Regular Monthly Meeting Agenda

Faculty Senate

Regular Monthly Meeting Agenda

Dec 1, 2017

14:00 – CHP 120

1. Call to order: Cindy Katz called the meeting to order at 14:05.

2. Approval of Minutes: Cindy Katz reminded the senate that these are the minutes from the October meeting. There was no quorum for the meeting in November which was held at the Southwest Campus. Cindy Katz reminded the senate that there is only one meeting held per semester at Southwest campus and it is important that we attend it. Shaun Smith motioned and Matthew Fuller seconded to approve the minutes as corrected. The motion carried.

3. Faculty members to be heard: Shaun Smith raised a question about the barriers to student registration including holds, required pins, appointment based advising, and other issues. Matthew Hudock said the whole enrollment process needs to be looked at and shared as example the situation with his son where it took from December to April to get him registered due to all of the hoops you have to jump through to be officially enrolled and then able to register. Cindy Katz asked senators to email her the specific issues that have occurred so that she may communicate them to Dr. Silva. Senators agreed that all board members should have to go through the process of enrolling and registering for classes like a student to see how difficult it is for our students. It was reported that these problems continue past the enrollment process into the process for transfer of credits and graduation.

4. Old Business

5. New Business

a. Election results: Cindy Pryor and Jack Nawrocik won the election. Cindy Pryor will take over for Renita Mitchell’s term and will have a one year term. Jack Nawrocik is taking over for Laura Miele and will have a two year term.

b. Chancellor’s retirement: The chancellor stated that once the job description is revised to include initiatives like Alamo Institutes the search and selection committee will be selected. The committee will consist of around twenty people and include faculty, staff, students, community representatives, and superintendents.

c. Tenure letter to chancellor: The super senate submitted a memo to the Chancellor that reminded him that he said we would revisit tenure once a robust faculty evaluation system is in place. Faculty 180 has been in place for two years. The super senate requested that this be addressed by the chancellor in writing and communicated to faculty.

d. Threeness: We are consistently fourth or fifth in pay. It would take a 1.7% point to reach the midpoint between second and third for faculty pay among our peer colleges.

e. Charrettes: There was a college charrette and a district-wide charrette. One of the outcomes was that competencies won as the terminology. The results of the charrettes will be wrapped into the development offerings.

f. IOTA 360: Faculty have brought up many issues with IOTA 360. The super senate will be putting up a proposal to the EFC to fix the issues such as the ability for students to come back in and change their answers, the length of the survey, irrelevant questions, and browser issues. They will be working on getting IOTA to talk to Faculty 180. Dr. Ray Chacon suggested that we should consider creating a standard response to not having enough surveys. Issues were raised regarding that classes with more than one instructor are causing issues for student surveys.

g. Colleges are not paying for faculty to maintain their CEUs: Dr. Loston reported from the PVC that the colleges will not be paying for faculty to maintain their CEUs. It was mentioned that conferences frequently provide CEUs. So faculty who get to travel for conferences do get their CEUs paid for; whereas others do not, thus creating inequity. Senate would like an explanation as to what the rationale is for not covering this as it adversely affects the college, programs, faculty, and students. Industry pays for their employees to stay current. If the colleges are not paying for the CEU’s and then they are not paying to travel to conferences, many will be unable to get their CEU’s. This will ultimately affect allied health trying to bring on three new programs.

h. Handbook updates: Group 1: Finishing some minor editing. Group 4: Having issues to the policies referenced in an entire section, it is not there when you go to look at the policy. Group 2: Finished, needs beautification. Group 3: pending. Group 5 met today will be finished by January. Cindy Katz asked us to make edits to the Word document itself. Katherine suggested that we use track changes in Word.

6. Committee Reports

a. Election: Reported previously.

b. Constitution: Dr. Christopher Davis said they were calling a meeting.

c. Professional Concerns: Nothing to report.

d. Faculty Development: Nothing to report.

e. Finance: Matthew Hudock reported that we have $500 and a little change in our account. Welcome Back breakfast will cost roughly $300. Faculty breakfast is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, January 10th with Thursday, January 11th as a back-up. Cindy Pryor will assist Albert Guerra with planning the breakfast.

f. Promotion Appeals: Nothing to report

7. EFC Report: The leadership ad hoc committee has submitted the leadership framework model to the board and PVC. The committee for lab loading is still running. Four of the peer colleges are at 100%, one is at 80%, 3 at 67%, and one at a split of 100% for load and 60% for overload. It will cost 6.7 million dollars to pay at 100%.

8. Adjourn. Matthew Hudock motioned to adjourn. Dr. Ray Chacon seconded the motion. Meeting adjourned at 15:21.