriculum Committee has had a very busy start to the fall semester

  • Met twice and discussed:
    • 32 curriculum modifications, including a design of the Elementary Education Bachelor’s degree to offer online
    • 4 course modifications, and 9 new courses
  • Special thank you to Elizabeth Washington and Angela Kohnen for their leadership with the CCC.
  • Dr. Kim Roberts leading the College’s efforts to complete the annual Continuous Improvement Plan process of all of the COE’s degree programs and affiliate certification programs in other colleges on campus
    • Includes over 50 degree programs and certificates
    • In process of submitting to the UF Assessment Office in support of the campus’ regional accreditation efforts

UF StARS (UF Students As Research Scholars)

  • Leadership team is continuing to meet weekly to identify ways to expand COE undergraduate research infrastructure
  • Current efforts include:
    • Systematic approach to informing undergraduate students about high/highest honors designation
    • Revisiting processes and requirements around honors project completion
    • Collaborations with the UF Center for Undergraduate Research
    • Ways faculty and student connections can be made to increase opportunities for students
  • Dr. Lori Dassa and the COE field placement office has been busy this summer ensuring the College has placement agreements for students completing internships around the State.
    • We have secured 20 new MOUs for 2024-2025 placements.
    • UF is now collaborating with over 40 counties (of the 67) to place students in field experiences around the State.
    • 25 new Clinical Educator trained teachers in Alachua County hosting our students this year.

Associate Dean Erica McCray

All things search

  • Welcome 15 new faculty
  • Individual meetings, coffees, walks, and talks with all of them
  • 2025-2026 searches launching slowly in:
    • Higher Education
    • Educational Leadership
    • Counselor Education
    • School Psychology
    • Special Education
    • Science Education
    • Math Education
  • If you have not been asked to be on the search committee, you will probably be asked to be on the search committee

Related to onboarding and sustaining our faculty

  • Planning faculty development offerings for mentoring new faculty and graduate students
  • Conversations came up regarding mentoring doc students after having recently been a doc student and how to get a lab going to work with doctoral and undergraduate researchers.
  • Developing offerings for that, as well as for faculty who will be mentoring other faculty that are coming on
  • Thinking about our post-docs
    • About 10 postdocs across the college that are attached to labs and projects, but not necessarily integrated into the college
    • Checking in and making sure that if they want to be more integrated in the college that we create space for them to do that
  • Looking at additional opportunities for non-tenure track faculty
  • Looking at ways that we can incentivize non-tenure track faculty
  • Elections regarding PK Yonge and Senate representation
    • There’s been some shift over time on how they have had representation or not, but we don’t have anything written anywhere.
    • It will be helpful to codify at some point.
    • Hopefully the elections committee can make a recommendation for that
  • AD-PACE updates have relaunched
    • Next one tomorrow (10/22)
  • Fall Recess on Halloween
    • If you are inclined to dress up please do
    • We will have festivities that day
  • International Education Week: November 18-22, 2024
    • Events held in our college

Dean Glenn Good

  • Historic Norman landmark has come down
  • Received about 150 to 200 suggestions on what to do with it
  • University likes one suggestion, which is to have the cheapest contractor remove it
  • Saving all we can of the useable portion of that
  • Live oaks are known for splitting and twisting
  • Ours has cracked and split and has a lot of rot
  • Saving acorns along with as much wood as we can
  • People can have their own version of the Norman oak
  • Thinking for future of patio to bring in a mature oak to continue tradition
  • Will probably need to have some shaded areas until the tree gets bigger
  • If you would like to be on planning committee for patio let us know
  • Question by Dr. Kohnen asking if there was a time capsule near the fallen oak that had been disturbed
    • Answered by Associate Dean Adams: It is located at the bottom of the stairs and was not disturbed
  • The College was chosen by the foundation board to represent and impress all the major donors of the university
  • Four faculty members, with Dean Adams as our panel leader, who presented there
  • People were super complimentary
  • Always a good thing and makes it easier to get funding for everyone when we have other events
  • Shoutout to OER and their research at the National Deans Conference
  • People were complimentary and asking for secret sauce being applied here
  • Associate Dean Adams and her office will be busy disseminating the secret sauce of our faculty success
  • Other positive things that are going on
    • Cape accreditation seems to indicate favorable outcome
    • Strategic funding and 10×10 initiatives
    • Don’t know when they will be out but will happen sometime
  • Scholarship and award dinner this coming Friday (10/25)
    • Trustees will be joining us there
  • Delay in presidential search is due to BOD’s new presidential search requirements for all state university system campuses
    • There will be an additional BOD representative on the search committee
    • Finalists must be vetted by the BOD
  • Raises coming out in Nov. paycheck
    • Retroactive to Oct. 1
  • Fall semester winding down quickly

Discussion and Action Items

  • Angela Kohnen and Tara Mathien met and discussed treating this like a reset meeting
  • Semester has had a rocky start due to hurricanes and leadership disruption
  • Trying to figure out what to do with rest of the year
  • Looking over the constitution, and realizing we are the policy body for the college and asking what we want to do
  • Exhausted from multiple years of disruptions: Covid, Zoom, the President
  • Getting back to normalcy and empowering FPC members to participate and use their voice
  • Want to give purpose to our monthly meetings so they are not just a monthly report
  • Go thinking about and asking your folks what we actually want to address and talk about
  • Examples of things the groups has done in the past include:
    • What should regularly scheduled review look like for non-tenure track faculty
    • What should mentorship look like
  • Question asking what we were doing prior to disruptions, using Covid as the first disruption, is there anything from before that can be continued?
  • What did it mean to have been assigned a mentor and what was expected from them
  • Faculty development offerings
  • Researchers gaining access to districts across the state
  • One hope for next meeting:
    • If you have a faculty meeting with your schools, ask about issues that are college wide, that we may not have had a chance to talk about and we would love to entertain those in the next meeting

Agenda Committee

  • Consists of a Chair and Chair-Elect, and then a third person who is a member of FPC
  • Ideally the members would be representative of the three schools
  • We would need someone from HDOSE as we already have STL and SESPECS
  • They would meet once a month and prepare the agenda for FPC, meeting with Dean Good and Dean McCray and discussing any issues that should be addressed by FPC

Committee Meetings

  • Part of reset is thinking through committee updates
  • Not all of the committees had gotten of the ground yet
  • Email sent out asking people to be FPC reps for the various committees and help get them going
  • Not all of them have had chance to meet, but when you give your update mention:
    • Who is your chair, and if you have met what do you have going on?
    • Whether you have met or not what is your carry forward?

Budgetary affairs – Vicki Vescio

  • Not here but in process of scheduling a meeting

CCC update given by Dean Colon

  • Heads up there is a two week lag time between when you can submit something through academic approval trafficking and when it can hit the agenda
  • Next CCC meeting Nov. 12
  • If you are preparing for something big to go to CCC give us a heads up before to get ready

Faculty Affairs – Nelson Brunsting

  • Report delivered by Tara Mathien as he was teaching
  • First meeting scheduled for the 28th of October

Lectures, Seminars and Awards (LSAC) – Katie Maki

  • Two cochairs
  • Not sure if there is a carry over
  • Several awards that will be reviewed throughout the year
  • How to get money for guest speakers
    • Document on FPC website for this
    • Main criteria that it is of interest to faculty and not just student workshop

Long Range Planning – Anthony Botelho

  • Have not yet met
  • Planning to meet within the next two weeks
  • Have notes from last year, but no mention of carry forward items, potentially reach out to former members to confirm
  • Asked about dean representation
  • Dean Good

Research Advisory – Lindsay Byron

  • Have not been able to meet, but did get together with a handful this morning
  • Chair is Mary Brownell
  • Working on a meeting process and getting organized
  • We have one returning member, but we do not have access to annual report from last year
  • Committee has questions about carry over policy
  • Tried looking on website but behind on updating website
  • Last year met through Qualtrics asynchronously
  • We decided to schedule meetings but still do Qualtrics review, but may not meet synchronously if able to do Qualtrics

Technology and Distance Ed. – Katy Chapman

  • Met on Tuesday Oct. 15
  • Scheduled meetings for Nov. and Dec.
  • Discussed carry forward and potential new goals
  • Thinking of repeat on AI workshop, but also including support for TAs and Doc students
  • Thinking of having a workshop on course mapping
  • Asked about dean representation
  • Dean Good

Updates for faculty senate

  • Reached out to senators
  • In the past they had emailed out little summaries, but last year they were sending out big summaries so our senators no longer summarized on our behalf.
  • Sarah Lin does not email those reports as regularly, so Gail Evans, one of our senators summarized and circulated it among the other senators to make sure she didn’t miss anything
  • What we did a few years ago was share anything that policy needed to know regarding what was happening at the senate
  • Nothing huge in the last update, but they reached a resolution on the characteristics of next president
  • They may ask us for input, but not yet been asked

Elections Committee

  • Shall be appointed by agenda committee (which we don’t have yet)
  • Comprised of members of FPC – one person from each school
  • Main task is to run FPC election in spring
  • Want to get that established due to outstanding issue that we have to make recommendation regarding senate representation for PK Yonge
  • As per statute it is an appointed position, but looking for volunteers rather than just appointing someone who does not want to do it
  • Katie Maki Volunteering for SESPECS
  • Anthony Botelho volunteering for STL
  • No volunteers for HDOSE yet
  • Angela Kohnen and Tara Mathien appreciate hosting the meetings in person because it is easier than hy-flex meetings
  • Meetings will continue to be in person
  • Magdi Castaneda is on Zoom because she is based in Miami
  • Sara Smith on Zoom for reasons that needed to be on Zoom
  • If something happens you may attend on Zoom, but it will make it harder for you to participate
  • Please try to attend in person

Diversity and Inclusion Committee

  • Keeps coming up because it is an inactive committee
  • Need to decide what to do about this inactive committee
  • Law surrounding the committee states that because this a faculty function and faculty are paid state employees, the committees work is not allowed
  • Angela Kohnen asked if committee can remain inactive indefinitely
  • Anthony Botelho followed by asking if committee’s work cannot be done or if the committee cannot be formed to do the work
  • Dean McCray responded saying that as an administrator the work can happen, but she is uncertain if it is allowable for the committee to exist as a placeholder
  • Angela Kohnen asked if we are vulnerable by having a committee with this name in our constitution
  • Dean McCray responded by saying potentially
  • Angela Kohnen asked if there were any legal challenges to this similar to those with curriculum and if there is a stay in place
  • Dean McCray responded saying there was a stay in place but she could not remember if it was about the curriculum side or not
  • Angela Kohnen asked if somebody finds this committee in the constitution, because we have kept it in the hopes we can eventually reconstitute it what would happen
  • Dean McCray hypothesized that if no names were attached to it, it could potentially go to the leadership of FPC as an inquiry
  • Committee can only be removed through constitutional amendment
  • Anthony Botelho asked how specific are the activities that are not allowable under the current legislation and if all the activities of the banned committee on that list of not allowable activities
  • Dean McCray responded by saying that there might be issues when looking at the purpose of the committee saying every other word might eb a red flag
  • Angela Kohnen read the committees wording from the constitution
    • “This committee will consist of two people from each school. The committee shall make recommendations regarding policies and matters related to diversity within the college of education.”
  • Then asked if there were any legal issues with only the word diversity
  • Dean Colon responded by saying that she sadly believed there would be issues with just the word diversity
  • Dean Adams added that the regulation states diversity, equity, and inclusion but the wording within the regulation is purposefully very broad.
    • Intended to communicate anything and everything
    • They are looking for people who are trying to work around
    • Simply changing the name of something but having the same mission will not be productive
  • Dean Colon added that we have lost a couple of gen ed courses because they contained the word diversity
  • Angela Kohnen asked who determined in this case that the courses must be removed
  • Dean Colon responded by saying it was the board of Governors in consultation with the UF General Counsel and the Provosts Office
  • Don’t think we will be able to resolve this issue today
  • Brought this up today for people to start thinking about and bringing back to their folks to have conversations with, because it is a big deal, and we would be effectively removing it from our constitution
  • But we will have to make a decision on it in the future, and just wanted everyone to be ready

Adjournment

Motion adjourned by Anthony Botelho at 3:03 pm. Katie Maki seconded with no objections or abstentions. The motion passed unanimously.