FAEC Meeting Minutes, Sept 22, 2021

FAEC MINUTES 9/22/21

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

Guests: Virginia Galdieri (Assistant Vice President, Human Resources and Benefits Administration); Janet Faber (Assistant Director, Employee Relations & Faculty Services (AFT) )

 Vote to bring meeting to order at 10:07am.

 Minutes Approval: The 9/8/21 and 9/15/21 meeting minutes were approved. 

FA PRESIDENT’S REPORT

 Spring 2022 Course Schedule: Provost was asked to reconsider not having the virtual option. Questions were asked about Winter and Summer courses, too. Spring 2022 will be hybrid, online, or in-person. There will be no Webex synchronous or asynchronous courses. There are specific guidelines for online courses; recorded asynchronous lectures cannot be used. Traditional online is without meetings or face-to-face.

 Printer Paper: Refuse collection has been clarified to the faculty via Provost’s email. Printers remain in offices; some units have a budget for printer cartridges, others do not. Paper will be provided.

 Faculty In-Service Next Week: The hybrid meeting will be run by the bylaws and handbook committees/taskforce. This will be for faculty only in ASB 136 and via Webex. The meeting will be at 1:15pm after the noon-1pm State of the College by Dr. Jebb.

 DEI Training 9/15/21: This was discussed.

FAEC DISCUSSION

COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Faculty have concerns about contact tracing when a student in their class tests positive for COVID-19. 

Does the faculty member have an obligation to disclose to the students that someone who attended the class tested positive? We need more clarification on these issues.

HR/ER GUESTS (Virginia Galdieri and Janet Faber)

Faculty Handbook Update: Committee  meetings have resumed.  Handbook revisions will be discussed at the Faculty In-Service. Janet will reach out to Rachel Budin to organize committee updates. There is nothing new to report since the last FAEC presentation. This was not worked on during the summer.

Promotion/Reappointment Software: This would be great instead of Google docs. This was discussed in the past and would be welcome if future submissions will be electronic.

Contact Tracing Concerns: Contact-tracing issues (see above) were brought to the attention of the guests. One consideration is whether students in the class are all masked; another is whether there was “close contact.” This could be difficult to assess and problematic for various reasons. Pandemic Assessment Team will discuss this further and provide clarity.

NEW BUSINESS

Faculty Assembly Meetings in the Spring: The meetings will be in-person or hybrid. We will follow Dr. Jebb’s guidelines. Staff is required to be in-person.

Unit Council: Will be fully face-to-face next semester.

Convening Groups: The meeting mode will be determined by each group.

Elections: ITS liaisons are Bonnie Blake (CA) and Thierry Rakotobe-Joel (ASB). Most FAEC representatives are finishing their terms so elections will be held.

Meeting adjourned at 11:58am.

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