The word that comes to mind after our faculty meeting Wednesday is WOW.
Your thoughtful contributions regarding our response to the external review speak volumes about what we value and want to spend our time doing in the next couple of years. You were honest in your comments and your concerns, while also being positive about what we're committing to. You amaze me every time we get together and talk about the future of our department. We craft the document further each time we meet and have culled the critical elements that are most meaningful and reasonable to us as a department. I'm excited about forwarding this document to the Dean and Provost. Thank you.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to be sure that everyone's voices are heard. Some of you weren't able to be at the meeting, some left early, and some may not have provided their comments at all for whatever reason. So, please forward me any ideas you have to share and I will work to include those. This is YOUR document, your department, and your future, so you need to have a say in what is being forwarded. You may email me those, post them on the blog, or provide them in writing to me in the document directly
Minutes from the faculty meeting were forwarded to you in an email on 12/7/07.
Next steps
I have received some feedback from Dean Adams on the draft you got in advance of the faculty meeting. He's provided most editorial and wording suggestions. I met with him Friday Dec. 7 and shared with him the changes we agreed to Wednesday. We discussed some additional ways to craft the priority areas of change. I will incorporate those in the revision and highlight them for you to see. He is willing to review the next version still in advance of our Dec 17 deadline.
Additional News
Merit Applications and Annual Meetings
I plan to have your merit forms delivered via email by early next week. These are due January 9 via email back to me. I will also be emailing you over break with information about our annual review/workload negotiation meeting. These meetings between faculty and the dept head previously took place in May. Among other changes, the Provost has moved these meetings to January-February. At this meeting we will discuss the the work you will be doing in 2008 as well as what you intend to do in 2009. At that time you will also submit your request for teaching assignments and reassigned time (as relevant). ALL faculty will complete these meetings. Reviews are now ANNUAL for all faculty, no matter what rank or tenure status. More information will be provided before you come back to campus.
From COALbin
As the colleges have assumed control of their per course, online, and intersession budgets, discussions are occurring about how to prioritize program completion needs along with faculty interests in offering certain courses. In particular, because intersession courses have the potential to pay faculty additional money beyond a percentage of base salary based on enrollment, these types of courses are fairly costly for the college. In addition, how much a particular course will cost is unpredictable because enrollments fluctuate up to the day the course begins. In order to develop some criteria for how many and which courses to offer as a college, the dean has put a moratorium on new proposals for the August 2008 and the January 2009 intersessions. That means, no intersession proposals nor courses will be offered during those terms by the college. Other colleges may or may not take this action, so this affects only COAL courses. This is important in two ways: you need to know this for proposals you may have been considering AND you need to tell your advisees about this as they plan for fall 08 an spring 09.
Faculty Development Opportunities
The ADC (academic development center) has recently announced a number of upcoming development opportunity for faculty.
Scholarship in the community, Graduate Student Recruitment, Integrating research and teaching, Best practices in online education...and many more
- Go to the ADC website for other opportunities in the spring semester. Seminar topics in the spring include teaching large lecture courses, peer review, doing the scholarship of teaching and learning, professional development, and more.
Search Update
The search committee (Kelly, John, Char, Isabelle) have reviewed the applications for the two assistant professor positions and are completing the tiering process. We got a great pool from which to choose. We plan to bring 4 candidates in late January, early February for interviews.
That's it for now. Hope the rest of your semester wraps up smoothly. Good health, good cheer, and happy holidays to everyone!
Kelly
Hey everyone, it's crazy busy this time of the semester, I know. We've got department head interviews starting at the end of this coming week and through next week. We're reviewing files for the 2 asst professor positions right now as well. I realize it's overwhelming, but the end is near for this semester.
FACULTY MEETING
In that spirit, I would like our faculty meeting Wednesday at 3:00 in Craig 337 to be productive and meaningful. So, I've included a number of announcements and information in this Head'sUp for you to review in advance of the meeting. I'll have time at the beginning for questions about any of these items that you may have. Then, I would like to spend the bulk of our time in discussion about the status of our external review response. I have attached the latest draft Response to Program Review 12_07.doc here and as an attachment to the email you receive. PLEASE review it prior to the meeting so that we can use the meeting to clarify points in the report, edit it, and provide additional commentary that may be missing. The deadline for this report is December 15 to the dean. He is currently reviewing this draft as well and I will share those comments with you Wednesday.
NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
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The Public Speaking Showcase final round will begin at 5:30 in the PSU Theatre, December 4th. Again, please make some time to join our COM 115 students and instructors in celebrating their accomplishments. This is a very public face of our department and so let's show some support for it. I know there will also be a hospitality room earlier in the day on the 3rd floor--join in some food and fellowship. Look for a reminder email from Jerri Lynn with more details.
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The COM 210 final poster session will be held in Craig Hall Lobby, Monday December 10 at 8:45am. Please plan to walk through the posters during that 2 hour block and talk with our 210 students. These students are the ones you'll be seeing in upper division courses soon.
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Recommend an outstanding advisor for the annual
Master Advisor Award of Excellence. The deadline for nominations (and that's all you have to do)
is Wednesday, December 5 at 5:00 p.m. If you would like to nominate a faculty or staff advising colleague, please send a short email to kathydavis@missouristate.edu.
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Speaking of advising, COM 499 is currently undergoing some revisions to begin the Fall 2008 semester. Janis, Deborah and Liz are working on some changes. The key thingsyou need to be doing right now are a) every time you meet with advisees talk about keeing graded papers b) as instructors, RETURN graded papers to students and c) if a student didn't keep the graded paper, be prepared for student to approach you with a clean copy of the paper and for you to write the grade it received on it with your signature. Sometimes that is hard to do after the semester is over, so KEEP all student papers accessible so that students can retrieve them. The committee is also working on revising the advising informational sheet to include the new BS/BA options as well as including some additional course options within paper categoires to make it easier for students to identify papers. The committee will make a brief report early in the spring semester on the suggested changes for us to discuss.
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A summer classes interest survey has been given to all majors and minors via in the InCommon blog. I'm getting some feedback now and will have a short report to you at the faculty meeting. I will just reiterate what I indicated in the memo I gave you this week--if you want to teach a course this summer, plan to teach a 115 section or a course required within a particular major for graduation with a proven track record of enrollment. I am seeing more interest reported for online graduate classes as well. Except for online courses, we are seeing as steady decline in summer enrollments for undergrads. So, rememeber to submit your summer teaching requests to me by the faculty meeting Wednesday.
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Karen and I are working on a draft schedule for Fall 2008. This will be based on the suggestions for courses you provided Carey in your annual meeting with him last May. As she and I get this firmed up, I'll get you a draft of the schedule to review by the end of the semester. If you think you might like to teach something different than you normally do, please forward me your ideas. We will need to cover COM 300, and some other sections previously taught per course, so think creatively. I'm also hoping that with two new faculty members on board next fall, the schedule will fill out nicely.
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Spring 2008 update please let your advisees know that we will NOT be opening up COM 300 for the spring 2008 semester. We will offer it Fall 2008, but I cannot staff it this spring, so we have to leave it closed. Sorry about that, but I had to let this one go.
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Relatedly, the university wide merit/compensation committee has made recommendations for all departments to re-evaluate how instructors are included in merit criteria and faculty review of merit applications. I believe that our instructors were included in the development of our merit criteria, but I want to be get some additional input from them. Thus, I will be sending out an email to all instructors asking them for their thoughts about the process so far and provide some background on this push from the compensation committee.
MISC
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Good News for our department! All three student governor applicants for the next appointment are COM majors! That's great news for us. I know 2 of the 3, but don't know the third one; Ashley Hoyer and Ryan Childress, along with a 3rd, have made the short list. That means that as long as this slate of applicants is accepted, we WILL have a COM major as a student governor on our board! I think the last one was Craig Halsey, back in the late 90s, so this is great news for us. If you see these students or know them, please take the time to congratulate them on their accomplishment so far. They will be heading up to Jeff City in the next week or so to interview with the governor's office.
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Craig 337 thermostat has been repaired. There should be a noticable difference in that room on cooler days. However, on warmer days, the room won't stay as cool. So, just be prepared on warmer days during the winter that the room will be warmer. There's little we can do to remedy that issue. If you notice that even on cold days it's very warm in there, do let me or Karen know so we can have it checked again.
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There was some discussion last month about the creation of a new Instructor rank called Senior Instructor. While there are plans to develop this rank and salary issues associated with it, but currently those discussion have slowed down considerably. There was a push to get it ready for fall 2008, with an application process in the spring. That plan however has been dropped for the moment due to the large number of initiatives and based on discussion with the handbook revision committee. That's about all I know at this time.
I appreciate your patience in my providing all this information. I appreciate all your support and look forward to seeing you at Wednesday's meeting.
Kelly