Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes March 20, 2024

University of Louisiana at Lafayette Faculty Senate
Draft Minutes, Wednesday, March 20, 2024, Zoom Meeting
Presiding: President Philip Auter, Secretary Kelly Robinson

Rap Session with Provost Jaime Hebert (JH)

Rap Questions

• Philip Hackney
  My colleagues and I recently held a conference for which we had outside funding. SPFAC asked for hotel and flight documentation for pre-approvals of reimbursements for visitors. We fought hard to get an exception. Will this new rule remain in place going forward? The process for using grant money is already quite cumbersome compared to other universities (e.g., we require W-9’s from visitors well before they arrive).
   
• Leah Orr
  A senator who had to miss this meeting asked me to ask: "How many new PhD programs at UL are expected to be approved by the Board of Regents, and when will recruiting of new faculty and students for those programs begin?"
  • JH: PhD programs in Informatics and Social Policy moving forward. Take 1 year to approve. Another one year to hire faculty. Another one year to bring in students. Realistic time-line is something we are talking about. Looking to submit an additional 2 PhD programs per year and want to add another 4 programs. Seek Doctoral 1 status being sought. Offering Doctoral degrees in 10+ CIP codes as well as graduating 100 doctoral degrees per year.
• Toby Daspit
  I have question(s) about dean search in COEHD. Dean Search brought to me as department head. Questions about rapidity of the search in the middle of advising and reaccreditation of the largest department in the College of Education. Also informed on a Friday. Questions about the procedures. Delineating between procedure and policy. Search committee did their job and did communicate.
  • JH: Decision to do things outside of guidelines. We are not following what is written. Here is why. You will see this in all 3 of the Dean searches. We are in unprecedented situation within a single semester. When we looked at the initial candidate pools, potential to have 9 candidates across the three searches. Concern about the optics of that. Made sure that internal candidates that made it through the first screening made it to the on-campus interview stage. Highest possibility to have 2 internal candidates if we only had 5 on-campus interviews. Increased to 7 to include all internal candidates that made it past the first screening process. Allow us to protect the privacy information. College [of education] is very engaged in the process. Information from feedback aligns with search committee comments. President has the right to suspend any policy on campus. We modified the process to have more information that the guidelines would have yielded. You will see this in the other searches. The timing of searches and only given 2 days to review the videos and complete the surveys in the middle of accreditation and advising. Last week was bad, this week is bad, next wee is spring. The best time is May after commencement and then we will loose our candidates. One person dropped out because they accepted elsewhere. We do not have candidates to have on-campus interview during spring break because that does not allow faculty engagement.
• Micah Bruce-Davis
  The time limit on viewing the videos of interviews and giving feedback has been frustrating. Especially since we were told about the interviews the week before they started, advising is ongoing, and we had a CAEP site visit. Is there a way for us to get an extension to watch the videos and answer the surveys?
  • JH: yes, I will request that the search firm opens those videos back up.
• Jeremy Foreman
  Will the university solicit feedback regarding the performance of the search firm?
  • JH: Yes, we will be.
• Istvan Berkeley
  This is a good reason why admin folks should also teach, as they would be aware about the pulse of the semester practically.
   
• Matthew Green
  • College of Education has a lot of feedback. Can we give a rank order for candidates?
    • JH: Dianne Olivier had that conversation specifically. We feel the same way. Surveys are good for soliciting information immediately after an interview. Ranking allows for quick comparison across all candidates after they all have been interviewed.
  • Policies about scooters but not about selecting deans, We thought we understood the process.
    • JH: We need to address the old dean selection process. You, as faculty, need to work with us to fix that process. Please give me and the President the latitude to make decisions in unusual situations.
• Phil Auter
• We are working in shared governance. Taking longer because of engaging all relevant stakeholders.

I. Call to Order

4:08 pm

II. Quorum Check

Need 25. Short at 18 and proceed with other issues.

III. Approval of Meeting Agenda

Skipping approval of meeting agenda and minutes. Now to committee reports

This meeting and April meeting left. RAP session upcoming.

IV. Executive Report

by Philip Auter

• Monday April 8 (1-2p) Mayor President Monique Boulet Blanco. How UL Lafyaette can grow its relationship with the downtown area, freetown and saint streets area.
• Tuesday April 9 Barnes and Noble representatives on BN services and what is available going forward. If log-in on BN website and logout you will not be able to log in again.
• Legislation to keep an eye is House Bill 1 and 2. House Bill 55 is the TRSL switch from ORSP to Pension. Bill is out there to give students greater latitude if they are accused of conduct violations. House 571 and House 572 prohibit the use of public funds for union. Reduce power of unions in our states. In God We trust must be displayed in classrooms. UL Lafayette and other state universities cannot require a student to have the covid vaccine. Other ones will affect students.
• Status Report
  Leah and I in talks with Jaime to work on Tenure and Promotion sections of the handbook. Moving slowly because a lot of things to handle. My mind is on break. When we return, then we have 4 weeks left in the semester. We are making progress because you are engaged. Spring elections are happening now for Faculty Senate. Little slow because of administrative process. May take a little bit of time to get senators elected but being held in spring means they will not miss a day of being a senator.

V. Senate Committee Reports

b. Ad Hoc Committees

i. Status of Women and Under-Represented Faculty
Eve Abington-Pitre
Underrepresented women and faculty group. Still collecting data on R1 universities. Make a presentation in the fall.

ii. HR & Retirement

• Emily Blosser
  Checked with HR about retirement sharing information. Checked with Charlene Hamilton in HR. What information are new hires are given about retirement. HR does not typically meet with candidates; HR is happy to do so if they get a request. Direct people to the website. The website is outdated and not easy to navigate and not particularly transparent. Hamilton is willing to talk with us.
• Robert Slater
  There was a more systematic effort to inform people about the different plans.
• Phil Auter
  -  Recommend / senate request to formalize the information dissemination. If the House passes, then the ORP people will have a 5 year window to make that decision whether to stay in TRSL or ORP
  -  Make a resolution for the April meeting to share with new hires (not at interview stage).
• Emily Blosser
  Not easy to find on the website. What is really not present is the Social Security piece. We have a responsibility to be honest. Many folks come in with limited options. My husband is at LSU a lot of his colleagues left because of this. There is not good sharing of the ROTH type account (403b)
• Leah Orr
  In humanities the job market is such that many candidates don't have other job offers. But the ethical thing to do is still to be clear about what they're signing up for. At least then they can plan for themselves with an IRA or something else.
• Phil Auter
  -  Senate should work with HR a one-pager that make available for departments for share with candidates.
  -  Not enough for Quorum. 4:39p Can we bring up new business for conservation if we don’t vote on it.
• Natalie Keefer
  You can still have a TIAA IRA account without a large Roth down payment.
• Matthew Green
  Back to convo about retirement. Possible to put on schedule. Enough people impacted by this. Routes of advocacy for this? Social security is a larger issue. What body is affecting this policy? Federal? State level? Guide us for advocating.
• Phil Auter
  Circle back with Emily Blosser to find out who we need to lobby.
• Emily Blosser
  Garrett Graves a congressman is working on the WEP issues.

iii. Tracking Facilities work requests

• Kelly Robinson gave summary on the meeting with Scott Hebert, head of Facilities. Problem is with paperwork being not tracked before and after it gets to facilities.
• Phil Auter
  There are lot of people who want a tracking system and a smaller camp who have a vested interest in NOT getting a tracking system in place.
• Istvan Berkely
  Information Technology concerns. Never take any faculty concerns. Are we sticking with Moodle or Canvas. Disconnect with academic calendar. Gene Fields has suggested a charter. Form an ad hoc Technology Advisory Committee to explore these ideas.
• Leah Orr
  Support the formation of the ad hoc committee. Interested in data privacy. Particularly when using personal devices for 2-factor authentication. What they can access.
• Phil Auter
  Gene fields does not get the feedback he wants. Incident that brought this to the forefront was that processes could be updated before something problematic occurs. Jaime Hebert agrees. Senate ad Hoc Committee may be the best way to start. Could be codify into a permanent committee if needed. Will check on if Senate President can just create an ad hoc. Matt Green says he can. Phil Auter will create one. Istvan and Leah to start.

VI. New Business​

• Kathleen Knierim
  Current ballots for senate? Kelly needs to send out the list of current senators to all the units.

​VII. Announcements

None

VII. Adjournment

4:59 pm

Submitted by Philip Auter
April 17, 2024