November 16, 2011
FACULTY SENATE MINUTES
NOVEMBER 16, 2011
Present: Richard Borgman, Ian Bricknell, Dick Brucher, Sudarshan Chawathe, William Congleton, Robert Dana, David Dvorak, Janet Fairman, Paul W. Ferguson, Michael Grillo, Dan Harrison, Sue Hunter, Dennis King, Irv Kornfield, Bill Livingston, James McClymer, Harlan Onsrud, Michael Peterson, Anne Pooler, Paul Rawson, Andrew Reeve, Bob Rice, Thomas Sanford, Michael Scott, Scott See, Phillip Silver, Howard Segal, Kathryn Slott, Claire Sullivan, Howard Segal, Shihfen Tu, Roy Turner, Janet Waldron
Absent: Emmanuel Boss, Douglas Bousfield, Benildo de los Reyes, Marcia Douglas, Dylan Dryer, Eric Gallandt, Robert Gundersen, Ramesh Gupta, Gordon Hamilton, Duane Hanselman, Samuel Helmke, Clarissa Henry, Melvin Johnson, Deborah Killam, Steven Kimball, Kurt Klappenbach, Judy Kuhns-Hastings, Molly MacLean, David Marcincowski, Stuart Marrs, Robert Milardo, Jennifer Moxley, Martha Novy-Broderick, Anthony Ortiz, Tina Passman, Steve Reiling, Caleb Rosser, Mark Wells, Vivian Wu, Robert Strong, Melvin Johnson, Molly MacLean
The meeting was called to order at 3:20 pm
Announcements:
The agenda was distributed prior to inviting Brian Dorr to participate.
Approval of Minutes
The minutes for October 19, 2011 were approved.
Committee Reports
BOT Rep – Robert Rice
There was a Strategic Planning organizational meeting yesterday. The President has broad goals for the group, no preconceived notions on how it will play out. Margaret Chase Smith Center will facilitate meetings to be held every week. Beginning in January there will be a call for input.
Finance and Facilities Committee of the BOT met over the weekend, Trustee meeting was at USM. BOT approved a $14 million dollar renovation of the field house and ended with two surprises: 1) the system hoped to hire a consultant to consolidate services and; 2) discussion regarding the funding formula, some want major changes to the formula. Request a consultant but not accepted. Talk regarding performance based formula.
BOT had some discussion regarding a response to the Governor’s letter regarding bold moves. Block tuition was discussed i.e. fixed fee tuition (pay for 15 credits but could take18 at no additional cost).
Freezing tuition was discussed; 1) for a year, or 2) freeze at point of entry. Consolidating credit hours to 120 per degree unless the program requires more for accreditation.
Discussed seamless transition between university and community colleges meaning liberal studies degrees from a community college would mean Gen Ed requirements at the university have been met.
Increase Stem graduates; increase 4 & 6 year grad rates; increase in internships; look to align certificate programs; on-line done on a year round calendar; BOT would like to work with faculty to improve faculty assessment; save $5 million in administrative costs across campuses; K-12 education –students come unprepared; System did not want to be seen as a top down system.
Academic Affairs –Judy Kuhns-Hastings & Shihfen Tu
Met on November 3. Undergrad; change in grading system; on-line
Constitution &Bylaws – Harlan Onsrud
Faculty handbook, 28 years old, has been scanned and loaded on the Faculty Senate website. There were revision attempts in 2005 and 2006. Intent should not be to recreate the handbook but to amend policy that is out of date or has issues and to address those issues where there is no clear existing university policy.
Q. If it’s 28 years old is it policy or an artifact?
A. Technically it applies unless a section was overturned
Research &Scholarship – Janet Fairman
All forms for UMapIt are on the OSRP website and can now accept proposals. Also met regarding the posting on the OSRP website regarding system policy on intellectual property rights, pleased with outcome.
Finance &Institutional Planning – James McClymer
The UMaine net calculator, to estimate a student’s total cost was compared to system and private college costs. UMaine calculator is similar, has approximately 40 cells and comes within $200 +/-, shows UMaine less expensive/competitive. Private schools have a lot of questions. Issues for UMaine are that it’s hard to find and the presentation could be improved.
University Environment – Mike Scott
Should have a report at the next meeting. Meeting with Janet Waldron on November 21.
Library Advisory –Howard Segal
President Ferguson signed the Berlin agreement.
The library is working on the Digital Commons and plans to have an official “opening” in the spring semester. To date the library has loaded some theses and dissertations, has created one journal using our own Olive Tree, and is working with the Digital Commons staff to load some faculty work.
Service &Outreach – Deborah Killam & Claire Sullivan
No report. They will meet this Monday.
Committee on Committees – Roy Turner
Still need members for Cultural Affairs, Inaugural, and Committee on Women.
Program creation& Reorganization Review – Scott See
No report, motion under New Business.
General Education — Tina Passman
Dennis King reported the committee will be meeting on December 2 to identify student learning outcomes and possible motion. Tina Passman will attend the NEASC conference in December with special attention to sessions on accreditation.
Ad Hoc IT – Irv Kornfield & Mike Scott
Richard Powell was asked to speak regarding the Distance Learning Steering Committee. Number of issues to work through; approved over the summer so larger committee of administrators and faculty to allow broader involvement; met a couple weeks ago making substantial progress; extensive discussion of services needed to carry out. Great deal of centralization has been reduced.
Susan Hunter said Rich has done a fabulous job and connected with faculty representatives. Tried to talk to as many as possible and if questions arise please contact him.
Q. Mechanical engineering has undermined itself on campus because of delivering distance education at USM.
A. Are you saying face-to-face instruction is better?
Yes, if student wants a physical class they should have that opportunity and it’s not currently available.
Irving stated the concerns are valid and should be explored but start at the unit level. A complex problem that will be addressed at some level.
Work with unit but also across campus.
Rich stated these specific matters haven’t been discussed yet. Indirectly pushing that decisions be made within autonomy of campus and units. Program by program basis, an evaluation segment is needed.
Q. “Delivery of Education” doesn’t sound accurate
Q. Who’s steering?
A. Every campus is involved but reports to the Chancellor and President Handley, not campus based.
Ad Hoc IT report continues:
Blackboard, met this morning with Dick Thompson. System Blackboard oversight group approved a segment of Blackboard mobile for students using Apple computers. Several committees on campus are struggling with IT. DLL plans, a division of CED, critical to understand division.
IT council – system responsive to some of our needs.
The main question, which needs to be addressed, is how do all these committees intersect with each other? There is currently no flow chart, and one is really needed at the system level.
T4 Survey Report –Brian Dorr
The Center for Research and Evaluation was contacted to do a survey on the use of technology — in the broader sense — in teaching and learning.
Teaching through technology, teach and learn, not just online or distance education, how technology is used in the classroom.
Goal – capture baseline across system; a lot happening with faculty and not transparent; help frame common threads across state, barriers, physical plant; objective is to put out first survey with broad stroke; focus after on roll of technology in learning. Exploratory study; coordinated consistent way; won’t be complete but starting point; pilot focus group tomorrow; in the next couple of months more module’s going out; April 3 summit of data; cleaned data will be available for people to see; goes to the System and Presidents.
Q. Looks at what is, how to look at what is not.
A. It will ask what is missing; what is needed; focus group; compile data and people may see what’s missing; barriers, incentives, beneficial or not.
Q. Timing and when will the data be available?
A. Won’t be much delay in raw data, special requests can be made to see that data, survey closing near first week of December, don’t see any big delay, a lot of cleaning needs to be done.
Q. Who is T4 reporting to?
A. Chancellor but membership has grown steadily. Advises the Chancellor but powerless.
Q. Few Blackboard sessions offered, only two offered this week and one has a waiting list.
The broader the participation the better things will come together.
Senate Executive Committee
Four meetings in December. Should be full stride in January but collecting data in December. Outcome should be 5-7 strategies to engage, possibly 5-10 but no more than 10 to identify.
Questions to Administrators
Q. Project 7 or 24-7 with dollars coming back to campus $1.2million. The PRE-VUE initiative is being funded by the Coke money and is a short-term approach to the Strategic Planning Initiative.
A. Closely tied RFP in next month or so allows faculty to apply; short term commitment prior to April; Margaret Chase Smith Center will manage RFP. Project 7: at a grad level DLL not here but Dan Sandweiss spoke on where planning is.
Grad committee is working on certificates and review, then forwarded to the Provost. Urging proposers to get them in so they can be reviewed. Mostly certificates currently so only need to go to the grad board. Some proposals are by faculty and some adjuncts.
Q. To Janet Waldron – Things in discussion at the BOT level, do you have ideas on how to work with this?
A. As we go along we will. At this point, get out ahead of it so we’re proactive instead of reactive.
Q. What is merit based?
A. That’s why we want to be proactive and help direct that.
Q. Teaching – what’s the accepted percent of classes taught by full-time faculty or acceptable level taught by part-time faculty? It use to be 50% full-time but that’s down to 30%. What’s the aspiration?
A. There’s no number, would prefer full-time but that’s not always possible.
Number thrown out at a meeting attended was 70% for research institution and 30% for a community college.
Q. Student comes to campus, is there expectation that they should be able to take classes in a traditional way? Has anyone looked at Distance Education and what a student gets out of it opposed to online?
A. Assessments, small local assessments, are important.
Comments:
Online courses distribute faculty evaluations to a faculty member’s campus and then they delete the evaluations. With that practice you can’t go back to check the data and faculty use course evaluations for promotion and tenure.
Seems there’s not sufficient capacity on campus.
A. Hear that about Calculus.
Irving stated there needs to be a push for maintenance of records.
Course evaluations in class are in the 80% range but for online it’s approximately 5%.
Old Business
No Old Business.
New Business
Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee [PCRRC]
Assessment and Recommendation Intent to Plan: Ph.D. in Communication
4 November 2011
Background and Committee Process: [for Stage 2sequence]
9/21/11: Information on proposal distributed to Faculty Senate for review and comments.
10/18/11: Meeting with PCRRC and proponents [Nathan Stormer, Dan Sandweiss]. 11/16/11: PCRRC recommendation on Faculty Senate agenda.
Overview of the Proposal:
Members of the PCRRC generally agreed on the following strengths and advantages of the proposal:
* It is comprehensive, persuasive, and closely follows the guidelines for Intent to Plan proposals.
* It builds on a successful Independent Ph.D. that has been in place since 2007, so in essence it seeks to convert or “normalize” a doctoral program that has been tested. As a result, this Intent to Plan is more detailed and documented than typical proposals at the Stage 2 level.
* It has been reviewed and approved by the faculty of the Department of Communication and Journalism. It has the full support of Dan Sandweiss, Dean and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, and of the Graduate Board [formally approved: 17 February 2011].
* It stipulates that the program can be initiated without the need for new personnel, facilities, or equipment. In the current environment of budgetary constraint, this represents a positive feature of the program.
* It articulates a program that will collaborate with Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative and other programs. This addresses one of the University of Maine’s signature goals: to improve interdisciplinary teaching and research.
* If implemented, it should be competitive among the University of Maine’s cohort of graduate programs in New England and the nation.
Questions and Suggestions Raised by PCRRC:
* The question of teaching assistants should be addressed in more detail at the next stage of the process. For example, what impact will the doctoral program have in shifting teaching assistants from the Master’s program over time?
* The long-term impact of the doctoral program on the teaching loads of the faculty in the department should be more clearly articulated in the next stage of the proposal’s development. For example, what impact will a robust doctoral program have on an undergraduate degree in Communication that is one of the largest majors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences?
* PCRRC suggests that the Full Program Proposal more explicitly defines the interdisciplinary nature of the program and more fully explains the anticipated role of graduate faculty who not members of the Department of Communication and Journalism. PCRRC Summary Comments:
* The proposal is important for expanding the number of graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences at the University of Maine. It emerges from an existing Independent Ph.D. program, so there is every reason to anticipate its success in moving through the sequence of stages for official approval of new academic degree programs.
* PCRRC notes that it all requirements of the Intent to Plan (Stage 2) have been met and addressed in the proposal and at the meeting with the proponents.
Recommendation
PCRRC recommends moving the proposal to Stage 3 of the Intent to Plan sequence, based on the findings expressed above.
Voting Results Approved 20 For, None Against, Abstentions 0
Adjourned 4:45
Respectfully submitted
Kathryn Slott