REPORTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON FACULTY SENATE COMMITTEES:  February 21, 2007

  
BUDGET AND FACILITIES COMMITTEE, Chair:  Richard Willson

First meeting took place on January 31, 2007. 

Present:  R. Willson (Chair), P. Copeland, W. Herendeen, G. Johnson, A. Kamrani, R. Keller, R. Lee, S. Quintero, K. Titz, A. Warner. 

Absent:  T. Karner.

Also not present was S. Kadipasaoglu, who will join the committee occasionally in addition to her duties on the Committee on Committees.

The Committee agreed to meet in the Faculty Senate office and to alternate meetings at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on Wednesdays to accommodate the various schedules of the committee members.  The Chair will prepare a draft schedule or the semester in the near future.

Allen Warner noted he had received no e-mail notice of this meeting, and the Chair is to check on whether Sukran Kadipasaoglu received notice as well.

An issue of interest of the committee this semester will be the Budget and Facilities aspects of the UH Department of Athletics.  A Subcommittee (Copeland, assisted by Johnson and Quintero) was formed to focus on the initial approach to the relevant issues.  Their first order of business is to meet (probably along with the BFC Chair) with Joseph Kotarba, President of the Senate, to review his desires in this area.  The BFC also agreed to look at prior reports on the relationships between athletics and the other functions of the university, and to interact with the Athletics Advisory Committee, which is likely to be an important source of information in this area.  Don Fox is the current chair of that committee.  The BFC’s mutual interest is last year's reporting from the Athletics Advisory Committee.

The other major issue of interest for this semester will be the long-awaited salary survey data.  This project is now coming to fruition after extensive efforts on the part of both Senate and the administration.  It is anticipated that the cleaned and audited data set will be available very soon.  Karl Titz will check with Libby Barlow on the status of this data set, and with any luck it will be the focus of the next meeting or even several meetings.

COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES, Chair:  Katy Greenwood

The committee will meet on Wednesday, February 28, at 9:00 a.m. in the Faculty Senate Conference Room.

EDUCATIONAL POLICIES & STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  David Mazella

Present: Brady, Bruxvoort, Duncan, Haun, Mazella, Mo, Trail, Wells, Chin, Bloom, Strickland

Absent: Gordon, Pirrong

        The Feb. 16 meeting began at 12 pm, when Prof. Strickland, as Director of the UH SACS Reaffirmation of Accreditation, answered questions about the SACS process to date.   After an overview of the process, Dr. Strickland noted that the initial SACS compliance documents would be due around 9/10/07, and that the QEP document would be due sometime between 12/11/07 and 3/7/08, in preparation for a spring ’08 visit between 1/22/08 and 4/18/08.  After describing the makeup of the QEP team, he described the process whereby some topics had been generated by that team, and then additional topics brought in by the FS retreat.  No particular data collection or study of the learning environment had taken place to inform the writing of proposals.  QEP Team members were also supposed to solicit additional feedback and proposals at this stage, but whether they had done so or not, Dr. Strickland did not know.  There had been no formal Call for Proposals last semester.  Nonetheless, about 40 ideas and about 5 or 6 fleshed out proposals were generated during this stage and gathered by Chris Stanich, Director of Planning & Project Development.  Since then, about 239 responses, mostly CLASS students, had appeared on the survey, with about 50 responses from faculty.  When asked about faculty awareness of the QEP, Dr. Strickland said that he was satisfied with the awareness and manner of input provided by the survey, since they don’t do brown bags or small group discussions.   Dr. Strickland said that faculty input and feedback were essential for the QEP.  The QEP committee planned to use the feedback from the survey to select a focus for the QEP, which would not be a single topic, but a coherent group of activities organized around the focus.  He did not know how much money was budgeted for the QEP, though the figure could range from half a million total to a million a year, depending on how large a cohort UH decided to target with its plan.  When asked about the precise relation between the Writing QEP and the Electronic Portfolio proposals going through the Undergraduate Council, Dr. Strickland said that these were related, but referred the EPSAC to Libby Barlow, Executive Director for Institutional Research, for further information.  Dr. Joel Bloom, Chair of the Undergraduate Council, asked whether there had been any attention to improving advising or communication with

students in the QEP survey, and Dr. Strickland indicated that there were such complaints in the student responses.  Dr. Bloom asked how the administration planned to administer the Portfolio system to UH students throughout their careers, when there had been such trouble with the old Writing Proficiency Exam.  Dr. Strickland referred him to Dr. Barlow for further details.  Dr. Wells asked whether there would be Faculty Senate representation, as well as EPSAC representation, during the implementation process, and Dr. Strickland said that someone from EPSAC would be part of the “hit team” designated to elaborate the 70-80 page proposal between now and the completion of the document.  The committee thanked Dr. Strickland for his time and resumed discussion of the remaining agenda items.

Dr. Mazella noted that two issues were emerging this year from the Provost and the Executive Committee: UH’s student population of undecided USD students and the assessment questions raised by the state proposal for exit testing of college students.  It would be particularly important to know what kinds of assessment were already happening on campus, and how these were being used.  Dr. Mazella indicated that EPSAC would form three sub-committees to deal with these issues, along with the unresolved bookstore issue from last semester.  Sub-committees for USD, Bookstore, and Assessment issues were formed with those who were present.  Dr. Mazella charged each committee to meet once in the next few weeks, and to gather enough information about its selected problem to report back to the Chair in the next month or so, so that the committee can start hearing reports by the time of its next meeting.

It was decided that the next EPSAC meeting would be on Friday, March 30, from 12-1:30 p.m. 
 

AGENDA

1. SACS QEPs:
      (Discussion w/Jerry Strickland)                                                

      a.  identification of “key issues” in learning environment?

      b.  how broad-based involvement by faculty?

      c.  choice of focus?

      d.  implementation-process?

      e.  Electronic Portfolio project (Writing QEP)?

2.  Undecided students and USDs?

a.  declaring majors?  (60, 45, 30 hrs?)

b.  advising?

c.  current program structures (Business and Pharmacy?)

3.  Assessment Issues?

a. state exit testing proposal?

b. current assessments taking place on campus?

4.  Bookstore contract?

5.  Sub-committees?

FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  Mark Clarke

The Committee met on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 12:00 p.m. in room 220U, MDA Library 

PRESENT: Drs. Clarke, Eichberg, Kadish, Linzer, Middents, Sansgiry, Schiff, Subhlok and Williams.

ABSENT:  Drs. Houston, Kugler & Manny

AGENDA ITEM #1:  Committee Introductions

AGENDA ITEM #2:  Discussion of Potential Issues to place on the FAC agenda for up-coming Senate session.

The Chair began the discussion by informing the committee that the Senate President, Dr. Joe Kotarba, had indicated that he felt that the FAC should consider, as a priority, issues that address investment in existing faculty by the University with a view towards enhancing the role, welfare and perception of “the UH professor.” The Chair also indicated that Dr. Kotarba encouraged the committee to develop their own agenda items as and when needed. This discussion led to a number of issues being discussed as potential major agenda items.

These included the following topics:

1)  Faculty Salary and Benefits Package

a.  Salary compression.
b.  Equity adjustments
c.  Benefits package (health and retirement).
d.  Leave of Absence
e.  Tuition subsidy for Faculty and Staff family members.
f.   Parking subsidy for Faculty
g.  Faculty utilization and potential subsidy of on-campus recreational facilities.

      2)  Computational and Statistical Support for Faculty engaged in Research Activities

Discussion on this topic focused on a written proposal provided by Dr. Schiff (see appendix) for developing a campus-wide or college-wide IT support system for specialized computational and statistical software packages utilized by faculty involved in research activities. The committee recognized that University level resources for this activity may be hard to obtain and depending on the research area the level of in-house expertise may vary. With this in mind, the committee suggested the formation of a campus-wide “faculty users group” that encourages faculty member’s expert in the use of specific computational and statistical software packages to share their knowledge and expertise with other faculty members in an “on-line forum” modeled after a faculty mentoring program. 

     3) Communication within and between Senate Committees and the Senate at large.

Initial discussion focused on an efficient means of continuing a discussion/dialogue on committee business in the month long periods between FAC meetings. Dr. Subhlok suggested that rather than e-mail discussions, a list server approach should be implemented for our inter-meeting discussions of FAC business. The committee agreed and recognized that this approach would not only allow a more in-depth discussion to take place but also maximize our time when physically together as a committee by helping shape concrete agenda items. This discussion grew to include the sense of the committee that such dialogue should be encouraged at all levels of the Senate. 

ACTION ITEMS

Action Item # 1 The Chair suggested that each committee member provide one or more proposed agenda items in order to develop a priority list for FAC action in the upcoming senate term. The Chair asked that they be e-mailed to him as soon as possible to allow discussion, again by e-mail, of that list.

Action Item #2 The FAC will investigate the technology support/resources required to implement a program designed to provide support for specialized computational and statistical software packages used by individual faculty and how to potential provide “incentives” for “expert faculty” to provide this service to their faculty colleagues. Dr. Schiff agreed to take the lead in this task by initially investigating if any up-coming initiatives by the UH IT Support system may address this need. If not, the committee will proceed with identifying ways to develop such a program.

Action Item # 3 The FAC will begin the process of setting up an FAC list server that will allow on-line discussion of FAC business in the time between FAC meetings. Dr. Subhlok agreed to take the lead in this task by identifying the individual in the UH IT Department responsible for supporting such a list server and determining the process/resources required to implement this initiative. As a wider initiative, once the logistics are understood, the FAC will recommend that all elements of the Faculty Senate implement such an approach to enhance communication within and between committees and the Senate at large.

APPENDIX

  FACULTY COMPUTATIONAL AND STATISTICAL SUPPORT

    PROBLEM:

        For teaching and research purposes, faculty members are expected to be competent enough to use as many as a dozen different computer software programs in their normal routines.  At least in CLASS, many faculty who not are quantitative or computer experts are expected to use programs with minimal training and almost no support.  Their own research may lead them to quantitative applications for which they have not been prepared in graduate school or in their own disciplines.

        An inventory of the more commonly used programs includes:

        MS Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint; WebCT Vista; SPSS, STATA, HLM, Mathematica, Fortran; DataFerret; and innumerable electronic databases with different operating rules in the MD. Anderson Library and in proprietary data archives.

        For administrators and students such issues are not usually problems.  Administrators are often able to assign staff to solve their computer and technical support problems.  Students pay dedicated fees and so staff are now available to resolve most of their computer problems. 

        Furthermore, the “distributed support” system set up by Instructional Technology does a reasonably good job of handling computer hardware and digital media problems for faculty during normal working hours.

        However, given the daytime and weekday demands of teaching and shared faculty governance, research faculty can often be found working at any time 24x7 and frequently during the weekends, holidays and summers.  Distributed support personnel are not available at such times and periods.  The Information Desk at Ext. 31411 is usually unable to resolve sophisticated problems.

        In short, there is inadequate computer or computational support available for faculty doing research, and there may be no dedicated budget line to support such service. 

  RECOMMENDATIONS:

1.   The Division of Research should set up a campus-wide network and directory of experts to support the statistical, computational and computer software programs research faculty use.  If the experts already have full-time positions, the VP/VC of Research will negotiate with departmental and college administrators to underwrite a proportion of their time to be devoted to research support.

      2.   The VP/VC for the Division of Research should have separate budget authority to support campus-wide or college-wide experts for research faculty
            using SC² software programs. 

SCHOLARSHIP & COMMUNITY COMMITTEE, Chair:  Suzanne Ferimer

The Committee will be meet with Michael Rierson, UHS Vice Chancellor and UH Vice President for University Advancement, on Thursday, March 8, at 11:30 a.m. in the Faculty Senate Conference room.