Behrend Faculty Council Meeting Minutes

Monday, January 30, 2023
4:30 p.m. via Zoom

  1. Call to Order – Lisa Jo Elliott, Faculty Senate Chair
  2. Approval of minutes from December’s Faculty Council Meeting
    1. Clarification to add to minutes: Alicyn's position is ending. She is not stepping down.
    2. Alicyn Rhoades, Lynda Hajec
  3. Update from Senators – pressing initiatives at UP
    1. Matt Swinarski: There is an open position to serve on the faculty advisory committee. There are three positions; they meet with the President and the Provost seven times a year. Any faculty is able to serve in that position; this year the position can be filled by a UP person or a Commonwealth faculty member
    2. Articulation agreements: items that are scheduled to expire, they will be dropped automatically.
    3. Curricular affairs is drafting a review of general education outcomes assessment; they will have a report soon. The committee discussed program proposals that request changes in delivery locations (extend to additional campuses or discontinue at one but not all)
    4. Education committee is working on transfer credits; Presentation on AI tools; developing syllabus policies for faculty on how to handle AI (ChatGPT)
    5. Educational equity: There was a presentation on accountability as a land grant institution. The question is how we can recognize the original ownership of the land by indigenous populations.
    6. Faculty affairs:
      1. The committee is working on forensic report AC17 to add non-tenure line faculty for sabbaticals.
      2. The committee added a statement to accommodation letter about getting the individual safety evacuated (liability issue). The concern is that faculty might be responsible for the safety evacuation of any student needing special accommodation
      3. We have a rough draft of A2 Review & Recommendations for Change to Administrative Guidelines for AC23 Promotion & Tenure Procedures & Regulations in discussion and shared with IRC &EECE for discussion.
    7. Intra-University relations: Faculty Assessment for Global Engagement. Reporting and using data from Activity Insights has been discussed. Some faculty appears to be against this idea. Granting Graduate Faculty Status has been discussed. There have been changes GCAC101; the committee is open to receive suggestions and further recommendation.
    8. Tracy Ann Halmi: The Admissions, Records, Scheduling, and Student Aid (ARSSA) committee established the India Working Group to attract more students from India (get them to CWC). The name of Arpan Yagnik was recommended for this group.
    9. A faculty member points out that it is very complicated to apply for graduate faculty status. There are problems with the application and the procedure. Being granted graduate status appears to be very restrictive and extremely competitive.
      1. Matt Swinarski shares that the application should go through a faculty member’s program/discipline and department; then it should go to the graduate faculty senate.
      2. Alicyn Rhoades: Faculty need to work their way up through a University Park college to be appointed to the graduate school to be on Ph.D.-level committees.
      3. A faculty member shares more information on how unfair the procedure is. Faculty at UP is in a position of advantage and unfair privilege.
      4. Matt Swinarski will inform the Intra-University relations committee of these problems.
  4. Updates from committee chairs
    1. Action items in reports
  5. Constitutional changes (FYS committee, Rules and Committee/Organization and Operations committee, Shared Lab)
    1. Committees and Rules and Committee for Behrend
      1. Committees produce reports; then reports goes nowhere, and nothing happens. We need a committee to make the changes that other standing committees recommend. Lisa Jo Elliott’s goal is to put this idea to a vote in March or April.
      2. Matthew Swinarski: Are you recommending this committee would be in charge of bylaws?
      3. Lisa Jo Elliott: they will review the charges, make new charges for the following year and then this committee can suggest that the faculty senate votes on a change proposed similar to what we did for the first-year seminar.
      4. Matthew Swinarski: The traditional committees on rules and governance only deal on how the Senate operates; how elections are done; how people are appointed to committees.
      5. Lisa Jo Elliott suggests that perhaps we could change the name for this committee. Faculty can make changes to the Canvas page for this committee.
      6. Lisa Jo Elliott moves on to the First-year seminar committee. She shows the Canvas page for this committee. Behrend adopted the related report in December. For both committees, Lisa Jo Elliott added information that faculty can edit.
      7. Pam Silver asks: Are you implementing these committees before you are changing the Constitution?
      8. Matthew Swinarski: Permanent committees are not the best ideas. Task forces would work better. A committee is routine. If we need to implement a resolution, we need a task force. For the first-year seminar, a task force is more useful.
      9. Lisa Jo Elliott sees first-year seminar questions as an ongoing challenge.
      10. Chancellor Ford invites Lisa Jo Elliott to consider ad-hoc committees; they can help because they would not require changes in the Constitution and problems with constitutional amendments. What Lisa Jo Elliott is proposing has merit, but the goals can be achieved with an ad-hoc committee too.
    2. Shared lab amendment. Lisa Jo Elliott would like to see a statement that the faculty recommends that shared labs are open to all faculty members.
      1. Faculty member: We have labs that can be deadly if people don’t know what you are doing.
      2. Faculty member: Labs need to have clear rules and safety regulations for use; a training could be required. In that case faculty needs to know. Definitions need to be posted.
      3. Faculty member: One of the research committee charges for this year was: Review shared policies. We can wait for this committee to complete the work before we create the statement. Lisa Jo Elliott agrees that we can wait.
      4. Faculty member: What is our goal exactly? We need to make sure that safety protocols are followed
      5. Lisa Jo Elliott: Some shared labs – labs that are designated as shared – may not be available for some faculty members. We need to address the problem that someone cannot conduct research because of lack of access.
    3. Faculty member: A day in May for faculty to come and meet up could help with the first-year seminar goals. A workshop day can help faculty share ideas and have more people and less time.
    4. Matthew Swinarski: Is the committee on rules and implementation committee?
      1. Lisa Jo Elliott likes the idea of an implementation committee. The descriptions of the committees will have to be redeveloped.
      2. Faculty member: A committee during the summer would help faculty
      3. Faculty member: Objection: Faculty are paid for 9 months.
      4. Lisa will table the creation of the two committees for now. We will work more on them before presenting them at Senate meetings
  6. Follow up on Draft Kings and Sports.
    1. No updates for now.
  7. Parliamentarian needed for Spring 2023
    1. Matt Ciszek is on sabbatical; faculty should let Lisa Jo Elliott know if they have recommendations on who can serve as a parliamentarian.
  8. Changing the name of NTT to Teaching Research and Clinical Faculty (TRCF).
    1. During a meeting in December, it was discussed by someone from UP that the NTT title be changed to Teaching Research and Clinical Faculty (TRCF).
      1. Pam Silver: It’s not clear what the change would be.
      2. Faculty member: I was at the meeting; the question does not matter much. It matters much more how we treat NTT. The name is not going to make a significant difference.
      3. Another faculty member agrees.
  9. New Business and comments for the good of the order.
    1. There was a voting issue with the votes for vice-chair and secretary of faculty council. At least three people that we know of voted more than once. We need to find a better way to conduct our votes. The Qualtrics form has caused problems. We can solve the problem by requiring faculty members to log in before they vote. The system should not allow us to vote twice. We  don’t know why the software did not work.
      1. Tracy Halmi: This problem is not new. Votes should be confidential
      2. Lisa Jo Elliott creates a poll to choose a solution with the options to put up a new vote or to use the votes as they stand.
      3. Council members vote and decide that Behrend should put up a new vote. This means that the deadline should be extended to a week from 1/31/2023. Faculty members will have to be reminded not to vote twice. Feedback that one has voted would help anticipate/eliminate problems.
    2. A faculty member asks about qualifications for PT committees.
    3. Pam Silver: To serve in a college level PT committee for tenure track faculty, a faculty member has to be tenured.
  10. Adjournment
    1. Charlotte de Vries, Edward Evans