Faculty Assembly Executive Council | Minutes | 10/10/18

FAEC Minutes 10/10/2018

Faculty Assembly Executive Council [FAEC] Meeting Minutes

Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2018  | Location: A218  | Time: 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Attendees: Kathryn Zeno, Tae Kwak, Donna Flynn, Sam Mustafa, Kathy Zeno, Renata Gangemi, Christina Connor, Hugh Sheehy, Eva Ogens, Cristina Perez

Secretary: Nakia Matthias

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1.  FAEC Minutes approved

2.  New Jersey’s Secretary of Higher Education’s RCNJ Visit

Dr. Zakiya Smith Ellis, New Jersey’s Secretary of Higher Education and Diana Gonzalez, Deputy Secretary of the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education visited  RCNJ on Wed., October 3rd.  They met with the President’s Cabinet, EOF Director, and FA President.

During their visit the Secretary and Deputy Secretary met with members of the Cabinet, whereby members of the cabinet requested additional state funding.  The Secretary indicated that state higher education earmarks could be distributed more equitably possibly to offset some inequity in state funding for public colleges since an equitable funding formula would be resisted by colleges traditionally better funded.

Prof. Kwak asked the Secretary to encourage the new governor to appoint more diverse Trustees since six members of the BoT have expired terms or terms imminently about to expire.  The Secretary indicated that she is fully supportive of our request for a more diverse BoT.

3.  Term expiration for members of RCNJ’s Board of Trustees [BoT]

FAEC has learned that of the six of the eleven members of the Board of Trustees’ terms are expiring or have expired.  Two have expired terms, and four more are about to expire.

4.  Vacancies and Interim Positions in RCNJ’s Administration

Given the controversial nature of last year’s Provost search, current and future searches for administrative posts should be conducted with sensitivity.  There are currently four vacancies among the administration including the following posts:

• Vice Provost
• Affirmative Action Officer
• Registrar

Vacancies in two of these posts (Vice Provost and Registrar) impacts advisement to ARC.  

5.  Student Course Evaluations

FAEC was informed that considerations are being made to mark student course evaluations with identifiers such as student R-numbers or other personal information in order to scan, track, and storage electronic versions of these documents to satisfy the ‘user name’ requirements of a new document/information management system. This was communicated by Jeff Delos Santos, Applications Programmer of Information Technology Services.  

FAEC insists that course evaluations remain anonymous and that the use of electronic evaluations be limited to tenured, full professors until a statistically significant response rate (of at least 75 to 83 percent) is achieved for electronic evaluations.  Subsequent roll out of electronic evaluations for the remaining faculty body should occur only after this threshold is met. Thus, FAEC supports the continued use of paper-based student course evaluations.

6.  Class Capacity Limits and General Education Courses

FAEC discussed the class size caps that the former provost instituted.  Since different units have different class size requirements clarification is needed regarding standards for class capacity limits.

With the prospect of a move to a 120 credit hour or mixed credit hour model, there is a need to understand how General Education Course categories will be impacted given that there is a twelve course maximum per General Education category.  

Any changes in the credit hour system would require the oversight of a registrar.

7.  Challenges to Diversity at RCNJ

African American enrollment is the lowest in the state (5.3% — NJ has 16.9% African American population for 18-24 year olds, TCNJ has second lowest [5.6%] and NJ City University has highest [22.6%]). Furthermore, relative retention and graduation rate of African American students is low in comparison to other public colleges in the State of New Jersey.

FAEC discussed black faculty retention and the fact that there were more African American professors seventeen year ago than there are now.

8.  Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP)

The Nursing program is initiating a Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, currently under ARC review.  It is not a Ph.D. and permissible according to guidelines established by the RCNJ President. The DNP degree offering will give RCNJ’s nursing program a competitive advantage as other public New Jersey institutions only offer nursing degrees at the Masters level.   

Meeting Adjourned at 12:30 pm

Categories: FAEC MEETING MINUTES 2018