Minutes (Draft) of Psychology Department Meeting Feb

Minutes of Psychology Department Meeting November 16, 2015

Present: Amitai Abramovitch, Sarah Angulo, Rick Archer, Natalie Ceballos, Millie Cordaro, Maria Czyzewska, John Davis, Rebecca Deason, Joe Etherton, Reiko Graham, Kelly Haskard-Zolnierek, Krista Howard, Jean Hu, Bill Kelemen, Azucena Mayberry, Amy Meeks, Crystal Oberle, Shirley Ogletree, Randall Osborne, Robyn Rogers, Ty Schepis, Ollie Seay, Kristen Tooley, Logan Trujillo, and Carmen Westerberg.

Bill Kelemen convened the meeting at 3:30 PM in UAC 275.

A motion to approve the minutes from the November 2 faculty meeting was made. All were in favor.

Announcements

Bill updated the faculty on campus carry. He pointed out the campus carry task force’s draft recommendations about implementing the concealed carry law are now available on the homepage at under the “News and Announcements” tab. He asked the faculty to review the recommendations. He also let everyone know that there would be three open forums this week for members of the university who want to comment on the recommendations. After the forums this week, the task force will revise the recommendations. Then more open forums will be offered in the spring.

Maria informed the faculty that Kate Rice, the 4th candidate, would be visiting on Tuesday, November 17. Maria asked that any faculty with feedback about Kate kindly forward Maria the feedback by Tuesday. The Personal Committee will meet Wednesday, then make some recommendations about hiring. Volunteer opportunities are still available during Kate’s visit, and there will be a dinner at Palmer’s.

Bill told the faculty that on November 30, there would be no faculty meeting. Instead, everyone is encouraged to attend the reception for Carmen Westerberg, who has won the Presidential Seminar Award. The reception is in FH 230 at 3:30. Typically, beer and wine are served, along with heavy snacks, so you can make a dinner out of it if you want.

Curriculum Committee

• John Davis updated the faculty on the decisions of the curriculum committee.
• Proposed revision of PSY 3314, Psychological of consciousness: Logan Trujillo has expressed interest in teaching a revised version this course.Revisions of the course description for PSY 3314 were also recommended.
• Proposed deletion of PSY 4390 C, Interpersonal Relationships. Alex Nagurney, who has moved on, used to teach this course. It has not been taught in several years.
• Proposed deletion of PSY 4390 M, Psychology of Opera. Theron Stimmel, who used to teach the course, no longer wishes to teach it.
• Proposed revision of PSY 4318, Psychological Measurement: Several faculty members have expressed interest in teaching a revised version this course.
• Proposed revision of PSY 3350, Behavior Modification and Cognitive Therapies. Robyn Rogers who teaches this course has requested that the title of the course be changed to reflect course content.

All changes have been approved by the committee, and will be passed on to the next committee for approval.

A motion to approve the changes was made and passed.

First reading: Proposed revisions to the department policy on workload and faculty evaluation

First reading: Proposed revisions to the department policy on awarding merit and performance

Crystal presented the proposed revisions to the department policy on (a) workload and faculty evaluation and (b) awarding merit and performance.

Bill explained that any changes in the policy will go into effect for 2016. Therefore, faculty completing their annual reviews in spring 2017 would have their 2016 work evaluated under the new system. The next annual review, which is for 2015 work, will still use the existing policies.

Bill and other faculty members thanked the Crystal and the committee for their work on the policies.

Crystal highlighted and explained specific areas of the policy. She explained that after the committee designed the new policies, they rated each faculty member’s 2014 work according to the new policies. The goal of this process was to ensure the new system was fair and effective. Overall the new policy resulted in similar ratings, though it was slightly more generous across the board. Furthermore, more faculty moved into the “Significantly exceeds merit expectations” category.

Merit and performance policy:

• Comment 6, referring to Section 1 B: Crystal discussed how the practice of using standard deviations above and below the department mean will no longer be used, as it does not seem fair or logical.
• Submitted but unfunded grants will now earn points in scholarship.
• Comment 21, referring to Section 2G: Lecturers and senior lecturers will automatically earn a point in scholarship, so they automatically meet expectations in scholarship. This arrangements better reflects university policy that lecturers have no expectations in scholarship. Lecturers and senior lecturers who wish to exceed expectations in scholarship may serve on thesis committees, conduct research, work with independent study students, or pursue a variety of other options.

Next, Crystal asked for questions and comments from faculty members.

John Davis advocated for a book author and a book editor to earn 18 points because of the significant work involved.

Carmen asked how an impact factor of 1 was decided. Could there be more points for a higher impact factor?

Crystal explained that impact factor can change based on the discipline.

Amitai pointed out that a ranking of the impact factor by discipline can be found online.

Bill suggested having authors make the case about the impact factor by attaching documentation to the annual report.

Ollie said she, as a clinical faculty member, could not find where to put her clinical practice aspect of service on the rubric.

John Davis asked if we value oral conference presentations twice as much as posters.

Kristen asked for a clarification of the term “invited presentation.” Does it mean being a keynote speaker, or being invited to give a talk, for instance, at UT?

Randall recommended that faculty members designate themselves as primary authors for posters their students present at conferences. This is the case even if the student is first author, because the faculty member has supervised the research. That way, annual review points are maximized but faculty and students are not competing with each other. Also, this method, allows students to get funding to conferences by being first author.

Amitai said an asterisk (*) can be used to indicate equal contribution on an academic work.

Ty asked if a student is first author on a paper, should it be more points than if a student is first other on a poster presentation.

Crystal replied that if you supervise a student, you should get teaching points. Ty pointed out that he has published with students that were not under his direct supervision.

Natalie said that we should do whatever we can to encourage publishing with students as first author.

Shirley pointed out that if the faculty member has the primary idea and the supervising role, then the faculty member should be first author. If it’s a graduate student who creates his or her own project, then the graduate student can be first author.

Bill said that the ability to explain details for a variety of situations in teaching, research, and service is important in ePortfolio. There is an area under each section in ePortfolio where faculty can attach documentation and include further explanation about what they’ve done.

Reiko: if an article has a DOI in an epub before a publication date, can the faculty member submit it for a given calendar year? Discussion ensued.

Kristen asked why lecturers and senior lecturers would earn a point in scholarship without doing scholarship. Crystal and other committee members admitted it seemed odd at first glance, but offered explanations for this “workaround.” Discussion ensued about reasons this setup was chosen.

Rick Archer asked if we retained the workload policy for Tenure-Track Option A faculty. It is not clear if submitted vs. accepted are the same thing.

Crystal asked if we could give points for a presentation that was submitted but not accepted.

Shirley asked if we should make scholarship expectations for Tenure-Track Option A faculty equivalent to those of senior lecturers.

Bill said this is not how things have been done in the past.

Amitai asked where editorial roles, editorial board membership, associate editor roles go on the rubric?

Crystal explained that these things go in service, with a description of the time spent in each role. Service points will now be awarded for all ranks based on the number of hours spent on service.

Azucena asked how dowe know how many hours we spend if we are on a committee, etc. Natalie replied that everyone must count the hours.

Crystal explained the reason the committee decided to award points based on time spent on service, rather than type of service.

Bill said there will be a field in ePortfolio where we can enter the time commitment.

Krista gave an example. She said she is on five committees, but when she adds up the time they meet, she doesn’t even reach “meets expectations.” She suggested that some committees who are efficient may spend less time in meetings.

Crystal replied that it’s important to count time spent on emails, reviewing documents, and other activities that occur outside of committee meetings.

Shirley asked if attending faculty meetings counts toward service time. Crystal replied that it did.

Azucena explained that she could not do an independent study because she already teaches three sections of research methods. This course entails a lot of time grading papers, and meeting with students out of class.

There was a general discussion of the following issue: Could there be extra points for teaching research methods?

Bill said people always spend more hours in the classroom if they teach a lecture plus a lab. That is, clock hours are more than paid hours. A person teaching methods may spend five hours per week teaching lecture and lab, but is paid at the level of a 4-hour course. This is a limit of university policy. We cap at 30 students and we provide an IA. Moving from 3 to 4 hours for research methods gets it closer to clock hours.

John pointed out that methods courses don’t get ratings that are as high as other courses.

Crsytal thanked everyone for their feedback and asked people to email her with more feedback.

Bill said the committee will meet to consider the feedback, then the faculty will meet again in early spring.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:40 PM. The next faculty meeting will take place in January 2016.

Minutes submitted by: Sarah Angulo