Minutes of the Faculty Senate

March 5, 2002

MCV Alumni House, Room 114, MCV Campus

Present:
Abubaker, Alder, Andrews, Bigbee, Bilyeu, Boothby, Bowlin, Briceland, Burton, Cash, Certosimo, Coffman, Crouch, Cummins, Davey, Dewey, Diegelman, Fauri, Garcia, Guidarelli, Hague, Heldberg, Heuman, Holmes, Johnson, Kennamer, Kirkpatrick, Koerin, Kuemmerle, Lamb, Leone, Lewis, Lloyd, McCay, McCreary, McKelvey, Mikkelsen, Moon, Nadder, Nicholson, Pitts, Poynor, Ream, Reynolds, Rife, Seago, Selinger, Simons, Tepper, Turner, Walsh, Ward, Weaver, Whitehead

Absent:
Costanzo, Delafuente, Dilworth, Hodges, Jeter, Kester, Konechne, Little, Ottenbrite, Philipsen, , Wood

The meeting was called to order at 4:05 PM
The first items of business were approval of the January and February minutes. Both were approved without changes.

President’s Report

Dr. Bob Andrews reported that the University Calendar Committee had decided not to make changes in the calendar for the coming year with the exception of the addition of Fall Graduation. He informed Senators that the University Council By-laws were currently in the process of being revised and that several faculty senators had communicated responses to recommendations.
 
 
 



Report from Nominating Committee

Dr. Wes Poynor, Chair of the Nominating Committee presented the Senate with a list of nominees for next year’s officers of the Faculty Senate. The following persons have been nominated:
President- Bob Andrews

Vice President- Chris Turner

Secretary- Peter Kirkpatrick

East Campus Representative- Judy Lewis

West Campus Representative- Dan Ream

Elections will be held at the April Faculty Senate meeting
 
 


 
 
 
 
 

Action Items

Senators considered, discussed and passed two resolutions. The following resolution, which addressed the Honor System Review process, was passed unanimously.
BE IT RESOLVED:
The Faculty Senate of VCU publicly thanks Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs Roderick J. McDavis, Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Student Affairs William H. Duvall and the entire Honor System Review Committee for their diligent, comprehensive labor in revising the VCU Student Honor's System Policy.

FURTHERMORE:

The Faculty Senate appreciates the collaborative and cooperative will of the committee in regards to continuing concerns on the part of the Faculty.


 

The second resolution addressed the issue of including a member of the faculty on the Board of Visitors of the University. The following resolution was passed unanimously.
 

WHEREAS,The Faculty Senate of Virginia, the Virginia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, and Virginia Commonwealth University's Faculty Senate have introduced and/or supported a bill in the General Assembly to legislate non-voting faculty appointments to Virginia's state institutions' Boards of Visitors for two sequential sessions; and

WHEREAS, Members of the General Assembly have twice failed to legislate faculty membership on Virginia's Boards of Visitors on the basis that the Boards currently have the voluntary ability to appoint faculty to their own Boards and therefore there is no need to mandate that ability; and

WHEREAS, The two state institutions that currently enjoy faculty appointed to their Boards of Visitors, Virginia Tech and Longwood, report a felicitous flow of information and cooperation between faculties, administrations, and the Boards; and

WHEREAS, The Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education and the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia have concluded that Boards of Visitors should include faculty as a "best practice"; and

WHEREAS, State law mandates a student representative to Virginia's institutions of higher education Boards of Visitors; 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT,

THE FACULTY SENATE OF VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY encourages President Eugene Trani to request the Virginia Commonwealth University's Board of Visitors to appoint a faculty representative as a member of the Board without vote; and

FURTHERMORE, This faculty appointee should be the Faculty Senate Immediate Past President (or his or her designate in consultation with the Faculty Senate).


 

Points were made that other universities in Virginia, specifically Virginia Tech and Longwood, had already made the move to include a faculty member on the Board of Visitors. A bill of this kind was presented to the General Assembly. It passed the House of Delegates, but failed to come out of the Senate Committee reviewing it. The opinion of some legislators was that there was nothing preventing universities from doing this and that the decision should be made at the university level rather than as a mandate from the state. There were parties lobbying against the bill from two universities.

Dr. Andrews clarified for Senators that Faculty Senate Officers currently attend the open portions of the Board of Visitors meetings, but the current process prevents them from speaking unless they are called upon to do so. Even if this proposal were to be approved the Faculty Representative would not attend closed sessions involving personnel decisions.

Report from Credentials and Rules

Dr. Margo Garcia, chair of the Credentials and Rules committee of the Senate gave her committee’s report. Reapportionment of Senate seats are recalculated each year using data supplied by Institutional Research. 
There are a total of 62 Faculty Senate seats. Each year each school is allocated 2 to 20 seats depending on the number of full time faculty teaching in that school. For next year the designated number of seats will remain consistent for all schools with the exceptions of the College of Humanities and Sciences and the School of Education. The College of Humanities and Sciences will gain a seat raising their number of Senate seats to 12 and the School of Education will lose a seat to lower the number of Senate seats to 4.
The table below indicates the number of seats allocated to each school.

 
Schools
Faculty Count
02-03 Faculty Senate Seats 
Faculty Per Seat
Arts
130
5
26.00
College of H & S
297
12
25.82
Business
106
4
26.50
Education
114
4
23.20
Engineering
33
2
16.00
Social Work
54
2
28.00
Libraries
31
2
16.00
Allied Health Prof.
65
3
22.00
Dentistry
64
3
21.33
Medicine
679
20
34.20
Nursing
28
2
12.50
Pharmacy
61
3
20.00
Total
1662
62
26.69

Senator Alan Briceland moved to adopt the amended report noting a spelling error of the School of Nursing

Survey on Physical Teaching Environments

Dan Ream, chair of the Academic Support Services Committee shared with Senators that a letter would be going out to all fulltime and adjunct faculty within the next couple of weeks asking them to complete a survey on the Web on their satisfaction with their classroom teaching environments. The survey was reviewed and approved by the VCI Institutional Review Board.

 

 

 

 

 

SACS Reaccreditation Preparation

Dr. Donna Brodd and Dr. Jon Ackley were present at the Senate meeting to update Senators on the SACS reaccreditation process.

Jon Ackley is heading VCU’s SACS reaccredidation self-study process. Accreditation was last granted in 1994. SACS, which stands for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, is the recognized regional accrediting body in the eleven U.S. Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia). Jon informed senators that SACS has a Website   www.sacscoc.org  that contains “lots of information on the accreditation process.”


SACS recognizes  6 levels of schools. VCU is a level 6 because it grants at least 4 doctorates.

There have been changes instituted in the reaffirmation process since our last reaccredidation process. It is now an output based accreditation review with 12 core requirements and 65 comprehensive standards. Part of the process will involve creating a Quality Enhancement Plan which will be a University-wide initiative. There will be 6 people involved in an off-site review and 5-6 people involved in the on-site review that will last 3 days. The first day will address compliance certification and the second and third days will be concerned with the Quality Enhancement Plan.

VCU’s goal is “to be reaffirmed without any deficiencies.”The full self-study report will be available on the VCU Web site with exception of faculty credentials. 

 
Dr. Ackley informed Senators that this was an ideal time for faculty input. There will be opportunities for influencing the development of the Quality Enhancement Plan. Every unit will be expected to specify student learning outcomes and an assessment process for examining outcomes.

Research Data Policy

Bob Lamb and Joyce Lloyd, Co-chairs of the Academic Programs and Research informed Senators of the recent efforts to influence the Research Data Policy currently being proposed by Dr. Marsha Torr and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Concerns were expressed by over 20 faculty who spoke relative to the proposed Research Data Policy.Even though everyone recognizes the need for a University policy to cover some important issues, nobody spoke in favor of the policy as it is currently proposed.
The following set of questions covers most of the issues and questions raised by faculty.
-How would this proposed policy improve the overall research productivity and quality at VCU?

-What is the real intention of this proposed policy?

-Who and what is it intended to cover?

-How does this policy apply to projects in the social sciences? In the arts? In business?

-What are the federal guidelines/requirements that this policy is meant to address?

-What will the process be for resolving a claim that a VCU researcher is guilty of “misconduct in science?”

-How will faculty be made aware of the policy if it is approved?

-How will the University approach cases where ownership of data by the University is not acceptable by the funding source for a project (for example, grants from industry)?

-How will the University approach ownership issues for joint projects that are performed with investigators from other institutions?

-Does the University own research materials that are obtained from another institution or source (for example, the letters of George Washington which are being used by a professor to write a book)?

-If the University owns the data, do researchers need to get permission to publish articles based on the data?

-In what instances would the University be liable in cases of research misconduct?

-Wouldn’t this policy increase the potential for the University being liable rather than decreasing it?

-If the Faculty Grievance Procedure is not used to appeal a decision under this policy, where is a similarly outlined process for the appeal to assure that an appropriately selected committee of peers will be selected to hear the appeal?

-If the Faculty Grievance Procedure is not used to appeal a decision under this policy because it covers other constituencies than faculty, what is being done to assure that these constituencies have input into this proposed policy?

-Can the policy be written in such a way that it is clearly a joint venture between faculty and the administration, with responsibilities and benefits to both?

-Where in our current policy statements does it say that the University already owns research data? 


 

It was noted that Dr. Torr would be invited to attend the next Senate meeting and that faculty are requested to present and put these concerns before Dr. Torr at that meeting.
 

Dr. Andrews indicated that he would apprise the Provost and President that there were a number of significant concerns expressed by the faculty in regard to the proposed Research Data Policy.


 

Dr. Andrews informed Senators that one of the current recommendations for by-law change for University Council is to reduce the number of faculty on the Academic Affairs Committee. By a show of hands the Faculty Senate indicated that they would support opposition to any proposal to decrease number of faculty on that committee. This move to reduce faculty on this committee was considered by some as a response to the move by faculty on that committee to vote to table approval of the Research Data Policy.

New Business

Dr. Alan Briceland presented some issues relative to the Honor Policy and then polled the Senators on "What is or What is not an HonorViolation" using a set of hypothetical and real cases.
The faculty moved to adjourn the meeting at 6:05 PM.
Respectfully submitted,

Dianne F. Simons, Ph.D., OTR/L

Faculty Senate Secretary-Treasurer

Posted March 29, 2002
Neil W. Henry