Faculty SubCouncil. Here's a summary of what happened there.
Chancellor Manning did not attend. He was attending a
building dedication at ETSU.
We were introduced to Dr Paula Short, the new VP of
Academic Affairs. She comes from an academic background,
was a tenured faculty member in the Missouri State College
system (sorry, I didn't catch her discipline), graduated 24
PhD students, and by her own account, is highly attuned to
faculty concerns and issues. She was personable and
professional, and made a strong first impression. She has a
plan to visit every TBR campus before May 1, so you should
have an opportunity to meet her here at some point.
She briefly discussed the Defining Our Future document,
indicating that TBR central office is developing an
implementation plan that will be communicated to the
campuses at the earliest possible time. She made it clear
that all goals of the document will be implemented, but
also stressed that the individual campuses will be given
great leeway to institute changes as deemed appropriate for
the separate locations. Very little of the implementation
procedures will follow a specific mandate.
SubCouncil members indicated their displeasure with the
entire development process, which seemed to essentially cut
out most opportunity for faculty input, but Dr Short
pointed out that the specifics of the legislative mandate
required an accelerated timetable that really created that
problem, and there wasn't much that could be done about it.
In fact, the implementation plan, which is not yet in
place, will go to the board for approval in March, then
back to SubCouncil for approval, which essentially prevents
any possibility of subcouncil contribution to the the plan.
Dr Short reassured the SubCouncil that most changes that
will start in August will not be drastic, that the template
for changes is very general.
Kerry Goodwin from TBR Legal walked the SubCouncil through
the changes to Policies and Procedures. You may recall a
note from Rick Bowers about 4-6 weeks ago mentioning the
posting of a 97 page document outlining these changes.
These changes are designed to eliminate obsolete policies
and revising existing policies to incorporate the Defining
Our Future goals, and are not substantive changes. For
example, there was a policy governing the management of the
Chancellor's residence, which no longer exists. The
procedure laying out the distribution of documents was
designed in the early 80s, and did not allow for
distribution via email, which at the time was extremely
limited. All described changes seemed to fall under the
umbrella of correcting outdated policies; I will leave it
you to examine the document on the Faculty Council webpage
if you would like to know more specifics.
There was a brief presentation of the changes to the A-100
guidelines for developmental coursework. Again, there is a
fear that massive drastic changes will be enforced on the
campuses, but Treva Berryman stated that one goal of the
announced changes was for campuses to have more flexible
delivery for SOME students who CAN move through
developmental work more quickly; not to to try to move back
to the self-paced and module based failures the system has
tried in the past. According to Treva, the goal is more
flexibility for the campuses, not limited choices. Perhaps
Joanne Thomasson could give more complete information to
anyone interested in these changes.
The move to a common TBR calendar was discussed; the common
calender is now a given, only the specifics remain to be
ironed out. The Geier lawsuit first led to institution of a
common calendar among a subset of TBR schools, and the
Academic Officers and Presidents apparently decided that if
some were forced to use a common calendar, all might just
as well do the same. It appears as if a three-day 55
minute, two-day 85 minute 14 week calendar is the most
likely; Dr Ellen Weed explained that some schools are
currently on a 14 week schedule, others on a 15 week, and
it was likely much easier to get half of the schools to
agree to shorten their academic calendar than it was to get
the other half to lengthen theirs. The current template
calls for a Thanksgiving break and a fall break; open
questions include whether the Wednesday we will be out will
be attached to a Mon-Tues fall break, or to the Thu-Fri
Thansgiving break, and it's still up in the air whether the
individual schools will be free to decide the week of their
spring break; logistically, there are apparently strong
arguments for benefits from having the entire system on
spring break at the same time.
Robbie Kendall-Melton talked about the explosive growth of
the RODP program, which has already exceeded its target
enrollment of 3500 students, and done so about two years
faster than expected. There is concern about faculty
compensation for development of these courses; as it
stands, the schools are awarded $6000 for the development
of a brand new course (and $3500 for conversion of an
existing course), and it's up the the Chief Academic
Officer at each school to determine how that money is
distributed. The faculty members have no opportunity for
negotiation at this time; they either must accept their
school's offer or turn it down, but are not free to
negotiate.
Faculty workload was discussed, and then basically put to
bed. There is no TBR policy on workload, and that's how the
presidents apparently like it. A handout was distributed
indicating extremely differing policies from one campus to
another, and TBR central office is hesitant to institute a
system-wide workload formula.
Academic Fresh Start was tweaked, in my opinion to good
effect. Until this semester, students intending to take
part in Academic Fresh Start had to declare their intention
to do so essentially immediately upon enrollment in their
college; the wording has now been reworked to allow
students to enroll in the program "within 15 credit hours"
of first enrollment in the college. This was passed
unanimously.
Use of adjuncts was discussed. There is no TBR policy
regarding numbers of adjuncts, nor is there likely to be.
Several SubCouncil members voiced concern that adjuncts who
were repeatedly given nearly fulltime loads should just be
hired, that if the work is there, it takes unfair
advantage of low faculty pay rates not to hire them into
permanent positions; that the system took advantage of
teachers who had no recourse but to keep re-upping in the
eventual hope of being hired. Apparently this won't change
anytime soon.
Finally, Kay Clark discussed ongoing work on articulation.
An Ad Hoc committe on articulation has been formed to
attempt to look at establishing a solid 32 hour core. The
goal isto have 4 year schools forced to accept all
completed AA and AS degrees as equivalent to having
completed the 32 hour core at the 4-year school.
Honestly, I normally enjoy these meetings, but thought I
would pull my hair out before this one ended. As always, if
anything in this summary is unclear, please feel free to
email or phone me, and, as usual, I apologize to the
English department for my atrocious abuse of the mother
tongue.
dave
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