Arts and Sciences Senate
Meeting
November 15, 2010

I.  Approval of Tentative Agenda:  approved.

II.  Approval of minutes from October 2010:  approved.

III.  A&S Senate President’s Report (E. Mendieta)

• Written report submitted

IV.  PTC Report (G. Matthews)

• Thanked the committee for service for the past year.
• Acted on 23 cases from 9/09-07/10:

8 were cases for promotion from Asst. Prof. to Assoc. Prof. with tenure
3 were cases for tenure only for individuals hired as Assoc. or Full Prof. without tenure
7 were cases for promotion from Assoc. Prof. to Full Prof.
5 were new appointments with tenure.

• The PTC Chair generated a fully editable document for candidates to assemble the biographical file and is on the Senate website.
• The PTC continued to move toward electronic submission of PTC files.  Became a reality starting with fall 2010 submissions.
• The PTC Chair is working with the Dean’s Office to arrange training for dept. chairs and assistants to the chair in preparing electronic dossiers for promotion and tenure.

There was a motion to accept PTC Report:  accepted unanimously.

V.  New Electronic Student Course Evaluations (G. Glynn)

M. Graham (President, USO):  The Undergraduate Student Organization passed a resolution at their last meeting supporting on-line course evaluations.  They felt that there should be incentive to fill out the evaluations.  It is important that the students be able to see the feedback.  System should be available to faculty and students. 

Current Process:

• Currently lose between 20-30% of responses due to students filling in the wrong ID#, wrong course identifier, etc. 
• Huge administrative overhead at the University in processing, distributing, sorting and typing the comments.
• Long delay before faculty have access to results.  Inflexible process.
• Questions have not been changed in 20 years.  Need to redesign questions.
• Comments more important then questions.
• 2/3 of the faculty are interested in on-line evaluations.
• Pilot study this semester with 250 sections of courses.
• Implementation process:  technology tool, question revision, and policies and procedures that would have to be put in place.  Looking at what other Universities are using.

Changing the process: 

• Data Collection will be browser based.  No special software.  Students will see a list of all the courses they are enrolled in for that semester linking them to each evaluation.  Using externally hosted service.  We are using a company that specializes in doing this for big universities across the country.  The real richness in this is not in the front surveys but in the data analysis they provide and the background they have generated to look at cross comparisons that allow you to do some benchmarking.  This will be integrated with Peoplesoft

Question set:

• There will be a Core set of questions, department questions and faculty questions.  One of the real advantages of putting evaluations online is that the department can have an additional set of questions and individual faculty with individual courses can add questions.  Pool of valid and reliable questions.  There is a lot of flexibility.  As soon as evaluations are closed, technologically we can make these surveys available.  Data can be available after final grades.
• Comparisons with depts. And across depts.  Potential national benchmarking.  Faculty comparison groups by rank, discipline and class size and type.
• Privacy issues are being looked at. 
• Faculty will make the ultimate decision on whether or not course evaluations go online.

There was a question about what happens to sexist, racist or slanderous remarks. G. Glynn:  the response rate goes down and the quality of the comments go up on line rather then on paper form.
Are written comments public domain?  Will take this issue up with the committee and see what recommendations come up.
Withholding a grade would be a good incentive.
What will the follow up program be?  The software has the capability of providing a link in the report next to your score on each question and that link will probably go to a page on the University Senate website with strategies on how to improve that score (there will also be resources you can look up).
Are there a set of diagnostic statistics for various classes?   Yes.
Privacy Policies in place with Company.  They cannot share our information with anyone.
What about ID for logging in?  The student will log in with their net ID here and then be forwarded to the company site.

VI.  CAS Dean’s Report (N. Squires)

• The 09/10 targets were calculated by evaluating dept. expenses over the previous 3 years, expenses built up and available fund distributed to departments.  Forty-nine individual units have each received their own budget target.
• Lost 20% of state support.  Thirty-seven Mil. needed to make up for lost tax support.
• CAS initial allocation and deficit (CBM = Campus Budget Module). 

CBM allocation to CAS for 2010-2011:  66, 950, 000
CBM Estimated expenses:  71,340,000
Initial deficit:  4,390,000

• Measures to cover deficit include Temp savings, faculty-staff attrition, SIB and OTPS cuts, revenue (from summer/winter/MA/tuition on research grants), departmental contributions, revenue rollover, CAS IDC contribution and Provost contribution. 
• Other measures include ramping up advancement efforts, freeze on all non-RF travel, defer payout of commitments, reduce chairs and directors stipends and eliminate CAS-funded stipends for Grad and Undergrad directors
• Strategic Planning for CAS:  departmental strategic plans, brochure on department plans, brochure on centers and institutes.  President presents to SBF on December 15th.

VII.  Old business:  no old business.

VIII.  New business:  no new business.

Meeting adjourned at 5:00 p.m.

Submitted by:

Laurie Theobalt
Secretary