February 5, 2020

Faculty Senate Minutes

February 5, 2020

Mary and John Gray Library

Attending: Arts and Sciences: Brian Williams, Jennifer Fowler, Larry Osborne, Matt Hoch, Cynthia Pipkins, Kelli White, LeAnn Chisholm, Pat Heintzelman, Jing Zhang, Sujing Wang, Gwinyai Muzorewa,  JP Nelson, Christopher Martin, Suying Wei, Cengiz Sen, Robert Vallin, Melissa Riley, Joseph Kruger, Jim Armacost, Cheng-Hsien Lin, Garrick Harden Ashwini Kucknoor Business: John McCullough, Tim McCoy, Vivek Natarajan Education: Cindy Cummings, Kaye Shelton, Donna Azodi, Eunjin Kwon, Robert Nicks, Cristina Rios, Praphul Joshi Engineering: Berna Tokgoz, Ruhai Wang, Chun-Wei Yao, Mien Jao Fine Arts and Communication: Awais Saleem, S Jordan Wright, Ashley Dockens, Serdar Ilban,  Jacob Clark, Nicki Michalski, Paul Hemenway, Travis Prokop  Library: Sarah Tusa, Scott Crawford

Not Attending: Arts and Sciences: Charles Popp, Jeremy Shelton Business: Ashraf El-Houbi Education: Lisa Wines, Khal Hamza, Dorothy Sisk Engineering: John Gossage, Yueqing Li Fine Arts and Communication: Xenia Fedorchenko, Brian LeTraunik Lamar State College Port Arthur: Mavis Triebel 

Call to Order: 3:31 p.m.

Guest Speaker: Dr. Arne Almquist, Dean of Mary and John Gray Library, Interim VP for Management Information and Analysis

Dr. Almquist spoke to the senate about the journal collections held by the library. The primary focus was Elsevier.

• It is an excellent collection, but very expensive. In fact, schools all over the world are pulling out of their deals due to high prices.
  • There is an escalation clause in the contract that allows them to increase the amount a library pays every year.
  • Right now, we use 34% of our budget to pay for this one service. That is compared to 7-12% paid by our sister schools.
  • This causes us to shortchange other services and resources.
  • The 110 core subscription cost is $491,204.
    • Our cost per use for the top 13 titles is between $1007.50 and $4,452.79. The top 68 titles average out to $100 per use.
  • Like many other schools, we are looking to cut our costs. It is far easier now to access journals, at a lower cost, than it was before.
    • With an information brokerage group, document delivery is $30/download.
    • We will ensure that this does not interfere with anyone’s accreditation.
    • We will release a list of content we plan to drop. This will be determined based on the usage load. If cost is low enough, we will continue to subscribe.
  • We are working on improving interlibrary loan.

Approval of Minutes: Vivek Natarajan made a motion was made to approve the minutes of the last meeting. Ashley Dockens seconded the motion, and it carried.

President’s Report:

• Jennifer, Vivek and Cheng-Hsien will be attending the TCFS spring meeting. They plan to ask about shared governance at other schools: do their senates have power and what powers?
• Nichols said that she will be staying as interim provost until August of 2021, at a minimum. There will be a national search for Provost in the fall.
• There will be a restructuring of the committees and councils. This will include eliminating some inactive groups and merging others with overlapping duties. Jennifer, Cheng-Hsien and Nicki are serving on this committee.
• The administration has said they are willing to set up a blog where Dr. Evans can answer questions there were not time for during the townhall meeting. There are concerns and questions:
  • There is a concern of a lack of anonymity with commenting/contributing to a blog.
  • If people are concerned about that lack of anonymity, will they participate?
  • Is this an effective way to reach the faculty?
  • There are all ready so many blogs, this may just get lost among the multitude.
  • We do, however, want to ask some follow-up questions. The biggest is how do we make deans and chairs follow the rules.

Committee Reports

Academic Issues:

• The committee did inform Michael Saar of the UUCC of the recommendation that department curriculum committee chairs be required to sign off for approval of new classes and degree plans.
• The group will meet next week.

Faculty Issues:

• We met with Brenda Nichols regarding the grievance policy. She had some good ideas we will discuss further.

Budget and Compensation:

• We have begun investigating the possibility that ADA compliance funds are being shifted to departments. If so, this could cause significant issues.

Events:

• We will begin discussing the staff appreciation day lunch at the next meeting.

Research and Creative Activity:

• We are trying to streamline the Faculty Development Leave process and its linkage with the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.

F2.08:

• The committee will continue its business which includes trying to figure out how to make chairs and deans use the mandated forms and policies.

Student Success:

• The committee will meet next week.

Handbook:

• We are meeting via email because our members also belong to other committees that are scheduled to meet the second Wednesday of the month. We also continued to work over the break. The administration has said it is urgent to finish our current review and update of the handbook due to SACSCOC requirements.
• There is significant debate over the language for the front page of the handbook. The lawyer says we cannot use the language we proposed.
• Nichols has said that the delegation clause of the TSUS Rules and Regulations prohibit the proposed language because the presidentially appointed committees and councils are limited to reviewing, offering suggestions, and making recommendations. We do not feel this applies to the Senate because we are elected by our peers not appointed.
• There is also debate about “causing to be prepared” not being the same as “preparing” regarding section 2.2 (11).
• The preface of the TSU handbook is much more inclusive than the language in Lamar’s Faculty Handbook.
• Jennifer suggested that the committee meet directly with Dr. Nichols.
• The committee is planning to investigate the legal implications of these issues.

Investigation Committee:

• The committee went in over the break and reviewed 500 pages of information that Lamar’s Public Information Coordinator, Cynthia Dean, refused to allow out of her office.
• We still have not received all the requested information that was promised by January 18. Cynthia Dean explained that they are still busy redacting it. The committee would prefer it unredacted.
• The biggest issue is the budget. Cynthia Dean is adamant in her refusal of access to budgetary information. The Texas Faculty Association has filed a public information request for the budget and all revenue and expenditure information.

New Business:

• We are working on increasing senate terms to 3 years. We believe this will increase the ability to complete projections and not lose as much information and progress.
• Garrick Harden is working on strengthening our by-laws. The proposed by-laws will be emailed out.
• The president of the CID (council of instructional departments) would like to strengthen ties between faculty and staff. Brenda Nichols proposed a monthly lunch with herself and the presidents of the CID, Faculty Senate, and the Staff Council.
• The senate is requested to investigate the reasons behind (and potential to stop) continuous changes to our semester schedules. For instance, the schedule for May mini last year was changed with only a couple days’ notice, after many faculty members had already made travel plans.

Adjournment: Sarah Tusa made a motion to adjourn. The motion was seconded by Vivek Natarajan and carried.

Adjournment: 4:19 p.m.