Faculty Senate Meeting
Monday, March 18, 2002
Minutes 

Attendees: Greg Poston, Pat Markham, Ben Matus, Lee Poehls, Ken Tow, Aniruddh Hathi, Jean Norwood, Bob Larsen, Stephen Range, Mike Torres, Deborah Neumann, Brandon Thomas, Steve Betros, Rick Porter, George Reamy, Troy Slayden, Terry Ehrhardt, David Junek, Frank Gentry, Ruth Gray, Dale Bullock, Bob Cozby, Richard Wheet, Ed Price, Tinker Clift, Terry Holmberg, Jeff Looper and Debi Cisneros

Meeting Called to Order

Richard asked for a vote to approval the March minutes which are on the website. Minutes approved

SSN # (Colleague) – Bob Cozby

No Report. The committee will be meeting Tuesday 3/19 at 3:00

Elections Committee – Ed Price

Friday March 15,2002 - all nominations were due.  The Faculty Senate indicated that any nominations received after March 15, 2002 would not be placed on the ballot but could be used as a write-in.

March 22, 2002 – the list of nominees and their bios will be made available

April 8, 2002 – elections will be held

Nominations are as follows:

9-month contract

Draft not been passed by the President’s Council nor has it been gone over by the faculty senate. Proposal did not come out of the nine-month faculty contract committee. The actual proposal was only taken for parts of the committee’s suggestions. The nine-month contract committee had no input into the final draft. Dr. Grulick spoke with Tinker Clift prior to the faculty senate meeting and he used 75% as the 9-month contract amount not the 85% as stated in the proposal. The senate recommends that no one sign any contracts until an actual approved document is produced with consistent numbers. A copy of  the draft is on the Faculty Senate website.

Comments; don’t trust it; lose vacation and it pays less than the proposal.

Please send Richard suggestions on the contract.

The Senate made a formal recommendation that any faculty with 15 years or more be given 90% instead of 85%. These particular faculty accumulate a lot of vacation and the time off versus the lose of income doesn’t make economical sense..  Faculty have been offered retroactive 9-month contracts and they are being computed as 10% of the 75% not 85% of the total.

In the DC meeting it seemed that this was it and not a draft, which is how it was stated. Richard Moore doesn’t know anything about this proposal.

The instructional department is acting like it is a COP and but it is not. 

Q: When and who came up with the 85%?

A: In the first meeting  - John Henry suggestion.

It has been stated that the administration would not force faculty to take 9-month contracts.  The instructional administrations goal is 30-40 employees on 9-month contracts.  This is being pushed pretty hard by Dr. Grulick based on faculty schedules and student evaluations with one faculty member from each department being placed on contract.  This seems to violate the faculty evaluation COP where student evaluations are not punitive but instructive.  The student evaluation is only one item in the total evaluation process.

5-year campus plan

Can be viewed on http://clients.freese.com/tstc/index.asp 

The plan would terminate the main entrance road at the student center (campus drive). Airbase drive would be made into a divided street. The plans call for a park and removal of some of the housing.

Q: Problem with kids playing in yard and on swings in other family’s yards.  Why can’t they plan to build swings or play area for these children?

A: Richard will check into this comment

Future of TSTC

There was a meeting in the Ideas center concerning the future of TSTC. Four objective areas were discussed but everything was not completely written down.  Sports teams were suggested?

Collegis

Collegis is a consultant company that did an assessment on computer system on campus. The February report on improvements came as no surprise. There was a follow-upmeeting with Dr. Ellis.  The faculty at the meeting feels that Dr. Ellis is leaning toward the idea that we need to bring an outside source in to start helping bring us up-to-date. If this is the case, the faculty members support this decision.

At the meeting, it was “generally” felt that there was no particular blame directed toward one area. Currently, TSTC does not enough time or personnel to solve all the problems. Collegis will not take over completely  Cost would be approximately $4 million over 4 to 6 years.  The majority at the meeting knew this problem needs to be fixed so not many objected. The next step would be to write an RFQ as to what we want done.

Ranking

An updated list has been posted updated list on web. On the right is the current rank (which was not checked for absolute accuracy since it did not matter). The next column is the proposed rank. Ranks with an * are for those who signed a letter of intent to complete the old plan. The letter of intent must be completed by April 30, 2002.  If not completed by April 30, 2002, the faculty member will stay at their current rank.  The ranking is for full time faculty position.

Q: What if you had a break in service?

A: They went back and hand tallied those that had a break of service since Colleague only picked up current service times.

Dr. Grulick indicated that as far as he was considered the new ranks are valid as of this week.

Appeals process, The appeals committee : Richard Wheet, Ed Price and Dr.Grulick. Send any appeals to Richard Wheet.  Ed Price and Richard Wheet, as representatives of the faculty, will make the initial recommendations and route them to Dr. Grulick. If any faculty member disagrees with the initial committee decision, the chain of command is Dr. Grulick then Dr. Ellis.

President's council meeting

Five-year campus plan on web

Faculty load COP 7.30 was tabled. Richard proposed that the faculty senate come up with own COP and submit it.

Q: It was stated that we need to worry about the SOS, so why not wait and try to influence the SOS if it is forthcoming.

A: We found out that the SOS will be so broad that the other campuses can interpret it as they see fit and it will allow them to do whatever they want. Probably the only thing systems wants are numbers they can crunch to see if faculty are productive. Problems with this approach is there is no credit for teaching in another department, working on a grant or other duties assigned and to which the faculty was given release time.

Suggestion; appoint a committee to work on a COP.  Send an e-mail if interested to Richard if you wish volunteer. The work needs to be done.

Comment:  If there is concern about courses being harder to teach give those courses the extra load, not just which department a faculty member is assigned to.

Faculty contract was mentioned by Richard but their was no formal agenda item (we need to look at the contracts).

Faculty Load

COP 7.30 has been tabled. It needs to be evaluated.

Twice in the COP it is stated that the Dean of Instruction can disregard the COP if the Dean so chooses.

Faculty are supposed to teach 18-24 but since we work 40 hours, that extra time can be used to assign the faculty anything and everything. 

Grants were added probably due to the lose 1.2 million from a contract the administration had no records to prove that they fulfilled their end of the contract.

Overload based on 6400 contact hours may mean that some departments may no be able to make the minimum due to laboratory constraints.

Academic faculty must teach 18 – 24 hours but receive overload based on 18 hours due to their excessive course loads. It was recommended that  load for those particular courses are based on the course, not the department the faculty member is assigned to.

Class sizes: majority of our student were not in the top 10 of their graduating high school class and most need extra help.  By increasing to mandated class sizes, they are not going to get that help and they will begin to drop.  Class size should be based on the course.

New business

Parking: Students are parking in employee parking. When campus security was called they indicated that security don’t have anyone to send. Raytheon is also parking in employee spaces.  Richard said he would pass this along to the administration.

 

Adjourned