Executive Committee of the University Senate

Report to the Senate,

August 25, 2008

ECUS held its first meeting on August 22, 2008. We discussed ways to make the transition for incoming officers easier, and the need to post publicly assignments for the various tasks that keep the senate running. These include recurring tasks such as maintaining the senator database, web site, Email lists, and the motion database. There was some discussion of perhaps moving the online motion and senator databases to WER to facilitate server maintenance.

Allison Prock is our new graduate assistant. She is available to do research for any of the senate committees.

We will hold an orientation on September 12 at 12:30 in the university banquet room (location to be confirmed later) for Standing Committee Officers. Karynne Kleine and Craig Turner will plan this and Dean Baker will facilitate it.

We received an academic advisement policy from Bob Haney and routed it to APC with the suggestion that they hold a joint meeting with FAPC and SAPC after initial deliberations to get their input. The proposal might have implications for both of those areas.

We formed the subcommittee on nominations and named Doug Goings as chair. We will need to find and confirm through the process specified in the bylaws two replacements for APC: one for Mike Gleason and another for Brock Fisher.

Dr. Roy Moore has also resigned, and Dr. Bob Haney has appointed Funke Fontenot as her replacement. VPAA appointments do not have to be confirmed through the subcommittee on nominations.

ECUS discussed the issue of emergency situations that demand actions over the summer when the senate is not in session in the context of existing bylaws. The BOR often imposes deadlines over the summer months that the institution must meet, and often these materials relate to matters that need to go through governance. The president or ECUS can call emergency meetings, but it is doubtful we could get a quorum over the summer months. Allison Prock will help Craig Turner and Deborah Vess work on revisions to the bylaws to address this situation.

Dr. Jude Hirsch brought concerns about the evaluation of administrators to ECUS last year, including the need for confidentiality for faculty submitting evals.  The ECUS debated whether these concerns represent policy or process. There are already policies in existence that mandate the evaluation of administrators. How these evaluations are done represent procedural matters. The University Senate is a policy-making body, and can only make recommendations about process. We have recommended that Dr. Leland appoint a task force to investigate the issue and to survey various stakeholders. The task force will report its findings to her. We have suggested that there be representation from faculty, administrative, IR/IE, and HR and that the chair of the staff council serve on the task force.

Parliamentarian: Ken Farr has been senate parliamentarian for several years, but since he is a senator this year there might be a conflict of interest. ECUS will seek out other possible faculty members to serve in this capacity, though Dr. Farr agreed to do it for the August 25, 20008, meeting. Dr. Farr conducted a brief workshop on Robert’s Rules, and reminded senators how to find our Robert's Rules Cheat Sheet on the web.

We also asked senators to review Meeting Etiquette guidelines.