Minutes of the Auburn University Senate Meeting
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
238 Broun Hall
3:30 P.M.
A full transcript is available for this meeting.
Attendance Record
Senate Officers:
Michael Baginski, Chair; Nedret Billor, Chair-elect; Beverly Marshall, Secretary; Adrienne Wilson, Secretary-Elect; Daniel Svyantek, Immediate-Past Chair
Administration attending: Annette Kluck substituting for Taffye Clayton, VP & Assoc. Provost of Inclusion and Diversity; Kelli Shomaker, VP Business and Finance and CFO; Elizabeth Quansah substituting for Royrickers Cook, Associate Provost and VP for Outreach; Gregg Newschwander, Dean School of Nursing; Amy Wright substituting for Paul Patterson, Dean College of Agriculture; George Flowers, Dean of the Graduate School; Calvin Johnson, Dean College of Veterinary Medicine; Richard Hansen, Dean Harrison School of Pharmacy; Gretchen Van Valkenburg, VP Alumni Affairs
Administration absent, not sending substitute: None
Ex-Officio attending; Emmett Winn substituting for Bill Hardgrave, Provost; Nancy Noe, Interim Dean of Libraries; Elizabeth Devore, GSC President; Tammy Williams, Staff Council Chair; Robert Kulick, A&P Assembly Chair; Jung Won Hur, Steering; Jared Russell, Steering;
Ex-Officio Absent, not sending substitute: Dane Block, SGA President; Michael Tillson, Steering; Robert Norton, Steering
Senators, by Department:
Attending or Represented by Substitute
Lisa Miller, Accountancy; Roy Hartfield substituting for Anwar Ahmed, Aerospace Engineering; Valentina Hartarska, Ag Economics and Rural Sociology; Molly Gregg, ACES; Jacek Wower, Animal Sciences; Chad Faradori, Anatomy Physiology and Pharmacology; Rebecca O’Neal-Dagg, Architecture; Kathryn Floyd, Art; Anthony Moss, Biological Sciences; Yi Yang, Biosystems Engineering; Mark Tatum, Building Science; Bryan Bechingham, Chemical Engineering; Doug Goodwin, Chemistry; J. Bryan Anderson, Civil Engineering; Ed Youngblood, Communication and Journalism; Mary Sandage, Communication Disorders; Kai Chang, Computer Science and Software Engineering; Young A Lee, Consumer and Design Sciences; Charles Chen, Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences; Jamie Harrison, Curriculum & Teaching; Forest Smith, Drug Discovery and Development;Gilad Sorek, Economics; Ellen Reames, Educational Foundations, Leadership; Lloyd Riggs, Electrical & Computer Engineering; David Held, Entomology & Plant Pathology; Lee Colquit, Finance; Ash Bullard, Fisheries and Allied Aquaculture; Zachary Zuwiyya, Foreign Lang & Literatures; Wayde Morse, Forestry & Wildlife Science; Haibo Zou, Geology & Geography; Kimberly Garza, Health Outcomes and Research Policy; Monique Laney, History; Daniel Wells, Horticulture; Scott Ketring, Human Development and Family Studies; Carlton Lay, Industrial Design; Mark Schall, Industrial and Systems Engineering; Greg Schmidt, Library; LaKami Baker substituting for Alan Walker, Management; Dora Bock, Marketing; Dmitry Glotov, Mathematics and Statistics; Matthew Hoch, Music; David Crumbley, Nursing; David Mixson, Outreach; Peter Christopherson, Pathobiology; Spencer Durham, Pharmacy Practice; Stacey Hunt, Political Science; Ken Macklin, Poultry Science; Malti Tuttle, Special Ed. Rehabilitation Counseling/School Psych.; Shashank Rao, Systems and Technology; Kenneth McDonald, ROTC Air Force; Celina M Creech, Lieutenant Colonel, ROTC Army; Arianne Gaetano, Socio/Anthro/Social Work; Robin Jaffe, Theatre; Robert Cole, Veterinary Clinical Sciences.
Absent, not sending substitute: James E. Ryan, English; Andreas Kavazis, Kinesiology; Daniel Mackowski, Mechanical Engineering; Michael Greene, Nutrition, Dietetics, & Hospitality Mgmt.; Eric Marcus, Philosophy; Michael Fogle, Physics; Tracy Witte, Psychology; Captain Willie Billingslea, ROTC Navy;
Remarks and Announcements
Comments by University Senate Chair, Michael Baginski
Chair Michael Baginski called the meeting to order at 3:37 pm. He reminded the members of the senate or substitute for a senator to sign in in the back of the room and for substitutes to sign in by printing his/her name in the column by the senator. He also reminded the Senate about rules for speaking at Senate meetings.
Minutes
A quorum, requiring 45 senators, with 67 senators recorded as present was established. The Chair called for the approval of the October 9, 2018 minutes as revised. The minutes were approved by unanimous consent. He then called for approval of the November 13, 2018 minutes. The minutes were approved by unanimous consent.
Chair Baginski addressed the Senate regarding collegiality and decorum. He asked that regardless of our personal feelings about policy or individuals that everybody should treat others with respect.
Chair Baginski recognized the officers of the University Senate.
Pending Action Items:
Faculty Handbook Amendments
Ralph Kingston, chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee, presented two pending amendments to the faculty handbook. The first item relates to the elimination of the August and June Senate meetings. It was noted that often the June meeting fails to achieve a quorum. The August date would be used to provide orientation for new Senators.
The second item related to expanding the charge of the Retention Committee to include enrollment in their charge. Kelli Shomaker asked why the Vice President of Enrollment was not included in the committee composition. There was some discussion about the Director of Financial Aid or the Provost Office designee filling that purpose but this is not consistent with the actual reporting structure. Ralph Kingston indicated that he would explore this further and provide an updated amendment.
Information Items:
Use of Student Evaluations of Teaching
Todd Steury, past chair of the Teaching Effectiveness Committee (TEC), presented a preliminary report regarding the usefulness of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) for faculty evaluation of teaching. They concluded based on the research that students were not qualified to evaluate teaching effectiveness. The research shows that while there is correlation between SETs and student learning, low SETs can be associated with high levels of learning and high SETs with low levels of student learning.
Final TEC Report on SETs (pdf)
He went on to add that based on studies at least 80% of SET scores were driven by something else. One source of that variation could be bias. Numerous studies have found bias in SET scores could be caused by faculty rank, faculty gender, student gender, faculty expressiveness, student motivation, expected grade in the course, or level of the course.
The committee also looked at the use of global questions on SETs. Global questions are overall questions, such as, rating the instructor’s overall effectiveness. Generally, the committee found that global questions were subject to even more problems with bias than other studies. In addition, most of the experts agree that global questions are particularly inappropriate for evaluating instructors.
The committee concluded that SETs are not valid instruments for measuring effectiveness of individual teachers. The committee recommends that, as a rule, SETs should not be used in summative manner for evaluating teachers. SETs could be used in a formative manner. For example, do scores improve over time? If SETs scores are used, the committee has a number of recommendations. In general, the experts agree that a minimum of 6 to 8 courses total need to be used. Courses with fewer than 10 raters should be excluded. For summative employment decisions, there should be a minimum of a 70% response rate. For formative considerations then, much smaller, a 30% response rate is acceptable. Again, the TEC recommends that no global questions be used.
Most importantly the TEC recommends that SETs must be used with other metrics of teaching. There are a number of different metrics that could be generated with respect to teaching effectiveness. These could include peer review of course material, peer review of course instruction, review of metrics of teaching effort, were course policies followed or grades submitted on time, and similar kinds of things.
Spencer Durham, Senator from Pharmacy Practice, asked whether these questions should be used in professional or graduate programs. Todd Steury indicated that the TEC set out to make questions to be used rather generally but recognized there are limitations and there are certain situations in which these questions could not be used such as graduate classes that are small or very focused in nature.
Ed Youngblood, Senator from Communication and Journalism, asked about scoring with peer evaluations and whether the committee had looked at any measures that people have developed that they could recommend. Todd Steury indicated that in their report there was an appendix example of a peer review rubric. As a committee, they did not want to get too specific in the exact rubrics that would be used since they felt these should be developed by the individual units.
Ed Youngblood, Senator from Communication and Journalism, asked if the report was available on the website. Todd Steury replied that it would be submitted pretty soon.
Roy Hartield, Aerospace Engineering (not a Senator), asked if SETs should be used for promotion and tenure decisions. He indicated that there was an old reference in the faculty handbook that they should not be used but still SETs do factor into the decision. Todd Steury indicated that the TEC doesn’t have the power to make any changes to the Handbook, so these are just the recommendations of the committee.
Supporting Research
Jennifer Kerpelman, Interim Vice President of Research, provided an update on some of the work by the Senate Faculty Research Committee (FRC) and the Vice President of Research office. She reported that 95 proposals were submitted this fall for the Intramural Grant Program, up from 85 submissions the previous year. The Competitive Research Grant committee will meet in February with funding decisions finalized in March.
She also provided an update on work on Incentivizing Scholarship. The overview document and guiding document were reviewed and additional input was received from the Provost, FRC, Associate Deans of Research (ADRs), and leadership within the academic units. A current draft is under review with the Provost and then the academic units will be asked to develop incentivizing scholarship plans that are uniquely tailored to fit the goals of their faculty and are feasible to implement.
Dr. Kerpelman also reminded the Senate of the various research symposia through the academic year for faculty, students, and external partners. Teams comprised of ADRs, FRC members, and faculty and staff have been created to look at research infrastructure (equipment, computing and statistical support, etc.). The teams will provide reports before the end of the spring semester. She also described some of the initiatives for interdisciplinary research and discussed some of the impact of research cluster hires.
Dr. Kerpelman also spoke on their work to provide a facilitated solutions process through the creation of a Facilitated Solutions Team to assist with moderating the stakeholder discussion and identifying the final decision maker. This process would be available to address issues that interfere with research productivity and progress.
Michael Baginski, Senate Chair
Unfinished Business: none
New Business: none
Michael Baginski, Senate Chair
Declared adjournment of the meeting at 4:40 pm.