Approved Minutes of the Faculty Senate Meeting
February 18, 2009
http://www.scsu.ctstateu.edu/organizations/facultysenate
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The ninth meeting of the 2008-2009 year was called to order at 12:10 PM.
Members Present: Emenyonu (Accounting), Vu (Art); Lavin (Art); Pang (Chemistry); Madlock (Communication); Jirsa (Com Disorders/MFT); DaPonte (Computer Science); Lawler (Counseling); Fopiano (Couns/Sch Psych); Fleming (Earth Science); Mills (Econ/Finance); Diamantis (Education); Goldberg (Education); Madonia (Ed Leadership); Larocco (English); Johnson (English); Petrie (English); Swartz (Exercise Science); Schmitt (Foreign Language); Olson (Foreign Language); Heidkamp (Geography); Paddock (History); Metaxas (History); Dunklee (Journalism); Hedreen (Library Services); Toce (Library Services); Prince (Marketing); Scheuermann (Mathematics); Gubitose (Mathematics); O’Brien (Media Studies); Nelson (Nursing); Goldblatt (Patrt-Time Faculty); Horch (Physics); Buterbaugh (Political Science); Sherman (Psychology); Colwell (Psychology); Faraclas (Public Health); Jones (Recreation/Leisure); Rofuth (Social Work); Bloch (Sociology); Brucker (Special Ed/Reading); Tamura (Special Ed/Reading); Nye (Theatre); Weiss (UCF)
Members Absent: Rogers (Anthropology); Maloney (Athletics); Feng (Biology); Shea (English); Calahan (Exercise Science); Bielefield (Library Science); Page (Management); _______ (Music); Rebeschi (Nursing); Carrano (Part-time Faculty); Anderson (Part-time Faculty); Ciarlone (Pati-time Faculty); Pettigrew (Philosophy); Cusato (Science Ed/Env Stud); Cameron (Social Work).
The minutes of February 4, 2009 were approved.
Announcements:
ü Senator Bloch will be the host for the Cinema du Monde on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 -- "The Bicycle Thief"
ü The Interdisciplinary Faculty Research Conference 2009 is scheduled for March 7, 2009 at EN 120.
ü SCSU Theater presents All Dressed up and Nowhere to Go on 2/27, @ 8 pm; 2/28 @ 8 pm; 3/3- 3/7 @ 8 pm; and 3/1 and 3/8 @ 2 pm.
ü The Physics department will hold its annual Open House on Friday, February 20 at 11-4 pm at Jennings.
ü AAUP is looking into sponsoring an off-campus retreat for leaders across the university. Further details to follow.
President’s Report ~~ President Johnson distributed the report and opened discussions on the following:
v The General Education Proposal will be arriving to the senate for a vote and then go out for the referendum soon. The discussions include a 3 year flexible implementation time for the new and/or revised courses than will need to meet the new requirements.
v March 18th is the CT Lobby Day. There was a recommendation that the full Senate meeting for that day be rescheduled to April 1st. This will allow some senators to attend the Lobby Day in Hartford and others to attend the Standing committee meetings. The rest of the full Senate schedule will remain the same. Hearing no objections, the secretary will send an email to confirm the change.
v The next Senate Colloquium is tentatively scheduled for Friday, April 24. The topic is Shared Governance. President Norton has agreed to be on the panel and President Johnson is seeking recommendations of other panel members.
Standing Committee Updates:
v Elections ~ ~ no report
v Finance ~ ~ Senator Brucker announced that there will be $20,000 transferred from the Faculty Retraining to Faculty Travel fund. In addition, at the end of the month, Lise Brule will generate the list of faculty names that had reserved money for traveling but have yet to submit for reimbursement. Senator Brucker will communicate to the faculty that they need to submit paperwork asap otherwise their allotted money will be available for other faculty to travel.
v Personnel ~ ~ In the absence of Senator Cusato, Sentor Sherman reported that the committee is working on revising the 6th year professional evaluation. The committee is also communicating with the P & T committee on improving the revised P and T Senate document.
v Rules ~ ~ Senator O’Brien reported that the committee met with Bonnie Farley-Lucas and after that productive meeting, the committee has drafted two resolutions which they will be presenting to the senate today for approval.
v Student Policy ~ ~ Senator Madonia reported that Dr. Joyner will be visiting the committee to discuss any new initiatives.
v Technology ~ ~ Senator DaPonte reported that Wendy Chang visited the committee and discussed different issues with them. One such item is the plethora of IT committees and how to condense them to a lower number, such as the Senate Technology committee and a reconstituted ETAC committee..
v Academic Polilcy ~ ~ Senator Bloch and the committee are working on a new Transfer Credits Policy which will be presented later for discussion.
Ad-hoc committees:
§ P & T Departmental Guidelines ~ ~ (Madonia, Fopiano, Calahan, Hedreen, Lavin, Shea). Senator Madonia reported that the committee will have a document to present to the Senate for discussion. It seems that the Deans’ Council does have a draft which seems to be different than the committee’s. The committee feels that we need to preserve what this document will be: guidelines and should not be a checklist.
In addition, President Johnson suggested that the P & T committee works and meets with the Senate’s Personnel Committee on a yearly basis, such as every spring to work together to revise/improve the P & T process.
§ PR / Naming Committee ~ ~ (O’Brien, Dunklee, Pettigrew, Heidkamp, Vu). Senator O’Brien reported that the committee is meeting with Megan Rock on Monday the 23rd.
UCF Update:
§ the revised Liberal Education proposal was presented to UCF last week. The GETF has addressed a number of issues that were raised over the fall, i.e. the proposal now provides more flexibility for students in scheduling their courses, allowing them to take Tier II courses earlier in their programs, deadlines for competency completion have been adjusted, etc. The proposal will be discussed further at the next meeting. If it is approved by the UCF, it will come to the Senate for discussion and faculty referendum vote.
§ Electronic proposals: UCF is seeking assistance from CIO Wendy Chang who will provide further IT support for the forms and proposals.
§ The Chairs’ council has approved the proposal that departments will received 6 credits for the undergraduate program evaluation work. The document will be given to the Provost for approval and it will be allocated to departments retroactive from fall 2008.
At this time there was some discussion on the P & T Department Guidelines and Senator Madonia opened the discussions from the floor:
§ the document should highlight “items of importance” for the specific discipline/department and it should be in the candidate’s file for all members of the P & T process to see and review.
§ The guidelines should not be a list of events but rather narrative in style
Provost Williams arrived at 1:15 pm and he invited questions for discussion from the floor. The first item was the statement on Shared Governance that the Faculty Senate presented President Norton. To today, the Senate has not received a response from administration, what is the status? Provost Williams replied that there seem to be some issues, one being that it should be a document developed from a more CSU view and not just an SCSU one. The argument was that it should be a local document, thus it should assist us in the daily events, rather than hinder our jobs. The definition of shared governance is a fundamental underpinning of contract and since the contract is not defined at the local level, neither should be this shared governance statement.
Another topic of discussion was the budget. Senator Dunklee reminded all that past practice has demonstrated that at such difficult economic times, state university’s had higher enrollment. He suggested that our Board of Trustees members fight for our interests as CSU institutions and thus, have lesser budget cuts than others. Provost Williams stated we don’t know what will be the restriction(s) for the Higher Education Stimulus package. The Chancellor has prepared a statement for the Appropriations Committee and the Provost will forward this document to the Senate.
The Provost also reported that the non-contractual reassigned time is being examined and budget reductions submitted to the Chancellor will include budget cuts through the non contractual reassigned time. Having said that there are some critical positions that were vacated due to retirement and the BOT has placed a freeze on new hires. For example, Kathy Mauro is retiring and the administration has yet to receive permission from the BOT to fill that position, even after the challenge to reconsider that critical position. The need is evident that all non-contractual reassigned time (especially the coordinators’ credits) need to be carefully examined and we need to start thinking of doing things differently. Great thought will be given to which positions need to be filled and which positions will not compromise student excellence.
March 13th is the next Town Hall meeting which is a combined presentation from the Budget and Planning Committee and the University Strategic Plan and Review Committee. Those two committees will be meting soon to come up with guiding principles for the budget cuts.
Motion to adjourn at 2:05 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Maria Diamantis
Secretary of the Senate