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Oct 19, 2005 Minutes

Approved Faculty Senate Minutes 10/19/05

Members present:

Chair Stone, Senators Brennan, Conroy, Davidson, Hazlewood, Hindson, Homeyer, James, McCall, McKinney, Montondon, Rao, Shah, Sorensen, Warms, Winek

Guests:

Mark Fonstad, Geography, Clayton Medford, Univ Star, George Restivo, student

Meeting called to order at 4:00.

 

Updates:

  1. Posting of draft PPS 7.19: The web posting of the draft PPS 7.19, describing research type positions at Texas State was premature.  Its posting was a clerical error and has now been removed from the PPS list.
  2. Texas Council of Faculty Senates:  The Senate Chair informed the Senate that the Texas Council of Faculty Senates is taking some action regarding the situation at Texas A&M-Kingsville where President Rumaldo Juarez recently suspended their Faculty Senate as an official body of the university pending the election of a newly constituted advisory body.  Former Senators are ineligible to serve on the new advisory body.
  3. Development Leave Applications:  Development leave applications will be considered at the next two Senate meetings.
  4. PAAG Agenda Items:  Senators are encouraged to start thinking of issues for the PAAG agenda since the next to meetings will be devoted primarily to consideration of development leave applications.
  5. Faculty Dining Room:  A question was raised regarding what happened to the proposed renovation of the Faculty Dining Room.  The Chair will ask around.

 

Faculty Handbook: The Senate considered the new draft of the Faculty Handbook.  All of the changes discussed at the last Senate meeting have been incorporated into the draft.  There are still some spacing and formatting problems, but this is an issue to be corrected when the final version is ready to be printed.  The sense of the Senate is that this issue should be made available in hard copy to members of the University.  A motion passed unanimously to forward the draft to the Provost with Senate endorsement and the recommendation that a printed copy be provided for all faculty.

 

Senate Web Page: The discussion continued with regard to whether the Senate web page should only be accessible with a university account, i.e., persons would have to log in to see the Senate web page.  Pros and cons of the issue were discussed revolving, primarily, around the accessibility of the evaluative comments of the last dean/chair evaluation.  The Chair will investigate whether a login process is actually feasible, and, if so, will come up some draft language about who will actually have access.  A remark was made at the end of the discussion regarding the long anticipated prospect of Instructional Technology helping out with the Senate�s web page:  �is it just a pipe dream?�

 

 

New Business:

  1. Scholarly/Creative Activity:  The issue of what kinds of activity count as scholarly/creative activity in a particular department was discussed.  The sense of the discussion was that this seems to be an issue that should be resolved at the department level and should be clearly reflected in the departmental tenure/promotion/evaluation documents.
  2. Departmental Governance:  With regard to the discussion of the item above, a question was raised with regard to departmental governance:  �What happens if a departmental faculty majority creates a departmental advisory committee that appears to have been created solely to circumvent the advisory authority of the departmental faculty and the departmental personnel committee?�  This is a touchy area in University governance with regard to where lines of autonomy are and should be drawn.  The Senator who raised the issue was encouraged to contact dean of the college of the mentioned department.
  3. Future of the Testing Center:  A question was raised with regard to who is going to be in charge of the University Testing Center.  The Chair will seek clarification.
  4. Travel Money for Graduate Students:  There has been an instance where graduate students in a particular department are denied travel money if the travel is to be out-of-state travel.  The Chair will seek clarification as to what the rules of travel for graduate students really are.
  5. University College:  Some alarm was raised with regard the possible reduction of the general education requirement at Texas State due to the recent legislative mandate that any undergraduate degree require no more than 120 hours credit by 2008.
  6. Censure:  The Senate rules were suspended and a motion passed by majority vote for the Texas State representatives to the Texas Council of Faculty Senate to support any measure to censure President Juarez at Texas A&M-Kingsville for his action to disband their Faculty Senate.
  7. Tenure/Promotion Data:  Where is the promised data of the last tenure/promotion cycle?  The Chair will remind the Provost that he had agreed to provide the data.

 

Minutes:

Minutes for 9/12/05 were approved with minor changes.