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Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes October 1, 2014

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes October 1, 2014

Senate Meeting called to order at 4:00 PM

George Wooddell moved and Kay Riedel seconded that the minutes of the September 17 meeting be approved.  The motion passed.

Executive Officer report: 

Prof. McDonald reported that a committee is being formed to investigate issues involved with the CACS office relocation.  He also reported that the merit pay and evaluation ad-hoc committee will be formed after the merit raise procedure ad-hoc committee has completed its business.

Reports of Senate Committees:  no reports from regular senate committees were presented at the Oct. 1 meeting

Ad Hoc Committee on Proposed Merit Raise Procedure:  Dr. McDonald reported that the Provost requested input from the faculty senate as to whether or not to base the merit raise in January on an average of the last three merit evaluations.  After some discussion, Phil Auter made a motion to base the current year raise on a combination of the past 3 years of merit scores (or fewer than 3 years in the case of those who have been at UL for less than 3 years).  The motion was seconded.  George Wooddell presented a friendly amendment suggesting a formula for converting old merit scores before averaging with the one year of rubric scores.  After discussion it was agreed that the conversion formula as stated did not provide a suitable conversion so the amendment was retracted.  After further discussion the question was called and a vote was taken on the motion.  The motion passed.  Prof. McDonald will discuss the problem of combining evaluations carried out under the old system and last year’s new rubric evaluations with Dr. Henderson.

Task Force on Faculty Handbook:  George Wooddell presented a motion from the Faculty Handbook Task Force specifying procedures for changing the Faculty Handbook.  After presenting the task force motion he proposed two “friendly amendments”.  The first proposed amendment was that in #4 of the procedure after the phrase "Upon receiving a proposal for a change in the Faculty Handbook," insert, "the full senate shall vote on whether the proposal merits consideration and should be submitted to the process described herein or not."  The next phrase, "the Executive Officer will publish the proposal on the Faculty Senate’s websites and refer the proposal to the Senate Executive Committee." should be altered to say, "If the proposal passes that vote, the Executive Officer will publish the proposal on the Faculty Senate’s websites and refer the proposal to the Senate Executive Committee.

Prof. McDonald stated that this amendment was more substantial than a friendly amendment.  The amendment proposed by senator Wooddell was then seconded by Mike McClure.  After some discussion the question of the proposed amendment was called.  The amendment was rejected by a vote of 10 yea and 28 nay.  A second amendment, requiring that an accepted change to the faculty handbook be published to the faculty, was presented by George Wooddell.  Prof. McDonald stated that Robert McKinney had requested the amendment.  It was accepted as a friendly amendment.   A vote was taken on the task force motion.  The motion proposing procedures for changing the Faculty Handbook passed unanimously.

Unfinished Business:  In its April meeting the faculty senate voted to refer a motion on limiting senate membership to those with rank of department head or equivalent and below to the Ways and Means Committee for consideration of appropriate wording.   Dr. Linton stated that the Ways and Means Committee in its current report proposed a change in the Faculty Senate Constitution to limit membership to those below the rank of Dean or to exclude those above the rank of department head.  Discussion of various considerations such as whether associate deans should be included or excluded followed.  Robert McKinney pointed out that schools, e.g. School of Geosciences, have a position of director that is analogous to department head.  Andrea Conque made a motion to send the original motion back to the Ways and Means committee for additional clarification of wording.  The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.

Announcements:  George Wooddell announced that AAUP is conducting its annual membership drive and encouraged everyone to join.
 

Meeting adjourned at 5:27 pm.

Kathleen Knierim
Secretary