NORTHEASTERN STATE UNIVERSITY

Minutes of Faculty Council Meeting
Friday, October 10, 2008

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by President Craig Clifford in SC147.  There was ITV access at Muskogee, Broken Arrow and Tahlequah.

Council Members in attendance: Sarah Brick Archer (Library), Ernst Bekkering (Business & Technology), Ron Cambiano (Education), Denise Deason-Toyne (Business & Technology), John Diamantopoulos (Science & Health Professions), Jennifer Edwards (Liberal Arts), Chris Garland (Liberal Arts), Rhea Johnston (Education), Brian Kaney (Science & Health Professions), Alan McKee (Optometry), Amy Aldridge Sanford (Liberal Arts), Dan Savage (Liberal Arts), Dan Sisk (Science & Health Professions), Rick Williams (Education)

Council Officers in attendance:  Craig Clifford (President), Linda West (Secretary/Treasurer).

Guests:  Dragos Albinescu (Science & Health Professions), Kenny Paris (Education), Chuck Ziehr (Liberal Arts), Jym Brittain (CTL), Terri Baker (Liberal Arts), Jeff Lowenthal (Business & Technology), Isaac DiIanni (Business & Technology), Fritz Laux (Business & Technology), Grant Alexander (Business & Technology), Martha Albin (Human Resources), Kim Cherry (VP Administration), Joshua Bliss (Student), Deb Smith (Science & Health Professions), Mia Revels (Science & Health Professions), Dalton Bigbee (VP Academic Affairs), Martin Venneman (Science & Health Professions)
Guests - Muskogee: Joyce Van Nostrand (Science & Health Professions), Diana Mashburn (Science & Health Professions).

Invited Presentations

A. Committees and Standing Reports

    1. Minutes of  9/5/08 meeting

         Archer made a motion that the minutes be approved as submitted.  Deason-Toyne seconded and the motion passed.

    2.  Spending Report

          The only expenditures this fiscal year have been phone charges.

    1.  General Education Task Force - Update (Sanford)

                Focus groups are forming for most departments except Psychology and Military Science.  They form and start meeting by November 5th.

    2.  Evaluation of Online Courses - Two packages being examined (Clifford/Bekkering/Brittain)

           Two products were looked at over the summer - online course evaluation.com and evaluation kit.com  A third solution would be to use the online survey system that we have with a new add on product that provides security.  A test of one product has been arranged for spring semester.  There was a discussion of who would have access to results.  Access would be the same as now, except that paper would not have to change hands.  There was a proposal to use the demo package (evaluation kit.com) for the fall semester along with paper evaluations.  There would then be an evaluation of that experience before a recommendation is made for spring semester.  The motion was made by Deason-Toyne, seconded by Bekkering and passed.

    3.  Conflict of Interest Policy - Draft Update (Clifford/Deason-Toyne)

          Comments of various faculty members have been passed on to VP Cherry by Clifford.  Director Albin will take the comments and revise the draft policy.  Deason-Toyne has been appointed on behalf of Faculty Council to review the draft document.  The final draft will then be distributed to all faculty.

    4.  Office Hour Requirement - (Bigbee)

          VP Bigbee stated that the purpose of office hours is not to extend the work of faculty or keep them on campus, but to provide an opportunity for students to find faculty for questions.  Eight hours seems appropriate for a full time faculty member.  He has been at schools that had more office hours.  He does not have a problem with Department chairs having discretion over how the hours are met.  He feels that hours could be held online in proportion to the number of hours taught online.  Office hours should be kept as much as possible so that students can know when they can find faculty.  Number of days could be reduced by agreement to respond to a comparable reduction in load for research.  Office hours should be proportional to class time.  Since some of these concepts differ from the Faculty Handbook, there will be a recommendation from Faculty Council to change the handbook.

    5.  Social Security Numbers on forms - (Cherry)

          VP Cherry stated that they have been working through the current software to eliminate the need to use SSNs as much as possible.  The student system still only uses SSN for identification and is not slated for change soon.  Faculty and staff are on a different system and we should be able to change over to new IDs with an employee number early next year.  If you see a form with a problem, please call VP Cherry or Albin and see if it is a form they have missed revising.

    6.  Study Days - (Bigbee)

         Study days originally came about because of a state mandated holiday in 2007.  NSU added two days to the beginning of the school year, and later in the year put in two study days.  After that, they were built into each subsequent schedule.  Giese has been charged to do an assessment of grades before and after the addition of study days.  Study days came after repeated requests from student government and have had positive student feedback.  Faculty will be interested in the data and findings.  Some rules of study days were discussed.

    7.  Recycling on Campus - (Cherry)

          VP Cherry along with Revels has identified people from all over campus to serve on a campus sustainability committee.  They have some project deadlines and are looking at how it will fit in next year's budget.

    8.  TIAA-CREF vs. Private 403B - (Cherry/Albin)

         Since this is insurance option period, it was noted that the increase in insurance came as a surprise to everyone at NSU.  There is a protest letter being drafted sponsored by Faculty Councils/Senates from RUSO and other campuses.  The RUSO board is forming a committee that will start looking at bids for new insurance products.  They are adding any other schools to the process who are not under another board.  They currently have an RFP for a consultant who will help the committee look at the problem.  The earliest implementation of any new plan would be January 2010.  NSU will have proportional representation on the committee.

          There are IRS rule changes for employers and 403B plans.  The rules make the plans less flexible and give the University more responsibility for oversight.  There is a very short time frame to put new procedures into place.  VP Cherry outlined the current time line: obtain information sharing agreements with companies; RUSO schools have a consultant working on a plan document that all will share; any company can bid; we have to be in compliance by January 1, 2009; there is an NSU committee with Yeutter and Cundiff; there will be more information in December about plans available and sign up will occur in January before the January payroll cutoff date.

    9.  Selection of Department Chairs - (Clifford/Bigbee)

         As time was running short, this topic will be investigated further and put on a future agenda.

    1.   State Regents Annual Faculty Assembly - October 25 (Clifford)

          Clifford sent a survey from RUSO to delegates and has received their feedback.  He will take the responses to the annual faculty advisement committee meeting.

    2.  University Assembly - Held Tuesday of this week (Clifford)

           There were comments about the meeting.  Questions were answered by all of the presenters at the meeting.  VP Bigbee wanted to get information out to those who could not attend.  Archer volunteered to share the minutes she had compiled for the Library faculty.

            A question for VP Bigbee from the meeting involved enrollment caps for online classes.  The proposal in the meeting was to add graduate assistants for faculty members whose online classes reach certain sizes.  The proposal was to add a graduate assistant when a class reached 50, 1 more at 75 and 1 for each additional 25 students in a class.

            The purpose of this proposal is to increase enrollment.  Several comments were shared by faculty in attendance.  These caps could vary by discipline and types of assignments in the classes.  Could the cap be lowered to 40?  VP Bigbee related that there is one class this semester that would meet the criteria for adding one graduate assistant.  If there are no graduate assistants available the classes would not be increased in size.  Adjunct faculty could be added instead of graduate assistants and they could qualify with only a bachelor's degree.  There was a discussion of quality versus quantity.  How big is too big to give a quality education?  Does this proposal really generate more students, or do they just shift from face to face to online?  What about programs without graduate programs to supply graduate assistants?  Gen ed courses are likely to be the large classes and VP Bigbee proposed that seniors with 90 hours or more, who had taken the class, could serve as paid assistants for these large online courses. 

            Lowenthal stated that, now, online classes fill up in one day and he feels we will see a shift from face to face to online for existing students.  Other questions were raised. Does this change how classes are taught to a more proctored approach versus the more successful interactive models?  If there are currently multiple sections of online courses, will these be collapsed into one course?  There were a number of concerns over finding graduate assistants that are not already employed with other classes.  It will be up to the Departments to find students to staff these courses.  If there are no assistants, then the course cap would not be raised.

          There was overall consensus that this proposal should be tested to see how it works in practice.  One proposal was to test two classes per college.  The College of Education has already formed a research group to review the effectiveness of these ideas for the College of Ed.  VP Bigbee restated that we don't know in advance what the results will be, but that we need ideas to address the problems at NSU.  It was stated that things are tight this year and we have to balance the desire for quality with ideas to increase enrollment.  We are in the business to offer quality, so we don't want a negative impact on quality.

    1.  Degree plans for transfer students - (R. Williams)

There is a problem with currency of the online lists of articulated courses which makes it hard to make degree plans for transfer students.  VP Bigbee will check on this issue.

    2.  Transit survey/issue

            There was a question raised about the use of University vehicles.  We will bring this issue up at a later date.

    3.  Four day work week

            Is a four day work week being considered for Tahlequah?  It is currently being used in Broken Arrow.  VP Bigbee stated that if Faculty Council makes a proposal, it will be discussed.  There is a task force looking at a common schedule for all campuses.

    4.  Faculty Development

            There was a question about whether it is a new policy or a cost cutting measure to pay 1/2 conference costs for each participant when a faculty member is presenting at a conference with a colleague.

    5.  Task forces for Faculty Council

            Clifford asked permission from the Council to form task forces for Study Days, Online Enrollment Cap, and Office Hours.  The council gave assent.

E.  Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 4:30 p.m.

Next meeting November 7.

Submitted by Linda West, Secretary-Treasurer
10/14/08