The fifth regular Meeting of the Faculty Senate for the academic year 2004–2005 was held February 10, 2005 at 3:30 p.m. in the Business Building University Room (BB 2.06.04) with Dr. Mansour El-Kikhia, Chair, presiding, Dr. Steven Boyd, Secretary.
Present: Diane Abdo, Ron Ayers, Stephan Bach, Ronald Bagley, Guy Bailey, Thad Bartlett, Robert Bayley, Manuel Berriozábal, Ron Binks, Steven Boyd, Felecia Briscoe, John Byrd, Aaron Cassill, Anthony Chronopoulos, Stacey Davis, Mansour El-Kikhia, Daniel Engster, Damon Garcia, Eugene John, David Johnson, Michael F. Kelly, Hayley Mayall, Patrick McDaniel, Bill Mullen, Alyson Ponomarenko, Dianne Rahm, Robert Renthal, Michael Ryan, Rudy Sandoval, Rocky Shih, Ted Skekel, Thankam Sunil, Betty Travis, Yiuman Tse, Raydel Tullous, Sandra Welch, Karen Williams
Absent: Rosalie Ambrosino (excused), Fred Bonner, Roger Enriquez, James Gallas, Timothy Goles (excused), David Hansen, Lars Hansen, Craig Jordan, Kerry Kennedy, Richard Lewis, Kenneth Masden, James McDonald (excused), Frank Pino (excused), Carlos Salinas, Larry Shrum, Joseph Stafford, Jude Valdez (excused), Venetta Williams (excused), Wan Yao
Total members present: 37
Total members absent: 19
Dr. El-Kikhia said that great importance must be placed on attendance at the Senate meetings. Senators must engage and give at least one hour a week to Senate issues. Dr. Bailey left Dr. El-Kikhia with a report regarding Family Leave for female faculty in the University. Dr. El-Kikhia also introduced Jennifer Milner, new administrative support staff for governance
With apologies to the Senate, I am unable to attend our regularly scheduled Thursday meetings this semester due to a teaching conflict that was unavoidable.
With that said, significant progress has been made on the new faculty governance web page. Please log into http://www.utsa.edu/gov to see the new design and updates.
The next step in the process is to develop a newsletter for the Senate/Assembly. A template has been worked up and I will be consulting with Faculty Senate Chair, Mansour El-Kikhia about content matters.
Dr. Renthal discussed recommendations for policy changes from the Provost’s Workgroup on Academic Policies, chaired by Dr. Ann Eisenberg. The report from the Academic Policy and Requirements Committee recommended approval of all policies. Motion to approve all policies as presented made, seconded, and approved.
Dr. Renthal provided a status report on the feasibility of establishing the position of faculty ombudsperson. The Committee spent considerable time studying the practice of ombud offices at various campuses across the country; met with Dr. David Johnson, Executive Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs to discuss the issue; and prepared a report titled, Should UTSA Establish an Ombuds Office? Since it was determined the ombud issue is closely linked to the grievance policy, the Committee will review the grievance policy over the next month and present additional information at the next Senate meeting at which time there would be further discussion. He noted he and the other Committee members would appreciate input from the Senators.
Dr. Bach presented a report from the Budget Committee on a recent meeting with the Provost. The Committee will meet with the Provost again as a later date when more budgetary information is available from the legislative session.
Dr. Engster reported the Committee met to review the revised workload policy; however, the proposal has since been withdrawn and is no longer an issue. The Committee will meet with the Provost soon to discuss the possibility of a Family Leave policy and should have a proposal by the next Senate meeting. The Committee is also working on the development of a policy that would allow tenured faculty to retain tenure if they choose to be appointed on a part-time basis.
Dr. Ronald Ayers reported a new workload policy has been proposed for the College of Business. The Dean of the College wants to adopt this policy by February 16th. He raised the issue of how college workload policies fit into the larger university workload policy and how the proposed College of Business would be integrated with any new policy developed by the Office of the Provost at a later date. Faculty in the College of Business are concerned because there are no plans to have a college-wide faculty forum to discuss the proposal. So far the only meetings planned are for individual departments.
Dr. Bill Mullen made a motion that the Senate recommend to the Dean of the College of Business that the college provide its faculty an opportunity to discuss the proposed College of Business workload policy by means of a college-wide open forum, in accordance with college bylaws, prior to implementation of the policy. Motion approved.
Dr. Bayley reported on two issues related to the revision of Senate bylaws that need consideration.
Dr. Mullen represented the Ad Hoc Committee on Evaluation of Administrators. This committee emerged out of work done last summer by the Faculty Governance Committee, chaired by Dr. Daniel Engster. One of the discussions that took place is how the role of the Senate and general faculty governance could be enhanced, and is the Senate empowered to conduct studies and reviews. Dr. Mullen said that a good deal of time was spent on the web looking at faculty senate web pages and the Committee found that it was a fairly common practice for faculty senates to have evaluation procedures in place.
Dr. El-Kikhia said he sent the final document to the Faculty Senate members, and a small but very thoughtful set of responses were made. The Committee has reviewed all of those responses, and made some changes; the final document is now being presented for discussion.
A recommendation was made to appoint the evaluation committee at the beginning of the academic year and to create a fall timetable for the work of the evaluation committee instead of starting in February. A motion was made to change the timeline to begin the process at the first Faculty Senate meeting of each year. Motion approved.
Dr. Ayers raised the question regarding the follow-up process for administrators who have received evaluations. He believes that these administrators might now have had the necessary resources to do their job properly. He proposed the Faculty Senate could set in some sort of resolution so that these individuals can obtain the resources that they need in order to do their job effectively.
Motion made to accept the report from the Ad Hoc Committee on the Evaluation of Administrators as amended. Motion approved.
On the same issue, Dr. El-Kikhia noted that the purpose of this proposal is not to be vindictive, but to receive good feedback, and have a system that would work for everyone.
(statement attached to and made a part of these minutes).
Questions were raised concerning the statement:
Dr. Vega responded to these questions by reiterating that La Raza is asking the Faculty Senate and its appropriate committee to:
La Raza believes that this case was handled outside of the guidelines of the HOP. Letters that were solicited from strong reviewers were set aside and the review committee moved on without them. La Raza believes that the process should be followed and that those letters should be considered and should have some weight in decision-making.
He also stated that the individual used in the example was once again going through the promotion and tenure process and did not want to utilize the grievance policy for fear that it would interfere as a result. Dr. Vega said that the HOP standards were loose, vague, and open to interpretation and not all of the departments have written policies. As a result the entire process was open to interpretation.
A decision was made to submit La Raza’s request to the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee for review and recommendation.
Dr. Berriozábal requested the Faculty Senate conduct an investigation on the matter of his administrative leave (statement attached to and made a part of the minutes).
Dr. Sandy Norman said the Senate should investigate the case if, for no other reason, than to try to understand the details. The fundamental issue seems to be faculty protection. Administration could remove any faculty member from academic duties for a variety of reasons. The assumption is if those reasons turn out to be faulty, unwarranted or invalid the faculty member could go back to their former position in good standing. That is not necessarily the case and was not the case for Dr. Berriozábal. The Senate needs to address the issue of forced administrative leave so faculty are not left to the risk of vindictive administrators. Dr. Bailey noted that faculty in administrative appointments serve at the pleasure of the administration; faculty status is a different matter and is protected. Dr. El-Kikhia asked for volunteers to form a special committee to investigate the situation. Members will include Ron Ayers, Rocky Shih, Steven Boyd and three members from outside the Senate.
Dr. Bailey discussed administrator evaluations and the questionnaires for evaluations as well as a few points about the budget. A document was distributed to Senators for review regarding these matters. A few main points about this discussion:
Dr. Bailey also discussed workload issues in detail. Specifics are as follows:
A question was raised in regards to the workload policy including:
Dr. Bailey responded that there were a number of individuals who did not have research agendas based on their course loads. However, if those individuals were untenured, that would be a different manner. Dr. Bailey made note of the fact that he was only discussing faculty who were tenured. Dr. Bailey also explained that each college is allocated a sum of money and it is up to the Deans, working with the Department Chairs, to decide how to divide that money. He also added that lecturers can now be put on lengthy contracts instead of a semester-by-semester basis
A comment was made that the number of classes any faculty is supposed to teach is three. Dr. Bailey argued that there is no reason the class load had to be three; there just had not been motive to change it yet. The interest here was in helping faculty pay less money to buy out a course.
Dr. Bailey explained that faculty should do two things in research practices:
Dr. Bailey discussed the budget and made the following points:
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Comments or questions to spottorff@utsa.edu
Last updated May 9, 2005