Faculty Senate, General Meeting

Friday, 17 November 2006

 

Attending: Courtney Ruffner (President), Jeff Grieneisen (Bradenton Representative), Meg Hawkins, Peggi Hunt-Evans, Beth Smith.

 

Meeting began at 2:20 p.m. in 6-130

 

1) Discussion, including a document, regarding Counselors’ and Librarians’ roles on committees, especially on Faculty Senate and Sabbatical and Promotion Committees.

·        Peg Beg solicited faculty senate input on this issue as a result of:

            --Counselors and Librarians hired as of Fall 2006 will no longer be        considered “faculty” and will not be eligible for sabbatical or promotion.

            --If counselors and librarians cannot participate as a recipient of            committee goals, should they serve on said committees?

            --If faculty senate is comprised of faculty issues, should non-faculty serve                       on the faculty committee?

·        Meg Hawkins stated that the library recognizes the honor of serving on the committee and enjoys being part of the governance of the college; further, as the library resources are a significant part of the college, she would like to see librarians remain on the senate.

·        Peggi Hunt-Evans, on behalf of the counselors, argued that such outside view adds a broad and valuable perspective to college issues. For instance, she was able to explain to faculty, in faculty senate, the process and implications of composing our own data for withdrawals.

·        Counselors and librarians have no allegiance to a department or administrator, and so their input can be valuable as an objective voice.

·        Working on committees provides leadership opportunities for counselors and librarians.

·        Further, can faculty senate make recommendations to a committee, or is this an issue for each committee individually to decide in its constitution?

 

            à Faculty Senate has been asked to make recommendations and will circulate a           flashlight survey to solicit input from other faculty regarding this issue

 

2) Draft of Withdrawal form was circulated; the withdrawal form came from a recent VPAA meeting.

·        Faculty should have more input on what they want to track, as much tracking seems to focus on information pertinent to counselors

à Faculty Senate will circulate, as part of a survey, to solicit faculty feedback re: the W/D form.

 

3) Gordon Rule: Much debate surrounds the ultimate fate of Florida’s Gordon Rule policy. As the policy has changed recently, MCC has designated no change in MCC’s administration of the tenets of Gordon Rule.

·        Why were we, as faculty, not informed about the Gordon Rule change?

·        Who decided the MCC policy and why was this decision made with no input from faculty?

·        Discussion ensued regarding exactly what the Gordon Rule Policy of the State of Florida and the Florida Board of Education states and its implications.

             

4) Evaluation of Instructional Faculty: Mike Mears produced a document, available on the S-Drive in the folder Faculty Evaluation and Promotion, subfolder Faculty Evaluations, sub-subfolder Evaluation of faculty document (draft 2).

            à Faculty Senate is to look at document and send Mike Mears any concerns   before it gets passed through into law.

 

5) Title IV Act—60% rule of student attendance and finances

·        From VPAA meeting, enrollment services reports to the state any student who has withdrawn at a given point in the semester.

·        If student withdraws early, MCC must pay back to the fed. government a portion of the money awarded for the student’s tuition/books, etc. MCC must then bill the student and hope that the student pays; if not, MCC has lost that money.

·        Unrelated to (5), but--Brief discussion of Early College Enrollment (from enrollment services).

 

6) Faculty Professional Development Day

·        *Committee has programmed into Banner so that Faculty Workshops, both at FPDD and during the semester, can be registered for online, where faculty registers with password and G#, just like a student (even includes signing in as “student”).

 

7) Overall Progress

·        Parking Situation—may be a null issue, as there are currently plenty of spaces; however, it will be an issue at the beginning of the semester, and waiting will enable the issue to be tabled in a continual cycle

-         How many spaces do we have?

-         What is our enrollment (we assume an increase)

-         With the understanding that Pappas does not like the idea of faculty parking, FS recognizes this as a faculty issue and relates to employee satisfaction.

·        SPD—We are awaiting answers from Dr. Rosen

·        Too many committees—Susan Finlay has received only fifteen responses; we need to ramp awareness of the survey, perhaps.

·        Withdrawal Process—we’re working with this (see above)

·        Success Rates—we still need to do some work with this. Faculty are no more receptive to Success Rate lingo than they were over a year ago.

·        Office Hours—we need to do more work to determine solid recommendations.

-         Denielle’s work is a good start, but we need clearer data.

 

·        Step Increase

 

8) Money Savings

·        Air shut-off

-         As air units are shut off, buildings are beginning to smell moldy (including the fairly new building 18)

·        Computer shut-down

-         Instructors cannot leave a sample paper on the screen with the LCD projector because the computer goes into sleep mode and loses connection

 

HOMEWORK SECTION:

 

·        Council Responses to W/D form

·        Note—Evaluation of Instructional Faculty booklet from Mike Mears needs to be posted for response

-         this is the last time faculty senate will have input on this!

 

·        Survey faculty regarding librarians / counselors committee positions

·        Post and know Gordon Rule information