Not in
Attendance: Andrea Barnett, Gregg Corely, Bruce Kalley,
Bill Leverette, Mary Orem, Julie Seligson, and Sandra Williams
Guests: Chris
Marino and Emma Robinson
Welcome and
Agenda:
Stacey
called the meeting to order at 12:05 pm.
Minutes
of the September 7, 2017 meeting were distributed and approved electronically
prior to this meeting and have been posted to eTC.
Old
Business:
By-Laws
and Constitution Revisions will be handled by email. Stacey will send out copies from other
institutions for compare and contrast.
New
Business:
Chris
Marino –
Chris spoke on the SMART evaluations; he is looking for a team of 4 to 6 people
to look into the student reaction to instruction evaluation. The members can be from Faculty Senate or
faculty at large. Currently it is being
done in an online format for ease of data collection but there is low student
participation. The old method of paper
surveys had higher student responses because it was done in class. But the data had to entered manually. This team would look into how student
participation can be increased and changes faculty can make. This team would under the auspices of Faculty
Senate. He also discussed how to make the instrument more useful and having a
review team to update the questions on the survey. This review team would come from Faculty
Senate.
Emma
Robinson – Emma
spoke on behalf of her department, Student Development and Wellness Services
(SDWS), and Croslena Johnson, manager, about new initiatives they are starting
to benefit students. They are beginning
with an anonymous survey about food and security. There are programs in place to provide
services to students through SC Thrive. While this is a state wide program, the
TCTC site will only serve prospective and current students. Students will have access to many state
programs, including but not limited to SNAP, Medicaid, SSI, Housing Benefits,
and Voter Registration. Emma handed out
cards with details about SC Thrive and the events and activities that SDWS are
providing this semester.
In
addition to this, a food pantry will be created on the main campus and will be
housed in the new student center. This will be an opportunity for service
groups on campus, such as the Student Veterans, Student Council, and others to
have a service learning project. This
project will begin in the Spring. Food
could be donated through a non-perishable food drive and/or donated by the
Café. As Faculty Senate it was unanimously agreed
that this a need for our campus without having to survey all departments. Mia
Tensley made the motion and Steve Gibson seconded it.
Jonathan
Warnock
– Jonathan spoke on two concerns from colleagues.
- Free education for children of TCTC full time employees. Full time and a majority of adjuncts agreed this would be a good idea to offer full time employees children a free TCTC education. Other institutions have this policy and would benefit the full time employees here.Also in this same frame could adjuncts receive professional development credit for sitting in on classes for best practice applications.Adjunct payment schedule. Lecturers are having to pay out of pocket for insurance premiums during the summer if they are not working and in January. It was brought up that the same was true for full time if they were not teaching in the summer. The discussion then turned to having an option to be paid in 10 or 12 month installments. If a faculty member chooses the 12-month option and then taught summer school a separate check could be written for the summer session. Stacy mentioned that this would have to go through Galen and could be presented by the TEE committee headed by Laura McClain.
Committee
Reports:
Matt Simon
(Calendar)
– An answer from faculty senate is need for the
question of when add/drop days should be held. Faculty senate desires that the
current add/drop schedule continues. The schedule for Fridays, of closing at 2,
would change some deadlines would move to Thursday or result in time deadlines
be issued. For future calendars, there is a discussion about the open day
before exams, changing the dates of professional development to that day and
separating staff and faculty PD days.
Laura
McClain (SCTEA) –
Every faculty and staff member has the opportunity to belong for $5. Departments should be encouraged to join.
TCTC will pay for memberships if the form is turned to Laura and electronic
forms will be emailed. If there are any questions,
please see Laura.
Laura
McClain (TEE) – A
subcommittee will be formed to discuss morale and other matters concerning
making this college great. Everyone on
all campuses should be included. There
will be face to face meetings with faculty and staff once they are up and
running.
Penny
Edwards (AACC) –
They are in the process of taking information from the workshops at conference
to make webinars. They are looking at
leadership traits and ranking them by importance. The ability to work with others was the
number one trait, others include communication styles, understanding the
institutions culture, and academic experience.
There will be more information within the next month.
Our
meeting dates for the next two months will be October 27th and
November 17th, from noon to 2 pm.
The
motion to end the meeting was made at 2:03 pm by Laura McClain and seconded by
Jonathan Warnock.
