October 04, 2023

In Attendance (In-person):

College of Arts & Sciences: Amanda Allison, Jim Armacost, Mark Broome, Raymond Doe, Jennifer Fowler, B. Garrick Harden, Pat Heintzelman, Matt Hoch, Jennifer Huff, Sharon Joffe, Tina Kibbe, Ian Lian, Cheng-Hsien Lin, Wen Liu, Mark Mengerink, J.P. Nelson, Joe Nordgren, Melissa Riley, Cengiz Sen, Jennifer Thedford, Chandru Chandrasekaran, Jan Liu

College of Business: Tim McCoy, Vivek Natarajan, James Slaydon, Kelly Weeks, Jerry Zhang

College of Education and Human Development: Daryl Ann Borel, Daniel R. Chilek, Caleb P. Hood, Eunjin Kwon, Kathryn Washington

College of Engineering: John Gossage, Clayton Jeffryes, Mien Jao, Gleb Tcheslavski,

College of Fine Arts & Communication: Alan Brincks, Andre Favors, Xenia Fedorchenko, Brielle Frost, Chelsea Lyles, Stephan Malick, Eric McCluskey, Millicent Musyoka

Library: Penny Clark

In Attendance (Online):

College of Arts & Sciences: Sujing Wang

College of Education and Human Development: Kelly A. Brown,

College of Engineering: Chun-Wei Yao

Library: Poornima Gunasekaran

Absent:

College of Business: Ashraf El-Houbi

College of Education and Human Development: Shelly Allen, Khal Hamza

College of Engineering: Maryam Hamidi

College of Fine Arts & Communication: Lilian Felipe (attended a conference)

Call to order

3:31 p.m.

President Taylor’s Minute

Dr. Taylor reiterated that the grievance procedure is a procedure, not policy, and brought Dr. Flores here to discuss the matter. Dr. Taylor expressed that there was concern with people sending grievances multiple places in the past, and he wanted to streamline the process.  In his comments, he also emphasized the importance of communication between faculty and administration, even when it is difficult.

Provost Brown discussed the administration’s recent accomplishments and plans for the near future. These comments included reminding everyone of the upcoming joint meeting of constituent groups and the important matters to be discussed at that meeting (enrollment trends, academic issues, SACSCOC report).  Provost Brown also highlighted the $500,000 spent on equity and the 3% raise pool. Recent improvements to physical facilities were part of Provost Brown’s comments as well.

In additional comments, Provost Brown highlighted plans to hire more faculty, which included a future advertisement on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website. He also informed faculty that many policies will be under review soon, and that Associate Provost Theodori contributed a great deal to that outcome.  Provost Brown expressed support for a meeting of instructors from across campus to discuss F2.08s, the utilization of F2.08s, and expectations across colleges.

Hector Flores thanked the Faculty Senate for the invitation to speak at the meeting, and he reiterated President Taylor’s emphasis on the need for an efficient, centralized process. Flores communicated that he is the intake officer, and he does not want to let grievances get delayed.

Hector Flores also highlighted the $100,000 of emergency locks purchased for faculty and students, and said he was looking for feedback on whether more of those locks are needed.

The questions and comments Hector Flores received from faculty senators focused on the timelines in the new policy and raised questions about when the timeline would start and whether the timeline was compliant with TSUS regulations. During this exchange, Jim Mann explained the role of the ombuds within the university (in response to one of the questions).  He also stated that whether alleged behavior meets the standard for legal harassment determines where a grievance is sent in the process.

Approval of Minutes  

Cheng-Hsien Lin asserted that Kelly Weeks wanted to correct the minutes, and that the correction is in process. Pat Heintzelman brought up a similar concern about the minutes of the previous meeting.

Clayton Jeffryes asked that the attendance record be corrected, and John Gossage asserted that Clayton Jeffryes had attended the previous meeting.

The minutes were unanimously approved (with changes).

Faculty Senate President’s Report (Cheng-Hsien Lin)

Cheng-Hsien Lin stated he will be meeting with Patrick Stewart about the one computer policy. He also asserted he needed minutes from committee meetings, and some deans want attendance records.  Cheng-Hsien also elaborated on the value of learning from other faculty senates. He said that the LSCPA Co-Chair asked to have a representative attend our meetings. Cheng-Hsien also said that LSCPA’s Faculty Senate meetings are the second or first Friday of the month, and someone can attend via Teams from noon to 1:00 p.m.

Faculty Senate Committee Chair Reports  

Budget and Compensation – Jennifer Fowler

3 main topics – merit plans – brought it to the provost; Dr Theodori is working on university-wide policy.

Budget transparency – met with CFO, said college business managers should offer any information they want.

Salary equity plan – like to address the instructors this year.

CFO has draft for methodology for intradepartmental salary equity plan.  The memo clarifies it is within equity within your department, not compared to other universities.

Faculty affairs – Sujing Wang

Met in September, shared 4 tasks; in charge of Piper Award application, it is completed, and they shared info with Dr. Jator.

Current draft need review: grievance policy feedback deadline is October 18

Tenure and promotion policy, promotion to full professor external review policy- committee is reviewing those drafts

Academic Issues - Melissa Riley

The committee reviews its charge and did not make any changes.

Old business – were working on instructor rank and promotion criteria, Provost had paused work on that while Texas Senate was debating tenure.  Provost gave us info to move forward on non-tenure track faculty promotion criteria.

Asked to write three-year contract verbiage; handbook said TSUS would not allow contracts beyond a year; new updates to TSUS allow longer appointments; will write verbiage on 3-year rolling contracts for non-tenured faculty.

Before meeting, were told some college curriculum committees only had chairs on the committee. They wrote a recommendation saying they are aware there may be non-compliant college curriculum committees. The committee recommends faculty representation.

Garrick made a friendly amendment to turn the recommendation into a resolution.  Millie (second)/ passed with 34 in favor and one opposed.

Research & Creative Activity - John Gossage

John Gossage – Research and Creative Activity

21^st September meeting; elected Penny Clark committee secretary so the minutes are good.

Went over policies in leave requests, considered charge for committee and decided against changes.

Pointed out a couple changes recently in application process; applicants are now required to meet with chair and have chair sign form saying there was a meeting, dean must do the same, they do not have to approve. The announcement will go out in morning announcements.  The application will go live in Competition Space on Monday.

Faculty Evaluation - Millie Musyoka

Looked at other universities and how they evaluate faculty performance; decided to invite Dr. Theodori to the committee meeting.  He agreed to attend the next meeting to discuss the F2.08 and to ensure that instructors are evaluated fairly and consistently on F2.08.

Faculty Handbook – B. Garrick Harden

Met on Sept. 20, everyone showed up; have been going through handbook, access to MAPPs that have been worked on; will be meeting for 8 hours a week to go over MAPPs.

The committee and senate officers are meeting bi-weekly with Dr. Theodori to review MAPPs and the handbook.

Share with your colleagues that tenure and promotion are university policies, but department details should be worked out in departments.

Ad Hoc Committee for the Review of the Bylaws - J.P. Nelson

Working on communication/disagreement with administration policy; who can serve; open forum; how to handle attendance issues.

Old Business

Some concerns that have discussed in Senate:

                Faculty emails responses’ time; AAUP policies, DE and AP being combined; college’s own policy; Enrollment ratio to faculty increases, class sizes up, academic quality; COB issues with Dean; grievances responses and investigation; HR’ refusal of grievance; 4-4 workload; COB’s failure to follow faculty evaluation procedures.  it is fair for more communication to happen and things more amicable.

Questioned that the administration puts new grievance policies online written by one person instead of the FS Faculty Affair Committee. Sujing Wang explained that the grievance policy online includes faculty and staff; which is different than the grievance policy that the committee has been working on for several years. It allows 30-day review windows. We can start from there to address comments and revisions.  Dr. Theodori apologized for posting the grievance policy without being opened to open comment and is working with us in this regard.

There was discussion about the grievance policy.  Some senators expressed that grievances should be directed toward appropriate committees that contain faculty representatives and not just administrators.

Provost Brown requests a written list of issues that senators feel should be addressed. He further states that Texas State has a separate informal grievance policy and a separate formal grievance policy.

Stephan Malik made a point of order and stated that Dr. Lin needs to recognize speakers on the floor. Dr. Lin needs to send issues to the correct committee to be addressed. Information should be provided upfront before the senate can take action.

Dr. Lin stated that our current practice is to send issues to the appropriate committee chairs, or he addresses them directly.

 Stefan Malik made a motion that all information for discussion on the senate floor should be presented in advance. He added that it should distributed is at the president’s discretion.  Garrick Harden offered a friendly amendment – ensure that the minutes of FS are posted online.  Malick accepted friendly amendment and Garrick Harden called for a vote.  Vote – 27 on floor, 2 online – yes, no nays, 1 abstain

New Business

Pat Heintzelman received  a call from Chronicle of Higher Education; faculty are loading up on liability insurance because of new tenure laws. They want her to report what is going on about how many are feeling they need to purchase liability insurance. TACT gives you liability insurance if you enroll.

Harden – Theodori was strongly supportive of incorporating AAUP comments and criticisms in handbook, but as Pat said, he said he would have to run it through Dann. (Put this in Faculty Handbook report)

Senators discussed the possibility of putting together a document with faculty concerns to distribute each month.

Adjournment

Raymond Doe motioned to adjourn. John Gossage seconded the motion. Motion was passed unanimously.

The meeting adjourned at 5:34 p.m.