11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Room 120 Rouss/Robertson
- Call to Order (11:07am)
Minutes postponed while Ellen Bassett, Chair of the Faculty Senate, established a quorum.
- Report from Provost’s Office (Liz Magill)
Chair Ellen Bassett recognized Provost Liz Magill.
COVID19
The Provost said COVID19 is a priority. The office will make decisions in the best interest of faculty, staff, and students. The situation is evolving. mailto:uvaem@virginia.edu is being monitored by multiple staff to ensure that we are responsive to incoming and emerging questions and concerns.
The International Studies Office (ISO) has comprehensive data about students studying oversees, whether UVA programs or UVA sponsored programs, coordinating closely with partners as conditions evolve. Parties with information or who need information should contact her Chief of Staff Mike Citro or the ISO office.
A Deans meeting was called to provide a briefing with ISO on student health and evolving understanding of COVID19 to create a coordinated response. One area that is unclear is deferrals for already admitted students, especially in level three countries such as China. UVA is planning for situations where students can’t go home in addition to the coordinated policy on int’l student affairs and students oversees.
Magill said she will be sending out an email, re: faculty trips abroad and other programs. Emails already sent by her office talked about the risk of stigmatization for students, visiting scholars, and maintaining contact with UVA folks in China and Hong Kong about communicating with the community there. Magill said the spread of the virus is a very dynamic situation and to please share thoughts or advice on the subject with her office.
Promotion and Tenure
Magill met with Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Maïté Brandt-Pearce and the P&T committee. The committee talked about cases, received training. It was Magill’s pleasure to read files to evaluate tenure.
Board of Visitors
The BOV meets next week. The Academic & Student Life is the featured committee of this board meeting. Phil Bourne, Dean of Data Science, and Ian Solomon, Dean of Batten, will give informal analysis of schools to get the Board up to date on their challenges, developments, helping the Board to dig in a bit deeper into happenings of schools. Pamela Cipriano, Dean of Nursing, will speak with the Advancement (Development) Committee to talk about the impact the biggest gift the Nursing school has ever received, and how they see it changing the school looking forward. At lunch on Friday, the Board and several students who are applicants for various scholarships and fellowships will be present. Kevin Palfrey will talk about his research into autism.
Chris Holstege, Director of the Student Health & Wellness Center and program will speak, likely about coronavirus, but also about efforts to complete the building program. Dr. Craig Kent, UVA executive vice president for the health system will share early impressions.
COACHE Survey
The COACHE survey has been sent out. Brandt-Pearce encouraged the deans to send it out as a reminder that the survey is cross-institutional and longitudinal. Magill asked the senate to encourage their colleagues fill it in.
Kudos to Faculty and Staff
Elgin Cleckley, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Education, and Health won the inaugural faculty award for Campus Compact which recognizes work for improving community life. Andrus Ashoo, director of the Office of Citizen Scholar Development, directs the citizen scholar program. Through his work UVA students has moved 10 UVA applications thru the Fulbright program, best ranking in UVA’s history and small measure of his virtue.
- Approval of the Minutes
The Chair determined the presence of a quorum and moved the approval of minutes from last meeting. Rob Patterson seconded.
Discussion: Rob Patterson made syntax, grammar, and other editing corrections and handed his notes to Rick Willis. The Chair acknowledged the changes would be made.
Senator Peter Norton spoke concerning the content of the minutes. After some discussion it was pointed out that Norton was discussing the content of the minutes which was reported correctly, and it was the subject of the content he disagreed with, e.g., the role of ExCo acting on behalf of the Faculty Senate in lieu of a vote of the full Senate.
Norton agree that minutes should record the proceedings accurately. He said it is worth recognizing that we proceed on majority vote where bylaws are silent.
Vote: Passed with one abstention.
- Overview on Inclusive Excellence: Rachel Spraker, Compliance Director for Equity and Affirmative Action
The Chair recognized Rachel Spraker, Compliance Director for Equity and Affirmative Action, to speak about the Inclusive Excellence Program and provide background info to fill in gaps in information coming through the community, and how faculty can involve others as this rolls out in different schools.
President Ryan and VP Kevin McDonald sent an email out about opportunity / invitation for community to re-envision itself earlier this year. There are four goals for the vision for the university: how we relate to one another, how we show up, who is here, and who is thriving, as we focus on participatory rather than extractive engagement with our communities.
The guiding vision is the 2030 Strategic Plan for the university. www.vpdiversity.virginia.edu has links for many resources can be found here.
The Division is not the controller of the process, but the convener who act as catalyst to push out the process to individual schools and administrators, UVA Wise, UVA Health, and the alumni association are participating.
Goal: by November 2020 each area that is participating will have a plan and have the steps outlined and ready for review.
COACHE is a great thing for informing this, great questions for faculty around effective mentoring and related topics in order to ensure needs of all in community are being met. Data from 2018 demonstrating different experiences of community — questions are about value as an individual, respect of race here at UVA; we know that not all people experience our climate in the same way; this provides concise evidence, about education and scholarship, infrastructure and investment, community & partnership.
100 people pan-university will be doing a kick-off to this work. Schools have teams formed. The Division is really a coordinator and convener offering toolkits, reflection guides on data, and resources for helping.
Q&A
Senator Brian Pusser asked where UVA is in the approach to inclusion diversity moving forward compared to UVA peer institutions?
Spraker said VCU is a real leader in this space, and Virginia Tech has been doing it for a while. UVA peer-school Cornell has been doing this for a while. UVA has seen change in race/ethnicity becoming closer to mirror the dynamics of state and labor market.
Senator Kay Neeley said the project speaks to larger issue of practicality of getting involved. Once committed to tangible things every day it is much easier to implement but is still hard to measure. Is it worth it for faculty to make an investment?
Spraker said the Division is hopeful but not naïve and will talk about where UVA is as an institution: holding status quo, getting better, moving toward fully inclusive.
Senator Rob Patterson asked about the role of financial aid in adding diversity and if there are ways to leverage happenings at UVA Wise and maintain exchanges of students between the universities. Spraker said UVA has done a bit over last few years to clearly build the relationship and have Wise understand that they are a part of us and the Provost’s office has been great, trying to do a lot more to make resources here available to Wise. She added UVA needs to ensure connectivity and increased exchange; to serve the state UVA needs to understand this relationship.
- Committee Reports and New Business
he Chair recognized Senator Brian Pusser to discuss the Resolution on Liaison Librarians and Course Sites:
The Faculty Senate Finance committee recommends Senate endorsement of the University Library’s effort to establish an optional process, compliant with FERPA regulations and University protocols, that would enable liaison librarians, with individual faculty permission, to be added to a UVA Collab or Canvas course site. Liaison librarians are those assigned to specific departments or disciplines to support teaching and research. The purpose of this effort is to endeavor to reduce course costs for students by alerting faculty when assigned materials are on reserve in the library or available in low-cost or no-cost forms. The liaison librarians would also provide ongoing support for coursework, offering faculty direct access to a librarian with knowledge of library collections and the wide range of potentially helpful library services relevant to the course. Representatives from the Library and the Bookstore will also meet to share information about their respective actions and initiatives and to lay the groundwork for future collaborations and partnerships based on shared interest in making course materials affordable for students.
The resolution was tabled in the previous Senate session and is now up for a vote. The motion to adopt the resolution passed.
Senator Kevin Lehman said he wanted the opt out provision for the resolution but there are limitations which made it impractical.
Ad Hoc Committee on Access
The Chair said the Ad Hoc committee has three names so far and still needs two more senators. Chair-Elect Joel Hockensmith said the committee has the charge to start to consider elements of open access.
Academic Affairs
The Chair recognized Aaron Bloomfield, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. Bloomfield said the committee doesn't have any proposals to bring to the attention of the Senate. The committee approved the Statistics Department discontinuing of a minor, approved two other proposals; and three minors in SE Asian were approved fully by Senate as of yesterday.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Chair recognized Senator Natasha Heller, chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. The committee had two meetings since last convening of full senate. In one, Rachel Spraker spoke about inclusive excellence framework and dialogue on incorporating faculty opinions and ideas; and met this week with Dean Greg Roberts (Admissions) on diversity and inclusion as a part of their process.
Finance
The Chair recognized Senator Brian Pusser, chair of the Finance committee. Pusser said the committee had not met since the last faculty meeting but will next set a budget model meeting.
Faculty Recruitment, Retention, Retirement & Welfare
The Chair recognized Alan Beckenstein, chair of the Faculty Recruitment, Retention, Retirement & Welfare Committee. He said the committee is working on initiatives around childcare, particularly implementation at the Medical School, and is looking at the possibility of using this as a model for broader basis of university.
There are issues with navigating HR reforms and it’s an active long-term process. The committee will meet with Kelly Stuck, vice president and chief human resources office, to understand faculty welfare.
Policy Committee
The Chair recognized Peter Norton, chair of the Policy Committee. He said the committee reviewed a lot of policy since last time, many of them quite minor. He said he surveyed constituents and the concern from his constituents is that non-tenure general faculty on teaching track de facto perform more than 100% of activities. They are all research active in ways that benefit UVA and Schools’ reputations. The committee recommend revisions to Provost office but were turned down.
There was discussion as to what counted administratively as a full-time load at UVA. Norton said specific to teaching track, in Engineering it is a 3/3 load, for nontenured is 2/2 load. The Chair said it may be helpful to have the General Faculty Counsel attend a meeting.
COACHE survey completion
COACHE survey updates from 2016. The Provost is in the process of gathering findings and things that happened after the 2106 survey will be placed onto a Website. Once it’s live the link will go out.
Conditional Gifts
Norton said he wants follow up on conditional gifts to UVA. The Chair said a conversation with advancement would be find. She’ll circle back to President Ryan when he returns from travel as the resolution has been communicated.
The Chair mentioned Faculty Senate nominations are coming soon. The process needs to get done because we need to know Senators by April to solicit committee preferences and select chairs for next academic year.
-Chair adjourns 12:25 p.m.