FAEC Meeting Minutes Feb, 3, 2021

FAEC MINUTES 2/3/21

Present: Naseem Choudhury (President, SSHS), Bonnie Blake (Councilor-at-Large over 10, CA) (Katie Cohen (Library), Donna Flynn (Councilor-at-Large under 11, TAS), Scott Frees (Vice President, TAS), Kim Lorber (Secretary), Lisa Lutter, (CA), Thierry Rakotbe-Joel (ASB), Mihaela Serban (SSHS), Ed Shannon (HGS)

Guests: Interim-Provost Susan Gaulden

Vote to bring meeting to order at 10:02am.

Minutes Approval: The 1/27/21 minutes were approved. 

FA PRESIDENT’S REPORT

 President Mercer: will not be able to attend today’s meeting. Naseem and Scott are scheduled to meet with President Mercer on Monday.

Presidential Search: one candidate has withdrawn their name. Links will be sent to faculty for their time with each candidate. The search committee has received many questions from faculty and will make selections for inclusion in this and at the town hall meeting. We can raise our hands and ask questions at the faculty meeting. President Mercer will meet with each of the presidential candidates.

Acting-President Meeting: Kirsten Loewrigkeit and Brittany A. Williams-Goldstein, Chief of Staff and Board Liaison, met with Naseem for 2 hours. The budget and fiscal planning were discussed. We will need approximately $3 million from our reserve account for losses this year. Kirsten has been asked by the BoT to make a 3 year fiscal plan. She is also working on restructuring our debt to save as much money as possible. This was encouraging news. There is also no plan to restructure our school with William Paterson University.

FAEC DISCUSSION

Enrollment: We look forward to hearing the enrollment status for fall 2021 at the end of the month.

Space Committee: Many changes seem to be occurring.  We will, hopefully, know specific details soon.

Layoffs: We have no information and much will depend on state and federal income as well as our auxiliary sources of income (ex: dorm rooms).

Faculty Assembly Committees: We are working to establish a more formal reporting function from FA representatives about their committees.

Course Delivery:

•     There are 6 delivery modes provided by the Provost.
•     Scott Frees said there are difficulties with setting up delivery modes, which has to do with software like ours. There are many steps involved in getting everything ready for advisement month. Unit secretaries are currently using a new web application that manages schedule changes. All of the course modifications will be trackable. Eventually, conveners will make the changes. Scott Frees set up this software with the help of ITS, Beth Foster, and Diane Couzens.
•     If one is in a course that will have some asynchronous class dates, the student will receive an email letting them know some meetings will be asynchronous. This has been confusing for students who were waiting to register.

Common Hour: Requests are coming from faculty, which will require many schedule changes. The TAS lab situation will have to be manageable for this to happen.

Snow Day Alert Me Now: Can the message be more specific to be complete and not refer all to their email accounts for the full message. Is it possible to explain which departments will be open, like the library, advising that any in-person courses will be held synchronously. Some did not receive the text alerts.

Websites: Conveners are responsible for updating their program’s websites; why is this another convener responsibility? Conveners send updates needed. It would be helpful to not leave the hands-on role to conveners.

PROVOST’S REPORT

Websites for convening groups: Students and faculty, and the general public, seem to have challenges navigating them. Provost Gaulden is looking at a mapping model and this is being discussed at AAC. She feels videos, testimonials, etc. would give a much more interesting introduction to Ramapo College and the majors, minors, and certificate programs they might wish to choose. The website should be exciting and engaging. She hopes to be able to contribute to this and would convene a faculty subgroup to help determine what a convening group’s template should look like. She also agreed with the idea of highlighting some of our outstanding adjuncts.

Ramapo Rebranding: This was being done by an outside source and was dropped when Covid-19 hit. Is there an update?

Archway Application: The students use this more regularly than the website.

Social Media: There is a very tight rein about what can be posted; permissions have to be granted first. If something is wrong and a correction is posted why is permission needed to provide correct facts?

Spring 2021 Operations Plan: Was approved by OSHE. Some clarification was needed regarding the Governor’s statement that all students can study remotely. If one person wants to study remotely in an in-person course, we can direct them to a remote section but we must provide them with an education. We can suggest someone delay taking the course.

Fall Course Delivery Plans: These need to be known by March in time for registration. If one has health concerns at this time, opt for a model that will not be in-person. In mid-August, students make their final decisions about living on campus. Rutgers’ University’s President has told their community fall delivery will be back to normal. Provost Gaulden’s approach is more flexible to accommodate everyone’s needs. General education and first year students need in-person courses the most. It is an easier switch to deliver an in-person course and switch to synchronous if needed.

Fall Course Scheduling: The goal is to have at least 500-600 in-person course offerings in the fall. Many details need to be addressed. All rooms are losing class delivery times as hybrid in-person courses might use different days. More courses could be offered if one of two day courses is offered on a specific day each week allowing another to use the second day. This would allow two hybrid in-person offerings. This might be a model post pandemic. Example: two Monday/Thursday courses could share a classroom with each picking one of the days for in-person teaching.

Classroom Cleaning: There are requirements for very specific cleaning between class sessions. It seems at least some classrooms are not being cleaned before or after. Provost Gaulden will follow up with this. Research suggests surfaces do not need to be cleaned so if this is true, cleaning might be eliminated allowing for more in-person teaching slots and thereby course offerings.

Fall Support Service Planning: Is it possible to identify which departments, like the Library, will be open/in-person. Much depends on Governor Murphy and OSHE.

Meeting adjourned at 12:00pm.

Categories: FAEC meeting Minutes 2021, RAMAPO FAEC