Behrend Faculty Council Meeting Minutes

Wednesday October 11, 2023
3:30–4:30 p.m.
114 Reed or via Zoom

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

Approval of the minutes from previous Faculty Council Meeting

  1. Motion: Adam Simpson

  2. Second: Mike Rutyer

II. Special Presentation – Sarah Whitney discussion of PaSSS

A. PaSSS, Pathway to Success

Summer Start, was originally on many campuses, now just two or so including Behrend. Designed to provide a wraparound educational experience for selected students. Qualified students are reached out to by admissions – many different criteria that can qualify students. The program includes two courses that are taken in the summer. There is a scholarship that funds some books/expenses, mentoring, and employment opportunities (some have been at the library). It has been identified that many PaSSS students have great summer outcomes, but then there’s a loss of engagement in the fall as students start fading away. Fatima Kelly, retention specialist, is looking to Faculty Council and Senate to see if we’d be interested in putting together a task force focusing on student engagement. Friday at the Senate meeting there will be further discussions by Kelly, and she’ll try to clear up common misconceptions about the program.

B. Ad Hoc Committee

We can create an ad hoc committee pulling members from two existing committees (Undergraduate Studies and Student Life) while also accepting volunteers. Jane Ingold may be willing to serve on the task force as she has seen the disengagement as well.

III. Updates from the Leadership Team:

A. Comments by the Chancellor, Ralph Ford

  • No announcements

  • Matt S. – Discussions of the budget came up in Senate, concerns coming from University related to the delay of the budget being passed at state level, what is the impact on Behrend?

  • Ralph F. – The state has not yet approved the non-preferred budget. It’s still expected to be passed, but sometimes the state is slow. This is why we see so many ‘advocate’ emails currently. Have not heard that we should be changing our spending or anything like that.

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

Sarah Whitney representing

  • Stephen Monroe was on campus Tuesday, it was a great event. He will be providing information about bringing a speaker who will talk about fraudulent credentials relating to AI.

  • Advising taskforce is dividing into 4 subgroups.

  • Working on an India recruiting strategy.

  • As far as retention goes, a New Student Orientation (NSO) feedback committee is looking at effectiveness at NSO and a student success committee is looking at NSO efforts and First Year Seminar (FYS).

  • Implementation of changes to FYS in fall 2024.

  • Working with the Office of Academic Affairs on stronger collaboration with western Penn State campuses (particularly Beaver) – looking to increase transfer flow from Beaver to Behrend.

  • Matt S: Where is the drop off as far as retention goes? If later on, then NSO and FYS might not be the ideal areas to focus on.

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

  • Trying to raise awareness for an upcoming event – Thursday 10/26 Magee Women’s Research Institute (MWRI) fall faculty retreat here at Behrend. Having an event to drum up new collaborations between MWRI and Behrend. Many areas of focus including data analytics, robotics, marketing, and more; opportunities are broad enough that faculty at large can be engaged. Watch for emails from Margie Sargent; there hasn’t been a resounding response yet. School directors are supportive, asking that faculty rearrange schedules as much as reasonably possible. Registration link will be emailed out, it will have all the bios, information on faculty that will be visiting, etc. Find more information about the retreat here.

IV. Committee Charges Discussion

  1. Academic Computing, Elisa Beshero-Bondar

    1. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Update made via email, please see appendix at the end of the minutes.

  2. Athletics, Adam Simpson

    1. No updates.

  3. Undergraduate Curricular Affairs, Glenn Kumhera

    1. No new classes have been added to CIM yet.

    2. Currently checking with the four schools to see if they are following the same procedure for CIM. There seems to be a shortage of training, working on figuring out who needs it and where to get it.

  4. Faculty Affairs, Lynne Beaty

    1. Charges have been delegated. Each has a lead with a small group. Plan to check back in at the end of the semester.

  5. Graduate Affairs, Mike Rutter

    1. There has been a name change, the previously named “Applied Clinical Psychology” degree is now just “Clinical Psychology”

    2. At the end of September, Alicyn Rhodes and Mark Owens had a discussion with those involved with graduate studies about the opportunity to explore Ph.D. programs.

  6. Research Committee, Babajide Osatuyi

    1. Charges have been divided among members, the primary focus right now is on sabbatical evaluations.

  7. Scholarships and Awards, Aimee Pogson

    1. No update.

  8. Student Life, Gabe Kramer

    1. Emailed – nothing to report at this time.

  9. Undergraduate Studies, Charlotte de Vries

    1. Subcommitee is going through survey results and will have a report in a few days. Preliminary results show that some really like Canvas and others don’t. Maybe we could put a place to submit questions for Canvas either on the Teams or Canvas page.

    2. Few mentions on pandemic within the survey, curious to see what all they said.

  10. Institutional, Educational, and Diversity, Kyeiwaa Asare-Yeboah

    1. Two of the four charges are standing charges and have been divided up, the other two are being tackled as a group. Work is ongoing.

  11. Ad Hoc Constitutional Reform Commitee, Jason Bennett

    1. First meeting scheduled for next Wednesday, 10/18.

V. Faculty Senate Updates

  1. More information will likely come from the University Faculty Senate meeting next Tuesday, 10/17.

  2. Advisory report coming up for vote about full-time teaching and clinical faculty sabbatical leave.

  3. Two new policies: Visitor Rights and Responsibilities, and then one on Trespassing

    1. The University is seeing an issue with people coming to classrooms, underage students attending, and unwanted guests. These are not Behrend-specific issues.

VI. Old Business

  1. N/A

VII. New Business

  1. Next Senate meeting, Friday 1:30 p.m., Reed 114 and Zoom

  2. Following the visit of Dr. Monroe, we need to consider if there are events/actions that we want to take as a Senate:

    1. First is the possibility of having some sort of workshops or brainstorming sessions for faculty to learn something about open AI from folks who know how to use it. To see what they have been doing in the classroom. The existing task force we have is more on the curriculum side. Possibly even a presentation by Elisa or Kyle to share what they have done. Is this something that sounds like a good idea?

      1. Yes – Dr. Monroe mentioned using it to benefit us but didn’t explain how to do so.

    2. Lena is in conversation with the Advising Task Force about a presentation to the Senate and/or Faculty forum to collect feedback

      1. We are likely a long time away from this point.

    3. Clarification question: Are committee chairs presenting something on Friday?

      1. Yes, just a brief summary of the committee update.

VIII. Adjournment

  1. Motion: Jason Bennet

  2. Second: Kyeiwaa Asare-Yeboah

APPENDIX:

Email from Academic Computing chair, Elisa Beshero-Bondar

The Academic Computing Committee has prepared a draft of a survey about our classroom computing needs across our schools. BITS has been monitoring our students' use of computer lab classrooms and finding they are open and not being used to capacity. In response, we've drafted a survey in hopes of gaining a clearer picture of how we work with computers in our diverse range of classroom contexts across our schools. We hope to help inform BITS and Behrend's budget decisions, and also get us all thinking about what we need for our classrooms.