December 06, 2023

In Attendance (in-person):

College of Arts and Sciences: Pat Heintzelman, Matt Hoch, Tina Kibbe, Sujing Wang, James P. Nelson, Cengiz Sen, Amanda Allison, Sharon Joffe, Melissa Riley, Jim Armacost, Raymond Doe, Cheng-Hsien Lin

College of Education and Human Development: Caleb P. Hood

College of Business: Gevorg Sargsyan, Vivek Natarajan, Tim McCoy

College of Fine Arts and Communication: Andre Favors, Paul Eric McCluskey, Stephan Malick, Millicent Musyoka, Lilian Felipe, Chelsea Lyles,

College of Engineering: Clayton Jeffryes, Chun-Wei Yao, Gleb Tcheslavski,

In Attendance (Online):

College of Arts & Sciences: Mark Broome, Jennifer Fowler, Perumalreddy Chandrasekaran,

College of Education and Human Development: Shelly Allen, Eunjin Kwon, Kathryn Washington

College of Business: Xiao "Jerry" Zhang, Kelly Weeks

College of Fine Arts and Communication: Xenia Fedorchenko, Alan Brincks

College of Engineering: John Gossage,

Library: Poornima Gunasekaran

Absent:

College of Arts and Sciences: Ian Lian, Jane Liu, Mark Mengerink, Wen Liu, Jennifer Thedford, Elia Hatfield, B. Garrick Harden

College of Education and Human Development: Kelly Brown, Mohamad (Khal) Hamza, Daryl Ann Borel, Daniel R. Chilek

College of Business: Ashraf El-Houbi,

College of Fine Arts and Communication: Brielle Frost,

College of Engineering: Mien Jao, Maryam Hamidi

Library: Penny Clark

Call to order

3:30 p.m.

President Taylor’s Minute – Dr. Lin provided Dr. Taylor’s comments.

• Cardinal Lights – President Taylor invites everyone to attend Cardinal Lights tonight.
• SACSCOC Achievements – At the December SACSCOC annual meeting, university received good news that our extensive efforts to achieve approval for our assessment of student learning outcomes (Standards 8.2a and 8.2b) resulted with a clean bill of assessment and no further monitoring reporting will be required. There were a few small issues, but we passed. We must maintain our focus on assessment as we prepare for the submission of our fifth-year report in March of 2025. President Taylor thanks all who contributed to the process.
• Happy Holidays – President Taylor wished everyone a happy holiday and expressed his appreciation for all you do for the university and the students.

Guest Speakers

• Nancy Bergeron, Dir Fin/Post Award Admin, Financial Services, explained role of HR in hiring (including graduate assistants), and highlighted the monthly availability of e-path training. Faculty members said administrators in their departments did not help with some types of grants.
• Jerry Lin, Assoc Provost, Research, emphasized that every business manager in each college can help with e-path, and that faculty should check with their department secretaries about whether they can process EPAF. If a department cannot process e-path, those faculty should contact Chrissy Jones.
• Cristian Bahrim, Director of Undergraduate Research, explained that his office is now a part of the Office of Sponsored Research. He also stated that his organization has recently tried to improve practices and offer stronger events, and that a Competition Space platform now exists for the Office of Undergraduate Research. Cristian Bahrim also emphasized the need for faculty mentors and the movement of the organization to a more competitive orientation. He also pointed out that the Office of Undergraduate Research helps to fund student travel; students can receive up to $500 from that office for research-related travel.     

Approval of Minutes

Jennifer Fowler motioned to table the approval of the minutes until the next general meeting. Andre Favors seconded that motion. 27 Faculty Senators voted in favor of the motion to table, and it passed.

The approval of the November minutes was tabled until the February general meeting.

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

• DEI Programs: In light of the state’s changes to laws regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, Lamar’s scholarships that used to be focused on certain student groups are now available to all students.

Pat Heintzelman asserted that the DEI bill is complicated and there are valid concerns about implementing the bill. Pat said we should make information available to people with questions about SB 17, as University of Texas – Austin has done.

• Elections: Elections are pending for two Faculty Senate positions.

Faculty Senate Committee Chair Reports

• Budget and Compensation – Jennifer Fowler
• Met with CFO: Dr. Lin and Dr. Fowler met with CFO Robinson to continue to discuss equity plans. They requested an estimate of how much it would cost to do equity adjustment for non-tenured faculty (instructors). Mr. Robinson should have the estimate prepared during the winter break. They also discussed travel, accounts payable, and payroll. These departments report to the CFO. He stated if there are any issues he needs to know. For example, it should not take 8 months to get reimbursed for a trip.
• Merit Plans: Committee working on merit plans to make sure every college has a clear merit plan, that it is transparent to each faculty member and how merit is calculated.
• Budget Development: Committee working on rewriting the charge for the university Budget Development Committee.
• Equity Adjustment: Dr. Lin added that he had discussed the issue of instructor salary equity with President Taylor and Dr. Taylor said he was very much committed to having accurate adjustment for staff and instructors, but there has not been much conversation with the Provost and CFO about this issue.

• Academic Affairs – Sujing Wang
• Teaching Load Survey: Teaching load survey emailed from faculty senator office to senators. Please share the survey with your department’s faculty members and encourage faculty to respond. Purpose of survey is to gather information because departments and colleges are so different. Need feedback from faculty to work with the administration on developing teaching load policies.
• Policies without Faculty Input: Provost office collecting department and college policies. Some colleagues state that if departments or colleges do not have a clearly written policy, they are just making one up. For example, Tenure and Promotion within a department or college without faculty input and feedback.

• Academic Issues – Melissa Riley

Met on November 15 did not have a quorum. Discussed the following topics:

• Class Schedule: As reported last month Provost Brown announced that the University is going back to the 50-minute Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes with start times, 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, etc. The committee suggests that a survey be sent to faculty for their opinion – does faculty have a concern about number of minutes in class and time between classes? The members thought more time in each class may add time to the semester without a reduction of course weeks. The five-minute resolution motion passed in 2022 has not been recognized by the administration. The committee decided to speak to decreased time and effects on students. Melissa is also gathering data/opinions from other employees of the university.
• Preferred Name Issue: They met with Dr. Titus about the preferred name issue in Blackboard (Banner name different from Blackboard and outside homework system, outside homework system did not have L number). Andre Favors pointed out that Dantrel Hargers is the person to contact about this matter. The university is close to making the preferred name universal across Lamar platforms. Melissa asserted there was a need to tie a student’s preferred name to the student’s LU ID in all spaces (including outside homework systems).

• Research & Creative Activity – John Gossage

Met on November 15 and discussed the following topic:

• Faculty Development Leave (FDL): The committee received and considered all the FDL application and found five meritorious. These five recommendations were forwarded to the Provost. John congratulated everybody that submitted proposals. The five recommended recipients are: Sharon Joffe (faculty senator), Judy Kennedy, Kelly Weeks (faculty senator), Millie Musyoka (faculty senator), and Adam Nummers.

• Faculty Evaluation – Millie Musyoka

Met on November 29 and discussed the following topic:

• Faculty Evaluation Template and MAPPs: Discussed the template, the MAPPs, and how to develop a fast, faculty-friendly annual evaluation MAPP. Hope to have first draft in OneDrive by January 23.
• Climate Survey: The committee is also in charge of the climate survey that is distributed in March. If you have any questions you would like to add to the survey email Millie.

• Faculty Handbook – B. Garrick Harden

Non-traditional meeting schedule, but the committee meets regularly:

• MAPPS for comments: There are two MAPPS up for comments.
  • 1) MAPP on MAPPs: Last day to make comments is December 6, 2023.
  • 2) MAPP regarding promotion to full professor. B. Garrick Harden made a motion regarding the promotion to full professor MAPP.
• Motion: The external reviewers MAPP states faculty hired prior to the establishment of a university wide policy to grant reassignment time from teaching for research will be excluded from the policy requiring external evaluator letters for promotion to professor rank. An exception is in College whereby a similar policy was developed with faculty input and implemented for 6 years or more. There was a lot of discussion, but no second.

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

Committee held last meeting December 5, 2023.

• Proposed Bylaws: Submitted draft of new proposed bylaws to Senate for comment – sent to the officers and members of the committee as well as the office staff on December 5.
• Overview of Proposed Bylaws:
  • Includes open forum at the beginning of each meeting.
  • At the first regular Faculty Senate meeting of each long semester, the open forum can include participation from any faculty member.
  • Senator attendance policy
  • It also includes procedures if there's an administrative nonresponse or rejection of one of our proposals,
• Discussion: addressed concerns from members about the process for selecting committee chairs. He pointed out that members can make additional changes to the proposed bylaws as debate on the subject continues in the spring.
• Next Steps: Distribution for faculty input

Old Business

No old business was discussed.

New Business

No new business was discussed.

Adjournment

Andre Favors motioned to adjourn. Millie Musyoka seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously.

The meeting adjourned at 5:35p.m.