Approval of Previous Minutes —

Meeting minutes from September 14, 2023. Victor Gonzalez asked for corrections to the minutes. Hearing none, the minutes were approved.

Guest Speaker Presentation —

Victor Gonzalez introduced Neal Kingston, the guest speaker, to talk about competency-based education. Neal wants the faculty senate and faculty to know about competency-based education initiatives. Neal is on the Faculty Senate Research Committee. There has been some interest at KU to allow more opportunities for those students who need more flexibility because of life circumstances. Competency-based education is based on on-line, but it is more. To position the university to offer this there are five committees looking at this. The programs are not bound by time, students can go faster or slower as needed. The five committees:  curriculum and learning, business processes, information technology, policy and regulatory compliance and student journey (support). It is designed around an 18-month cycle. About 100 people are working on tis across the university, and we are at a point where there will be recommendations coming soon.  We are only looking for faculty champions for a program, we are not forcing this on anyone. There are five initial programs, three we are just starting, and two we acquired, including hiring their faculty. These are all master’s programs. One is a math teacher education. A second program in education is designing for justice and equity in education. Of the three new programs, two are through professional studies. The last is instructional design in education. It is important to start conversations about the progress with faculty.

Questions and Answer Session.

Question. Are you and the committees thinking about undergraduate programs and what would that look like?

Answer. We are thinking about undergraduate programs and what it will mean. It is possible and requires creating good experiences in advance. The challenge is the breadth of the education. Master’s is much easier. There will be many issues. They’ve met with the Arts and Humanities Chairs.  These programs are getting hammered, but employers value the skills learned in these programs. Competency-based education can communicate with the outside world what students are learning. This will affect what goes on a transcript.

Question. What is the financial model for these programs?

Answer. This has not been decided, nor has everyone given input. We are thinking the cost will be with the program overall. The details need to be worked out. Another issue is the faculty member assigned to competencies. These issues need to be figured out. The committees will look at these things.

Question. Assume I am a new faculty. Should I worry that KU will change my courses? Will this affect me immediately?

Question. No programs are forced to move in this direction. Faculty will have choices in departments who sponsor these programs. It would be difficult to do both.

Neal said he is available to meet with any department. He is meeting with various deans now.

Question. No one has to be involved.  If someone wants to be involved, but their department does not, how does an individual get involved?

Answer. A lot of features of competency based can be implemented in a course. CTE offers workshops in competency-based education. There may be opportunities to work across schools.

Thank you for your service. Victor and Kristin are here for senators. Meeting adjourned.

Faculty Senate Report

There have been discussions and meetings with different university leaders. They attended the Provost Retreat and were part of the planning for the year. Another meeting is coming up next week. We revised the Faculty Senate committees and appointed faculty members. Almost all of the positions have been filled.  We have regular meetings with Amy Mendenhall, Faculty Affairs. We have discussed the attendance policy, and you will hear more about this. Victor met with the Faculty of Senate Presidents, among the Kansas institutions. Victor attended a KBOR meeting. KBOR will come to KU in two weeks and SenEx will meet with them. They met with Jill Hummels to discuss the shared governance charter, developed last year with Ani Kokobobo. They will use this as a way to highlight members’ contributions.

University Senate Report

State of University was on Oct. 4 and State of Campus will be Oct. 24. We are working on the excused absence policy and will send out a survey. Ada Emmett, Ombuds Office, talked to University Senate and gave updates. Next month Lauren Jones McKown, from Title IX will come. There will be a forum with Jeff DeWitt, KU CFFO, on Nov. 6 in person and on Zoom. Kristin encouraged all to come and ask questions. There is a Qualtrics form to ask questions. The Hire Right email went out about three weeks ago. Any questions should be deferred to Faculty Affairs. If faculty do not want to do that through Hire Right, contact Faculty Affairs for another method. It has been updated since it first went out and there were technical problems.

New Business —

Open Access Policy-recommendations for the FY 2023 Libraries Committee.

Rami Zeedan, Chair of the 2023 Libraries Committee, joined the meeting to discuss the committee’s recommendations for changes to the Open Access Policy. Rami was chair in FY 2023, last year. Rami made the following comments. Three years ago, we drafted a statement, and it was approved by the Senate last year. We heard that statement made a difference and allowed faculty to make better deals with publishers and publish more open access publications. The Open Access Policy revisions are due every three years. We invited many to join the discussions. We proposed minor changes to the policy. We are recommending some gender language changes. We changed some background information. What about students, undergrad and grad that publish things?  We wish to expand to the entire community. We decided that the committee was not the proper place to do this but should be taken to the senior leadership of the university. We learned from other institutions this could take a couple of years. John Bolick and Marianne Reed of the Libraries do support all publications of the University.

Q.  Mat Johnson. I did not know we had an Open Access Policy. The language was surprising. Is this not meant to be enforced on faculty, rather something to be used in negotiation with publishers?

A.  Josh Bolick. His office supports the implementation of the policy. It has been crafted by lawyers. It needs to be effective instead of opting in. No one is forced to put their work in the repository. This is a tool that is available to help faculty share their research.

Q.  Victor. If the journal is still under embargo, can I send the approved version manuscript?

 A. Josh. The final version. Other universities have these same policies.

Q.  Brendan. If not relevant to the approval, what is the next recommendation?

A.  Rami. The University explores expanding the policy to everyone on campus including students and staff.

Comment. Josh. The University of California System did it top down from the Chancellor’s Office.

Kristin Villa made a motion under FSRR 2.5.2 (f) to suspend the rules to vote the same day as an initial consideration. Roberta Schwartz seconded. A Zoom poll was launched. 19 were in favor, and 0 were opposed. The motion passed.

Kristin Villa made a motion to accept the recommendations on the policy. Colin McRoberts seconded. A poll was launched. 20 were in favor and 0 were opposed.  Motion passed.

There was a brief discussion on the organization of University Governance.

Victor Gonzalez shared a PowerPoint presentation on University Governance. Victor said the Governance Office is in 33 Strong Hall. Suzanne Scales, Executive Assistant, and Caty Movich, Administrative Associate, Sr. are in the office. The Office is there to support everyone.

Caty showed the organizational chart for Governance. There is a faculty senate composed of 39 senators.  There is a Student Senate and University Senate. FacEx sets the agenda for Faculty Senate. There are standing committees of Faculty Senate. There are six of these committees. You can visit the website to read more about each committee: charges, past members, minutes, and final reports. The committees and chairs of these committees report to FacEx. FacEx appoints members and sets their charges. University Senate is set up similarly. A recent change is that only a portion of faculty senators attend University Senate. There are now an equal number, 18, of representatives from each senate on University Senate. Each senate acts autonomously on their own and meets with the provost and chancellor.

Faculty Senate, Student Senate, and Staff Senate are the three senates. Faculty Senate meets once a month. The Faculty Executive Committee (FacEx) meets twice a month. Faculty Senators are encouraged to relay information to their departments. They are encouraged to bring issues from the departments to Faculty Senate.