Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes April 29, 2020

University of Louisiana at Lafayette Faculty Senate
Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, April 29, Zoom Meeting
Presiding: Donna Gauthier (DG); Secretary: Clai Rice

    I. Call to Order 4:04 pm
    II. Quorum Call: 28 attending in Zoom so far (max at 44)
        a. Provost will join for Q&A at 5:30 pm
    III. Approval of Minutes from February 19, 2020--tabled
    IV. Welcome and Report of Executive Officer
        a. Changes in SEI, remote teaching policies, remote graduation, so many issues.
            i. Summer likely 100% online.
            ii. Plan for Fall 2020 is open for suggestions.
                1. Moodle has an excel file, list of issues from other universities, Deans, U Council;
                2. President said everything is on the table for the fall, no decisions made yet. Start late, breaks changed, online or not. No update has been posted on UL site since April 9.
                3. Look at list, email ideas to DG.
        b. About SEIs, we aren’t sure what the process is. They are trying to create a survey for students regarding the shift to online specifically.
        c. March FS meeting was canceled.
        d. Dr. Authement passed away. No sense of closure without some kind of ceremony.
    V. Committee Reports
        a. Faculty Senate Committees
            i. Committee on Committees – Jo A DeRouen
                1. Getting ballots to people to fill committees. Got two senators from each college for each ballot on each committee. J. has questions about procedures. We present ballot this meeting, vote next meeting? Does this go to Admin or do we vote and that’s it? These are FS committees.
                2. Must be full prof to be on Committee of Committees, but one college has no full profs participating, so do we need to make an amendment to allow Assoc. prof. if Full not available?
                    a. Parker: 3 at large members don’t have to be Full.
                    b. McKinney gets data from us from the survey to vote on University Committees. Usually we vote in final meeting of the year. They are running behind or haven’t sent out survey.
                    c. Patricia: last year the survey data was already old.
                    d. DG: we could email Brock directly and find out about survey.
                    e. We could move to keep committees all the same due to exigency.
                    f. N. Autin: we never got updates 2 years ago. Fall 2019 committees were updated.
                    g. DG: They have been inconsistent.
                    h. A. Hazelwood: Dean mentioned at Deans meeting McKinney said he’s working on committee schedule, so it is being discussed.
                    i. McDonald--C on Cs is responsible for slate, approved by FS. The survey is just advisory. Governance is going to be important this year, so faculty participation will be very important. We should insist on having an approved slate.
                    j. DG moves to approve the slate. Rescinded after discussion. Slate will be presented on Moodle with voting instructions.
            ii. Ways and Means – James Berry
                1. Just posted annual report—no news. On April 9 he sent the motion on SEI to Robert, at the provost now (but see below, VI.c.). He’s going forward with last year’s handbook changes.
            iii. Academic Planning and Development Committee – no members
            iv. Faculty Advisory Council Committee – Donna Gauthier
                1. UL System and BOR meetings – DG thinks it is imperative that we send someone to these meetings.
        b. Ad Hoc Committees
            i. Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Salary and Compensation – Donna Gauthier
                1. They met and set up requests for data
        c. University Committees
            i. Faculty Grievance Committee – Natalia Sidorovskaia
                1. DG. mentioned to her about processes not being followed but heard nothing back so far.
            ii. Faculty Benefits and Welfare Committee – Donna Gauthier
            iii. Library Committee – Febee Louka. Report will be ready after finals. Search for Dean of Library ongoing, no finalists yet.
            iv. Student Evaluation of Instruction – Nancy Autin
                1. Autin has sent report, should be on Moodle.
                    a. SEI committee was tasked to revise survey. Office of Institutional Assessment met and researched possibilities. Proposed revisions, and a new name to the survey. Revisions went to Deans, suggestions ranged from no SEI, totally revised, part revised. Deans devised final instrument.
                    b. Wed April 22 notification went out with link.
                    c. We received today an email for each course about completion rate. It will be up to Deans as to what to do with results.
            v. Distance Learning Leadership Council – Claire Arabie
                1. LMS task force has continued meeting. Members are submitting evaluation scores. Report will be filed. Next thing is issue RFP, test pilot in the fall. Financial is an important consideration at this point.
                2. Summer support for faculty. Designing online courses for faculty teaching in summer.
                3. Basic course building workshop opens on May 15. Walks through basic issues. Enrollment already open. Counts toward DL certification.
            vi. Strategic Program Review Committee – Donna Gauthier
                1. Program review is on hold right now
    VI. Old Business
        a. Faculty Senate Website  -- continue to work on it. After grades are in.
        b. Work on Faculty Handbook – DG hopes to revive Constitution working group
        c. Provost kicked the SEI motion back to us, saying we need an ad hoc committee to define good teaching before editing the handbook about using SEIs to evaluate (see body of the email in the appendix below).
            i. N. Autin says we can certainly prepare some statements.
            ii. Rice: The objection is specious because the two issues are really not connected. Our statement is that there are no conditions under which overuse of SEI is acceptable.
            iii. McDonald: Kicking it back to us is not in the spirit of faculty governance process.
    VII. New Business
        a. Online vs traditional classroom teaching
            i. The policy about adding a faculty member to your Moodle course in case of illness needs to be discussed.
            ii. With time to grade essay/writing assignments increasing so much in online context, are there plans to reduce enrollment limits for some classes?
    VIII. Announcements
    IX. Motion to Adjourn, 5:32 pm.

Appendix A: Response to FS motion regarding appropriate use of SEI for faculty evaluation.

From: Robert W McKinney robert.mckinney@louisiana.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 3:14 PM
To: Donna M Gauthier donna.gauthier@louisiana.edu>
Subject: FW: final copy of handbook change from Faculty Senate

Donna,
 
The Provost and I commend the Senates efforts to examine the evaluation of teaching. Teaching is indeed a complex endeavor to evaluate that necessities multiple methods to assess the quality of the students. Therefore, in consultation with the deans Dr. Hebert and I want to propose establishing a task force to define what is good teaching. With that definition the group can develop university guidelines for evaluating teaching, and then make policy recommendations that may extend beyond the initial proposed change to the Faculty Handbook.
 
Please let me know if there is interest in establishing a task force on good teaching.
 
Sincerely, Robert