Faculty Assembly Executive Council | Minutes 3/27/19

Faculty Assembly Executive Council [FAEC] Meeting Minutes

Date: Wednesday, March  27, 2019 | Location: A220  | Time: 10:30 am to 12:00 pm

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

Secretary: Nakia Matthias

Guests:  Martha Ecker, AFT;  Michael Unger and Sarah Carberry

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I.  FAEC Minutes Approved

II.  Online Course Evaluations [Martha Ecker, AFT]   

Martha informed the FAEC of the Provost’s intention to proceed with implementing online-only course evaluations (eliminating paper forms) for Spring 2019.  Martha maintained that a threshold would need to be established on an aggregate, rather than individual basis. She also expressed that faculty should not be penalized if they do not meet this threshold due to missing/few online course evaluations.

It was discussed that when online evaluations were the default format and faculty needed to opt in for paper course evaluations a record of faculty that opted in for paper evaluations was established to demonstrate course evaluation format preferences.

Martha noted that the move to online course evaluations is proceeding without faculty negotiation toward an agreement or faculty buy-in.  She indicated that during a Communications meeting on 3/27/19 the Provost explained that online evaluations will save money.

The FAEC noted that the provost originally agreed that online course evaluations would not be implemented until there was a plan to ensure response rates.  There for the current decision to move forward with online course evaluation is occurring without a plan to understand and improve response rates.

The following Faculty Assembly and FAEC minutes document discussion of course evaluations:

• FAEC Minutes – October 17, 2018
• FAEC Minutes  – October 10, 2018
• FAEC Minutes – March 13, 2019
• October 31, 2018  – Faculty Assembly
• September 5, 2018 – Faculty Assembly

III.  Follow-up to Provost’s Faculty Assembly report

The next Faculty Assembly on April 3rd. should include discussion of the move to online evaluations.  

The faculty should vote on whether online evaluations should be immediately implemented  for Spring 2019, as well as whether the roll out for online evaluations should be conducted among tenured full professors until an adequate response rate is achieved.  The response rate for the previous online evaluations that were conducted for full professors were never assessed to determine the nature of the response rates.

IV.  Increasing the number of Faculty at RCNJ through the Implementation of Instructor Lines

President Mercer seeks to increase faculty to teach courses through the use of the instructor line.  Also, Martha from AFT is interested at capping the number of instructor lines. If faculty at the instructor line make up 5 to 15% of faculty this will create a two-tier system.  Any decision to employ more faculty should be driven by the curriculum. If RCNJ employs more faculty at the instructor line that receive benefits this would be a better than an adjunct system.  

V. Michael Unger and Sarah Carberry, GECCo  [General Education and FAEC Assessment]

It was discussed that the Provost may be concerned that the General Education course categories will become bloated and he may be under the Impression that we GECCo and faculty have lifted restrictions.  The process for removing restrictions includes a chain of approval that must be followed before the Provost can approve changes to the Gen.Ed courses.

Currently, General  Education classes must run once each year per an agreement that was endorsed by FA during came former Provost, Beth Foster’s tenure.  Additionally, deans and convening groups have historically handled scheduling rather than GECCo. Deans also perform syllabi audits. Michael and Sarah suggest that this should continue to be the case.   Furthermore, narrowing or expanding sections is up to deans. There will be more effort by deans to populate courses by increasing their capacity. A percentage of courses can be determined for General Education courses that can be allowed to run under the established capacity threshold [10% etc.].  Sarah will attend Dean’s Counsel to discuss the scheduling matters that the Provost mentioned via e-mail with deans.

At present GECCo has no policies but will be creating a manual over the Summer 2019 term.  The document will include written procedures for assessing course content in conjunction with outcome categories, as well as other processes that GECCo undertakes.

VI.  FAEC Assessment

By end of the semester FA and FAEC must  conduct a self-evaluation survey patterned on what has been done in the past for the provost and president. The general role of the FA and FAEC, as well as FAEC representatives can be evaluated.  The results of the evaluation are not the primary concern but rather the ability to demonstrate that the faculty had the opportunity to assess the role and functions of the FA and FAEC. FAEC discussed that evaluations instruments can be disseminated via a secured Qualtrics survey.  

Meeting Adjourned at 12:00 pm

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