ABAC Faculty Senate Minutes August 26.2016Page 1 of 3

Faculty Senate Meeting

Minutes from Meeting on Friday, August 26, 2016

Call to Order:

Faculty Senate meeting was called to order byChrissy Dent, at 14:04pm

Members Present:

NameDepartment

  1. Shawn Seat*(unfilled seat)Science
  2. Vanessa Lane* (Jason Scott)Forestry Resources
  3. Steve JanousekHuman Sciences
  4. John FolsomFine Arts
  5. Abul SheikhBusiness
  6. Casey BrasherBusiness
  7. Chrissy DentNursing
  8. Anthony FitzgeraldHuman Sciences
  9. Jeannie PaulkNursing
  10. James McCrimmonAg
  11. Brian Yost* (Russell Pryor)English and Communication

* indicates proxy for an absent Senator

Presentation of previous meeting minutes:

Minutes presented by: Chrissy Dent

Meeting date for minutes:

Discussion/amendments: Minor edits suggested:
1.c. 5th line down, typo “advising at ABC” should be changed to “advising at ABAC”

1.e. “submit” on the last line is missing the “u”

1.g. 2nd line “approve by deans” should be “approve by cabinet”

Vote result for accepting minutes:

Motioned: Brian Yost

Seconded:Abul Sheikh

Result: All in favor, motion passed.

Old Business:

  1. Advising student evaluation form was heavily discussed.
  2. Anthony Fitzgerald talked to Janet Haughton to explore possibility of having the advising evaluation form online.
  3. Three main concerns:
    1. Can forms be placed online via Centrify? Yes.
    2. Is student anonymity preserved in online form? Yes.

3. Can the form be recurring for each semester? Yes.

  1. Form can be placed in Centrify via “My Forms”
  2. Centrify uses Banner database to call up faculty advisor information and student 918 number.
  3. SGA ballots already exist in Centrify, adding the evaluation form is doable.
  4. Form will have ability to write in advisor name if academic advisor isn’t one listed in Banner
  5. Online forms can allow more questions and more complexity than paper forms.
  6. Concerns/Comments: How will data be analyzed and by whom?

Eventually use Centrify for course evaluations too?

With course evaluations, will student participation decrease due

to all forms available at the same time? (Perceived workload on

one page?)

  1. Abul Sheikh talked to Clayton Riehle about the paper form of the advising evaluation form.
  2. Price dictates complexity with paper forms. Cheaper to use short and simple forms.
  3. One page forms optimal due to machine feeding issues. If more than one page is used and the machine misses a page, the second page of one evaluation is really the first page of the next student’s evaluation.
  4. Can designate certain areas for machine to “look” at for answers, so format is limited to ease of what the machine can read.
  5. Two columns may be possible to fit more questions on one page.
  6. Write-in comments possible as long as students write within a box.
  7. Online faculty vote for electronic vs paper advising forms
  8. Dent will send advising form only, committee members should reply with all department votes.
  9. Voting closes September 9th, Dent will send email to Dr. Dillard with results.
  10. Results will be forwarded to Dr. Dillard by September 30th.
  11. Vanessa Lane discussed survey design issues with the advising student evaluation form as currently written.
  12. Questions are already approved, but Lane suggested switching to a 10 point Likert scale instead of categories (e.g. strongly approve, etc.).
  13. Scaling should also be reversed. Strongly approve should be on the left, strongly disapprove should be on the right.
  14. Lane commented that some questions are worded ambiguously and student interpretations can be very different. For example, the first question is “My advisor helped me address my academic needs.” What are academic needs? Freshmen may have different interpretations than upperclassmen. What is this question really measuring? (i.e. emotional needs, academic assistance, tutoring, etc, only a few of which are required by advisors)

New Business:

  1. Fitzgerald requested to readdress office hours with the 5x5 load being shifted to a 4x4 load.
  2. Reduction in office hours requested from the current mandated 10 weekly hours.
  3. Concerns aired that reduction in class work load may increase office hours.

Senator Dent took a vote to determine if faculty senate wanted to reconsider office hours during the next meeting.

Vote yay: Yost, Fitzgerald, Brasher
Vote nay: Lane, Janousek, Seat, Paulk, Dent, Sheikh

Abstain: McCrimmon, Folsom

Motion did not pass.

Ajournment:

A motion to adjourn was made by Senator Shawn Seats,

seconded by: Senator John Folsom.

The Senate adjourned at 15:06

The next meeting is scheduled for_September 30th 14:00.

Appendices:

None.