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Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes December 2, 2020

University of Louisiana at Lafayette Faculty Senate
Minutes, Wednesday, December 02, 2020, Zoom Meeting
Presiding: Donna Gauthier (DG), Secretary: Clai Rice

1. Call to Order: 4:04
2. Quorum Call: 48
3. Approval of Minutes from November meeting (P Henderson, E. Abingdon). 4 abstentions. Minutes approved.
4. Report from Faculty Senate President
  • Had council meeting, brought up the recent code of conduct issue, administrators are aware of the Senate’s positions.
  • DG sent out an email about committee structure, some chairs have emailed their membership also. A workgroup will be addressing the committee situation eventually.
  • Four workgroups requested volunteers. DG requested day and time for committees to meet to help avoid conflicts.
  • Concerns about face to face commencement were forwarded to Council by DG. Faculty participation will be voluntary.
  • Policy for changing handbook is at the front of the Handbook.
5. Reports from Senate Committees

Committee on Committees – JoAnne DeRouen

  • Recruiting a science representative for membership.

Ways and Means – Still needs a chair

6. Reports from University Committees

Faculty Grievance Committee – Natalia Sidorovskaia

  • Membership issues. Only tenured members are allowed, but some that were on the committee were untenured. All cases are on hold right now.
  • Membership currently is Alper, Stevens, Lehmann, Engineering vacant, Goodwin, (Hazelwood, Linahan—we need to choose from these two), Bellieu, Library vacant, two alternates needed to provide for quorum, the only alternate now is Bay from business.
  • What is the history of tenure-only membership? We don’t know right now. GH says we don’t want to expose untenured faculty to decisions that might ricochet back on them.
  • DG reminds us Workgroups will be researching membership policies of AAUP and other schools.
  • NS: policies insist on mediation process but the committee is not in charge of that so it is falling through the cracks. We need to establish new practices on this.

Library Committee – Blair Stapleton (Z. Stein spoke)

  • Please encourage students to submit for Caffery award. See library website.

Student Evaluation of Instruction – Nancy Autin

  • Continues dealing with membership issues.
  • SEI PDFs being prepared now for Fall.

Distance Learning Leadership Council – Claire Arabie (F. Crocco spoke)

  • Summarized stats on increasing usage and enrollment numbers and analysis – report will be available on FS Moodle.

Reports of Ad-Hoc Committees

Faculty Salary and Comp - DG

  • Met with Dr. Pal in Math who will be doing the data analysis for internal equity study
  • Variables in the data include: gender, rank, years in rank, baseline salary, years here, years teaching, department, college.
7. Old Business
  • Code of Conduct and Ethical Behavior policy.
    • DG will submit the objection form to the President.
    • Reports from several faculty who recently took HR trainings show that the policy is not linked in the trainings right now.
  • FS needs to have representation on the campus IChange Team.
  • University Committees.
    • The front matter in the Faculty Handbook includes the procedure for changing itself—in answer to a question asked last meeting.
8. New Business
  • Berkeley: Turning Point is sending out flyers that they are hosting meetings. Several faculty respond that TP has long been active on campus.
  • D. Reid: “real world experience” should be considered in compensation. Responses indicate a wide variety of opinions on this matter.
9. Announcements
  • Next meeting January 20, 2021
10. Adjournment (Berkeley, Parker): 5:02

Submitted 2/23/2021
Clai Rice, Secretary

Appendix I: Brief notes from the conversation with Provost Hebert.
  • The Code of conduct was approved by the council, as presented by operational review, after modifying it with regard to federal Title 9 issues. The Provost will let FS President Gauthier know tomorrow that there are significant issues with it. DG has already sent the President the faculty survey results.
  • McKinney confirms that SEIs do need to be completed after drop date is passed.
  • McKinney also stated that the Committee on Committees was “not intentionally” omitted from the process this year.
  • Nancy Autin clarifies her committee does not set the schedule for SEIs.
  • We are still negotiating with a Library Dean candidate.