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Faculty Senate

Mar 5, 2008 Minutes

Members present:  Senators Stone, Bond, Feakes, Furney, Hazlewood, Hindson, Hurt, McGee, McKinney, Meek, Melzer, Ogletree, Wilson, Winek

 

Guests: Rebecca Swindal, Staff Council Representative; and David Rauf and Selina Saucedo, University Star

 

 

Meeting called to order at 4:00.

 

Info Items:  Several topics were discussed:

  • Graduate Enrollment Figures:  Applications are up 25% and acceptances up 27% .
  • Disability Services:  There has been an enormous increase in usage of disability services, causing budgets to be strained.  One notable increase is the usage of translators for deaf students.

 

CAD Follow-up:  Discussion centered the comments section of the Senate’s survey of faculty opinions of academic administrators.  After a discussion of whether respondents should remain anonymous or not, the consensus of the Senate was that every reasonable effort should be made to preserve anonymity of the survey respondents. Publication of the comments is a concern of the Provost, but to accuse faculty of making comments in a National Inquirer attitude was considered offensive by some Senators. Also, some Senators felt that survey comments create a particular impetus to remove poor administrators that is not reflected in agree-disagree bubble responses. A subcommittee of the Senate (Senators Feakes, Hindson, McKinney and Stone) will meet to discuss the issue with the Provost.  Also discussed was the policy requiring distribution of the dean’s evaluation of chairs to departmental faculty.  It was decided to perform an audit at the end to the semester to determine which deans are in compliance with the policy.

 

Quality Enhancement Plan:  Senator Winek will serve as the Senate’s representative for the group that will be working on selecting a theme for the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).

 

Posting Salary Data:  Discussion continued regarding posting of salary data on the Senate’s webpage. A motion made at a previous meeting to post the data without required authentication failed.  A new motion to post the data with authentication open to anyone in the Texas State community passed.

 

Academic Computing Committee Recommendation:  Dr. England, Journalism, presented the ACC recommendation to fund twenty-two proposals ($473,099.18).  Eight proposals were not recommended for funding.  He detailed the procedures used by the committee to determine its recommendation, indicating that each college representative acted as an advocate for his/her college’s proposals, but did not vote on those proposals.  There was no partial funding of any proposal.  A motion was passed to suspend the Senate’s rule requiring a motion to approve the recommendation be considered at the next meeting.  The Senate approved the ACC recommendation and applauded the committee for its good work.

 

New Business:

  • Elections: Senate Elections are coming.
  • Survey:  The faculty survey on deans and academic administrators is coming.
  • Institutional Review Board:  Dr. Blanda from the Office of the Assoc. VP for Research is scheduled on a future agenda to discuss issues raised regarding the IRB.

 

Minutes:  Minutes for 02/20/08 and 02/27/08 were approved as amended.