From: Craig Turner <craig.turner@gcsu.edu>
To: "fapc@list.gcsu.edu" <fapc@list.gcsu.edu>
Sender: "fapc@list.gcsu.edu" <fapc@list.gcsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:19:26 -0500
Subject: Fwd: Re: FAPC: Student Opinion Surveys (Participation Rate): ECUS
Response
Members of FAPC,
Below is my reply to Provost Jordan's clarification regarding the 3 Dec 2010 Motion 1 in the committee report. I did not notice that her response email was cced to the committee so I used "Reply" rather than "Reply to All".
-Craig
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:07:19 -0500
To: Sandra Jordan <sandra.jordan@gcsu.edu>
From: Craig Turner <craig.turner@gcsu.edu>
Subject: Re: FAPC: Student Opinion Surveys (Participation Rate): ECUS Response
Provost Jordan,
Thank you for your careful and thoughtful review of the draft of the FAPC report I circulated to the committee, and for bringing your points of clarification to my attention.
The intended message I attempted to place in the report is consistent with my understanding of the clarifications you bring to my attention, however I do agree that I have used the word policy of the technical jargon inconsistently.
1) I agree that the selection (one by faculty member, one by chair) of Student Opinion Surveys (SOS) is procedure and not policy. I will replace the word policy with the word procedure so that the phrase "revise the current policy wherein" is replaced by "revise the current procedure wherein" in my report.
2) The other clarification you offer is more subtle. What I understand is that the motion (Administer SOS to ALL classes with ten or more students) proposes a new procedure for identifying courses that would be surveyed. The point I attempted to communicate in the parenthetical comment was that the committee did not explicitly indicate a recommendation to amend the procedure of selection (one by faculty member, one by chair) of the Student Opinion Surveys used for faculty annual evaluation. Specifically, while all four courses of a faculty member may meet the at least ten student threshold and have SOS administered, the process of selection (one by faculty member, one by chair) of SOS submitted as part of the formal faculty annual evaluation would continue to occur. I see that your interpretation permits selection of courses to inform periodic reviews [pre-tenure, tenure, post-tenure, and promotion processes] of faculty which in turn are informed by the annual review [faculty annual evaluations]. In each of the periodic reviews, the collection of materials in the portfolio submitted by the faculty candidate includes the documentation [individual faculty report including the selected Student Opinion Surveys and the Department Chair Evaluation of Faculty Performance] of the faculty annual review.
-Craig
At 05:51 AM 1/31/2011, you wrote:
Craig, I do not think that the parenthetical statement in the Motion to ECUS is accurate.
The current selection process (which is not policy, but procedure) which includes the chair and faculty selecting one course each, would be replaced by the motion that all courses with 10 or more students would be surveyed. What it doesn't alter is that the faculty can still select the courses that inform the current pre-tenure, tenure, post tenure, and promotion process.
Sent from my iPad. Please forgive typos.
On Jan 30, 2011, at 5:59 PM, "Craig Turner" <craig.turner@gcsu.edu> wrote:Members of the 2010-2011 Faculty Affairs Policy Committee,
Below is a restatement of the 3 December 2010 committee motion (Motion 1) on Student Opinion Surveys that the committee charged me to take to the Executive Committee of the University Senate (ECUS) for steering. Also included is the response from ECUS including a summary of the conversation points at the 21 Jan 2011 joint meeting of Standing Committee Chairs and ECUS.
Motion to ECUS for steering: The committee unanimously passed the following motion at the FAPC meeting charging the committee chair to report this motion to ECUS for steering. Motion 1 (3 Dec 2010): To recommend that Student Opinion Surveys be administered to all classes with ten or more students. (Note: The committee did not make a recommendation to revise the current policy wherein there is an identification of two courses per semester (one selected by faculty member, one selected by chair) for use in annual evaluation. This suggests that not every course surveyed would inform annual faculty evaluations.)
ECUS response from the 21 January 2011: A summary of the deliberation at the 21 January 2011 joint meeting of ECUS and Standing Committee Chairs follows.
1. ECUS indicated its position is that the policy for student opinion surveys is that they are administered and that the details (how frequently, to what classes, how they are administered (on-line, paper and pencil), how the Student Opinions Surveys used for annual faculty evaluations are selected, etc) are procedural matters.
2. In light of this position, ECUS indicated that this motion was procedural and recommended that FAPC apply its advisory function to offer advice to the Provost on this matter.
3. There was an additional recommendation that the language in the GCSU Academic Affairs Handbook regarding the use of Student Opinion Surveys for faculty evaluation be reviewed by FAPC for consistency with current practice given the recent transition to on-line administration of these student opinion surveys.
4. Finally there was a lengthy conversation with no consensus on how soon this motion should be implemented.
i. One observation offered was that the practice of administering Student Opinion Surveys to (essentially) ALL classes would be administratively simpler.
ii.Another observation was a recommendation that the practice of administering Student Opinion Surveys to ALL classes might be delayed until the current review by the Council of Department Chairs of the current survey instrument concludes.
As part of my report on this matter to the University Senate on 31 January 2011, I will indicate that
FAPC invites feedback from faculty to inform its continued deliberation on this matter. Feedback can be shared with any committee member.