Unfinished Business —

The Chair, Kevin McCannon asked if anyone had concerns on the revised changes to the committee charges.

• I share your concern.  We have a teaching professional in unit.  The University seems to be moving this way.  Having standard procedures is important.
• I am chairing such position right now, so this is fresh on mind. 
• Agreement across University would be good.  It would be nice for search committees to have guidance for positions such as this.
• Regarding the ad hoc group referenced in charge--Chris Brown is not in this position.  The last survey had the support of his office. 

Comment:  Lou Mulligan is on aboard-especially for teacher professorships. My impression is they want to focus on this group.

• What would be good is a survey to those who are in the know of policies for teacher professorships.  Faculty Affairs is going after the faculty voice.
• Should we generate a list of concerns?
• Language teachers.  With recent awards, there are bigger budgets for language teachers.  Hiring of online teachers and those not required to be on campus.
• KU is changing.  It’s good to know what’s happening.
• Put our feedback in a longer form.  Elizabeth Esch volunteered to write/generate this. 
• Can these individuals teach during the summer?  It varies across campus—also varies depending on if they have administrative duties.
• There is a huge variety under “non-tenure track” and this needs to be defined.  We need to be inclusive.
• My understanding from Lou Mulligan’s discussion at FacEx is that they are trying to capture diversity of non-tenure and bring awareness to diversity.
• KU has an interest in nailing this down, especially with the Union initiative. 
• The more we can do to offer language—note huge gaps and differences across units.
• Regarding the past survey.  It wasn’t as conclusive.  They aren’t sure who received the survey.  Not sure whose voice is presented.  It’s hard to interpret the results.

Not sure what they can glean from the past survey.  It will inform how to move forward with focus groups—need to capture all voices.  What are the common practices?  Such a survey may inspire if we will know there isn’t anything in writing. 

• In conjunction or instead of surveying what everyone is doing, maybe do a best practices.

Comment.  Good idea.  We don’t want to open an endless process.  Expectation should be known by those in positions or applying for positions for things such as sabbatical, recognition in publishing, contract, participation)

Comment:  I like “what if” instead of finding what the situation is.

Comment:  Other committees look at what other schools are doing.  Or, look at the AAUP.  We can create a “what should”.

Instead of trying to talk with every department, we can look at AAUP. 

We can do both—FacEx said they will facilitate.

We can look at what people think they are doing—voting rights, privileges.

Did the COACHE survey ask these things?  We’ll check.

Next steps were discussed. 

Respond to FacEx that we discussed this.

Lou Mulligan (Faculty Affairs) wants to put together a committee to look at this.  They want to include some from this committee. 

The point of plagiarism on faculty syllabi.  There was no previous discussion on this.  The committee generated three recommendations from brief discussion: 

1. Remind colleagues that syllabi (and exams) are original work-plagiarism of syllabi is a thing. 
2. There are avenues available to share.
3. The existing policy is adequate.

Confidentiality of personnel (re revised charge #2). Kevin explained that Per Doug Ward/CTE, in 2020, FRPR was concerned about potential misuse of electronic data from student surveys of teaching. A critical mass of departments had shifted to the electronic student survey, and all the data was being consolidated in AIRE’s database. Previously, departments handled their own surveys, and data was available only to department administrators.  FRPR was concerned that there was no policy about how that data could be used or who could view it. More specifically, they raised questions about whether administrators above a department chair or dean could access student survey data without faculty members knowing, and whether the data could be used as part of a metric to assess faculty productivity. CTE raised the concerns with Chris Brown, and he didn’t see a need for further policy. He said that AIRE was responsible for the university’s data and that there were clear protocols about data handling.

Kevin reached out to AIRE.  He hasn’t heard back.  This has been deferred to Spring.

Next steps: Advise FacEx the committee will look at peer institutions' non-tenure track rights and privileges.

We’d like to see data from academic staff that replied to survey.

Comment: The reason for Faculty Affairs focus on non-tenure is most likely because this is where there is a lot of change.  It affects a large number of people.

Kevin will communicate with FacEx.  He’ll request results from COACHE survey that apply.

Meeting adjourned.