Behrend Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, December 6, 2023
1:30–2:30 p.m.

I. Call to Order

  1. Approval of the minutes from previous Faculty Senate Meeting
    1. Motion: Elisa Beshero-Bondar
    2. Second: Vickie Kazmerski

II. Welcome and Comments from the Chair

  1. Two Faculty Senate meetings are scheduled for the spring:
    1. Tuesday 2/20/2024, 1:30–2:30 p.m., Reed 114 or Zoom
    2. Wednesday 4/17/2024, 4:00–5:00 p.m., Reed 114 or Zoom

III. Remarks from the Chancellor, Ralph Ford

  1. General salary increase – finally moving forward, the state has passed the nonpreferred appropriation. Good news in that it passed, unfortunately there was no increase for us which is disappointing. The 3% merit-based increase is still planned – based on annual reviews last year, retroactive to July 1st – 3% is not necessarily what you will receive. Lump sum payment will be in January paycheck. Hopefully next year, being an election year, we will have a better outcome.
  2. Q: when will we see the information on WorkLion about change in pay.
    A: We will look into this, unsure of the date at this point – before the end of January.
  3. Q: Is Penn State still trying to lobby the state? Is there a possibility that there could still be an increase?
    A: Unlikely at this point.
  4. Comment: Advocate.psu.edu can be used in an effort to push letters out to representatives, makes it very easy to send emails about things like this, grants, work study, etc.
  5. College budgets, the University has started sharing dashboards. Revenues, state appropriations, completed projects, and so on can be seen. We anticipate that within 2 years projections will be closer to normal.
  6. Q: Behrend is constantly told we are doing well, and the University takes more out of our budget. What do they do with it?
    A: Not sure what they do with it. Last year, Behrend paid $30 million for central services. Behrend has had flat tuition for a few years, we should be looking into small increases.
  7. Commencement is rapidly approaching, encourage colleagues to attend to represent majors.
  8. Q: University faculty Senate global engagement committee – push to have more international students. Being asked to come up with things to advocate for our campuses.
    A: Greg and Ralph were sent a report for reference, Behrend seems to hit all items. If you go back a year, certain campuses were not allowed to recruit internationally. We are well positioned and we want to be recruiting international students. We don’t want to miss an opportunity, Greg is working on this. There’s an India initiative, working with Harrisburg, anything we can sign up for, let us know.
    • Harrisburg faculty are weary of this because of the additional burden that might be put on faculty and school because if you bring in that many international students, what support services are there? Concerns coming from faculty at Harrisburg – administration might handle it, but just so you’re aware. Things that might not come directly from admin when you meet with Harrisburg.
    • Behrend is working to address this head-on.

IV. Updates from Behrend Committee Chairs

  1. Academic Computing, Elisa Beshero-Bondar
    1. Ran a survey – thanks to everyone that participated, 69 responses with pretty even distribution across schools. PDF in Canvas that summarizes the results. Began going over results in important sessions – meetings on future of computing at Penn State Behrend. Motivated to do this survey to help advise IT on how to make the most of our dwindling resources, how to improve access we have and make ourselves the most efficient. IT wanted us to extend the survey over the break.
    2. Committee assigned to review results and come up with action items that make sense for your school. IT is ready to custom design the lab situation for each school. Looking for laptops rather than desktops so you can close them and teach eye-to-eye. Computer lab computers that are updated regularly from IT but would live in a cart in some of the classroom and could come out as needed. Could we outfit a regular classroom to have lab access this way?
    3. PDF was attached to this mornings email about our meeting, also on Canvas. Leadership reports are also in the same areas.
  2. Athletics, Adam Simpson
    1. Trying to increase interaction between athletics and academics. Tricky to get faculty and students to attend sporting events. One idea, modeled after a program at Harrisburg, faculty athletic mentor program. Hoping to make a more sustained faculty presence. Give sports teams more resources for questions about grades. Would include a faculty with an interest in a sports team to serve as the mentor. This would involve going to occasional sporting event, banquet, maybe an away game. Brian sent out an email this afternoon sharing this information. He talked to several sports teams, the coaches, and put together a list of ten teams that have agreed to do something like this. If you look at that list and would like to get involved, send an email to Adam Simpson, Brian, or Chuck Brown.
    2. Looking to create some sort of deliverable like a set of instructions for academic advisors and how to deal with scheduling athletes. Think this could be especially important for NSO. Brian Streeter – rule is that students should not be avoiding certain classes for sake of practice. Trying to create a list of guidelines and things that we can tell students. Coaches put in a lot of time trying to circumvent these issues, like holding multiple practices. We don’t have a firm consistent set of guidelines, working to try and standardize this message.
  3. Undergraduate Curricular Affairs, Glenn Kumhera
    1. Only 4 proposals this semester, nothing new to report. With changeover to CIM, any kind of previous consultation like disciplinary consultation is getting lost. This has resulted in huge backlog of proposals that are waiting at Senate level for consultation to show up on the document. If you’re asked to consult please reply. If you add consultations after on CIM, it will NOT email those that you add.
    2. When you get an email asking you to consult, it says you don’t have to respond. There are different levels of consultation – some are discipline and others are you’ve been specifically asked to consult. In the previous system you have to say it’s fine or you left comments, and in the new system you don’t have to say anything at all.
  4. Faculty Affairs, Lynne Beaty
    1. Seven charges, met last Friday December 1st, making progress on all seven. Townhalls last couple weeks to talk about non tenure line faculty perspective on promotion and annual review process. Said they received a lot of good feedback on that, keep eye out for additional meetings.
  5. Graduate Affairs, Mike Rutter
    1. Concern of faculty to be recognized as graduate faculty. Requirements have not changed, but there have been procedural changes. Now two opportunities for appeals. If you’re interested in that, please reach out.
  6. Research Committee, Babajide Osatuyi
  7. Scholarships and Awards, Aimee Pogson
    1. Check your email for nomination information, make sure to nominate, incredibly important.
  8. Student Life, Gabe Kramer
    1. Exploring student input on quality of residence life (halls, food, safety, parking), exploring mechanisms for students sharing concerns. Still looking for volunteers for the PASSS committee (shared between Student Life and Undergraduate Studies). If interested reach out to Lena, Charlotte, or Gabe.
  9. Undergraduate Studies, Charlotte de Vries
    1. Survey from spring, saw patterns on misconduct, starfish, canvas. Developing recommendations next semester on this. On Teams page, working on getting onto Canvas page.
  10. Institutional Equity and Diversity, Kyeiwaa Asare-Yeboah

V. Faculty Senate Updates

  1. Can go to link and get a recap of Senate videos.
  2. President Bendapudi noted a stop of decline in commonwealth enrollment.
  3. 9% increase in underrepresented students, and international enrollment is back to pre-Covid.
  4. Advocate.psu.edu is recommended for everyone to take a look at and send emails to representatives.
  5. Budget questions can go to Dean/Chancellor, before moving further up the chain.
  6. Provost Schwartz had a passionate discussion on student health and well-being. Make sure faculty are aware that this time can be very stressful on students with holidays and finals. Resources will be shared to Canvas.
  7. Presentation on Who Are Our Students, excellent insights, early on in the meeting.
  8. Academic analytics on the courses, instructors, etc. gathered through Canvas. What information is going to be gathered and how is going to be used – keep ears open. If there are concerns as this comes through, speak with your Senators. Collaboration between faculty and administration, goal is to make sure faculty are involved in process, know what’s being collected.
  9. Sabbatical leave for NTT was approved, without discussion.
  10. We piloted the Senate elections.
  11. Benefits tool on WorkLion to assist in enrolling in plans.
  12. Transferring between Cisco to Microsoft Teams for our phone system.
    1. Q: Eventually is university going to get rid of Zoom to go completely in Teams?
      A: Have not heard that.
  13. Matt will be putting up committee updates – every month get updates from each Senate committee about top 3 to 4 items. Posting to Canvas site instead of reporting out. Go to report and see what the committees are doing because then you’ll know ahead of time what is coming up. On Canvas under University Faculty Senate, top module – University Faculty Senate Update for each month.

VI. Updates from Ad Hoc Constitutional Reform Committee, Jason Bennett

  1. Committee overall goals:
    1. Restructure the Behrend Faculty Senate to increase its ability to conduct effective business and provide a unified voice on issues while achieving equal representation of the faculty.
    2. Create a better dialogue between Senate and Administration to improve the impact of committee work.
    3. Improve the communication between Behrend Senate and University Senate.
    4. Give Faculty an improved sense of purpose in shared governance, and make the work done on committees worth the investment of time for the faculty members.
  2. Models:
    1. Current Model: Committee of the Whole, all faculty members are Senators and have voting privileges. Need quorum of 10% to be there in order to vote
    2. Alternate Model: Representative Model – a certain number of Senators are elected to represent the faculty.
    3. Harrisburg, Abington, and Altoona all have a representative model, Berks uses committee of the whole.
  3. Recommendation:
    1. Converting Behrend to a Representative Model to improve its ability to conduct business effectively and provide a unified voice.
      1. Representative model is consistent with structure of several similar sized campuses.
  4. How to Structure:
    1. Approximate:
      1. Business – 52 full time
      2. Engineering – 61 full time
      3. Science – 64 full time
      4. HS&S – 64 full time
      5. Library/Athletics has some as well
      6. Each also has some part-time faculty
  5. Recommendation on Representation”:
    1. Senate officers include Senate Chairperson, Vice Chairperson/Chair-Elect, Past Chairperson, Secretary, Parliamentarian
    2. Each school has same number of Elected Senators (likely 6 – 9)
    3. Library will have 1 Senator
    4. Athletics will have 1 Senator
    5. Part-Time Faculty will have 1 Senator
      • Overall will have an odd number
  6. Nonvoting members with full floor (speaking) privileges
    1. Chancellor
    2. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
    3. Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies
    4. Staff Representative
    5. SGA President
    6. All faculty not elected as a Senator
  7. Next Semester
    1. Determine expectations of all Senators and accountability
    2. Determine Standing Committees and number of faculty for each
    3. Meet with administration (February 2nd)
    4. Finalize details of Senate logistics
    5. Hold discussion sessions for feedback
    6. Vote in time for University Senate Meeting in April
       
  8. Q&A
    1. Q: Do you envision ever having to change the number of Senate members in the event that a school grows above a certain number? Like something built into the constitution that we could make the change without having to amend.
      A: We have not discussed. The constitution will have information on revisions. Could be done to build something in, either based on a number like growing by a percentage, or time based like every 5 years a committee looks at representation.
    2. Q: Based on the way it’s written, we elect the Senate and then populate the committees. Any reason it can’t be like Council is where committee elects chair, chair is automatically elected into Senate?
      A: Concerned that this may create a system where ‘you’re not as important because you’re not a chair.’ Trying to make committees more for recurring standing charges, and if we have new charges, we’d have taskforces. Taskforces would produce simpler focused reports opposed to larger committee report.
    3. Q: Breakdown on type of faculty Senators?
      A: Have began to discuss, but no outcome just yet. We are going to consider NTL vs tenure, graduate vs. not, etc.
    4. Q: Concern is that we may lose some newer faculty voices. Under this method part of the process likely becomes name recognition.
      A: There would still will be school committees, but we will need to think about that.
      Maybe we expect a certain portion of Senators to have been employed for fewer than three years.
    5. Two standing faculty college committees are the promotion and tenure committees – they are in constitution but not part of faculty Senate.
    6. Q: Are we envisioning a session with all faculty?
      A: Yes once we have more details. Aiming for early March.
    7. Q: Curious if it would be possible to be both Senator locally at Behrend but also represent University faculty Senate. Are we worried about that person carrying too much weight. Double elected, double voting – and what if I don’t agree with how my Senator is voting?
      A: Have yet to discuss how University Senator’s role aligns with Behrend Senate. Good points to be taken back and discussed as far as how University Senator and Behrend Senator integrate.
    8. Q: Is there a model that does it like that, where a University Senator can also be elected as a campus Senator?
      A: Many differences across Universities. One said two University Senators will sit on college Senate, and another said that they can’t. There are differences based on the university.
    9. Q: Part of the reason we are having this discussion is because not enough people are showing up to the meetings. Also because we aren’t getting things accomplished. What if we have a topic that is very popular and we have 70% of the faculty present to discuss, could there be an option to allow the faculty more push?
      A: The idea is that you would discuss with the elected Senator. Everyone that is not elected does still has a voice, they just won’t vote themselves.
      1. There is a Forensic function – all faculty can come together in a special meeting with a vote to discuss an issue and that itself can be passed on to the Senate in an effort to sway their decision.
      2. There’s also a timing issue – trying to get faculty more information on committees and what they are doing. Goes to Council and there’s a two-week period where Senators can get input on what is being voted on. If we have a smaller group, we need to start thinking of putting Senate meetings in the middle of that two-week period. Still need to discuss all of this.

VII. Discussion of college-wide AI efforts, Qi Dunsworth

  1. Path forward for educators
    1. Staying the same
    2. Catching more AI violations
    3. Preparing students
    4. Leveraging AI’s power
  2. Burke 236 @ 12:05 – 1:05 with lunch (tentative)
    1. Tuesday, January 23 – Navigating AI: Opportunities and Challenges
    2. Thursday, February 8 – AI or Not, Improving Questioning Skills
    3. Tuesday, February 20 – AI for Educators
  3. Reserve online: cti.bd.psu.edu/events

VIII. Old Business

  1. N/A

IX. New Business

  1. N/A

X. Adjournment

  1. Motion: Jay Amicangelo
  2. Second: Charlotte De Vries