Faculty Senate Report

Misty reported the following. 

• In Oklahoma, there was an executive order removing tenure for instructors at community college. We should pay attention to this.
• At the Faculty Senate Lunch, KBOR said if there is any discussion or if it will go anywhere, KBOR will testify in opposition to those bills. 
• The search committee for the provost has concluded their search. Feedback was provided. The Chancellor received the report. Misty said the committee reviewed feedback provided by the University Community. The feedback provided strengths for each of the candidates. The process was committee driven.

University Senate Report

No report

Unfinished Business —

Grading policy. The Student Senate submitted a grading policy that is going to the University Senate. FacEx looked at a draft of updates to the policy. FacEx will wait to make recommendations. 

Poppy declined to move the “recording of senate meetings” forward to University Senate at this time.

Restructuring Faculty Senate. Misty has not done anything with the policy, and Misty will make some changes and meet with Brendan about changes for next year. The level of representation was discussed. What was the smallest level/unit we will go to? It will be based on the number of units. 

New Business —

Restricted Research Policy. Susan MacNally from the Office of Research joined the meeting. The suggested changes to the policy were sent with the agenda. The policy has not been updated in a long time. The goal of the revisions is to help the Restricted Research committee more efficiently.

Susan MacNally discussed the recommendations/changes. 

• Restricted Research is for faculty wanting to take on sensitive but not classified research. 
• They suggest that it be administratively reviewed, and the Office of Research give a report to Faculty Senate. 
• The approval process will not take weeks. There is a simplified process for notifying students there is a restriction. 
• If students can maintain progress to degree and it makes sense to KU, these are important.
• The things that will change are at the beginning of the draft policy.
• Susan highlighted the changes between the original and proposed policy.

Susan shared the “rationale” document and discussed the information requested on the form.

Q. How is “substantial” defined on the form?

A. It is not defined in the policy. It is a subjective term. 

Comment. Substitute “scholarly or educational benefits and provide a public service.”

Other comments:

• The VCR or designee has the authority to review the applications and provide a response and approval. 
• There is not a grievance procedure.

Misty said the current process is slow and needs to be made more efficient. We hope to have FacEx approve and talk about this at the Faculty Senate meeting. 

What happens to the current committee? They continue through the end of the year. 

There will need to be a change in the University Senate Code for the Restricted Research Committee and a change in the FSRR for the restricted research policy.

Brendan motioned that we vote by email on these changes. Jari seconded. All were in favor. 

Susan is going to look over the draft again and send revisions before FacEx votes.

IT Concern from Faculty Senate Meeting. Follow up to IT Concern brought up at the past Faculty Senate Meeting. Misty agreed to work on this on the side. 

Jari commented that at the meeting we were thinking how we could expedite the situation, and if there were any exceptions under the policy. This would not be a policy change, but to see if there were exceptions within the policy. The situation discussed was timely, as a large monetary discount would be lost at the end of the month if not resolved. The follow up email did not address that we are looking for exceptions under the policy that we can pursue and move along. 

Has anyone looked at the policy to see if we can help in this situation? Brendan commented that the only policy he can find is a website article. Brendan provided some resources to the individual having the issue. In the meeting, it was not clear what policy was being discussed. No one was clear what the policy is. There is no recognition of what policy this is under. If we understand where the bottleneck is, we might be able to expedite. 

Brendan shared two links in the chat which he said are close to a policy, but not an actual policy.

Misty planned to contact the provost office to help with this situation. Multiple people have had issues with IT purchases. Brendan mentioned that IT reports to the Chancellor’s Office, and not the Provost’s Office. Have the right people been contacted? Brendan said he sent names of people to contact. Bozenna suggested Jesse clarify what he has done in the situation, and what should be done next. Brendan offered to keep in touch with Jesse to help him. He will reach back out to the group if he needs more help with this. 

Why doesn’t Faculty Senate or University Senate get any sort of input on these policies? We can act on that.

Najarian said that if we are going to wade into the pool of policy marking/updating, there should be something that’s concrete in terms of the timeframe for review that we can all agree upon.

Expect an email on voting for the restricted research policy flow. 

Meeting adjourned.