President Kathleen Cohen announced that the Faculty/Staff Fund Drive is continuing. She reported that faculty had contributed $26,400 so far. She urged faculty and staff to consider contributing.

Dale Clifford reminded everyone that Niall Ferguson will speak tonight (November 2) at 7:30 in the Stein Auditorium in the College of Business. His topic: "The Cash Nexus War and the International Bond Market, c. 1700 - 2000."

The Committee met with President Hopkins on October 16. There are graphs and statistics posted on the Faculty Association Website. Interpretations of the graphs are included in this month's packet under Information Item #2. The Committee solicits input from faculty about what they want the Committee to consider. A meeting will be scheduled.

The Committee met November 9 at 12:15 in FAMA. They discussed the use of the Faculty Commons and nominations from faculty for an honorary degree. .

Absent: Sent her report. The Committee met October 25. Members discussed the reviewer rating form to be used in the review of Summer Teaching Grant proposals and set the schedule for the review. The Committee's goal will be to complete their review of Summer Teaching Grant proposals by December 1 in order to provide their recommendations to Dr. Serwatka by December 8.

The Committee discussed the UNF Faculty Community Series forum that it sponsored on Friday, October 25. Though the program was lightly attended, everyone participated in a wide ranging discussion of the many significant pressures that faculty work under and how these pressures often function to isolate faculty from one another.

The next UNF Faculty Community Series forum will be December 1 and the topic of discussion will be, "What is learning? You think you know, but do you really?"

The next meeting is set for November 29 at 9:00 a.m.

Absent: Cynthia Nyquist-Battie reported on the findings from the UNF Faculty Survey on Research that was conducted in the Spring of 2000. The full results are available on the Faculty Association Website. There was a 22% response rate. Survey results will be used to develop recommendations and possible agenda items for the Faculty Association. Major findings: less than 50% were satisfied with their research productivity. Only 19% were moderately or extremely satisfied with the research environment. There were lots of comments and suggestions returned with the surveys. Key findings were available on handouts at the meeting.

The Committee will be concentrating on scholarship grant applications at its next meeting. There were new forms this year. She urged applicants to please use these new forms to apply.

Dr. Hopkins was absent and sent her regrets.

Dr. Chris Rasche will take the time period to report on the October 20 meeting of the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates. (ACFS).

The Senate is composed of key officers (usually presidents, vice presidents, or past presidents) of the faculty senate bodies of the ten SUS universities in Florida. It meets three times a year to exchange information and ideas, identify mutual issues of concern, and convey faculty concerns directly to the BOR.

This year, ACFS members are very concerned about legislative action to kill the Board of Regents (and many other higher educational structures), and replace them with a single "seamless" K-20 state system. This means the state universities would be teaching grades 13, 14, 15 and 16 and sometimes 17 and 18. The system would consist of a State Board of Education made up of seven part-time volunteers appointed by the Governor. There would also be local Boards of Regents made up of nine part-time local regents at each university. ACFS explored the issues and agreed that the SUS institutions and the quality of higher education are best served by having an intermediary regulatory body over the university system, separate from K-12 and the community college system.

The Legislature also created a provision for an Education Governance Transition Task Force to develop a plan for how the new educational system would actually work. This Task Force is meeting around the state on a monthly basis. The ACFS decided at its meeting in October that one or more members should attend each of the Task Force meetings and speak out. Dr. Rasche spoke at the meeting that was on the UNF campus. Only a half dozen other people spoke. In addition, the group decided to send a letter on behalf of the State University System's 11,500 faculty, independent of the union, saying, in effect, that faculty are very concerned about the loss of academic values, about what this is going to do to higher education in Florida, and about the erosion of quality. The letter will be sent to the governor, members of the Task Force, legislators and the media. It will say that these are really important issues and please pay attention to them. It is possible that the state will end up with 12, or more, mediocre universities, not 10 really good, specialized, focused universities.

Information is that the Task Force and the Governor have not gotten much feedback from the public. Without feedback, their assumption is that this is acceptable. Dr. Rasche urges emails and letters be sent to the Governor, Task Force members, legislators and UNF backers in the community. Copies of the MyFlorida.com Web page were handed out at the meeting. It includes information about the Task Force and addresses, including email addresses.

The letter that the ACFS will be sending will be posted on the Governmental Affairs Web site. Interested persons can see language and pull out what they want to say in emails and letters to Governor Bush and others. Ms. Owen reported on an increase in the general revenue for UNF adding money for big projects, including the addition to the library.

Kathleen Cohen read the following questions:

Rama Murthi Rao to Dr. Kline:

Question #1. I requested on September 21, a computer/projector equipped classroom for a course I am assigned for next term. I received the following reply from the Dean's Office in the COAS.

"We have only two DAVIS rooms at night and these were requested about 4 times over for TR nights. I have a list, with several courses in front of Dr. Rao's, of who would go next. But I don't expect any of the night rooms to come open."

Will more projector equipped rooms be provided?

Question #2. Different computer-equipped classrooms on the campus are controlled now by different units. Several phone calls are needed to check the availability of any of these rooms, if at all we know who to call.

Can the control be centralized for more efficient use of the resources?

Kathleen Cohen for Dr. Kline:

The Vice President for Academic Affairs has made several decisions that will impact faculty, especially new hires and those who will be going up for tenure and promotion. Some of these decisions were made with limited or no faculty input. Faculty, historically, have been actively involved in issues when it has to do with promotion, tenure, and the recruitment of new faculty.

Point (1): The addition to the hiring offer letter of the statement that contracts and grants are expected to be actively pursued.

Question: What is meant by actively pursued? Does that mean application for one, two, three – how many – grants?

Question: Applying for a grant may be as time consuming as publishing an article. Is a grant application, successful or unsuccessful, equivalent to a published article?

Question: For the individual's academic success (promotion, tenure, and raises) should he/she pursue grants or publish articles?

Question: Are grants from some funding agencies more prestigious, therefore better, than others, or are we looking at equal dollars (e.g., NSF grant the same as a grant from JCCI)?

Question: Will the weight of a grant be relative to a published paper?

Question: What happens to the individual who pursues one grant and is turned down, but has several articles published at P/T time? Has the individual fulfilled the actively pursued grants part of the administration's expectations when she/he reaches the promotion or tenure point?

Point (2): Time in rank.

Question: Why is it assumed by the Vice President for Academic Affairs that when a candidate comes up for promotion to Full Professor at the required minimum time in rank as listed in the Faculty Handbook that the faculty member is actually coming up for promotion early and is likely to be turned down because the faculty member came up too early?

Question: Is there a time frame that is not too early? Should that not be a faculty decision?

Point (3): Outside letters of reference.

Question: Outside letters of references are used by some departments for P & T evaluation purposes. Are the departments that do not require outside references placing their candidates in jeopardy?

Question: If outside letters are used then who selects the reviewer?

Question: Given that we have reviewers and that our faculty evaluations are relative to their peers at UNF, how can an outside reviewer assess the quality of research based upon UNF criteria and their peers?

Question: Along with the idea of reviewing research to see if it "hangs together" as a cohesive whole, do we then send all the research that the candidates' peers have done? Recall they are evaluated relative to their UNF peers.

Question: What is a research program that "hangs together"? Who determines what "hangs together" means?

Point (4) Confidentiality of Reviews.

Question: A candidate who agrees to outside reviews may not have the right to exclude those reviews from the dossier. A candidate should always have the right to see and respond to reviews (as he/she does for letters from inside the University). How can the administration deny this right of a candidate to see material in his/her own dossier and respond to it?

Questions from the floor:

Bruce Fortado to General Counsel Karen Stone.

When are grievance materials open to public access and when are they not open?

When are EEOC charge materials open to public access and when are they not open?

When are litigation materials open to public access and when are they not open?

Is there any relation between these categories? For example, would grievance materials or EEOC charge materials not be open to the public if litigation on the matter was in progress?

Judy Solano to Faculty Affairs Committee members:

Asked members to meet with her after the Faculty Association meeting.

James Crooks to Chris Rasche:

Could the UNF Advisory councils be enlisted to send letters to legislators regarding the Education Task Force?

Chris Rasche: Good idea and Janet Owen is a good resource. She can help with language. Janet Owen said she could give a fast presentation if it would help.

Item #1 - FA 00-32: Submitted by the Academic Programs Committee.

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
1-APC 2 (course title change)

Dr. Russac moved the item. There was no discussion. The item passed.

Item #2 - FA 00-33: Submitted by the Academic Programs Committee.

College of Health
13 APC 1 (new courses), 11 APC2 (course title changes), 1 APC 3 (program change)

Dr. Russac moved the item. There was no discussion. The item passed.

Item #3 - FA 00-34: Submitted by the Academic Standards Committee

Academic Probation Policy

Dr. Sen moved the item. The corrected copy was discussed. There is no difference in the text, just the format. There was no discussion on the issue. The item passed.

The meeting adjourned at 12:57 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

_________________________________

Barbara L. Tuck, Secretary