9-17-2014
APPROVED: October 22, 2014 (Tom moved, Stacy 2nd)
Present: Lara
Wrightson, Tom Hiebel, Laura McClain, Chris McFarlin, Brad Bowen, Bruce Kalley,
Ron Talley, Justin Herndon, Kevin Bell, Marla Roberson, Stacey Frank, Todd Crisp-Simons
Absent: John Duke, James Whisenhunt, Carol Henry, Brittany
Smith, Shona Montgomery, Tonia Faulling (the majority of these are due to class
schedule conflicts)
Guests: Lisa Garrett
Welcome and Introductions
Ron and Justin will speak with the three adjuncts from
EIT to see who would like to represent that area from their division. Marla will update the information on the IT
website of all the current reps.
Review of minutes of August 19, 2014
Tom Hiebel moved that we accept the minutes as submitted; 2nd
by xxx; all approved.
Elect Vice President and Secretary (Current list of Senators attached)
- Duties of the Vice President
- Assist the Faculty Senate
President in soliciting nominations from full-time faculty in each
division and in soliciting nominations for the member-at-large
representative.
- Schedule and facilitate Faculty
Senate meetings in the absence of the Faculty Senate President.
- Represent Faculty Senate on the
Provost’s Council and other committees in the absence of the Faculty
Senate President.
- Communicate Faculty Senate
concerns to responsible Vice President and/or the President of the College
in the absence of the Faculty Senate President.
- Assume other duties of the Faculty Senate President as needed in his/her absence.
Justin
Herndon accepted the nomination for Vice President.
- Duties of the Secretary
- Record minutes of Faculty Senate
meetings.
- Send minutes to Senate members
within 7 business days following a Faculty Senate meeting.
- Send approved minutes to appropriate contact for public posting
No
volunteers for the position of Secretary.
We will probably rotate this function.
For this meeting, Todd and Marla took notes.
- Duties of Faculty Senate Representatives
- Attend Senate Meetings
- Solicit agenda items from
constituents
- Disseminate meeting minutes to
constituents
- Encourage open dialogue and
transparency among constituents
- Represent the faculty body and the Senate’s interests by serving on at least one other outside committee
Old business
·
By-laws – copy attached. Need to approve changes to add Past President
and to change the wording on Article IX 4e to reflect agreed upon sentence from
August 19, 2014 meeting.
o
Passed (Tom Hiebel proposed and Chris McFarland
2nd. All voted to approve the changes.)
o
Marla will update the by-laws and send a copy to
all. Also post on the websites.
·
Talent Management Committee update – Todd
Crisp-Simons
o
Todd updated that the committee hadn’t met since
March 26. He emailed Sharon C yesterday
to ask about the current status of the Committee.
o
To fill the 3rd faculty slot on the
committee (left vacant by that faculty member leaving the college), Todd
nominated Tom Hiebel.
·
Transformative Student Experience – Executive
Summary is being presented by Galen DeHay to the Executive Staff on
Wednesday. As soon as he presents it, he
will send me a copy and I’ll forward to the Senators.
o
This was approved by Executive Staff Wednesday
AM so Marla was able to pass out the Executive Summary.
o
Galen would like to address Faculty Senate about
the TSE. Marla will invite him to the
next meeting.
o
It was noted that there were no faculty involved
in the membership of the creation committee.
We will ask Galen about that when he attends the FS meeting.
·
Faculty Senate budget – we will have one next
year with the primary costs anticipated for printing and a recorder. Galen or Marla’s areas will absorb for this
year.
·
Professional Development (info from Galen)
o
Foundation: “The funds generated by this
endowment will be used to assist the faculty in an academic department each
year to strengthen their teaching. The endowment will support innovation
teaching projects, attendance at seminars and workshops, return to industry,
advanced course work in the faculty’s subject area, or other faculty
development projects.”
o
Mini-grant funds are similarly used within this
scope of professional development. Professional development funds cannot be
used to buy equipment. That is the most common request that is denied.
Professional development is focused on providing learning opportunities through
formal/informal course work, conferences, consultation, coaching, training, and
learning opportunities within the scope of a faculty/staff member’s practice.
o
Can adjuncts use the funds? The answer is yes.
According to Debbie Nelms, department heads/program coordinators should decide
how their funds are allocated based on program needs. If a program has an
adjunct that requires professional development to perform his/her job, then the
department head/PC can sanction this expenditure.
o
It is not recommended that a mass “cattle call”
email to all adjuncts stating they can use professional development funds. Funds
are limited. Department heads/PC’s
should use their professional judgment to allocate finite resources.
o
When will the schedule for the October
professional development day be out?
o
Who created the schedule? Faculty Senate requests to be involved in the
scheduling of the next Professional Development Day.
o
Is there anything about conflict
resolution? Does the SC Tech system
offer something like this (specifically addressed to how faculty can/should
engage students?
o
The Faculty Senate wonders if this is a
volunteer activity for the adjuncts and lecturers, would it still be
illegal? We do not think it would be
since it is a volunteer and not required activity.
§
We do believe that the adjuncts and lecturers
should be paid for their time. However
if not possible, then we feel they should have the ability to attend on their
own time.
New Business
·
SACSCOC Decennial Reaffirmation – Handout from
Margaret Burdette
·
Faculty Credentialing Process – handout (TCTC
and SACSCOC)
·
The Executive Staff currently consists of the
following positions. This is a
leadership team that is designed to provide advice and guidance to Dr. Booth,
and as such, is comprised of whatever positions he deems appropriate – it is
not governed by any outside agency and can therefore be changed as he deems
appropriate.
o
Senior Vice President (vacant)
o
Asst VP for Curriculum and Instruction (Galen)
o
Asst VP for Student Engagement (vacant)
o
Dean, College Transitions (Jenni)
o
VP Business Affairs (Gregg)
o
Executive Director of the Foundation (vacant)
o
Director of Economic Development and Government
Relations (vacant)
o
Director of Public Relations (Rebecca)
o
Asst VP Human Resources (Sharon)
o
We would like there to be faculty representation
on this committee.
§
Marla spoke to Dr. Booth about this. He asked that I remind Faculty Senate that
the Chief Academic Officer is on the committee. The committee has increased in
size this Fall to have additional input.
Also 1 out of 10 employees are on the President’s Advisory
Committee. Dr. Booth has an open door
policy and is willing to meet with anyone that has a concern.
§
Marla also wonders if a faculty member is on
Executive Staff, then shouldn’t a member of Executive Staff also be on Faculty
Senate?
·
Transition Courses moved to Comp Studies
o
Within the College
Transitions division, the Comprehensive Studies department is responsible for
delivering academic coursework to assist students in cultivating the
foundational knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for success
in college and life. In alignment with this philosophical framework, all
transitional, pre-curriculum courses will now be delivered by Comprehensive
Studies. In addition to the current developmental coursework (ENG 031,
032, 150; MAT 031, 032, 150; RDG 032, 100) and College Skills course
offerings, the following transitional math and English courses will be housed in
Comprehensive Studies: MAT 101, MAT 102, and ENG 100. With a specific focus on
effective and efficient progression through pre-curriculum coursework, we
believe this change will result in positive impacts on successful student
transitions.
·
Adjunct Questionnaire – copy is attached. The survey went out on 9/8. A reminder will be sent on 9/15 and it
will close 9/19.
o
Two of the Adj Faculty Senators did not receive
the link for the survey.
Marla will send the link to them.
o
Marla contacted Chris Marino to find out the
status of the survey. He emailed the
survey on September 8. Per our request
it will now close September 26. Marla
will send the link out to the individuals that elected to NOT receive any
contact from Survey Monkey. Other
possible issues could be spam filters or junk mail filters or blocking Chris’s
email. He will send out a reminder to
please answer the survey.
o
Of the 393 employees with an employee class of
adjunct instructor:
§
33 opted out of receiving email surveys
§
359 received the survey
·
Behavior and Intervention meetings – we need a
rep. Scheduled for Monday at 8:00 AM.
(Let Jonathan Fitch and Dan Holland know.)
o
Chris McFarland will be rep.
o
Marla will email Jonathan Fitch and Dan Holland.
Committee updates
·
Student Success Center update (Marla)
o
Project Manager, Architect, students and various
staff met last week. We are in the
planning stages to see if this is something that needs to be done to increase
student success. See more info in
Connections.
General Education Outcomes
Project Charter (Ron) Ron updated on
9-22-2014
o
In addition
to skills and knowledge specific to an occupation or discipline, students
are expected to acquire general education as well. This committee was formed
because it is time for the college to review its proposed general
education outcomes. The following are some of the questions to be
asked in the discussion: "If general education makes a more
rounded student experience then what do we define as general education? Where
do technical courses come into play? Can those same courses develop General
Education Outcomes? Among deliverables is "Develop general education
outcomes that reflect core skills, attitudes, and behaviors required by
employers, four-year colleges/universities, and society." The committee's initial
focus is on a list of skills, attitudes, and behaviors identified by
members of the many department advisory committees. It focuses on what the
employer would like to see in the people they hire (examples: work place
ethics, interpersonal teams, society skills). The committee will develop
a communication plan to inform faculty and staff about revisions and the
purpose of revisions to the existing list of general education outcomes.
o
This Project
Charter will develop a list of outcomes which will be in a planning stage
document before the next SACSCOC visit but not actually implemented in the
courses until after the SACSCOC visit.
·
Recruitment Project Charter (Ron)
o
What is the difference between recruitment and
marketing?
o
What is TCTC’s goal to recruitment? Email ideas to Ron and he will pass on to the
committee.
·
Honors (Todd)
o
This is a faculty committee only at the present
time.
o
It is exploring the various options such as
should :
§
Honors be on a small scale
§
What classes should be Honors?
o
There is no Project Charter yet. Ron asked Todd to please include him in this committee.
Additional updates
·
Class size
o
Tom brought up that he has heard that there is
some beta testing of classes of up to 40 students. Laura said that one of the classes is
her’s. Why are we doing this? Possible explanations are: determining if
student’s success is impacted by larger class sizes. Is it due to how much it would cost to change
the building to accommodate either more classrooms or more offices? Philosophically, if this is an experiment,
what do we owe the students that might be negatively impacted by larger class
sizes? What are we saying to the
students and our other stakeholders if we increase class size? A final concern is for the instructor of such
large classes (will they have any assistance, pay increase, time off)? A class of this size impacts testing and
paper submission. How will we determine
what classes should be allowed to increase enrollment?
o
This will also be used to determine which
classroom is used for which class.
·
Shortened semester
o
Chris and Marla need to contact Scott Harvey to
find out what specific processes are done between semesters. Can this be automated? Can we help?
o
Marla spoke with Scott Harvey for clarification
on the semester length of courses. Scott appreciated that the Faculty
Senate wanted more information on the end of term processes.
He noted that these processes are currently automated as much as possible. The
change to the length of semester had little
to do with the processes but rather to do with the fact that we were meeting
for classes more than necessary. Per Scott, according to SACSCOC each course must meet for 750 minutes
per credit hour. After meeting with the Strategic Scheduling
committee (Tim Bowen, Janet Fuller, Scott Harvey,
Robin McFall, Chris McFarlin, Brian Swords, Della Vanhuss, Stan Compton)
our class meeting patterns were adjusted
to follow SACSCOC requirements. In addition, TCTC also had a local policy in place that classes must meet for the same number of days per
week. (i.e., if we met for 14 Monday’s,
then we had to meet for 14 Tuesdays, 14 Wednesdays, 14 Thursdays, and 14
Fridays). After
lengthy discussions, that policy was removed
by recommendation of the Academic Calendar committee. As a result of these
changes, the Academic Calendar committee subsequently removed excess meeting
days from the calendar.
·
Student survey – how can we get more students to
answer the survey?
o
Incentives?
§
Have to fill out the survey to receive a “ticket”
to be allowed to take the final?
o
What can we do to help get more responses from
the students?
o
Marla will invite Chris Marino to a future
meeting.
Other projects for this year and who would volunteer to
lead or help me?
·
Create a digital copy of minutes. Ask IT for
server space and/or put on a thumb drive to pass between Presidents. (Some of this is on Blog at http://tctccommittees.blogspot.com/search/label/Faculty%20Senate)
·
Create a TOC of a Faculty Handbook – last one
was revised in 2004. While this doesn’t
have to be a complete “book of the documents”, at least create a list of
specific documents and where to find that info.
Most is on eTC.
·
Create a historic record.
·
Invite to
speak to F/S
o
Matt Edwards to give a state of the IT talk.
o
Dr. Booth to give a state of TCTC
o
Chris Marino regarding surveys
Marla to do
·
Schedule meeting room
·
Update charter and committee members with IT
·
Invite Jonathan to talk about Security at the
October 22nd meeting
·
Invite Galen to talk about TSE at the October 22nd
meeting
Future Meeting schedule and location and discussion items
·
September 17 (Wednesday),
·
October 22 (Wednesday) Change
per request of members. Will be 4 to 6.
Room RH248. Marla will send out an
Outlook invitation.
·
November 19 (Wednesday)
·
December meeting has not been scheduled.
