FAEC Minute Aug 5, 2020

FAEC 8/5/2020

Presenters: Roark Atkinson (HGS), Naseem Choudhury (President), Christina Connor (Library), Donna Flynn (Councilor-at-Large under 11), Scott Frees (TAS), Thierry Rakotbe-Joel (ASB), Mihaela Serban (SSHS),  Ashwani Vasishth (Councilor-at-Large over 11)  

Guests: Provost Susan Gaulden, Jeremy Teigen (Faculty Fellow, Enrollment Management ), Martha Ecker (AFT President)

Kim Lorber (Secretary)

April Faculty Assembly Minutes: These will be approved in September. 

Minutes were approved: 7/22/2020; one abstention.

FA President Report

Stage 2: Labs and clinicals will be F2F. We will be teaching/working virtually otherwise.

Administrative Responses to FA and SGA Questions: Provost Gaulden 

Meeting with President Mercer: engaged in frank discussions about furloughs and layoffs. Further information regarding layoffs will be forthcoming. This will happen as there are few alternatives at this point. Uncertainty around residence hall occupancy is a significant factor in how the financial situation will unfold. 

Making SAT tests optional for future admissions: Jeremy Teigen will discuss the data from EM from the last 10 years that show the association between SAT and college success, and the support for making SATs optional at Ramapo. 

Provost Gaulden said this is a practical matter for next year as so many students have not had the chance to take the tests. Many schools are dropping this requirement. The data to be presented will be about Ramapo students and not from a national study. Some majors/outside accrediting bodies will still require SAT scores. It is her suggestion to assess the effectiveness of SAT optional at regular intervals to make certain that the policy is successfully achieving it’s goals.

Faculty Assembly 9/9: Naseem will invite VP Romano to speak to the faculty. This is an informational item as FA has no substantial role in determining this criteria for admission.  

PROVOST’S REPORT: 

Stage 2/Virtual: There will be 90+ courses that will have some in-person elements: labs and clinicals. Some are LEC courses (Banner label): if a faculty member is interested in teaching in-person and has a compelling reason for hands on work. There are approximately 900 students who will have one of more F2F courses.

Next General Communication Message from the Provost to Faculty will discuss the waves. The academic affairs and library will open on 9/2. Units in Academic Affairs, like International Education and the Registrar’s Office, will open sooner. We can only run at 25% capacity. Some units will continue to work from home (ex: Institutional Research). Office hours with students can be done remotely. If there is a need to meet with a student in-person, go for a walk with the student outside with masks. There is no expectation for faculty to come to campus. Club advisors should try to do virtual activities. Aim is to keep campus population density low while planning remote activities. 

Stage 2 Labs: No external visitors on campus; if Ramapo students/faculty volunteer, they can be part of studies. Appropriate social distancing and masks will be required.

First Year Students: will only come for labs. They can live on campus. We will offer 1,600 bedrooms (one student per). Some of these will be dedicated for quarantine purposes.

Faculty to Campus: Send an email to the Provost or Diane Couzens if you want to go to your office (Tuesdays or Fridays) before August 15th.

HR ADA process: official beyond Academic Affairs and approval by Provost. Susan continues to explore the HR side; if we are teaching remotely, that is all we need to do; stay home. 

Employee Training: This will be a brief online training. Mandatory if the employee is to return to campus. Employees will also self-check and self report on a daily COVID questionnaire. The CDC does not recommend testing as this is expensive.

Cleaning: Surface contamination concerns are reduced per the CDC.

Enrollment: We do not have news yet. There will be a town hall with new and another for returning students. 

Housing: We are open to having as many as 1600 students.

Jeremy Tiegen: Reported about the efficacy of the SAT score versus GPA on retention and first year GPA. This has been a consideration for a few years and is not simply COVID19 related. How can we best use the admission strategy in a competitive climate to get students who will come? How can we identify students without results who might become academically at risk? 10 years of Ramapo student data has been used to review predictors of student success. Bottom line: High school GPAs are much better predictors. Questions about out of state and international students in the analysis were raised and discussed.  Questions about transfer students were raised.  This data focuses on first time first years so transfers were not included here.

  Naseem asked: what is FA’s role in this? Who will make the decisions and what are next moves? Naseem will reach out to Susan to see what the next steps are. This needs to come from Academic Affairs with involvement from the deans.

AFT Concerns for Professional Staff: Many are unhappy with the current proposal for returning to campus 

FAEC Meeting: Beginning 9/2/2020 10:30am-12:30pm.

Adjourned at… 

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