Faculty Affairs Policy Committee (FAPC) - September 2, 2011

Faculty Affairs Policy Committee (FAPC) Minutes - 02 Sept 2011

Attendance

Present:  Dean Baker, David Connolly, Carrie Cook, David de Posada, Victoria Deneroff, Provost Jordan, Karynne Kleine, Mary Magoulick, Leslie Moore, Holley Roberts, Mike Rose, Craig Turner, Mike Whitfield.

Absent:   None

Regrets:  None

Guests:   None

Activity and Agreements

1. Call to Order: Craig Turner, committee chair, called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m.


2. Agenda: A motion to approve the 2 September 2011 agenda as circulated was made, seconded, and approved.


3. Minutes: A motion to approve the 29 April 2011 FAPC meeting minutes was made, seconded, and approved.


4. Informational Items:
   
   
   
   1. Committee Annual Report: The committee chair distributed a copy of the 2010-2011 FAPC annual report to all committee members.
   
   
   2. Meeting Location: FAPC will meet in Arts & Sciences 1-16 for all scheduled meetings of the 2011-2012 academic year. Such meetings are scheduled from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. on the following Fridays: September 2, October 7, November 4, December 2, January 13, February 3, March 2, and April 6.


5. Action Items:
   
   
   
   1. Committee Operating Procedures: A draft of proposed committee operating procedures was circulated by the committee chair for committee consideration. The chair indicated that the proposed operating procedures were comparable to those used by FAPC during the 2010-2011 academic year with a few minor editorial revisions and the inclusion of the University Senate Bylaws pertaining to committee meetings that were adopted by the University Senate in April 2011. The chair went on to indicate that the main conversation point regarding these operating procedure in the 2010-2011 academic year was the issue of a voting threshold, noting that there are two standard variations considered when defining a voting threshold. These are to take a majority of the voting members present at a meeting in the presence of a quorum or a majority of those voting members eligible to vote (whether they are present at the meeting or not) in the presence of a quorum. The chair stated that Robert’s Rules of Order recommends the voting threshold of a majority of those voting members present assuming the presence of a quorum. Other items addressed in the proposed operating procedures included but were not limited to: a list of the responsibilities for each of the committee officers, the process of setting and circulating a meeting agenda, the process for drafting and circulating meeting minutes, and a mechanism for amending the operating procedures. Finally, the chair indicated that Article III Section 1 of the University Senate Bylaws requires that the committee establish operating procedures and file them with the Executive Committee. A committee member expressed concern about the accuracy of the phrase is a team and not a set of individuals within the language: “First and foremost the Faculty Affairs Policy Committee is a team and not a set of individuals. To realize this philosophy, we endorse the following:” A motion was made to amend this language to read “First and foremost the Faculty Affairs Policy Committee will work cooperatively and respectfully on behalf of the faculty. To realize these goals, we endorse the following:” This motion to amend was seconded and approved. There was no further discussion on revisions to the proposed committee operating procedures. A motion to approve the proposed committee operating procedures, as amended, was made, seconded and approved.
   
   
   2. Selection of Committee Representative for SACS Work: During the 2011-2012 organizational meeting, the Provost expressed interest in having a member of FAPC serve on the SACS steering committee during the 2011-2012 academic year. The floor was opened for nominations and self-nominations. Craig Turner volunteered to represent FAPC on the SACS steering committee. This self-nomination was the only nomination coming forward and Craig Turner was selected by the committee to serve in this capacity by acclamation.
   
   
   3. Academic Year Faculty Contract Start/End Date: Karynne Kleine was approached by members of her constituency requesting information about the process by which the start and end dates for academic year faculty contracts are determined. One committee member provided anecdotal information indicating that based on her/his contracts since fall semester 1998 and semester conversion, the start date has always been August 1 and the end date has varied between May 4 and May 14 and in recent years the end date has been in close proximity to the date spring semester grades are due. The Provost indicated that according to the information she has, if the start date was adjusted from August 1 to a later date in August, a proration for the August paycheck would be necessary. A related issue of whether academic year faculty are considered to be 9-month or 10-month employees was also discussed. One committee member indicated that there are references in University System of Georgia policy and procedure manuals of such contracts as 9-month, 10-month and academic year contracts. This member went on to point out that language in the Georgia College Policy Manual indicates that conversion from academic year to fiscal year contracts for faculty is accomplished by multiplying the base salary by 1.2. This practice supports the position that academic year faculty have 10-month contracts as the conversion factor of 1.2 is the ratio of twelve months to ten months. The Provost indicated her perception that the University System of Georgia centralized payroll systems consider academic year faculty as 10-month employees and that faculty have been 10-month employees since the institution shifted from the quarter system to the semester system. Some of the faculty who were employed at this institution at that time agreed that faculty contracts were converted to 10-month contracts when the USG adopted the semester system calendar. It was suggested to Karynne Kleine that she share these committee conversation points with those she represented.
   
   
   4. Academic Year Faculty Summer Course Pay: Karynne Kleine discussed a faculty constituency concern about the way that faculty who have an academic year contract and teach at least one summer course are compensated. The standard pay rate is 9% of base pay for a three-hour course taught in the summer. While faculty can be prorated and receive less than this if a certain threshold of students is not achieved (this threshold is a function of the base pay of the individual faculty member), there is no bonus for teaching a course when the number of students exceeds this threshold. Some committee members noted that the College of Arts & Sciences had implemented a system that provided such bonus pay for the summer 2011 terms. This was an illustrative example that this matter could be addressed at the college level rather than at the university level. Dr Jordan indicated that colleges receive most (70%) of the revenues generated from their summer courses and that this money is earmarked for development of their faculty. For the College of Arts and Sciences to offer a bonus for exceeding summer enrollment thresholds, its faculty had to agree to that each dollar allocated for a bonus would result in a corresponding dollar reduction of development funds for collegiate faculty. Karynne was encouraged to recommend this approach [considering modifications at the college level] to those she represented. It was noted that this matter could be revisited by FAPC at a future meeting if there were recommendations for proposing revisions to summer pay that would apply to all university faculty.
   
   
   5. Digital Measures: Mike Rose posed questions from his constituents regarding the faculty activity database called Digital Measures, specifically access to faculty records and notification of faculty members when an administrator (chair, dean, provost) accesses their records or when modifications to their records are made by another.
      
      

      o   Access: The Provost indicated that access to a faculty member’s activity records within Digital Measures is available only to the faculty member, administrators in the supervisory chain of the faculty member (chair, dean, provost), and the office of institutional research (for the purposes of preparing reports). To be specific, chairs can access activities of the faculty in their department, deans can access activities of faculty in their college, and the provost and institutional research can access activities of all university faculty. The Provost stated that this administrative access [available to chairs, deans, provost, and institutional research] allows an administrator to query the system and receive aggregate data [e.g. a count of the number of faculty who engage in activity X] as well as to view the specific activities of each of the individual faculty members reporting to them. She went on to indicate that in practice, this administrative access is typically used to perform queries for aggregated data (e.g. How many publications in a certain time window?)

      
      

      o   Notification: The constituency of Mike Rose advocated for faculty receiving a courtesy notification when administrators view faculty records within the digital measures environment. However, an individual faculty member is not presently notified when her/his activities information is viewed by a person with administrative access (chair, dean, provost, institutional research). The Provost indicated that it may not be possible to alter Digital Measures to support this notification because it is a purchased program and not programmed by university employees. Additionally, the information available in Digital Measures is the same performance related information that faculty have historically provided annually through an electronic resume. There has been no practice of notifying faculty when their resumes are used to provide information.

      
      

      o   Revisions: The Provost indicated that each faculty member has control over her/his own information and that the ability to revise information depends on whether that information is in a “locked” field or not. If a locked field (such as gender, employment start date, etc.) is incorrect, then a faculty member can use an electronic notification to contact the system administrator and request a correction. Fields that are not “locked” can be revised only by the faculty member to whom they apply. The Digital Measures environment allows a collaborative effort to be documented by a single faculty member and apply to all individuals participating in the collaboration. For example, if an activity is entered by one member of a collaborative group and that member designates other participating members, each of the other designated faculty members in the collaborative group receives a “copy” of that documentation and is notified of that addition. The individual can then modify her/his “copy” of the documentation.

   
   
   6. Updates from FAPC Work Groups:
      
      
      
      1. Student Opinion Survey Form Work Group: There was an earlier recommendation by FAPC that representatives of FAPC meet with a representative of the University Council of Chairs (Chairs Council) to determine the status of and advocate for faculty voice in their review of commercial student opinion surveys that are nationally normed with published measures of validity and reliability. The members of this work group – Karynne Kleine, Craig Turner, and Carrie Cook – met with Lee Gillis from the Chairs Council and suggested that a work group of 6-10 members, the majority faculty and the minority from Chairs Council, be formed to continue to work on this matter. This recommendation was not formally acted upon (endorsed, not endorsed) by the full committee at this meeting. The work group also recommended that meaningful involvement of faculty extend to faculty evaluation policy and procedures in general and not be limited to work with the Chairs Council on student opinion surveys. Specifically, the work group recommends that FAPC should put forward a motion to the effect that faculty should have meaningful and substantive involvement in issues related to faculty evaluation, including the selection and/or creation of instruments used to assess or evaluate faculty performance. This recommendation was not formally acted upon (endorsed, not endorsed) by the full committee at this meeting. The Provost expressed concern about the language of the proposed motion noting that it does not specify explicitly what comes to FAPC for consideration and what should be considered through departments. The proposed motion may be too specific in its language and does not direct departments to support the culture of faculty involvement through discussion and recommendations that come forward from faculty to departmental chairs or deans or directly to the Provost for action. There was further discussion about whether this proposed motion is redundant with our current system of shared governance. The work group noted that its intent when authoring the proposed motion was to formalize the level of faculty involvement in decision-making that is currently evident in the culture of the university. A motion was made, seconded and approved to postpone further consideration of this matter to the next meeting of the committee given the allotted meeting time was nearly expired.
      
      
      2. Post-Tenure Review Work Group: The work group reported that a subset of its membership met once since the 29 Apr 2011 FAPC meeting and the work group continued its review of the post-tenure language in the university policy manual (formerly in the academic affairs handbook). As part of that deliberation, it was noted that the University of West Georgia (UWG) recently revised its post-tenure review language and so the work group will inform its deliberation with the UWG language. Additionally, the work group will ensure that it has at least one active member representing each college and the library.
   
   
   7. Tentative agenda items for FAPC for the 2011-2012 academic year: Consideration of this item was postponed to the next meeting.
   
   
   8. Unfinished Business: There was no unfinished business.
   
   
   9. New Business: There was no new business.
   
   
   10. Tentative Agenda for the next FAPC meeting: The tentative agenda for the next meeting includes tentative agenda items for the 2011-2012 FAPC considered at the 10 August 2011 governance retreat and further discussion on the recommendations of the student opinion survey work group.
   
   
   11. Opportunity for the FAPC Secretary to clarify any matter with the committee: Carrie Cook, committee secretary, was provided an opportunity to clarify any matter with the committee to assist her in the preparation of minutes for this meeting. She required no clarifications.
   
   
   12. Adjourn: There being no further business, a motion to adjourn was made, seconded and approved. The meeting adjourned at 4:48 p.m.

Actions Some activities lead to actions to implement the committee agreements.

5.a.     File the operating procedures, as amended, with the Executive Committee. (Craig Turner)

5.b.     Represent FAPC on the SACS steering committee. (Craig Turner)

10.      Set tentative agenda for the next meeting in consultation with committee. (Craig Turner)