Behrend Faculty Council Meeting Minutes

Monday December 4, 2024
8:00–9:00 a.m.


I. Call to Order – Lena Surzhko-Harned, Faculty Council Chair

  1. Approval of the minutes from previous Faculty Council Meeting
    1. Approver #1: Mike Rutter
    2. Approver #2: Jason Bennett

II. Welcome and Comments from the Chair

  1. The next Faculty Senate meeting is on Wednesday 12/6 at 1:30. 
  2. If there are things anyone wants to share to all the faculty, send to Lena and she can put on Canvas page.
  3. Lisa Nelson has created the meeting schedule for next semester – Two council meetings (both at 8am) along with two Senate meetings. If there is a need for additional meetings, we can convene an additional time. 

III. Updates from the Leadership Team:

  1. Comments by the Chancellor, Ralph Ford

    1. Raises – On the morning of the previous Townhall, the state passed nonpreferred budget. It’s good that it passed, however we saw a zero percent increase. There is a modest increase in tuition at UP and no increase at commonwealth campuses. Raises will be 3% is merit based – annual reviews will drive how much each employee receives. Not everyone will get 3%, some may get less. Pay is retroactive to July 1, the university is entering all the pay data now and thus can’t do the lumpsum backpay until January. Those retiring on December 31 would not be eligible for the retroactive pay unless they work for a little over two weeks in January. 
    2. Compensation modernization for staff members – the University is redoing salary bands. The idea is to get everyone up to new minimum in the new classifications. This is a multi-year process where additional funds will be added to this initiative. While it is still expected, there is no update on timeframe. This is a University-wide initiative that has been in progress for several years. 
    3. The University asked for 7% increase in state appropriation this year, don’t know what next year looks like, though, the election years tend to favor us, legislators like to hand out more funds. But this is all speculative. 

    4. Q&A

      • Q: Bringing staff up to the minimum seems like it will create more issues down the road – if everyone is at the minimum, the average will increase, and the staff will be below again. How did we end up so out of line?
        • A: Not everyone is out of line and it’s a University wide issue. We should be trying to get them to the midpoint, but we can’t get anything in writing. This is expected to be a 3-year University process. Part of the process is standardizing titles, currently we have nonstandard names like Staff Assistant Level 5 in place of Executive Assistant. This transition will include more market based names that make more sense. The whole process will take a central infusion of cash which we are ultimately waiting on. It’s been 12-13 years since the University adjusted the salary bands. 
      • Q: How many staff retiring?
        • A: Don’t think it’s a huge number, just a few.
      • Comment: There is a concern that raises don’t meet cost of living, we risk losing good faculty to other schools that pay better. 

  2. Comments by the Interim Vice Chancellor and Dean of Academic Affairs, Greg Filbeck

    1. The AI Team has been working all fall to look at the development of a certificate and/or minor in AI. Proposals are being submitted on Wednesday. We are behind, with respect to AI opportunities, and want to get up to speed. 
    2. There is a lot of things going on in terms of Indian recruiting strategies – met with several faculty members with connections to India. Harrisburg has been successful with this. Ray is going to be our ambassador. Strategies will emerge from there. Penn State working with Monash university to get into India. 
    3. Western campuses – taking a large group of people down on January 30th to Beaver. We will be going to them and taking key individuals in different programs/services to try and push a 2+2 agenda. This is in an effort to shift the automatic thought from UP being the only 2+2 program. Admissions directors have been communicating. Academic officers are going to be pulled into the discussion as well. 
    4. Program reviews – We don’t a great job of getting information out to our organization/Council of Fellows. Programs been getting feedback from stakeholders and have been making changes as a result. Working with Lena in spring to figure out ways to facilitate information that is coming out of these reviews. Ever since Covid, it feels like we are operating in islands – trying to address that.
    5. Looking for ways that we can we support our small majors. We have just under 20 majors with fewer than 20 students. Met with directors, Bill Gonda, Andrea, looking at ways to give some love to smaller majors to try and beef up/promote them. Looking at identifying 1 or 2 majors that are unusually low in terms of major count and coming up with strategies to push out opportunities. 
    6. The Advising Taskforce is going in full force. Four sub-committees working on different aspects of advising. On target to get a proposal to Ralph by March. Critical retention issue – admissions to NSO to FYS – how to reduce melt rate. Front end melt rate is hard due to applying to multiple universities, maybe no intention of coming here in the first place. But from NSO to FYS we are losing 3 or 4 dozen students – how can we better help and service those students. In fall 2024 – all four schools will take/implement feedback from committee on FYS revisions.
    7. Q&A
      • Q: Last year we were visited by an Indonesian university that wanted to have an online connection with us. Currently, this is on hold. Might be some opportunity there.
        • A: Let Greg know of these opportunities and we will definitely look into it. Might be option for EDGE (Experiential Digital Global Engagement). Excellent opportunity to move Open Lab forward. EDGE is a program where students at our university and those at a foreign university would work together on a project (community or industry partner). This is a University wide effort. Beaver representative focused on EDGE is going to be coming up and will discuss how we can get more involved. There seems to be a lack of awareness in general.
      • Q: Advising – our focus seems to be on retention, Provost Schwartz seems concerned on completion. Students need to complete and complete on time. Does the taskforce have any focus on how to ensure completion?
        • A: That is a natural implication of what we will be doing with advising. The biggest concern is the front end, retaining students. But completion is also a concern – self-advising puts them in situations where students may end up staying longer. 
      • Q: AI – UP is currently working on building an AI system in Penn State that would help with advising. A place where they can get a question answered in the middle of the night when others aren’t available. The group at UP said they are building something with corporate connections. They hope to roll it out this fall. Maybe the taskforce can connect with them. It seems to be University focused, not specific to Behrend.
        • A: Will reach out to Linda and Terri and see if they know. 
        • Comment: Lisa Jo’s class has an assignment involving the design of an AI advising bot. 
      • Q: How much melt do we have between NSO and not showing up for classes. 
        • A: Half of the issue is not making it to NSO in the first place. And the other half we lose them during the first semester. There isn’t much concern between NSO and showing up for classes. We are also looking at reengineering NSO to make it more friendly from a retention standpoint.
           

  3. Comments by the Vice Chancellor and Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, Alicyn Rhodes

    1. Research budget is still under negotiation. It’s a strong negotiation.
    2. Make sure we don’t lose sight of the sabbatical component of the constitution. Looking for feedback from the mixed committee.
      1. Comment on the mixed committee: Felt too big and the members couldn’t all meet at the same time. Problem with meeting times made it difficult to have a conversation. As a result, results weren’t necessarily agreed upon by majority. 
    3. Matt S. regarding Sabbaticals: Currently developing guidelines on sabbaticals. University guidelines act like frameworks with individual units defining their own criteria. The University will define what that framework is. Example: NTT to allow sabbaticals related to pedagogy – but since a lot of NTT also have research requirement, want to make sure they can also apply for sabbatical with a research component. How the framework gets implemented is up to each unit. 
      1. Unfunded, and as a result process has become more competitive in recent years.
      2. Has passed senate, president needs to sign off. If she signs off,  it is in place, until then, it’s not in place. 
      3. The way it reads, the employee has to be here a minimum of 7 years, been promoted at least once, and then one of a list of titles. 
        • The titles can be confusing due to the staggered overlap of Tenure and NTT employees. The 7 years and promotion requirement should be the focus.

IV. Updates from the University Senators, Matt Swinarski

  1. President – looking at how to stop in decline in terms of commonwealth enrollment.
  2. 9% increase in underrepresented students.
  3. International enrollment back to pre-covid
  4. AdvocatePSU.edu for Pell grants/work studies
  5. Budget Questions go to Dean/Chancellor 
  6. Provost Schwartz – concern about student well-being, especially during exams/holidays. Resources are available for faculty. Extension.psu.edu, adult mental health first aid. Wants to make sure faculty are aware that students can be going through difficult times this time of year. 
    1. External locus of control – belief that the deck is stacked against oneself seems to be more common. The more the student expresses this the less likely they are to succeed. Historically has been seen in ethnic groups, but seems to be moving into generational groups. Important to remember that failure is not predetermined. 
    2. Help is available, students need to be made aware of this. 
  7. Senate elections – pilot went well. 
  8. Benefits tool – available going forward to help pick your benefit plans based on your situation. 
  9. Switching telephones from Cisco to Microsoft – integrated in Teams. 
  10. Food and housing insecurity – nice QR codes at end of presentation, you can donate
  11. You can donate monthly like the United Way campaign

V. Committee Charges Discussion

  1. Academic Computing, Elisa Beshero-Bondar
    1. Survey results, struggling with how to present. 
    2. Send to Lena and she can help figure out best way to present.
  2. Athletics, Adam Simpson
    1. Mentor program discussions.
  3. Undergraduate Curricular Affairs, Glenn Kumhera
  4. Faculty Affairs, Lynne Beaty
  5. Graduate Affairs, Mike Rutter
    1. Much needed amendments to policies in obtaining graduate faculty status. Especially those not involved in the program wanting to be a graduate member in a program. Two levels of appeal process if denied on initial application. 
  6. Research Committee, Babajide Osatuyi
  7. Scholarships and Awards, Aimee Pogson
  8. Student Life, Gabe Kramer
  9. Undergraduate Studies, Charlotte de Vries
    1. Results from survey have been added to teams site.
    2. Student misconduct – concerns with lateness. Most concerning is language and aggressive behavior. Talking, disrespecting faculty and students. Not following rules outlined in syllabi or University rules. Arguing about exam grades, wearing headphones during class. 
    3. Why people like/dislike Starfish/Teams – training related, lack of knowhow, dislike capabilities. The few responses received, faculty feel like Starfish is a checkoff list rather than something generating tangible benefits. 
  10. Institutional Equity and Diversity, Kyeiwaa Asare-Yeboah
  11. Ad hoc – PASSS – (Student Life and Undergrad Studies) 
    1. Trying to get a group together, have not heard back from many. 

VI. Ad Hoc Committee on Constitutional Changes

  1. Met 4 times – big issue is the overall lack of participation from faculty. Currently, the model is a committee of the whole. All 260 faculty members are senators and it is difficult to get a quorum and thus conduct business. The committee has agreed to switch Senate over to a representative model. Each school would have between 6 and 9 senator depending on how we populate the committees. That way you have a smaller but representative portion of faculty that can help conduct business with some kind of follow through to ensure people are voting etc. New proposal for Senate – Chairperson and Vice Chair would vote. Past-Chair (maybe), Secretary,  and Parliamentarian may be nonvoting. Library gets an additional senator, Athletics gets one, part-time is also going to get one. Hoping for an odd number of senators for voting purposes. Glenhill, a staff representative, and SGA president would not have voting privileges. 
  2. All of this is still being discussed.
  3. All faculty not elected could still participate and have floor privileges, just wouldn’t vote.
  4. Plan moving forward – starting next semester, figuring out committees. 10 committees seems like a lot especially at 8 people per committee. Looking at the standing charges, and restructuring that. Could utilize taskforces and subcommittees to get work done. 
  5. Meeting February 2nd  with administration to figure out the process. Big complaint of Senate is that people feel they do committee work but that there is no follow through. Big goal is hammering out the details.
  6. Q&A
    • Q: As a committee chair, it’s difficult to get people to actually come to the committee meetings.
      • A: University Senate takes attendance and then ensures follow through of who is working on things. At minimum you know who is attending.
    • Q: Are votes recorded and available? If we are going to vote for representatives, we would want to know that who we are voting for is representing our thoughts.
      • A: We typically don’t share this information, but we have the ability to do so.
      • A: We will need a majority vote on the change (electronic is allowed).
    • Q: Currently, committees are populated with early career faculty. Other Universities have new faculty focus more on outreach and other service activities and once promoted the focus shifts to committees. There’s a feeling here that to be successful you have to be voted onto committees.
      • A: Outreach could be a bigger focus of newer faculty, or ad hoc committees that are coming from Glenhill rather than college committees.   

VII. New Business

  1. Commonwealth caucus – statement came up regarding NTT faculty that has research as part of their requirement. We seem to be the oddball campus. Should we be comparing ourselves to other commonwealth campuses? Do you want information on how we do actually compare? 
    1. Research scholarship – we view it broadly. We require faculty to be active scholars in their field, not necessarily publishers. This goes back very far in Behrend’s history. Every college has its own set of expectations. Behrend sets itself apart from other campuses in a lot of ways. This is one of the things that it does – it’s important. People should be advancing in their field in whatever way that is. Betterment of faculty and students are more successful as a result. Probably a deeper discussion would be needed. 
      1. Reach out to library faculty senators – they have a number of NTT librarians that have a research component (like Jane Ingold). 
    2. Part of this came within the conversation of workload.
      1. Opportunity to do research as a NTT faculty is a huge benefit, but with appropriate compensation/sabbatical/etc.   
  2. Any guidance to students that FAFSA isn’t out yet? 
    1. All of us faculty could benefit from knowing more about the work study cycle. 
    2. The FAFSA is supposed to come out this month – ‘expected’
    3. Federal Government is changing the FAFSA overall
    4. Best idea is to ask Andrea Konkol and maybe have her come in to discuss
    5. Work studies discuss with Ken Miller 

VIII. Adjournment

  1. Approver #1: Elisa Beshero-Bondar
  2. Approver #2: Mike Rutter