University Faculty Senate Minutes

November 11, 2014

 

The fourth meeting of the University of Mississippi Faculty Senate was called together at 7:00 PM on November 11, 2014.

 

Senators in attendance: Rachna Prakash; Chuck Ross; Philip Jackson; Patrick Curtis; Brice Noonan; Randy Wadkins; Brad Cook; Tossi Ikuta; Feng Wang; Tom Garrett; Elliott Hutchcraft; Adetayo Alabi; Ben McClelland; Chris Offutt; Robert Holt; Yang-Chieh Fu; Oliver Dinius; Joshua Howard; Vanessa Gregory; Dennis Bunch; Susan Ivey; Jing Jing Wu; Christopher Newman; Sasha Kocic; Tejas Pandya; Valentina Iepuri; Adam Estes; Michael Gardiner; Jos Milton; Laurel Lambert; Erin Holmes; Allison Bell; Mary Thurlkill; Breese Quinn; Ben Jones; Greg Love; Marilyn Mendolia; David Rutherford; Marcos Mendaoza; Minjoo Oh; Allan Bellman; Mark Ortwein; Joe Sumrall; Rory Ledbetter

 

Senators excused: Andre Liebenberg; Lorri Williamson; Jessica Leming; Dwight Frink

 

Senators absent: Darren Grem; Antonia Eliason; Milam Aiken; Heather Allen; Desiree Stepteau-Watson

 

The following departments’ seats were unfilled as of this date: Biomolecular Sciences, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Law (2), and Pharmaceutics

 

Guest:

 

 

• Call meeting to order by current Senate Chair, Michael Barnett
  • 7:00PM

 

·       Approval of October 14, 2014 minutes

• Approved

 

·       Campus-Wide Testing center

• Exploring the need for a campus-wide testing center open to every Student Disability Services registered student in all academic disciplines. Neil A. Manson, Associate Professor of Philosophy,

 

I am advocating for this because I think that it’s something we need. I’m getting a lot of requests from students asking for alternate testing options and we have space constraints. I can’t find a place to put everybody, and this will continue to become a problem as we grow. Until this past year, we did not have a testing center. Now we have a 40 seat classroom in Hume Hall which is reserved for half of the day. I see deficiencies in this—why is it restricted to liberal arts? We have other students that need this. If you are not in liberal arts, you have to arrange accommodations on your own. We also don’t have divided screens in our current testing center. Currently, only University of Mississippi and Alabama do not have a full time university-wide testing center.

 

What can the senate do to help? On an individual level, get to know the rules. The number one thing you can do is to approve the facility and staffing, and I know this

 

takes time and money. The main thing that I don’t understand right now is why we have a center restricted to the college of liberal arts.

 

Michael Barnett: This will be sent to the Academic Support Committee.

 

·       Proposed Resolution in Support of Chancellor Jones (See attached)

Motion for amendment: Can we add service to the final sentence? “…research, service, and teaching”?

Motion seconded.

42 in favor. 0 opposed. 0 abstentions.

 

Motion for amendment: I would like to add a comma to the second paragraph to set off “since 2009.”

Motion seconded.

42 in favor. 0 opposed. 0 abstentions.

 

·       Senate Committee Report for Executive Committee (moved up to accommodate guest speakers Dr. Lori Wolff and Provost Maurice Eftink). Breese Quinn presenting.

 

The first page of the document is what I showed last time, which was data on cases. The committee met with Lori Wolff on October 29 to discuss this data in detail, and here [document on screen] are some main points. There were 11 overturns, 6 of which were against the instructor. The committee almost always defers to the instructor, except for the cases where the instructor was not clear in the syllabus. There were not any types of sanctions in particular that led to overturns. There are unusual cases from time to time, but because they are unusual, we cannot set them with guidelines. It is generally appropriate because different departments emphasize different infractions. The only types of infractions that are in a state of flux are things dealing with scanners. For all of these reasons, it was unanimous for the committee that we should produce guidelines to guide departments [3 points on screen].

 

Since this is a simple set of guidelines, we feel that our committee will produce these, taking into account any input you all have for us. Please give the information to your colleagues and get back to us with any feedback you receive. We would like to present the final report in December, and assuming that a recommendation to produce guidelines is accepted, the final guidelines document will be presented to the senate in January.

 

Q: One thing that was brought up a month or two ago was that a faculty member cannot tell if a case has ever been brought up against the student previously. You know, sometimes if you’re not sure what to do or if you think it may not be serious and that the student may not do it again, you sort of wait to see what happens. Are there any plans to make that type of information available for faculty?

A (Wolff): That ability is already there. We keep records of previous cases for students. It may be at the Deans level only now, though. Occasionally, we’ll have a faculty member ask us, and occasionally we have done so.

Comment (Eftink): The way this part of the policy has been written stems back to our previous provost, who was a law professor. Her position was that each infraction should

 

be based on that particular infraction, and not on past evidence. Only once the student has been found guilty can the committee see, and then at that time they can increase the sanction. Just like it would be in a legal case. Now, that was the point of view when this was created, but it doesn’t mean it has to stay this way.

Q: (Barnett): The recommendation in that type of situation is that you should still report anything to the system, or to give probation as a warning?

A (Wolff): Yes, probation or enhanced probation. Probation goes to the Provosts’ Office. The Academic Discipline Committee only acts on a case if a case is appealed. So, if the student does not appeal a case, we cannot go in and change anything.

 

Q: What are we [the senators] supposed to do at this point? Give these guidelines or are there going to be lengthier ones? I’m a bit confused if these are the proposed guidelines or if there is going to be another draft.

A: Yes, if no changes are recommended to these informal guidelines, we will write these up formally.

 

Comment: I think it would be really great to think about considering that if a student is a multiple offender, he or she should be reviewed, even if the student doesn’t appeal.

Eftink: So what you’re saying is that if a student doesn’t appeal, the committee would be notified that a student is a multiple offender?

Wolff: That is at the Deans level, but that could, in theory, be done.

Eftink: I think this system works pretty well because our faculty are entering cases. The cases are increasing, and it’s working well. And it works well because of Dr. Lori Wolff. They have an extreme size of cases.

 

Barnett: Does your committee rotate every year?

A (Wolff): Yes, and I’m a rotating person as well. I’m not sure about the rotate schedule off the top of my head. Our undergraduate and graduate person changes yearly, but I’m not sure if it’s a 3 or 5 year term. People are on it because they are interested, not because they are forced. We think this is a good committee and that it does good work. There are ten of us—8 are faculty, 2 students.

 

Quinn: This issue of whether a student is a repeat offender seems to me to be outside of the scope of this particular committee’s item now. It seems more like the policies of how the Academic Discipline Committee works, rather than these guidelines from the senate. I would not think this issue should be included in this.

 

·       Presentation by Associate Provost Maurice Eftink Regarding:

• HERI Faculty Survey (See attached): The administration is seeking an endorsement by the Faculty Senate of the survey, to be sent to all faculty, in the hopes that such an endorsement will encourage faculty to submit a completed

 

This faculty survey has been proposed by different groups. It’s a national survey out of UCLA, largely about teaching, but also about place and environment. We have also had the request to conduct this survey in association with the Diversity Plan. I prepare reports for SACS and I can tell you that it would be very helpful to have some data related to faculty attitudes on teaching and environment. Students are surveyed, but we

 

don’t really have a systematic survey of faculty. This has been proposed a number of times, and I think this needs to be brought up again. It’s not terribly expensive.

 

You may be wondering what we will do with the data. We can use it for accreditation reports and NSF reports, and to help guide our Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Over the summer, we looked at the CETL and how its mission has changed since its inception. The proposal that this group made in the summer was to refocus this center on faculty development. We do not have a director for this at this point in time. To search for a director, faculty data would be good to have. The HERI has a main component—mostly about teaching and faculty attitudes. Also, a component that I would like us to add is diversity (campus environment) issues. The current timing would be to begin this in December and run for a couple of months. That is my proposal and I’d like to have the senate formally or informally endorse this.

 

Q: In terms of what to do with the data—can we use the data to increase quality of professors that we have, and can we use it for recruitment?

A: Yes, we can use it by showing that it is a good place to work. HERI is better than using a survey that you created on your own because it is national data.

 

Q: Is this data made available to people outside of the university?

A: It will be included in the database, and I think we could have the option to make it available.

Q (follow-up): I just wanted to know if we have control over this data.

A: Well, it becomes part of a database, so it will go into that. This is used for comparisons to other universities. I doubt that you can compare yourself to specific institutions, though.

Comment: Yeah, I think a concern could be if a racially charged incident happens, and someone could get to our data and see what faculty think.

A (Eftink): Yes, that could be a problem. Anyhow, I think this data would be good to have.

 

Comment: I think that for faculty excellence, this would be a good way to use the data.

 

Comment: I would concur that this is focused on teaching, and this is a very important component. However, the research component is extremely underrepresented. If we were to adopt this, I would like to see another survey about research on campus, particularly with the effort we have underway to become a research 1 university.

Eftink: I think that you’re right that it is underrepresented about research. We do have the opportunity to add our own questions, but for a cost. And of course we couldn’t compare those to other institutions. I’ve talked to a few people asking if they would like to generate questions, and if you have any ideas, send them to me so we can decide if we should add questions for the cost.

 

Barnett: Motion to endorse survey? Yes, and seconded.

 

Motion for amendment: Can we add an amendment to address the research component? I don’t want to endorse without that.

 

Yes, and seconded. All in favor.

 

• Faculty Titles and Ranks Recommended Policy (See attached): Seeking input on the work done last spring by the Task Force on Faculty Titles, Rights and

 

We put this together last spring and I wanted to get a group together to tie up “loose ends.” Basically, we have had a definition of faculty ranks policy that is essentially an alphabetical list of definitions that are very difficult to understand. Most other universities have a policy document about titles and ranks that is readable and makes sense. Others at the university would like us to rework this.

 

We put together a group that had some faculty senators, and we came up with what is on the screen. I will try to summarize the memo by recommendation.

 

The first recommendation is to adopt the new definitions in the first 7-8 pages (HR type of stuff), and a new standard format for faculty titles (and include a prefix for non- tenure track).

 

The second recommendation is a digital reformat of everything, with evidence of their approval and descriptions.

 

The third recommendation is that this is available to faculty via myolemiss.

 

The fourth recommendation is that all permanent faculty members have an available promotion route within their faculty category, which was approved by the Deans and the Provost. There should also be an appropriate salary increase included. Basically, we do not want money to be the issue that keeps people from being promoted.

 

The fifth recommendation says that all faculty are subjected to annual performance evaluations, including tenured faculty. We do this anyway, but it has never been written that we have to.

 

The sixth recommendation is about a post-tenure review policy. We created one ten years ago, and it has not been used much except for a few faculty who have been in this process to a certain extent. Basically, I do not think any department has post-tenure guidelines, and so we would like to make it say that if a department does not have post- tenure guidelines, the promotion guidelines would apply.

 

The seventh recommendation deals with the unresolved issues. A related issue here is that we have a committee to review (the Tenure and Promotion Committee) where a person goes to the Lyceum and their dossier is checked. A question is whether or not that applies to non-tenure track faculty. Should their dossiers be looked at by that committee? If so, the committee will have increased work and will likely have to meet more than once.

 

What I’m here to submit to you is this first document that I’ve reviewed, and to ask for any input towards the adoption of this policy.

 

Q: On number four, related to promotion— how does this solve it if you’re not saying where the funding is coming from?

A: At least one school said that the reason they wouldn’t consider promotion is because they thought that they had to come up with the money on their own, and we’re saying that the money will come from administration.

Q (follow-up): Yeah, but we have a lot of non-permanent people.

A: Right, but the document states this is for permanent positions.

 

Eftink: I’m presenting this to give you all time to decide if you think it sounds good or if it needs editing. I’d like to get it submitted and approved.

 

Barnett: Are you asking us to vote or are you just asking for feedback?

Eftink: Well, whatever you think. You did have faculty senate representation on the group that created this document.

 

Comment: I’d like to spend more time reading before giving feedback.

Eftink: Sure, and email me if you have any questions. This task force was from my frustration of having varying faculty policies that differ. I wanted one main document. This is an attempt to re-clarify.

Comment (follow-up): My department just re-wrote all of our promotion policies, so I know they’ll have some feedback.

Eftink: Yes, but that’s good, because each department should have that.

Comment (follow-up): So are we supposed to put a post-tenure review policy together? Barnett: No, this policy says that since most departments do not have that policy, they can fall back on their promotion guidelines.

 

Comment: How do you determine a negative review?

Eftink: At the bottom, there is a checkbox that indicates satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

 

Barnett: Since it is a long document and we have had so much tonight, let’s take another month to look it over. Send any questions to Provost Eftink or me.

 

 

• Learning Management Systems: Exploring the continuation of using Blackboard versus adopting software provided by an alternate vendor (Canvas)

 

Our contract with Blackboard is up for renewal, so we are looking at this to see if we want to continue with Blackboard or if we should go with Canvas. We are looking for input from faculty. Penny Rice or Jimmy Ball- email them to get a sandbox account for the two systems for testing. You may also just have comments for what features you think are important.

 

The key differences for me:

 

• Canvas uses Turnitin instead of SafeAssign, and the issue is that all of the symbols will not be pulled in to
• Pricing- both are expensive, but we do not yet know
• Canvas seemed to have an easier way to have audio feedback on

 

• We have heard a lot of comments about how slow Blackboard is for entering grades, but we do not know if Canvas will be
• Both will work with a way of creating online quizzes, both will support extensions to integrate with third party vendors. Both are similarly ADA

 

Comment: I think it will be a nightmare to switch and I do not hear any amazing things that Canvas does that Blackboard does not do.

 

Comment: I can say that on the student side, they seem to like Canvas better, but I do not know about the faculty side.

 

Q: Can courses in Blackboard be migrated?

A: Yes

Q: Is it easy and are they good?

A: I do not know.

Comment: If you want to see how your course will migrate, Penny can give you an account to test. Also, one feature that I like is the calendar view in Canvas. Apparently Blackboard can do that, but we do not have that part of the package. If you do see features you like, you can ask to see if it is possible in the other system for a cost, and adding it could be a possibility.

 

Comment: A minor point—we should see if students prefer one over another.

 

 

·       Senate Committee Reports

• Executive Committee: No formal report
• Academic Affairs: See above
• Academic Support: No formal report
• Finance: No formal report
• Governance: We have completed our policy, but we are going to delay so that everyone can read
• University Service: We received the sample frame for childcare from Kate. Expect it to go out early December.

 

·       Old Business

None.

 

·       New Business

• Royalties from Textbooks and Materials Authored by Faculty and Assigned by Faculty

– Draft Policy (See attached). Lee Tyner presenting.

 

Should you assign work from something you created? What if the student says you are forcing them to buy your stuff to make money? State ethics law states that one cannot get anything other than their paycheck. We are trying to create a safe harbor so that we can stand behind you to an auditor or ethic committee to give guidance at managing any conflicts of interest.

 

Therefore, we wanted to give you a policy that is aimed at giving faculty a safe harbor for this. Do you have comments about ways we can make this safe harbor better? Of course we have to have ethics folks agree that what we create is allowed. I have been saying for years that I am worried that faculty do not understand this, and I want them to.

 

Q: Is this only for required books, or also for recommended books?

A (Tyner): I would say any material that the student needs to do his/her work. We are recommending being overly cautious.

 

Q: Your interest is to protect faculty, but we also have an academic conflict of interest here.

Tyner: Agreed.

Comment (follow-up): I have seen cases where there is a form that a faculty member completes before the course begins, and a chair or dean approves and says that it is appropriate for the faculty to use their own materials.

Tyner: Yes, that would manage the conflict, but you can still be accused.

Comment (follow-up): I am just wondering if and where a faculty member should begin a paper trail.

Tyner: Yes, a paper trail could help, but it will not prevent a complaint if a student wants to make one. It could help with management of the issue.

 

Comment: Is my academic freedom being limited by making these decisions?

Tyner: We do this in other instances (citing conflict of interest for university affiliated inventions outside of the university).

 

Comment: Has there been any consideration about the amount of money? In my history, royalties aren’t anything, so could there be a limit where this wouldn’t even be an issue?

Tyner: I don’t think making an exception manages the core conflict.

 

Q: So if we know of faculty that are self-assigning, can we send them to you? I don’t want to be the middle-man for this legal issue.

A (Tyner): Yes, but remember that I’m not creating an issue. I’m trying to manage an issue that already exists.

 

Comment: Is this only for faculty assigning their own book? What if another faculty member in the department uses your book?

Tyner: No, it’s only for a faculty member assigning his/her own text.

 

Comment: There is an article about this that I found, regarding academic freedom and how you manage this. I’ll send this out to senators.

 

Tyner: We are trying to encourage faculty to research and publish, but also to use their best academic judgment when making academic decisions.

 

Q: The wording “It is traditional at UM…” Does this mean it is not always the case? Tyner: I think you’re asking if the copyright is with the university, and that is not what we are talking about here.

 

Barnett: I think guidelines are appropriate here, and not a policy. Send thought to us if you or colleagues have them.

 

·       Adjournment

 

• 8:45 PM. Next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 9, at 7