MINUTES
FAC Meeting
November 29, 2007 KEL 3010
Betsy Read (Factulty at Large) Chair, Janet McDaniel (Faculty at Large), Carmen Nava (Faculty at Large), Ann Fiegen (Library, Lance Newman (CFA), Fran Chadwick (COE), Cathy James (Lecturer)
Absent: Soheila Jorjani, Jackie Trishman
I Approval of Agenda – approved, no objections
II Approval of Minutes- from Minutes from (November 15th)
III Chair’s Report/Announcements
A. UPD/RSC grant review summary
Betsy Read spoke to chair from NEAC re: the need for another committee for UPD/RSC grant proposals. Chair of NEAC will take it back to committee once again.
Gerry Gonzalez is ready to get the call out for UPD Proposals – he is supportive of the idea of streamlining the call and will come to talk today’s meeting.
Thanks to people who reviewed proposals for UPD, Betsy will write a letter. Proposals decided upon to fund were given part of the money, as there wasn’t enough left to go around. Very few were fully funded. After money was “spread out”, they looked at people who were tenured associates and took some of the money off of their proposals first. Mostly travel area was trimmed. This was the thinking in terms of steps in approving and how much money was granted. Some bigger questions came up: Is it okay to support research or professional development; is it okay to request technology (hardware); and then what happens when if technology breaks? Will ITS support as follow-up? What is professional development? Will this help you with your teaching? We got some decent proposals from first and second year faculty - looks like a jumpstart on helping new faculty with research.
A. Sabbatical Leave Policy Revisions
EC looked over sabbatical leave changes made by FAC and have recommended different wording - changing “final approval” rather than” granting”, and not “awarding” tenure but “earning” tenure. This was approved.
C. Dept. Chairs letters to the WPAF
Question from library: Library unit is its’ own department chair. Coordinators are not supervisory positions for faculty. Question is: Practice in past has been to require a letter from coordinator for the candidate. This person then would be ineligible to sit on a PRC. What is the practice requiring letters from department chairs to the WPAF? What are other practices in the college? University procedures have a couple of options.
Discussion: Rarely is there a department chair letter in the review – it is a step. What is happening in the library is not anything like other colleges and departments. There is no letter solicited and put in the WPAF from dept. chairs. Culture is generally a communal sense that chairs have not wanted to position themselves in a hierarchal position with faculty.
In assessing the current student eval forms, there is a committtee that reviews university-wide surveys. This committee wrote a policy about the admin of surveys to minimize the same (other than IRB). There is no faculty rep on this committee, Matt Ceppi says this is an admin policy, but the surveys must be approved by this committee, so faculty needs to be aware when setting up a timeline to get surveys.
Old Business
A. Revisions/Recommendation to the UPD/RSC Rubric
Scores are averaged, this is an excel spreadsheet. If some items are not relevant, they are not averaged in with relevant items. Question re: the application instruction to line-up with the budget item on #6 of rubric, so that rubric and call correspond and that call is very specific. Number six should not include “justification for assigned time” ( as this should be in the proposal).
#6 will say, “ The budget is appropriate and well-documented.”
State on request for proposal under budget: “The more detailed the documentation, the better the committee will be able to evaluate the quality of the proposal. Please consider the following as you write your proposal:”
Gerry Gonzalez will give samples of strong proposals to the Faculty Center as good examples.
Maneuver of monies at university level is needed, as mini-grants must be able to cover the cost of assigned time – changed to $6000.
On the front page, the grants are referred to as “mini-grants”, “mini” will be deleted.
Include: Use CSUSM Reimbursement rates for travel expense – per diem mileage
Approved by Committee
B. Faculty Survey on the Student Course Evaluation Form
(not discussed)
C. Gerry Gonzalez – Restructure of University Grants
Under How to Apply, changes made – a few deleted sentences, as form is self explanatory. Recommendation that Faculty must indicate…be left and other two sentences deleted on that paragraph.
Add: Address the following in your proposal:
Another change: FAC oversees the process of reviewing proposals and makes recommendations,
UPD/RSC Grant – monies must be spent and cannot be rolled over, application in Spring only have 6 months to spend. We could make a later request, but this position should be avoided. Gerry will look into option of making request and opportunity for rolling over – creates a staggered budget, and he will speak to provost about concern of some being able to apply. Rationale that 6 months isn’t enough – he will check to see how this works in with the budget. There could possibly be precedence of this happening that ME Stivers knows about. Option will be explored.
This grant proposal doesn’t give a lot of time between proposal and release and/or planning for grant activity. It was suggested that we look at this on a larger scale. With a new committee formed by NEAC, it will be the task of FAC (in Spring) to provide a clearer structure. We should brainstorm and consider what we really want in terms of this grant and other possible options and further clarity.
G. Gonzalez pointed out that we would have to make a transition into a change in funding, and to remember that some do not think too far ahead to make change in structure feasible. Options will be explored, however. We need better reporting, which should not be criteria for getting award, but Chancellor’s office needs more data and this should be considered with changes.
Next Week:
We didn’t get to Faculty Survey, and survey must go out when faculty receives their findings (to go together). For this reason, we will work on this survey online, and work on it next week past regular meeting , if necessary for an extra 15 minutes, after priority of COBA RTP Document.