If you are a faculty member at this university, we invite you to communicate your questions and concerns in writing— anonymously or not— and place them in the suggestion box just outside the Faculty Senate office (FC 159). In this area of the Senate website, we will address those questions or concerns, even if we do not believe the issue to be specifically Senate-related. In such cases, we will attempt to refer you to the appropriate entity to better address your issue. Please, let your Faculty Senate know what you think!
| Anonymously generated questions and Dr. Harper's responses: |
What are the rules and regulations according to external accreditation bodies of a college hiring its own graduates to teach courses and run programs? SACS does not have any rules regarding hiring your own graduates, as long as they meet the same academic credentialing requirements necessary to be considered SACS qualified. Other professional accrediting agencies may have different rules but primarily this is usually up to the institution itself. Many universitities will not hire their own graduates as a matter of course. Many others attempt to balance their faculty on a variety of elements: alma maters, diversity, areas of expertise, etc. To meet some of the role model goals that we have established regarding recruiting minority faculty, it may indeed be the most pragmatic course of action to intentionally "grown our own" in order to have a cadre of minority faculty members. When faculty members have professional needs as well as program needs that are being unmet by the faculty members' departments and colleges due to perceived financial contraints, would the provost like to be informed of such needs? Faculty members can either express their concerns about their department chairs during their annual evaluation process or college deans during their every two year evaluation process. If these vehicles do not convey the concerns of the faculty, the Faculty Affairs committee of the Senate should review the concerns and determine their validity. The Senate could then forward their findings to the Provost. More general concerns about financial constraints could be forwarded to the Provost by way of the Senate Budget committee. It is not practical to have individual faculty members communicating with the provost about disagreements with their chairs/deans other than the channels that I have mentioned. What are the external accreditation guidelines concerning the numbers of students that can be in one lecture type class? SACS does not specify a limit of students that can be in a lecture class. AACSB does have an SCH guideline per faculty member that it shares with its membership and other professional accrediting bodies may have similar guidelines. Does the university believe that better instruction will occur from a member of the faculty who has a terminal degree versus a master's degree? Do accreditation bodies prefer that members of the faculty have master's degrees or terminal degrees? The College Deans Council believes that better instruction is more likely to occur due to the demonstration of effective pedagogical techniques, which may or may not be related to the terminal degree. Accrediting bodies have different standards. For undergraduate instruction, master's degrees are required. For graduate degrees, terminal degrees are required. Typically, one of the measures of university excellence is the percentage of full-time faculty who have attained their terminal degrees. To what extent should deans be allowed to hire faculty who have non-terminal degrees to teach in the undergraduate program? The deans are charged with delivering the instructional programs in their colleges within the financial resources made available to them by the university. While it is preferable to have terminally qualified professors teaching at the undergraduate level, it is likely that the university will rely more heavily on graduate teaching assistants, adjuncts, and other clinical faculty as enrollment expands and financial resources shrink. In fact, the Faculty Senate will be receiving a proposal about clinical faculty that addresses the challenges that are being faced by all the colleges. Are deans allowed to rewrite college handbooks and publish them without a faculty vote? It depends on the contents of the college handbook. The University faculty handbook specifies that when colleges develop further steps in the process and further criteria necessary to evaluate candidates for tenure, these must be approved by a majority vote of the faculty of the department or division in question and filed with the Faculty Senate and Office of the Provost. Other important policy matters have similar language in the university handbook. However, some college handbooks have a lot of procedural material. These do not need a faculty vote. |
| Suggestion: |
| One faculty member wrote the following, which we received on 1/17/06: "Deans need to be evaluated by faculty every year. Too many important issues fester over a 2-year time period. The new Provost should be able to evaluate deans in the spring of 2007." |
| Senate Response: |
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Faculty Senates past and present agree with you. Two years ago, this issue was raised in a Senate meeting, with the sentiment being that deans be evaluated every year. We also believed that department chairs, vice presidents, and even the president should be evaluated more frequently— preferably, every year. However, our proposal to change the policy that was current at the time (deans' levels on up evaluated every 3 years; chairs and faculty every year) was turned down at the President's Cabinet level. (Note that the proposal was not turned down at Dean's Council or Provost's Council levels.) President Furgason felt that this timing involved too frequent evaluation of administrators and that the potential for liability (negative publicity) might increase. Basically, there were legal and operational reasons against having a more frequent or regular evaluation process for administrators. At that point, then Senate Speaker John Brendel and Deputy Speaker Diana Ivy requested and were granted a meeting with President Furgason and Provost Harper, to discuss the issue. President Furgason explained his reasoning for the decision, but listened to Brendel's arguments on behalf of the Senate and entire faculty. John's primary arguments were (1) that it seemed unfair or out of balance for faculty to be evaluated every semester, every class by their students, and then also yearly by their chairs and deans, yet deans and above were only evaluated every 3 years; and (2) an untenured professor who experienced a negative relationship with her/his dean could wait a long time (possibly 3 years) to be able to offer feedback on the dean. That 3-year period could seriously damage that faculty member's progress toward tenure and promotion. President Furgason took the arguments into account, then offered a compromise position, a sort of 1-year, 2-year, 3-year approach. Faculty and chairs would be evaluated by their supervisors every year; deans every 2 years; and vice presidents every 3 years. As a side note, President Furgason was very open to the idea of a faculty/staff evaluation of his performance as well. So, the Senate hopes that you understand the work that has been done on this issue and that at least we were able to get the 3-year time frame for deans' evaluations down to a 2-year time frame. Since the deans were evaluated this spring of 06, they will not be evaluated again until spring of 08. |