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Faculty Senate

September 5, 2018

8^th floor Mary and John Gray Library

 

Attending:

 Arts and Sciences: Brian Williams, Jennifer Fowler, Tom Sowers, Sanaz Alasti, Garrick Harden, Stacey Knight, Gretchen Johnson, Pat Heinzelman, Jing Zhang, Sujing Wang, Gwinyai Muzorewa, JP Nelson, Suying Wei, Robert Vallin, Ted Mahavier, Joseph Kruger, Martha Rinker, Cheng-Hsien Lin Business: James Slaydon, Kaushik Ghosh, Karyn Neuhauser, Tim McCoy, Vivek Natarajan Education: Kaye Shelton, Donna Azodi, Janice Kimmons, Johnny O’Connor, Israel Msengi, Kim McGough Engineering: John Gossage, Xuejun Fan Fine Arts and Communication: Jacob Clark, Nicki Michalski, Paul Hemenway, Sherry Freyermuth, Cherie Acosta Library: Michael Saar, Scott Crawford College Readiness: Melissa Riley Lamar State College Port Arthur: Mavis Triebel

Absent:

Arts and Sciences: Kami Makki, Lisa Donnely, Cengiz Sen, Valentin Andreev, Maryam Vasefi, Ashwini Kucknoor Business: Seokyon Hwang Education: Connie Ruiz, Dorothy Sisk, Wendy Greenridge Engineering: Berna Tokgoz, Gleb Tcheslavski, James Curry, Mien Jao Fine Arts and Communication: Nandu Radhakirshnan, Ashley Dockins

 

Call to Order: 3:33p.m.

 

Guest Speaker: Dr. Evans, University President

• President Evans began by reminding us that we are here to serve students. Combined with that mission there is an obligation to fuel the growth of information and knowledge, to share our research with our students.
• The university is still feeling the financial impact from Hurricane Harvey. Many people are just now getting back into their homes.
  • While our headcount is up, the semester credit hours are down to the number of people who have to work extra hours to recover from the storm.
  • Changes have been made to our budget in order to allow us to keep going despite this fact.
  • International student enrollment is down due to the policies of President Trump.
  • Our undergraduate enrollment is up for first time freshmen.
    • Our focus on first generation students has helped.
    • The primary area of growth is from Central Texas, the Valley, and North Houston.
    • We are facing increasing competition from Louisiana and Oklahoma in recruiting because Texas is one of the few states that is increasing the number of high school graduates.
  • Our dorms are at about the same level of occupancy as last year.
• A number of renovations and construction projects are ongoing or wrapping up.
  • Classrooms in Galloway have been renovated.
  • The Lucas tutoring center has been renovated.
  • The dorms will need to be enclosed. We are facing long-term continuing cost from them due to the cheap construction.
  • Stage one of the library is complete.
  • The science and technology building should open in November.
  • We have been working on infrastructure: sewage, water, power.
• We have a number of new Deans: arts and sciences, library, engineering. Dr. Palanki has moved to dean of research so there is an interim dean in engineering.
• We also have a new athletic director.
• In our retention efforts, we need to learn to help our students recalibrate. If somebody had planned to be an engineer but can’t do math, or wanted to be a nurse but can’t pass anatomy, we need to help them find where they fit and can be successful.
• The Biennium is upon us. This means many meetings in Austin.
  • We need to remind the legislators why LU is important and deserves support.
  • We need to convince them to hold us harmless due to Harvey; they shouldn’t penalize our funding because we have lost students and hours from the storm.
  • We are hoping to get approval for tuition bonds to fund development focusing on digital learning, the midstream part of the oil and gas industry and our involvement in the dredging of the Neches and Sabine Rivers.

 

Approval of the Minutes:

• There was a suggestion made to link the Faculty Senate webpage to the new minutes’ location.
• The spelling of Jacob Clark’s name needed to be corrected.
• Tom Sowers made a motion to approve the minutes with the correction; Vivek Natarajan seconded the motion. The motion carried.

 

President’s Report:

• We have not had a raise for four out of the last nine years; this puts us below the rate of inflation.
  • James plans to discuss this with other faculty senate presidents at the fall TSUS presidents’ gathering.
  • Market advance has been integrated into the handbook. President Evans wants people to get outside offers to support their case for salary increase. There is a potential downside that people will just take those offers and leave.
  • James hopes to speak to the regents at their next meeting and address this issue. Many of our faculty are underpaid even by tens of thousands of dollars.

 

Old Business:

• We have not received feedback from the administration about our F2.08 recommendations.
  • We do know that Marquart would like to have the language match that in the P&T documents.
  • Evans has said our process is broken and he has given up trying to fix it.
  • We are going to simply move ahead with the revisions because this has been going on for too long.

 

New Business:

• Please sign up on the sheets at the front to indicate which committee you would like to participate in. The committees usually meet the second week of the month, Wednesday at 3:30.
• Our shirts are in. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, they are at the front for you to pick up.

 

Committee Reports:

Academic Issues:

• The vaping issue from last year has been referred to the LUPD.
• We need to finish the SACS report but can do that via email.
• Vivek Natarajan suggested that this committee look at the implementation of the Concourse program.
• The vita section of Concourse is not yet working.

 

Faculty Issues:

• The call for the Piper Award nominations is coming out.
• Garrick Harden would like for the committee to look into the BlackBoard data-mining that will be done in our classes. They may be selling this information and there may be FERPA issues. They are refusing to answer what is being collected and how it will be used.
  • Some universities have custom BlackBoard agreements. Perhaps this is a route we can look into.
• Everyone should be aware that your LU email is not private. The email is owned by the university. If there is anything private, you should consider using a private email and only using LU email for student and administration items.

 

Budget and Compensation:

• The administration got a 3% raise while faculty received 2% (based on information from the regents’ board report). Some individuals actually received 10%. This is something to look into.
• The committee is still working on the travel funding issue.

 

 Distinguished Faculty Lecture:

• Exxon has decided to no longer sponsor this event.
• We are unsure if President Evans will fund it.
• The winner has not been notified due to the uncertainty of the situation, although the event is scheduled for next month.
• There was an attempt to “lock up” the senate’s money to pay for this, but that did not work out.

 

Research and Development:

• The committee is working with Beverly Kemp to set up competition space for use for development leave applications.

 

F2.08:

• This was already discussed under old business.

 

Emerging Issues:

• The committee will be looking at retention.
  • There is rumor of a “hit list” of assistant professors and instructors who are targeted for removal because the fail rates for their classes are too high. There is an investigation under way to determine the truth of this situation.
• Workload is another concern for this committee.
  • The focus may be changed from course load to instructional load.
  • Class size is an important element. The department chair decides how large a class should be. One of the issues is that class size may or may not be reflected in the faculty member’s work load.

 

Call for Adjournment:

Tom Sowers made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Paul Hemenway seconded the motion, and it carried. The meeting was adjourned at 4:28 p.m.

 

Submitted by:

Nicki Michalski