Auburn University
Steering Committee
Minutes
Thursday, October 23, 2014
206 Samford Hall

Present: Patricia Duffy (Chair), Larry Teeter (Chair-Elect), Larry Crowley (Immediate-Past Chair), Gisela Buschle-Diller (Secretary),  Sara Wolf, Keven Yost, Mike Baginski, Constance Relihan, Art Chappelka, Camille Barkley, Susan Smith, Tim Boosinger, Emmett Winn

Absent: Laura Plexico (Secretary-Elect), Emily Myers
The minutes of the Steering Committee meeting from October 2, 2014, were approved without modification.

The agenda for the General Faculty meeting on October 28 was considered as set.

The agenda for the Senate meeting on November 4 has been drafted.  

The Senate will vote on the Pending Action Items introduced at the September Senate meeting – now Action Items. Xing Fang, the Chair of the Academic Standards committee, will lead the discussion and call for a vote on the proposals regarding the Exploratory Student Admission and the Conditional Admission. Adding a Library representative to the UCC will be presented by Sara Wolf.

New Pending Action Items will include the proposed revision of the Conflict of Interest Policy (COI), presented by Art Chappelka, Chair of the Faculty Research Committee, and the addition of a Library representative to the Graduate Council. George Crandell will most likely be the presenter.

As Information Item, Camille Barkley and Susan Smith will go over policies and trademark rules on printing and use of Auburn logos on posters, presentations and commercial products. Both presenters gave a preview of their slides and showed some confiscated counterfeit.

The Faculty Handbook committee had proposed some rewording/changes to Section 3.7.1, Performance Evaluation, and the Steering Committee briefly discussed the suggested modifications. Any changes will be brought to the Senate in February or March the earliest, since guidelines should not be changed during while the T&P process for this year’s candidates is handled.

Patricia Duffy mentioned that more proposals from Academic Standards are in the pipeline, one concerning the current Repeat of Courses policy and another concerning the CAP policy. These will be placed on a future agenda (possibly January?) as Pending Items.

Reference was made to the Executive Committee meeting held October 9 where Yasser Gowayed (Chair of the Administrator Evaluation committee) reported on the status of administrator evaluations. Concern was expressed about consistent application of the evaluation process across all unit Deans and Department Heads and also about avoiding duplicate surveys as duplication decreases the response rate. 

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00.