GovernanceCouncil

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

3:00PM

UNH200

James Mower,Chair

Minutes

PRESENT:Kressner, Ilka; Malloch, Carolyn; Moore, Chris; Mower, James;

Poehlmann, Christian; Schmidt, John; Sorensen, Lucy;Yonkers, Virginia

Absent:Herrmann, Susan; Young, Yuchi

The meeting convened at3:00p.m.

Approval of Minutes

The minutes of February 21, 2017 wereunanimously approved.

Chair’s Report – James Mower

Chair Mower reviewed his written report, as submitted below:

  1. Jim Collins and I continue to discuss a Senate home for representing contingent faculty issues. We are considering whether to create a new Council or to add a new Committee to an existing Council.
  2. CLE has recommended that Qualtrics be used for upcoming Senate elections (more about this on today’s agenda.
  3. CAGC is working hard on the governance survey (on today’s agenda).
  4. I will host a Senate forum on the State of IT at UAlbany on Tuesday, April 10 from 12:00 to 2:00 pm in the Multi-Purpose room, Campus Center West.
  5. Karin Reinhold will host a Senate forum on the State of Arts and Humanities at UAlbany on Monday, April 23 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in the Multi-Purpose room, Campus Center West.
  6. The last Strategic Plan round table discussion will take place on Friday, March 30th from 1:00-3:00 pm in the Campus Center Multi-purpose Room. If you haven’t attended one yet, please consider doing so.

Chair Mower noted that at the roundtables, metrics are being discussed on how areas are to be evaluated and how things will be budgeted.

nEW BUSINESS

Report from Committee on Liaison and Elections (CLE) regardingfaculty-wide elections

CLE Chair Chris Poehlmann reported that elections would start Tuesday, 4/3 and run through Monday, 4/9. The results, he noted, would be announced on 4/10. The CLE Chair stated that Qualtrics softwarewould be used, as it was much easier to set up and to use than MyUAlbany. He explained that the final slate had gone out on 3/27 and that there had been no additional volunteers.

Update from Committee on Assessment of Governance and Consultation (CAGC) on Survey of Faculty

Report from CAGC

Prepared by Virginia Yonkers

March 28, 2018

Our committee has met twice, each time with Lucy Sorensen, Carolyn Malloch, and Virginia Yonkers. We have not heard anything from Yuchi Young, and are still waiting to hear who the new member will be on the committee.

In the first meeting, we set general goals for the survey, which included:

  1. Demographic information about position at the university (participants will be able to mark all that are relevant so we can capture those with multiple roles such as graduate students and contingent faculty, contingent faculty and administrator, academic support such as student advisor and administrator such as department manager).
  2. The faculty senate consultation on governance issues with university constituents at the university, school (e.g. CAS, Education, Business, etc…), and department levels.
  3. Development of the Strategic plan, which encompasses recommendation 2 and 3 of the 2016 recommendations. This includes participation in process, the budgeting and resource allocation process (level of participation at dept., school, and university level), input on curriculum, research, and constituent (faculty, academic, administrative, and student roles) responsibilities, mission and vision.
  4. Questions that were administered in both 2014 and 2016 so some longitudinal data be collected.

At the end of the meeting, Lucy agreed to review the 2016 questions and report (the only one we had access to at that point) to determine which questions we could use in the 2018 report and Virginia agreed to meet with Jack Mahoney of Institutional Research to determine when we could administer the survey, the logistics of receiving help from Institutional Research, and any other information his office might have (including the COACHE report from 2017) that could aid in developing, administering and analyzing the survey on Governance.

We then met at Carolyn’s office to work on the survey.

Jack Mahoney indicated that it would be difficult to get university wide participation before the end of the semester since there are already four major surveys scheduled. In addition, the strategic plan will be unveiled at the university level, but will continue to have implementation plans at the school/division and departmental level over the summer. Therefore, we are requesting that the survey be postponed until the end of September so we can 1) publicize the importance of participation in the survey so that 2) we can get higher participation rates, and 3) get feedback on the development of the strategic plan at multiple levels of governance.

We have a rough draft of the faculty/staff survey, but still need to develop the undergraduate/graduate student survey. We have decided that the undergraduate survey will be substantially shorter than the graduate student survey since graduate TA’s/GA’s will have more input and impact on governance than undergraduate students. Also, according to Jack Mahoney, longer surveys tend not to be completed by undergraduate students. We still need to test the surveys before they are administered, and schedule the date for administration. We will schedule another meeting in the future to develop the undergraduate and graduate surveys, but in the meantime will communicate via email.

GACG Chair Yonkers added that Jack Mahoney had offered to discuss COACHEat a Senate meeting. She indicated that Institutional Research would be available to offer only limited support this spring due to the other surveys being run. The committee, she added, needs to finish formatting questions and to modify the survey for GSA and SA students. Per Carolyn Malloch, Institutional Research keeps a schedule to prevent survey “fatigue”. GOV Chair/Senate Vice Chair Mower noted that Senate leadership were in agreement regarding the delay of the survey until September.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting adjourned at 3:27p.m.

Respectfully submitted by

Elisa Lopez, Recorder