Faculty Senate Minutes of January 28, 2014
The meeting was called to order by the Chair Delano Gray with the following Senators and visitors present:
College of Architecture & The ArtsJaime Canaves
Patrick Schmidt
Steven Schoen
Kathleen Wilson
College of Arts & Sciences
Gerardo Aladro
Astrid Arraras
Laurel Collins
Alan Gummerson
Krish Jayachandran
John Makemson
Oren Maxwell
Assefa Melesse
Rene Price
Jean Rahier
Joerg Reinhold
Laurie Shrage
Renee Silverman
Louis Tebou
Victor Uribe
Enrique Villamor
Hassan Zahedi
Ping Zhu
Absent
Piero Gardinali
Fenfei Leng
Marifeli Perez-Stable
Misak Sargsian
Ronn Silverstein / College of Business Administration
Krishnan Dandapani
Delano Gray
Cliff Perry
Clark Wheatley
Absent
Shahid Hamid
College of Education
Leonard Bliss
Martha Pelaez
Absent
Teresa Lucas
College of Engineering
Malek Adjouadi
Albert Gan
Osama Mohammed
Gang Quang
Ibrahim Tansel
Absent
Arindam Chowdhury
Anthony McGoron
School of Hospitality
David Talty
Absent
Pablo Simon
School of Journalism
Maria Elena Villar
Absent
Neil Reisner
College of Law
Jan Oseitutu
David Walter
Library
Lauren Christos
Patricia Pereira-Pujol / College of Medicine
Sheldon Cherry
Juan Lozano
Absent
Dietrich Lorke
Alan Wells
College of Nursing & Health Sciences
Florence Keane
Absent
Lucie Dlugasch
Jennifer Doherty-Restrepo
College of Public Health & Social Work
Marianna Baum
Fatma (Rose) Huffman
Ray Thomlison
Guest:
Elizabeth Bejar
Julian Edward
Jeffery Gonzalez
June Hawkins
Raul Herrera
Hamid Meziani
Tonja Moore
Diwaldo Rabre
Douglas Robertson
Rick Tardanico
Douglas Wartzok
I. Approval of the Agenda. Moved and approved.
II. Approval of the Minutes of the January 14th, 2014 meeting. Moved and approved.
III. Chairperson’s Report.
Remember the deadline for nominations for Faculty Awards is January 31, 2014, and that completed applications are due February 14, 2014. Each award carries a $5,000.00 stipend. You may find the link to the awards information at facultysenate.fiu.edu/awards/awards.html.
The Academic Integrity Committee’s will be participating in an upcoming seminar sponsored by the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI). The seminar will be held in Jacksonville Florida from February 27 to March 2, 2014. The theme for these sessions will be Academic Integrity: Confronting the Issue.
Congratulation to the College of Law for moving up in the national rankings as reported by US News and World Report. FIU Law now ranks # 105 nationally and is among the institutions with lowest cost for students and also listed with those institutions with the smallest class size. The only other school to rank higher in the State is UF.
The Academic Policies and Personnel Committee (APPC) have submitted the revised Tenure and Promotion document which was sent to the members of the senate under separate cover. This will provide members with time to review the document and make recommendations. If necessary, we may schedule a special session of the Senate for further discussions.
You may still participate in the faculty reading or working groups sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching. A copy of the schedule is included in the Board Pack.
The Joint memorandum was sent by the President and the Provost on January 20, 2014 with the subject line A New Era: Accountability and Performance. The memo outlines the expectations for the University System as envisioned by the Board of Governors. It spells out the definitions of Quality, Funding and Synergy. Please read the 2012-2013 Accountability Report and the Funding Model adopted for Florida International University.
The Steering Committee approved a motion to accept the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee that reviewed the FAAS document.
Thanks for your kind cooperation.
IV. Action Items:
A. Faculty Senate Steering Committee Motion
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the use of the 2008-2009 FAAS survey to include the disclaimer and the following changes: 1. “insufficient” to “don't know”; and 2. “comments” to “an area where my administrator could use some help is.” Moved and approved.
B. Online Review Committee Motion – Laurie Shrage, Chair
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the recommendation from the Online Review Committee that FIU pilot a process for awarding credit for learning from MOOCs by selecting one UCC course, andthen developing assessments and procedures that would allow students to earn course credit and fulfill a UCC requirement without enrolling in the course.The Online Review committee would work with the Core Curriculum Committee to identify a core course and several faculty members for this project. The faculty members would develop an FIU CLEP-style exam that could be used to award credit to those students who have achieved the learning objectives of the course. This exam could then be used as a prototype for developing similar exams for all core curriculum courses--and eventually many other courses outside the core. Faculty who teach sections of the core course would be chosen to develop the prototype exam, and then given appropriate assignment time to complete the task. Choice of a course for the prototype might take into account the availability and completion rates of existing MOOCs that appear relevant to our core curriculum objectives and student outcomes, so that we start with those courses most likely to have MOOC counterparts. Motion to table is Moved and approved. (Tabled.)
Motion: The online committee will work with the Psychology Department to develop the assessment criteria to give credit for MOOCs and report back to the Faculty Senate by the April 8 meeting. Motion called into question. Moved and approved.
C. Curriculum Bulletin 3 Motions
i. Global Learning Curriculum Oversight Committee Motions – Rick Tardanico, Chair
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the following Global Learning proposals from Curriculum Bulletin 3:
AFA 4XXX: Global Capitalism and the African Diaspora in the Modern World-System Moved and approved.
SPN 3XXX: Spanish for Business in Latin America. Moved and approved.
ii. Curriculum Committee Motions – Shahid Hamid, Chair
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the New Graduate Degree: Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences, in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Moved and approved.
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the Unit-Specific Graduate Admission Standards for the Combined BS/MS in Criminal Justice, in the Department Criminal Justice. Tabled.
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the Unit-Specific Graduate Admission Standards for the MS in Criminal Justice, in the Department Criminal Justice. Tabled.
Motion: The Faculty Senate approves Curriculum Bulletin 3. Moved and approved.
V. Reports:
A. Provost’s Report—Provost Wartzok.
A. Regarding new administrative hires: Vice President Luisa Havens has been doing multiple jobs while we have been looking for senior hires in Enrollment Services. I am pleased to announce that FIU has hired a new Director of Admissions, Jody Glassman and that Kevin Coughlin has been hired as the new Registrar. B. AAALAC Certification: Congratulations to the FIU faculty who work with animals. The university has achieved AAALAC (Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care) accreditation. It should be noted that it is extremely prestigious to receive accreditation for a first-time application, which is what FIU has achieved. C. Metropolitan University Consortium: FIU, UCF, and USF have formed a metropolitan university consortium. The Presidents and Provosts of all three universities have been meeting. Also leaders in undergraduate education from the three universities have been meeting. Dean Robertson is our representative. UF and FSU are each receiving an additional $15 million annually for preeminence. The consortium is seeking special funding recognizing our major role in higher education in the state. The three universities involved produce over 60% of the degrees awarded by the SUS. Consortium members have been talking to the Florida Legislature and the Board of Governors (BOG). A proposal from the consortium was circulated at the BOG meeting a week ago, which asks for $12 million to be split among the 3 universities. This would not be an even split. Rather, the funds would be divided differently based on projects in the following 4 areas: 1) predictive analytics (FIU have this experience) 2) high tech pathways (FIU also has experience in this area) 3) targeted support (coaching, mentoring, advising) and 4) career readiness (internships). D. Legislative funding for gap analysis: In the last session of the Florida Legislature, $15 million in funding for closing the gap between jobs and degree production was approved. The BOG has determined there are significant gaps in 3 areas: accounting, information technology (IT); and middle-school teacher retention. F. Performance funding: Please refer to the memorandum from the President and Provost.
B. University Graduate School Report – Lakshmi Reddi, Dean.
See addendum.
C. McNair Program Report – E. George Simms, Executive Director of Student Affairs.
D. UFF Report—Florence Keane, UFF-FIU Secretary.
UFF-FIU activities
Bargaining for the new contract for faculty continued last Friday with discussions regarding the allocation of summer appointments and concerns about the tenure and promotion process. The conversation continues on Friday, February 21.
UFF-FIU representatives took part in the “Walk a Mile for Public Education” march on January 17. Organized by the United Teachers of Dade, the march marked the beginning of a campaign of public school teachers, support personnel, parent and community groups, to take back public education by demanding that public schools remain public, and that the testing frenzy be moderated.
Membership Chair Rick Tardanico attended the bi-annual Campaign for the Future of Higher Education gathering in New York January 17-19. Like the UTD initiative to influence the debate on the future of K-12 education, the CFHE is an effort to give faculty and students a voice in the future of Higher Ed.
The next Executive Committee meeting will be on Friday, February 14, at noon, in the Labor Center Conference Room.
Legislative Concern in Tallahassee
UFF is joining the United Faculty of Miami Dade College to ensure that HB 7029, passed in the 2013 state legislative session is not implemented. HB 7029 allows private companies to offer online courses that must be accepted for credit by Florida public universities and colleges. This is an attempt to rest academic control from faculty.
HB 7029 is a further step in the process toward funneling public funds to private companies in education, including the proliferation of charter schools in K-12. That several Florida legislators have economic interests in private educational enterprises was highlighted last week in The Miami Herald : http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/24/3891440/lawmaker-championing-charter-school.html
Doubts about online education, including MOOCs on the rise
While the Florida Legislature continues to push private online educational efforts, a new survey released by the Babson Research Group found that academicians are becoming less enamored of online courses. "In 2004, 27 percent of academic leaders said that retaining students was harder online than in face-to-face courses; in 2013, 41 percent said retaining online students was harder, even though online course delivery became more sophisticated during intervening years.” http://chronicle.com/article/Doubts-About-MOOCs-Continue-to/144007/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Study by Higher Ed Group Questions Accountability Measure
The Association of American Colleges and Universities released a study that questions the use of graduates’ salaries upon leaving college as an accountability measure. “While the group does not buy into the idea that earnings are the most important college outcome, it had to respond to the ‘growing myth’ that liberal-arts majors leave students ‘unemployed and unemployable,’ said Carol Geary Schneider, its president.
“Often the focus is on what graduates make right out of the gate,” said Debra Humphreys, a co-author of the report and vice president for policy and public engagement at the group, known as AAC&U. But career success, she said, is “more a marathon than a sprint.” http://chronicle.com/article/How-Liberal-Arts-Majors-Fare/144133/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
E. SGA Report— Diwaldo Rabre, SGA-MMC.
VI. Unfinished Business. No.
VII. New Business. No.
Announcements
The next Faculty Senate meeting is on Tuesday February 18th, 2014 at 1:00 PM in the Wolfe University Center 155 in BBC, and WC 130 in MMC. Go to facultysenate.fiu.edu for regularly updated information on the Faculty Senate.
Faculty Award Nominations Close Friday, January 31st, 2014.