Faculty Senate Minutes of March 8, 2011

The meeting was called to order by Chairperson Thomas Breslin with the following Senators and visitors present:

College of Architecture & The Arts
Jaime Canaves
David Dolata
Jacek Kolasinski
Absent:
Phillip Church
College of Arts & Sciences
Dawn Addy
Joan Baker
John Berry
Thomas Breslin
Rebecca Friedman
Alan Gummerson
Steven Heine
Kenneth Johnson
Leonard Keller
Mary Levitt
Felice Lifshitz
Oren Maxwell
Florentin Maurasse
Aurora Morcillo
Joe Patrouch
Joerg Reinhold
Gene Rosenberg
Dev Roy
Peter Thompson
Victor Uribe
Dean Whitman
Absent:
Julian Edward
Piero Gardinali
Yvette Piggush
Enrique Villamor
College of Business Administration
Krishnan Dandapani
Dana Farrow
Delano Gray
Shahid Hamid
Clark Wheatley
Absent:
Dinesh Batra
College of Education
Leonard Bliss
Martha Pelaez
Absent:
Marc Weinstein
College of Nursing & Health Sciences
Jennifer Doherty-Restrepo
Sandra Jones
Florence Keane
Amy Paul-Ward / College of Engineering
Malek Adjouadi
Osama Mohammed
Sabri Tosunoglu
Kuang-His Wu
Absent:
Geoffrey Smith
Ibrahim Tansel
School of Hospitality
Percival Darby
Absent:
David Talty
School of Journalism
Neil Reisner
Absent:
Carlos Suris
College of Law
David Walter
Absent:
Howard Wasserman
Library
Lauren Christos
Andy Grof
wertheim college of Medicine
Dietrich Lorke
Absent:
Luther Brewster
Stempel college of Public Health & social work
Nasar Ahmed
Ray Thomlison
Absent:
Fatma (Rose) Huffman
Guests:
Gisela Casines
Ken Furton
Robert Grillo
Walter Van Hamme
Anna Hlodarczyk
Gail Hollander
Steve Kelly
Brian Peterson
Nagarajan Prabakar
Damaris Rubio
John Stuart
Doug Wartzok
Kathleen Wilson
  1. Agenda – Moved and Approved
  2. Minutes of the February 22, 2011 meeting – Moved and Approved
  3. Chairperson’s Report –Dr. Breslin provided the following report:

Today we will have a number of important presentations. Prof. John Stuart, our Faculty Fellow, is here to summarize and answer questions about the work of the Textbook Affordability Committee. Some very interesting initiatives have taken place with respect to textbooks, a subject of both state statute and BOT regulation.

Under Action Items we have Curriculum Bulletin #4 including motions from our Ad Hoc Global Learning Curriculum Oversight Committee and our Curriculum Committee. We will also hear a report from our Graduate Council which has recommended the addition of a non-voting student to the Council. The Steering Committee was so taken with that idea that it will bring to the Senate a constitutional revision calling for the membership of a non-voting student on both the Graduate and Undergraduate Councils.

We will also be hearing reports from the Provost and from the Dr. Ken Furton, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences on the Mathematics Initiative there, as well as from Kathleen Wilson, UFF chapter President, and CiCi Battle, Biscayne Bay Campus SGA President.

Tomorrow I will accompany other members of the BOT to Tallahassee for “FIU Day” to meet with legislators and lobbyists on behalf of FIU. The legislators will include both local legislators and members of the leadership.

  1. Textbook Affordability Report – John Stuart, Chair

The full Textbook Affordability Report is available in Appendix A.

Problem areas:

  • Recommended readings are sometimes listed as “required” by the bookstore.
  • Students can’t get scholarship monies in time to get books for courses.
  • Bookstore does not look up ISBNs of books, but by courses.
  • We need to find out how the bookstore decides how many books to order.

Ideas:

  • Text books can be put on reserve for students to access.
  • “Orange Grove” inventory of common use books should be looked at as an option. Anyone wanting to write for the Orange Grove should contact University of Florida Press.
  1. Action Items:
  2. Curriculum Bulletin #4

Motion#10/11:42:

The Faculty Senate approves all Global Learning Designation Proposals presented in Curriculum Bulletin 4 with the following exception: EML 4905: Senior Design Project.

The Faculty Senate approves the new graduate track “Flex MBA” in Masters of Business Administration from the Chapman Graduate School of Business Administration.

The Faculty Senate approves Curriculum Bulletin 4.

The motion was moved and approved.

  1. Graduate Council Motions – (see Fred Blevens, Chair report)

Dr. Blevins asked the Faculty Senate to urge Deans to evaluate funding for graduate students, especially in the Social Sciences. Often students run out of funding in fourth or fifth year and can’t complete their dissertation years.

Dean Furton responded that CAS has guaranteed a four year commitment to all students who remain in good standing. Doctoral Fellowships can be applied for after that. The following two motions were approved.

Motion#10/11:43:

The Faculty Senate strongly urges the dean of the University Graduate School and unit deans to evaluate the level of funding for graduate students in differing units and, where appropriate, improve that support. The Senate is especially concerned about those doctoral students in the social sciences who have exhausted fellowship aid and are working as adjuncts without tuition waivers.

Motion#10/11:44:

The Faculty Senate approves of Graduate Council Policies and Procedures Manual.

  1. Reports:

A. Provost’s Report— Provost Wartzok

  • The Provost responded to a couple of items that had been discussed on the floor earlier in this Senate session.
  • Doctoral Completion: It is the Provost’s understanding that the College of Arts and Sciences is working with the social science departments that were not following College policy with respect to a minimum of four years of support for doctoral students who are making satisfactory progress. The full dissertation committee meeting with each student on at least an annual basis will help to keep them on track and moving successfully to degree completion.
  • Textbook Response: The Orange Grove Texts+ has several hundred open-access textbooks to choose from. Admittedly, most of them are old and don’t have expected supplementary material. UF faculty are currently writing a calculus text that will be available to all campuses to assign to their students for only a minimal access fee. Provost Wartzok currently chairs the Board of the University Press of Florida. In the long run they will try to develop the ancillary materials that go with the texts and may use the access fees to Orange Grove Press as a revenue source to allow them to continue to publish scholarly monographs that can no longer be subsidized by declining revenues from trade books. Many faculty may not know about Orange Grove Texts+ and its resources. We need to get the word out.

The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act required unbundling of textbook packages to make texts more affordable.

  • Surveys: In the Chronicle of Higher Education’s recent survey of Great Colleges to Work For, FIU came out fairly well in the areas of: pride, professional development, supervision, facilities, senior leadership, and teaching environment. We did not come out as best in class in any one area. However we improved greatly from past survey results in all categories. The highest scoring was seen in trusting chairs; 71% (best in class was 75%) agreed they had good relations with immediate supervisor or chair. 58% (best in class was 65%) agreed they had good communication between faculty and administration. The lowest scoring 60% (best in class was 77%) was seen in teaching environment. The highest improvement was in Senior leadership.
  • Sabbatical approvals have been completed. There were 29 requests. 10 out of 18 were awarded at full pay for 1 semester. 5 of 5 were approved at 2/3 pay for 2 semesters. 6 were approved at ½ pay for 1 semester.
  • Instructor promotion file reviews have been completed. 40 out of 45 were approved. This is not surprising because we have many outstanding instructors who have not previously had a pathway to promotion.
  • FIU-MDC Day: Last Friday FIU faculty and administrators met with MDC to discuss more seamless ways to transfer students and better ways to prepare students for FIU. FIU and MDC faculty are identifying critical courses that predict how successful MDC transfer students will be at FIU. We also want to place more FIU advising on site at MDC. FIU has given notice to MDC of our intent to formally object to their letter of intent to establish a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. We cannot confirm or replicate the data they used to suggest that there is an unmet need for bachelor’s degree recipients in the South Florida workforce region. Our reading of the state workforce projections is that there will be an annual need for 299 BS graduates per year. FIU graduates 220 bachelor’s in Biology per year and with the other universities currently offering bachelor’s degrees in South Florida, the projected needs are fully met.
  • FIU Day: We will be in Tallahassee for tomorrow the day with administrators, faculty, students, union, and trustees. Revenues related to PICO funding are falling so the BOG has told us to expect a large decrease in PICO funding. We have been receiving between $20 and 40 million but this year the estimate had already been reduced to $11 million. The first $5M of PICO funding is always allotted to infrastructure renovations and repairs.
  • Professional Development: Paula Gillespe has arranged for several “Writing Across the Curriculum” workshops to be led by Dr. Bradley Hughes on Friday, March 25.

B.Update on the Mathematics Initiative– Dean Ken Furton, College of Arts and Sciences

Dear Furton’s report is available in Appendix B.

C. UFF Report—Kathleen Wilson, UFF-FIU President - Dr. Wilson provided the following report:

  • Thank you to the Provost for notification of 40 non-tenure track promotions, based on merit and not determined by budgetary constraints. There is a task force to look at on-going concerns of non-tenure-track faculty with Lorna Veraldi as chair.
  • A Memorandum of Agreement has been reached regarding the non-smoking policy and there will be a vote for ratification by the faculty on March 29 and 30 at all three campuses: Engineering, BBC and MMC. from 10 am to 2 pm.
  • A contract compliance workshop for chairs has been scheduled for April 15 from 2:30-4:30. It will be taught by Bruce Harvey, former UFF-FIU grievance chair, and will include the 7 criteria for just cause as well as how to avoid grievances whenever possible.
  • The UFF State Senate was held Feb. 26-27. Main topics of conversation were the bills that have been filed that will affect pensions (SB 1130) and collective bargaining rights (HB1023). The UFF-FIU Chapter meeting was held March 1, during which Officers and Senators were elected.
  • The UFF-FIU President will be joining FIU President, Provost and Trustees at FIU Daya in Tallahassee March 9 to support FIU's priorities for the 20111 Legislative Session.
  • Reminder of Open House March 24 in PC 111 from 3:30-6.

D. SGA Report – Cici Battle, BBC SGA President No report. (Left for Tallahassee already)

E.Jacek announced Diversity Day shoe project with CARTA students. Students are taking donations of canvas shoes and then painting them and sending to orphanages in Haiti. He will have more information on how others can contribute and join the project.

  1. Unfinished Business – None
  2. New Business – None

Announcements

The next Faculty Senate meeting is Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at
1:00pm in the Wertheim Conservatory. All are invited.

Go to facultysenate.fiu.edu for regularly updated information on the Faculty Senate.

Appendix A Textbook Affordability Report

FIU Textbook Affordability Committee

Report to the Florida International University Faculty Senate

March 8, 2011

Prepared by John Stuart

Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Provost

Professor of Architecture

Committee chair

Overview

The cost of textbooks and other instructional materials has been increasing with the cost of a college education. Any increase in the cost of textbooks decreases the affordability of an education at FIU and negatively impacts student accessibility to higher education. In response to this issue and to several others, Florida Statute 1004.85 on Textbook Affordability was voted into law in 2008. The statute requires that all community colleges and state universities develop and approve specific regulations regarding textbook affordability by March 1, 2009. FIU Board of Trustees (BOT) Regulation 1103 was developed and adopted in early 2009. A summary of FIU-1003 and of the Florida Statute may be found at the end of this report.

In fall 2009, the Provost established an eleven-member, university-wide Textbook Affordability Committee consisting of students, faculty, staff, and bookstore staff (see below for membership). The committee is chaired by the Faculty Fellow and reports directly to the provost. The committee’s mission is to develop, evaluate, and recommend for implementation initiatives designed to reduce the cost of textbooks to students.

Textbooks and other instructional materials are now published and provided in many forms. Students are faced with a variety of decisions about where they purchase or rent their textbooks and whether they use digital or printed copies. Current textbook delivery systems include:

•purchasing used or new printed textbooks

•renting new or used printed textbooks

•purchasing an e-textbook without an expiration date

•renting e-textbooks (publishers determine whether an e-textbook is rented and provides the expiration dates)

It is key that students are informed early so they can take advantage of purchase options, lower prices, better availability, buy-back options, and financial aid.

For several years, the University Bookstore textbook buy-back program has provided important savings to students. In this program, a student may sell a book back for up to 50% of the original price they paid for the book if the book has been adopted for an upcoming class and is needed by the bookstore. If the textbook has not been adopted for an upcoming class, the amount students may sell the book back for is considerably less and depends upon a number of factors including national demand. In AY 2009–10, for example, $1,292,778 was given back to students through the bookstore buy-back program. This program requires that the bookstore staff know of future textbook adoptions in a timely manner and provides evidence that the timing of adoptions is critical to increasing textbook affordability. Adoption of these policies will aid in the purchasing of more used textbooks by the bookstore and thus a higher availability of said textbooks for students in the upcoming semester.

Most significantly, the committee has encouraged the development and customization of a new Panthersoft tool to be fully functional in Fall 2011. This tool will allow faculty members and departmental schedulers to attach textbook and instructional information directly to course information located on Panthersoft. It will provide students direct access to textbook information almost as soon as it is uploaded and will offer more simple and direct communication with the University Bookstore.

The textbook affordability initiative at FIU has also been enhanced by an agreement between the provost, the university deans, and the department chairs, who are developing a system of financial disincentives for faculty members whose courses do not have textbooks assigned (or an indication that no textbook is required) no later than 45 days before the start of classes. Disincentives discussed by the deans may include the elimination of discretionary funding (for travel, etc.) for full-time faculty members who are tardy in their orders, and a docking of pay during a future semester for adjunct faculty. Discussions of these types of disincentives have already made considerable impact on the level of awareness among faculty members, department chairs, and deans of this issue.

2010–2011 Textbook Affordability Committee Members

  • Valerie Lynn Boulos, Collection Development Officer, Green Library Meaghan Connolly, General Manager, FIU Bookstore
  • Susana Guerra, Assistant Director, Marketing, Business Services
  • Jeff Krablin, Assistant Vice President, Business Services
  • Elena Montano-Gilley, Account Manager, Business Services
  • Caroline Simpson, Associate Professor, Department of Physics
  • Dacia Simpson, Assistant Director of Class Management, Office of the Registrar
  • John Stuart, Faculty Fellow, Office of the Provost, chair
  • Alessa Torres, Student Government Association
  • Hannibal Travis, Associate Professor, College of Law
  • Sanjeev Udhnani, Student Government Association

Goals of the Committee

Thirty days before the beginning of classes during the Spring 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters, FIU has been at 89% and 85% compliance respectively with textbook orders. Fully 15% of the courses that were supposed to have textbooks ordered did not have them thirty days before the beginning of classes. Anecdotal evidence shared by the University Bookstore indicates that on average at other SUS schools only about 5% of courses that are supposed to have textbooks have not had them ordered at that time. Since the FIU BOT regulation states that textbooks must be ordered forty-five days before the beginning of classes each semester, our primary goal is to bring our average textbook adoption rate to 100% for courses requiring textbooks when measured forty-five days before the beginning of classes.