Faculty Senate Minutes | September 16, 2020

Introductions of Senate members, Briefing on summer meetings and activity by the Executive Committee (Title IX changes, Fringe benefits, Ombudsperson); Bylaws revision

Faculty Senate Meeting

September 16, 2020 | 4:00 PM

Note: To facilitate open discussion, the identity of most Senators making comments or questions is not recorded. Such comments as recorded here are generally not verbatim. The identity of comments from Senate Officers and Senate Ad Hoc and Standing Committee Chairs are given, as is the identity of persons commenting in their official administrative capacity (e.g. EVP, Provost, or College Dean.) 

Meeting called to order

• Motion made to approve minutes from April meeting- unanimous approval

Introductions made by members of the Senate

Summer Discussions

• For the first time in a long time, the Senate met all summer. Decisions/discussions include the following:
  • President of Senate will sit on gift acceptance committee
  • Discussions on Title IX
    • will stay with preponderance of evidence
    • Changes made to Faculty responsibility on mandatory reporting- faculty are no longer mandatory reporters, however all senior academic staff, chairs and unit heads are still mandatory reporters
    • former Title IX Director left, offer was made to someone and the person accepted (will begin October 1st)
    • Points raised
      • recommended maybe Senate can have her come by one meeting just to introduce him/herself -Provost Kersh
      • syllabus language still had mandatory reporting
      • The Senate does not have authority on this topic. The Senate was just consulted in order to receive feedback. -Matthew Phillips

Benefits

• The Fringe Benefits Committee met with HR over the summer to discuss benefits. Chris Coughlin as Chair gave a report. This year university will be moving to a prescription formulary plan. There will be email, snail mail and a dashboard so people can find information.
• For dental coverage, university  decided to retain the current plan where 70%  of the cost is covered by the employee and 30% is covered by Wake instead of moving to plan where 100% is covered by the  employee
• Senate convinced HR to do spread of information campaign, so everyone knows what the changes are; no changes until Jan. 3

Ombuds Position

• Due to COVID, the progress towards having an external Ombuds person has stalled. However, the internal position is still on track but there is a need for nominations. If you know anyone you think would be a good candidate please reach out to them. This is an important role. The President of the Senate asks that by NEXT Friday (9.25.2020) to please send names.
• Questions Raised
  • Is there a description available online?- Carrie Johnston
    (response) A description should be sent to members of the Senate so that they can past the news along to others. -Provost Kersh

Bylaws Revisions

• Purpose of the revisions are increased institutional discipline and encouraging work to be assigned to specific roles instead of just individuals.
• When deciding what to revise, the committee looked at terms of officers, resource committee, increasing shared governance and faculty involvement, finding what practices were  inconsistent with the bylaws.* researched best practices with peer institutions.
• Next Steps/ Color Coding
  • The Senate will vote on the revisions during the next meeting in October.
  • The text that is in red are the new changes the committee is recommending. The text that is blue is the rationale for suggestions, or changes. The orange text represents the  changes that were voted in favor of by the Senate in 2017
    • Procedure may not have been properly followed in 2017- S. Boyd
    • Procedure in 2017 was followed correctly- full faculty was notified (full faculty has to be notified, they do not vote)- Phillips
    • Question was posted by President Caron why are we putting text in orange if a procedural mistake was not made.
      • (response) The orange text was added because the changes were never updated on website
    • Motion made by S. Boyd to restore part of report taking out- the Preamble… would like to restore *motion seconded by W. Silver
      • Boyd further clarifies why it is important to restore the preamble- -it’s not clear what our areas of responsibility are and it’s important to keep that in front of us
        • *clarifying question asked* Are you (Boyd) asking for the preamble to be added to part of bylaws, not just added to the report?
        • (response) “Yes” – S. Boyd
      • Nervousness was expressed about drawing a paragraph from another institution (AAUP) for our Senate. That is why preamble was not added before. -M. Phillips
      • Reasoning provided by M. Phillips as to why the Senate did not include the preamble before reflects secretary’s own (A. Mitra) recollection.
      • Perhaps the first paragraph should be the second paragraph instead. Also, where are these quotations coming from?? They need references and sources.
        • (response)hesitant to put footnotes -S. Boyd
      • How well AAUP is representing faculty is a question that came up
        • (response) When you say AAUP doesn’t protect teaching professionals could you send a link for that? -S. Boyd
        • They do not support the idea of contingent faculty (non tenure track)
      • Cleaning up the website and an outside meeting to further explain the relationship between some of these groups AAUP, etc. will make it easier for new colleagues to better understand these conversations. -M. Phillips
    • Discussion over whether to withdraw the motion or table the motion takes place
    • Motion by Stephen Boyd to add the preamble was withdrawn after first wishing to table.

Meeting Adjourned