Minutes: October 26, 2012

Present:  Tom Ormond, Carrie Cook, Beth Broyles, Scott Butler, Mike Rose, Karynne Kleine, Carol Christy, Holley Roberts, Sandra Godwin, Beauty Bragg, Bill Miller

Regrets: Leslie Moore

Absent: Jeff Turner

Mike Rose (on behalf of chair, Leslie Moore) called the meeting to order at 2:00.

Agenda: A motion to approve the agenda as circulated was made, seconded and upheld.

Minutes: A motion to approve the minutes as circulated was made, seconded, and upheld.

Unfinished business:  Work on a replacement for Student Opinion Surveys continues.  A webinar for the IDEAS brand scheduled on Wednesday October 24^th was well attended.  The ETS instrument webinar is scheduled for November 14 at 1:00.  There was some discussion of whether to include students in the selection process and if so when.  The group seems to lean away from soliciting student input in the interest of making a recommendation as soon as possible.  It was finally concluded that the recommendation should go directly to the Provost’s office.

It was suggested that the committee postpone any further work on the post-tenure review policy since few departments seem to be actually conducting post-tenure review.  As it stands the document is nearly complete in its address of the original problem, a lack of language that specifies options for faculty response to negative decisions.   This suggestion was not put in the form of a motion.

New Business:  Background information was presented regarding the issue of “faculty input on faculty evaluation.”  After some discussion of what constitutes meaningful input and the work that had previously been done around this issue, it was concluded that Carrie Cook would circulate the work that had been done by the previous committee, so that this one might use it in preparing a motion to adopt a statement in an as-yet-to-be-determined document.  A draft of this statement will circulate at our next meeting. 

Additional discussion included the topic of how the committee might “start looking at a real assessment of the Senate” to determine whether it is merely functioning legislatively or as a deliberative body. 

Adjourned:  The meeting concluded at 3:15.