Tri-County Technical College
Faculty Senate Minutes
Date: October 25, 2012
Location: Fulp 400
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Members Present: Amoena Norcross, Todd Crisp-Simons, Ashley Brady, Cheryln Brown, Penny Edwards, Jason Poole, Tom Lawrence
Members Absent: Lisa Walton, Tony Logan, Chris McFarlin, Marilyn Vickery, Corey Evans, Steven Mathena, Tony Young, Marla Roberson
Guests: Tracy Ethridge, Curriculum Committee Representative
Presider: Amoena Norcross
Approval of Minutes: No corrections. Cherlyn motioned that the September minutes be approved. Ashley seconded the motion. The minutes were approved unanimously.
1. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
Tracy Ethridge, the current Curriculum Committee Chair, explained there is a new streamlined version of the WIDS system being instituted. The change option already existed on the WIDS system, so there will be no cost involved. She gave everyone a handout which is still in draft form, but it outlines the move to a web-based system instead of a client-based system. The approval order will be developer, program coordinator, department head, dean. It will then, if approved, go to Student Records and on to the Curriculum Committee. Documents and comments will travel with the change for everyone to view. The Curriculum Committee has adopted this change but wanted to run it by the Faculty Senate because the Curriculum Committee was originally formed by the Faculty Senate. It will probably not be implemented until after the first of the year (2013). There was some discussion about the order of approval, but it occurs that way because of Financial Aid and SACs when using state models. This process only includes changes at the course level such as pre-reqs, out-of-date courses, repetitive courses, etc. The committee makes recommendations to the Provost, and even if the committee does not recommend a proposed change, the Provost makes the final decision. Previous data will not be incorporated into the new system.
Tracy also mentioned the Provost Council was working on a committee charter for the Curriculum Committee because there has never been one.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
Amoena will keep the Senate informed of the Curriculum Committee Charter as it is being developed through the Provost’s Council.
Old Business:
2. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
The revised Faculty Senate Constitution and By Laws were distributed via email. The revised section pertaining to Article III, Section 5 (Clarification of Officers’ Duties) was adopted since 86% of Senate voted and unanimously approved the revision. Two-thirds (2/3) of the Senate must agree on proposed changes to the Faculty Senate Constitution and By Laws.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
None
New Business:
3. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
Regarding Professional Development Day, there have been many complaints about being “encouraged” to attend on a day when the college is officially closed, even to the point that faculty are being told that they need to pick a particular number of events to attend. It was proposed the Professional Development Day might be more acceptable to faculty and well attended if we did this at the beginning of the semester. An additional issue with the present scheduling on election day was that public schools are also out causing a child care problem. What we’re hearing is that people aren’t planning on coming.
Amoena had a conversation with Sharon Colcolough who schedules the event and let her know we are looking at rescheduling to a scheduled work day. Her response was it then might create a problem for staff. The majority of employees on the campus are faculty. Perhaps some things could be repeated so staff could attend at least some of what’s offered. It was mentioned it may require a faculty development day and a separate staff development day as they have different needs.
Amoena proposed that a representative from each division send out an e-mail to all of the faculty and ask if they would rather have Professional Development Day every two years during the general election time when the college is closed, or the week before classes start in the Fall every year. Jumpstart will be eliminated in the Fall, so there would not be a conflict.
Someone asked if the Department Heads and Deans should receive a copy of the e-mail. Hopefully there would be no punitive actions based on asking the faculty this question. Penny suggested having a survey created that could be sent out electronically to faculty. After further discussion, the Senate decided to send out a survey electronically to faculty for anonymous input on the scheduling of Professional Development Day. We would want survey results by December 1, 2012. It was noted that Dr. Booth plans on being at Professional Development day all day.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
Penny will speak with Chris Marino about getting a survey created using Survey Monkey. Amoena will send a sample email to Senators once the survey has been created, encouraging faculty to complete the survey.
4. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
Course Restrictions & Self-Pay Forms was the next item on the agenda. Some of the issues that have developed are courses were not on the list that went to Student Records in Arts and Sciences. Also, Early Childhood had classes needed for university transfer that were not approved. Both problems have been resolved.
The self-pay form is supposed to be given to students by faculty during advising if a student decides to take a course outside of the required major. The student has to fill out the form and take it to Student Records so s/he can register. Faculty do not need to sign the form, so the question was posed as to why faculty are involved at all. The student should go directly to Student Records to get the form, fill out the form, and turn in the form. It was proposed that the student be allowed to register without the form because there is an e-mail generated anyway that says Financial Aid will not pay for the class because it is not in their program. If the student received the e-mail, s/he could then go back and check with the advisor. That direction seems better.
There was a problem with the e-mail not being generated until students had been in class for two weeks, but this is not an issue any longer. According to Scott Harvey, drop/adds are run every night, and the e-mail is going out much more quickly now.
The system now blocks you from registering for classes outside your major curriculum. This system is also preventing students from taking appropriate higher level classes and they have to make an appointment with appropriate faculty to get an override. So it is creating more work for the advisors. Student Records is actually going to the divisions and asking which courses should be allowed outside the major curriculum. It seems to have made the process more frustrating for the students also.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
Amoena will find out what the e-mail actually says, when it is sent, and why faculty need to be involved since we don’t sign it.
5. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
Tom offered to address the multi-campus scheduling issue. Representatives got together from the different programs and had meetings for the Anderson and Easley campuses. They charted out all the course offerings at each campus to see whether it was possible for a student to matriculate through the entire degree by taking all their classes at one campus.
What was revealed was a lot of the courses were scheduled at the same time. They tried to move courses around to offer a full two year schedule but ran into the additional problem of low enrollment numbers. Some courses under the current policy would not be offered due to low enrollment.
Also some courses are offered only one night a week for 3 hours, and others follow the traditional schedule. Having no Friday classes at Anderson became a problem because without Friday as a teaching day, there is not have enough time to make everyone’s schedule fit. Easley’s problem was that the classes weren’t making. Nothing was resolved at this meeting.
Penny asked why hybrid courses weren’t being offered. Tom said the idea was not well received. The real question seemed to be who we are trying to serve with our satellite campuses. If we are expecting them to be full service, we are not there yet.
Friday was to be a meeting day at Anderson, but not sure that is what is happening. Also at Anderson classrooms are shared with non-credit classes on Friday. The no Friday classes plan at Anderson was a pilot to see if we wanted it at the main campus. The question was asked as to why this schedule at the Anderson campus is still in effect since Easley, the newest campus, did not adopt the Anderson campus schedule and neither did the Pendleton campus.
Sharing classes between the satellite schools and the main campus was discussed. Someone was to check where and how that was already being done, but the idea has not gone further.
There was a schedule created. Tom will try to bring a copy of it. It worked well for some programs but not for others. General education classes were the biggest problem including developmental classes.
Amoena brought up the Summer 2013 calendar which has come before Provost Council. There was a major problem in the Summer 2012 calendar when Session B and Session C had a difference of 3 instructional days. Session B and C have the same number of instructional days for Summer 2013. However, there is quite a bit of disparity in Session A between the different meeting patterns. These discrepancies occur between classes that meet M-F; MW, with some Fridays; and MW and TR. The discrepancy between some of these meeting patterns equals almost an entire credit hour of instruction.
Amoena reported that the Provost’s Council is aware of the Session A discrepancies. The Scheduling Charter Committee will address the discrepancy for Session A in the Summer 2013 calendar. It was asked if there had been discussion about the type of course offerings in the Summer 2013. Amoena replied that there had not been.
The point of view of why we don’t offer more hybrid and online courses in the summer so students could still travel and not be stuck on campus was introduced. Classroom space being an issue was also discussed. Criminal Justice does have a lot of online classes, so it was stated that it may be a division problem. In Criminal Justice, you can do the entire program on line. They actually have students attending from out of state.
Different types of classes are conducive to hybrid mode and some are not. For example, lower level English classes with a high demand for writing are difficult on line. These classes tend to have high attrition rates. Maybe hybrids would be an option in this case, but online has a very high failure rate.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
None.
6. Issue discussed and major points of discussion:
The next point of discussion was the attendance policy. Amoena distributed the attendance policy and procedure (3-2-1053 and 3-2-1053.1) The policy and procedure are also available in the Committee Structure link under the Employee tab in eTC. Galen Dehay, the Interim Provost, ask that the Senate consider what the relationship is between attendance and student success. For some programs, it is a close relationship and for other programs not so important.
Amoena asked Senators to consider whether the current policy works for your students or does the policy need to be stricter or more lenient. It may be possible to have an attendance policy set by division or program. However, it must be specified in the department syllabus and presented to the students.
Nursing doesn’t really have a problem because they can use other measures such as probation to handle excessive absences.
Would federal financial aid support division or department determination of an attendance policy? Federal financial aid doesn’t actually dictate our attendance policy. The current policy already has many loopholes in it. The use of the word “may” for example.
Several questions were posed: What is an absence? Does this include excused absences? What is late?
If we went with division control of an attendance policy, it would be confusing for students to take 6 different classes and have 6 different policies. Shouldn’t there be consistency?
Also, not all faculty follow the policy because of the “may”. But Scott wants us to withdraw students this semester because of the financial aid issue.
Faculty Senate has already discussed this issue and wanted the flexibility because faculty members could not agree to an inflexible plan.
Action to be taken as a result of discussion, person(s) responsible, and timeline:
The discussion will be continued at the next meeting. In the meantime, members need to think about the question posed by Galen, not the other issues.
Nepotism in the classroom will be addressed at the next meeting.
Next meeting: Nov 14th at 1:30 pm
Comments/Concerns: none
Name of Recorder: Marilyn Vickery
