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Good Monday to you all,

Hopefully the rain has stopped for a few days so that we can dry out. I can see some sunlight poking out right now as I type   I thought Saturday would be the washout and Sunday the drier day...but noooo!  The weather forecasters called for rain all day Saturday but there was none and Sunday it was only supposed to rain for the morning, but it rained all day.  How would you like to have a job where you could be wrong most of the time, even with the best technology, and keep your job? 

Anyhow, we've got a week to wrap things up before final exams.  Our faculty meeting will be Wednesday at 3:00 (starting at 3:00 so that a few folks can attend the 3:30 grad council meeting).  Below is a draft agenda.  Then, what follows are a couple of reminders and calendar events to plan for. 

Draft Faculty Meeting Agenda. May 6 @ 3:00, Craig 336

1.  Announcements, Congratulations, and Goodbyes

2.  Discussion about PR program staffing in light of Susan's departure.  I have been working closely with Sam and Jerri Lynn to make necessary adjustments to cover Susan's courses next year.  I am extremely grateful that Jerri Lynn has agreed to teach a full load of PR courses both fall and spring next year. With that, I have requested a one-year basic course instructor to teach the courses Jerri Lynn would have taught.   

With Susan leaving, we will have a vacant position to fill by August 2010. We need to request a replacement position to teach courses in the PR program.  The administrative team has discussed a few staffing options via email recently and we need to discuss these options as a faculty now.  From this discussion and your input I will forward a request to the dean. Because the dean is currently considering all faculty requests in the college, it's important that we forward such a request before the end of the semester.

3.  Curriculum Revisions.   As you know, both Heather and Stephanie have headed up changes to their respective areas in the last few months.  Ad hoc committees have been working in the last few months to make recommended changes to both health and org com major options in the BA/BS in Communication degree. There are a few associated course proposals that go along with these.   I will ask that Heather and Stephanie make brief reports about the status of these revisions so that we may seek input from the faculty.  We plan to recommend final revisions to the faculty at the August faculty retreat (the Friday before classes begin).  However, if the faculty feel compelled to vote on any particular item on Wednesday, we may do so.

One additional item that needs further discussion is the issue of allowing students to complete a double option in the BA/BA in Communication major, as well as whether or not our majors can complete the Ethical Leadership minor.

4. Other items to be added by any faculty member.

Additional Reminders and Deadlines

1. May 7, 2009, Faculty Report on Remunerated Outside Activities for 2008 are due to me.  Thank you to those who have already submitted theirs.  Recall that even if you did no work, you must still sign the form and submit it to me.  If you DID have work for which you were compensated, you must complete this form as well. And, if you did multiple events, you need to submit one form for each separate activity. If you submitted one form with two activities, please revise it and resubmit it to me by Thursday.  If I don't have yours by the faculty meeting Wednesday, I'll send you a special email personally to remind you :).

2.  Friday, May 8, at 5:00, Plan to attend the End of the School Year Grad and Student Awards Party.  The weather is supposed to be nice on Friday, so plan to come on out to our cabin in Fair Grove.  You should have received a flyer in your mailbox from Randy last week.  We begin at 5:00 with food, fun and drinks...maybe even take a short stroll on the trails. Then at 6:15, we'll give out the awards for grad teaching assistant, grad research, and faculty awards.  

3.  Friday, May 15, 8:00-9:15 COAL Commencement Reception. It's again at the First & Calvary Church next to the Arena. Please plan to attend this fun event, meet the parents, and congratulate our 59 graduating seniors.

4. Friday, May 15 at 10:00am is the commencement ceremony for COM majors and other COAL students. It's at the Arena of course.

5.  Monday, May 18 at 10:00am ALL GRADES ARE DUE.  Yeah, summer begins!

Welcome back to campus after a brief but well deserved Spring Holiday Break.  We've got four more weeks to the end of the semester...here we go.

We've got a faculty meeting this Wednesday at 3:00 * in Craig 336. Please plan to attend this meeting as Dean Carey Adams is our guest and main agenda item. Below is a brief agenda:

• Dean Adams: Q&A about productivity issues, course minimums. and enrollment management. Please come with questions you have for the dean about his response to the President's memo, and any other issues you want to raise with him. This is also an opportunity to discuss our enrollment strategies as well as inquire about administrative reassigned time, etc.
• Update on NFA tournament with Drury: This begins on Thursday, April 16 and runs through Sunday evening on our campus.  We planned to use the event as an opportunity to recruit to our graduate programs. Curt tells me that Saturday and Sunday are good time to have a table in the PSU to meet with students to talk with them and program information. I'll have sign up sheets for those times at our meeting Wednesday. We might also ask a few of the graduate students to be at the table for a few spots.
• If time, we may hear again from the Writing Test sub committee, get an update on the Health Com major revisions, and other updates and announcements as you have them.  Let me know if you have an agenda item you'd like to add.

Reminders & Announcements:

Recognize a great teaching and research graduate student!  Attached is the call for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching and Excellence in Graduate Student Research Awards along with nomination forms for each.  These awards will be announced at the end of the year Celebration on Friday, May 8.  

The departmental Honors Ceremony  is planned for Wednesday April 22 at 3:00 in the PSU (room to be announced).  Thanks to the scholarship committee for reviewing applications and making recommendations.  Please plan to attend the ceremony, we give out graduate and undergraduate scholarships and have the LPH Induction ceremony. 

Faculty Report on Remunerated Outside Activity forms are due May 7 to me. Please use the form I provided in each of your mailboxes and email. 

See you Wednesday,

Kelly

Hey everyone,

It's the week before Spring Break and all through the halls, the faculty were stir crazy and the students missing in action. Hopefully you aren't nuts yet.  We've got a faculty meeting this week. Here are a few highlights and things to prepare for:

1. Faculty Senate Elections: We need to nominate people at Instructor and Associate Professor rank to run for ranked senator positions.  Each dept forwards one name for each rank and those are placed on a ballot for faculty (at that rank only) to elect a faculty senator to represent that rank.

2. Health Communication major revisions discussion. Attached Health Communication Major Proposal.doc are a few items for you to review before the meeting. Heather Carmack has headed up an ad hoc committee to discuss how the major can be revised to attract new students.  Members of the committee are Heather, John, Lynn, Isabelle, Stephanie, and myself.   Heather and I will review the proposal & discussion thus far by the committee. There is no vote planned at the meeting, only for you to provide initial input into the proposal so that the committee can continue to fine tune the proposal.

3. The main item is to provide a forum to discuss our strategies for responding to "low productivity" as described in the president's email.  I will share a few comments about what those numbers mean. Also, I have met with the administrative team to brainstorm possible responses and I will share those as a starting point. I've attached a working RecruitmentPlanDraft09.doc document of those items here. I'd like you to review the list of action steps before Wednesday's meeting and provide your input at that time.

4. There will likely be a few miscellaneous items added by Wed. For example, we still have to discuss the writing test plan previously submitted, soI'll put that as old business. If time, we'll follow up on Wednesday, or push it to April.   If you have something you'd like to add, please let me know.

Below is the agenda for the faculty meeting Wednesday at 3;15 in Craig 336. Sorry to be getting this so late, but here it is.

I.  Demonstration of Activity Insights (online vita) and instructions for reviewing your vita information (research section needs to be updated by Feb 28).

II. Writing Test for COM majors report. (old business from previous faculty meeting). Attached is the Major QUIZ2.doc for you to review before the meeting Wednesday.  I will ask Susan and the committee members to review their work and then open it for discussion.

III.  Budget Update (University and Departmental)

IV. Recruitment (initiatives for graduate and undergraduate programs), Enrollments (I'll have a table with majors numbers over the last 5 years), and Course innovation ideas.

V. Other items to be added that you have.

See you at 3:15.

Kelly

HAPPY SNOW DAY!  This ice storm is initiation for Heather and Stephanie—Welcome to the winters in Missouri.

Congratulations to Sandra and Cliff House for 45 years of marital bliss! Happy 45th anniversary Sandra.

Budget Update:  Dr. Nietzel spoke at dept heads meeting yesterday and echoed what Carey has put in his dean’s blog and emails: we are cautiously optimist about this and next year’s budget because of Governor Nixon’s deal with the state universities.  In the meantime, we are not to go back to “business as usual” with our budgets.  We are not going full tilt on faculty/staff searches at this point and Carey has yet to give his decision about current college searches. Further, Dr. Nietzel is continuing his policy to restrict international travel and unnecessary in-country travel.  Carey has not put a limitation on requests for travel funds this semester, so I anticipate honoring the Central States and Sooners travel requests.  There are a few of you with international travel requests and we should meet soon to review those. 

I am in the process of reviewing our current budget and as long as we get our expected transfers IN to the budget, we should be fine. At this time we have spent half of our typical budget (allocated budget + carry forward from ‘08 online, course and honors payments). So we are on track to have small carry forward for next year…which, is what we planned on.  The president indicated yesterday that he is not going to withhold a portion of each college’s carry forward monies, indicating that salary and other savings should remain in colleges.  So, I feel positive that we won’t be “taxed” for carry forward money by the president. What is still unclear is if the dean will do this.  I’ll keep you posted on Carey’s budget plans, as I know them.  I am happy to report that thus far we have been able to honor most of our budget priorities this year (new faculty initiatives, travel requests, equipment funds, and part-time work for the graduate college and debate team).

Reminders
ADVISEMENT UPDATE: With fall registration we will be using the new Banner registration system. As such because all pre-reqs will be enforced at the time of registration for students, we want as many students who are in progress with their admission requirements not to be encumbered (registration block) due to not being admitted. 

As you may recall from our last faculty meeting, we agreed to admit all students who were currently IN PROGRESS with a core course or completing 59 hours.  At this time we are not including those who are below the 2.5 gpa and those who are on probation. I will consider exceptions for those who are very close to the gpa.  Realize that if a student who is admitted now does not meet those requirements by the end of the semester, his/her registration will be dropped will require a registration override from the dept office in order to re-register for classes.  We want to have as few of these as possible, but of course it’s up to the students to complete their requirements.

What to do: Check your advisee list and identify those who are currently in progress with meeting admission requirements (unless they do not have the overall gpa met).  Contact them and make an appointment to begin the admission paperwork as soon as possible, preferably in February. The sooner we get this done, the less hassle students will face when it comes time to register.  Not only is this a student friendly policy, it also allows us to have as many eligible students as possible to register for our upper division courses this fall. As a reminder, ALL pre-reqs are now being enforced at the point of registration.  So there is much at stake here in getting as many undergraduate students admitted as possible.  Let me know if you have any questions.

May Commencement:  Please plan to attend. You should have already received information about reserving regalia. Please submit this or if you have your own regalia then RSVP by March 13.  Our students always enjoy having faculty at graduation to celebrate with them and in many cases they want to introduce you to their family. As before, the dean’s office will award the dept with the most faculty in attendance at commencement with money for food at a future departmental faculty meeting. COAL will walk at the 10:00am ceremony. 

1. General announcements
2. Com 115 mass lecture discussion
3. COM Scholarships 2009-2010 update
3. Banner policy changes review
4. Handouts
    General Education revisions
    Digital Measures (electronic vita) update

Faculty Meeting Items: 
COM 115 and large lecture sections. Discussion have been going on with myself, John and Carey about moving a number of Com 115 sections into a mass lecture format with break out sections for giving speeches.  Initially we were concerned with some student satisfaction data that John received recently.  One option that emerged was to have a full time faculty member give a lecture one or two days a week and then have graduate students grade speeches in smaller breakout sections.  We need a 250 seat lecture hall and also discovered those are few and far between on campus.   We have been able to secure Carrington Auditorium and others are becoming more available as administration is working to release more space.  Now we’re looking for faculty to provide their input. So, one main issue for discussion on Wednesday is to get your impressions of this format change and the implication of it for the basic course and instruction generally. We look forward to your input.

Other banner reminders/policies: 
Beginning the fall 2009 semester, you must declare your grading policy in your syllabus. This deals with the new plus/minus grading option that will be available this fall.  You need to inform you students in the syllabus what you grading scale is.
Beginning the spring 2010 semester, MWF classes will begin at 7:30, and have 15 minutes between classes.

A few changes have been discussed relative to the basic skills component of the general education program. IDS 110 has seen the most changes as it is being proposed to become a 2 credit hour course. Additionally, the CIS 101 course may go away for the majority of students who test out of it (likely during SOAR).  And financial and information literacy components are being sought as additional elements of the basic skills.  GEP 397 is still under review but currently it is unlikely to return to the program and instead replaced with the additional components noted above.  I have this information in a table format from faculty senate, but it’s not here at home with me to attach. I will have it for tomorrow’s faculty meeting.

Have a great rest of the day, stay safe, and hopefully we’ll see you tomorrow for our faculty meeting.

Kelly
 

Another spring semester has begun and this time without an ice storm!  So far we've had a mild winter, but I'm not banking on it being that way for much longer. We've gotten 14 inches of snow in March before.  I'm hoping for a mild winter this year since I'm now officially a commuter from Fair Grove. Yep, Jay and I officially moved into our cabin on New Year's Eve!  There are some hilly areas I have to drive now to get here to work.  After moving in, we stayed there for 3 nights and then packed again and took off last week to Colorado.  I thought the trip was poorly timed, but once we got there, I forgot about the dissary of the house and all the boxes.  We enjoyed great skiing conditions (powder) while there and so it was worth it to get a break from the move and remodeling. Since returning, we've gotten the kitchen, living room, and dining rooms fully set up. The rest can be done on weekends. I feel good about it all and look forward to having an open house next month sometime for everyone.  Later this week, I'll get some pictures on my family blog and I'll send the link to you so you can see a few home movies and still pictures of the new place.  I appreciate all the well wishes you've given me recently on getting moved in, I can't wait to share the new place with you all.

I hope your classes have started out nicely. I am teaching COM 300: Careers in Communication in the first block and have a great group of juniors and seniors who are eager to work on their resumes and learn about great jobs for COM majors.  I hope you have great students as well. So, a few business items to take care of:

Faculty Meetings Schedule for Spring 2009

Wednesdays, 3:15-5:00pm, Craig 337:  January 28, February 18, March 18, April 15, and May 6 (CGEIP and Grad Council overlap)

Additional Items of Notes

1. Craig Hall roof installation. Word from the dean is that the roof installation should be completed by first of next week. Weather delays prevented them from meeting the January 9 deadline.  Many of you have complained and shared grave health concerns and those have been duly noted by the dean and Bob Eckles.  They've made some adjustments to the vents on the roof and yesterday was better, but we'll have to go day by day. If your room is Craig is unbearable due to fumes, you should get with Karen immediately and schedule a temporary room change. You may want to adjust offifce hours as well while the work is being completed. Let me know how things are working for you in that matter.
2. Beginning of semester notes: For liability reasons, if a student’s name is not on your class list, please do not allow that student to attend unless he or she can provide verification of enrollment.

Do you recognize this place?

Perhaps not.  This is a picture from a few weeks back of one of the rooms in the house that Jay and I are remodeling...Yikes huh?  Let me assure you, OUR DEPARTMENTAL HOUSE IS NOT IN THIS DISARRAY.  In fact, with respect to our operational budget we are doing very well, so take a deep breath.  However, as with any house, there are places to tidy up. 

We have a scheduled faculty meeting this Wednesday at 3:00 in Craig 337.  Please make every effort to attend—it is our last faculty meeting before break. And, with the news of budget cuts recently from Dr. Nietzel as well as discussions on UDIG and in the halls, we have a number of items to discuss. In particular I will be looking to you for feedback on a number of staffing, course planning, and budget issues.  In advance of the faculty meeting, I am meeting with the administrative team to review these items to get some initial ideas floated.  Once we’ve narrowed down some of the issues, I’ll email you with ideas to review before the meeting on Wednesday.  At this time the faculty meeting agenda will revolve around adjustments to the spring 2009 schedule, planning for fall 2009 course offerings, and some possible curricular items.  I’ll also share with you some updates on academic policy changes that are coming down the pike relative to Banner implementation.  We also have a number of accomplishments of our faculty and former students to celebrate.  My plan is that our meeting will be frank and realistic relative to budget planning and that it includes some enjoyable items too. The holidays are coming, you know.

Events of Note This Week

1) Departmental Colloquium: Noon-1pm, Craig 337. Graduate Student Seminar Paper Presentations.

2)Tuesday, December 02, 2008, 7:00 PM, Glass Hall 101.  Leadership Speaker Series will present a lecture by Shawn Askinosie.

3) Wednesday, December 03, 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, PSU 313. Provost Research Forum
    Art Spisak, Modern and Classical Languages, speaking on Leadership
    Chad Stearman, Chemistry, speaking on Chemistry applications.

4) Thursday, December 4, 11am-1pm, COAL Holiday Open House, Craig Hall Lobby

5) Thursday, December 04, 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, PSU 313. Advisor Forum: "Including the Public Affairs Mission in Advising Sessions." Madeleine Kernen, Dave Lutz and Rhonda Ridinger will serve as panelists on the topic.

6) Friday, December 05, 2008, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM, PSU 313. Banner Informational Session:
Topics will include the registration and advisement time line, the new repeat policy, admission to degree program changes, the overload policy and the last date to drop or withdraw.  

7) Friday, December 05, 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, PSU 313.  Academic Advisor Forum: Gloria Galanes and Susan Waters will meet with interested academic advisors to present information on generational issues.

8) Friday, December 5th from 5:30-7:00 at PCOB. The CDR is hosting an open house for Volunteers and COM faculty.  This open house also coincides with first friday artwalk.

Draft Faculty Meeting Agenda

Budget Update
Scheduling and Course Offerings
    Spring 2009 schedule: Enrollments so far
    Course caps
    Fall 2009 schedule
    Summer 2009 (who wants to teach?)
Curricular items
    Brief review of Banner policy changes
    Tentative: Changing permissions in online courses
Others to be added?

Kelly

Announcements and Upcoming Events

1) Faculty Senate agenda to include our new minor and major option in Ethical Leadership
Plan to attend this session to support the new programs!  Thursday, November 13 at 3:30 in PSU 313.

2) Compensation and the Evaluation of Teaching
On Friday, November 14, at 1:30 p.m. in Meyer Library 101, there will be a meeting targeting Personnel Committee Chairs, administrators and interested faculty on features of the Compensation System which have been developed in response to assessment information collected by the Senate and other discussions that occurred last spring. Members of the Compensation committee will be available to explain aspects of the Best Practices document which is now on the Provost’s website.

The second half of the meeting will focus on emerging practices in the evaluation of teaching. Initially, the focus will be on formative approaches used to improve teaching. Implications for how merit and Tenure & Promotion plans might include various approaches for the evaluation of teaching in the future will be explored.

3) Craig Hall sisal to be removed summer 2009! Yes indeed, the reports are due.  All of the 3rd floor classrooms, which still have sisal, will have it removed. Good news/bad news.  Good news that we’ll have clean walls beginning fall 2009 semester. Bad news this will take the whole summer, so we will not be offering classes in Craig hall next summer. So, if you plan to teach next summer, plan on your class being somewhere in the vicinity. 

4) NFA tournament in April confirmed!  Again the dates are April 16-20, 2009.  Thursday-Sunday sessions will occur on MSU campus and Monday’s final rounds will occur on Drury’s campus.  I’ll invite Curt Gilstrap to a future faculty meeting to discuss the tournament and how students and faculty may participate.

5) New color printer for the COM lab has arrived! Thanks to the Provost's major equipment budget, we were approved for this and it was delivered on Monday. The printer is HUGE and so we need to purchase an appropriate desk/cabinet and reconfigure the lab to accommodate it. I will be working with Brooks and Karen (and the PR faculty) to get something ordered soon. I anticipate we could have the printer up and running for classroom use (initially) by Thanksgiving.

6) Craig Hall space utilization discussions beginning to take shape. When MCL moves to Siceluff Hall next August, faculty offices and lab space they occupy now will be available for redistribution to COM, Theatre and Dance, and MJF.  I am in preliminary discussions with those heads right now. Next I will be talking with our directors of administrative programs affected by this.  I don't want to give any details until we get this finalized and approved by the dean. I can say this though, with the number of faculty spaces in MCL being freed up, all three departments should have space for one faculty member per office--no more sharing for full time faculty!  This should begin in fall 2009.

Faculty Meeting Draft Agenda
Discussion Topics

• Report from Faculty Concerns Committee by Liz. She wants to ask you a few questions that are being tossed about in the FCC including developing a policy for assigning credit/pay for faculty who work on independent studies, theses, and possibly service learning.
• The Compensation Committee is currently discussing a number of topics. One of them I wanted your feedback on: How would you feel about moving the evaluation period for merit to an academic year?  In that scenario your application would be due in September (and involve work done the past spring and fall semesters).
• Administrative Areas reports:  Basic Course, CDR, Debate, Grad Program, Dean's Fellow
• Public Affairs in the Major continued: I’ll share with you some of the ideas that are being floated about in the college for various ways to incorporate public affairs through college wide activity.
• Classroom upgrade money for to upgrade Craig hall classrooms for use in the basic course. Where are we now?
• Advising Tips and Reminders
• Other Items? If you have something you’d like to discuss, please let me know and we will include it.

Kelly

 I’ve attached the meeting minutes to the email with this blog post.  Please review it for items discussed and those needing attention for future meetings (i.e. your inventory of the 3 public affairs themes in your classes).  I want to follow up with a couple of items that I didn’t get a chance to share with you and are important to note.

1. COM budget: I wanted to share with you during the faculty meeting that the Dean has yet to approve our carry forward proposals for this year’s budget. This means that we don’t have access to the over $30000 left in our budget from last year just yet. You’ll recall that at the August faculty meeting I provided a proposal for initiatives and priorities this year using our regular budget, incentive money from MSAS courses, and carry forward money.   Some of the items include a new Level I classroom for use by COM 115 sections, support for graduate assistant for Randy, support for the debate program with a part-time coach, and faculty development money.  I’ve transferred money to cover the part time assistants for this year, but I’ve put the classroom upgrade on hold for now.  Dean Adams assures me we can go forward with our plans, but since we can work with ETC to install the classroom anytime this year, there isn’t as huge a rush to push this forward.  As soon as I get word back from the dean on our carry forward proposal, I will let you know.

Relatedly, the Provost approved our major equipment request for a color laser printer for our computer lab.  I will work with Karen to get this ordered as soon as we can.  The classroom upgrade Level I request was denied.  If you’ll recall we asked for another upgrade to go along with the one we are to purchase ourselves (as noted above).  The provost argued that there are funds for that in other areas and didn’t want major equipment funds to go towards infrastructure.

2. Our new copier.  The copier we purchased last January has a yearly service contract with a specified number of copies we can use without additional charge.  When we renewed our agreement in August, it was noted that we had gone over our allotment by 20,000 copies.  We had to pay a penalty on our service contract to cover the overage.  There are number of reasons why we incurred so many additional copies from February to July, but I did want to make a couple of comments.  I am not a copy nazi, but there are a few simple steps that you can take to reduce the wear and tear on the copier and make it so that we don’t have to pay stiff cash penalties when we go over our allotment.

• We have a policy that if you need to make more than 100 copies (total pages copied) that we submit your job to COPYTHIS. It’s far less expensive to use their service than to pay a penalty for additional copies on our service contract. This requires advance preparation on your part though and with a 24-hour turn around.

• Let me make an additional EASY suggestion, we have student workers who need to be utilized more efficiently and one way to do that is to submit your job (articles in particular) to our student worker and have them scan it and make a PDF.  In most all cases, they can do the scan while you wait!  They will email the PDF to you or put on your clipdrive. Then YOU send the PDF to your students or post it on blackboard.  
Please take these simple suggestions for what they are, easy ways for us to save money on penalties for copy overage and make our copier last longer.

FOLLOW UP
Congratulations to Liz Dudash and her COM 597 students for putting on a professional program of Debate Watch Wednesday night at the Gilloiz. There was great turnout of both students and community members.  This was a lot of work and coordination and so Liz is to be commended for providing a great learning experience for her students, but also an event that the community could participate in.

Next Faculty Meeting, Wednesday November 6 at 3:00 in Craig 337.

Kelly

Minutes from Sept 24 faculty meeting were attached to the email you received announcing the blog. 

Reminder:  Faculty meeting October 15, 3:00, Craig 337

Items for discussion to include: Banner policies and admission to the major, report of writing in the majors committee, Public Affairs in your courses list, NFL tournament participation, and others to be added.

UPCOMING EVENTS for your calendars:

• Debate Watch, Wednesday, Oct 15 at 7:00 at the Gilloiz Theatre. Liz’s 597 class is organizing the event.  Consider extra credit to your students for attending! Panel discussion before debate and Q&A afterwards.

• Come to the COAL tailgate party, Saturday from 11:00 a.m. -- 1:00 p.m.  FREE FOOD and games for the kids, visit with former students, and enjoy the great weather.

• Celebrating our retired faculty members! 

• Russ Keeling to be inducted into the Wall of Fame on Friday, October 10 at 3:30 on the 3rd floor of the PSU near the elevators.  PLEASE plan to attend so that we can support Russ’ accomplishments and contributions to the university for over 30 years.
• Don Stanton will receive the Homecoming Award of Recognition Friday, October 10 at the Homecoming Dinner.
• On Friday, October 24, we’ll have a reception for Don to congratulate him on this award. It will likely be at 3:00, location TBA.  Please put this item on your calendar!

Let me know if there are other events you'd like to post on the blog.

Kelly

Major's Fair, teaching classes, meeting with department heads, President's address, COM Week--so much going on these days!  September was never so busy before...or was it and I just blocked it out?

Below is a list of items that we'll be reviewing and discussing at the faculty meeting tomorrow at 3:00.  In particular, I want to call your attention to a few items that need your review before the meeting. NOTE: Since this is coming to you the day before, if you have to choose an item to focus on, pay attention to #1 regarding the minor and what our strategy for a minor should be. 

1) Attached are two versions of the minor in Ethical Leadership proposal (original plan alternative plan). Please review each and come prepared to discuss their merits tomorrow.   This item will be couched in a discussion about how the department may position itself relative to infusing the 3 themes of the public affairs mission into major/minor programs (see #3 below).

2) Also, I'll provide a couple of items for curricular "clean up" for discussion and possible vote. I'm not attaching the forms here, but I'll have draft copies of the forms tomorrow. There will be two items: 

• A proposal to revise the pre-requisites for COM 436 to include COM 115 and 60 hours completed.
• A proposal to include a number of courses in the various COM Studies program options electives that were recommended at our August meeting (e.g. adding COM 360 to the org com major, and other classes to health com, etc.).  

And 3), see the attached worksheet that the dean has asked that we draft regarding what we do now (and can) to infuse the 3 public affairs themes into our undergraduate experience more intentionally. This is related to the priority of the President and Provost to shore up the how public affairs is infused into student academic experiences now that GEP 397 has been put on a two year hiatus.  The worksheet is not an assignment for you to complete, but as orientation to what we may consider in infusing the three themes into the experience that every one of our majors should have.

Finally 4), I had asked you to provide me with travel and equipment request by this September faculty meeting. So, please bring those requests with you to the meeting tomorrow. Please put in travel requests for conferences during this academic year. Karen has copies in the office of these forms.

Essentially these are our main agenda items tomorrow, with additional items noted below too.

Items for discussion and notices about upcoming events

1. Advising Workshop for COM Advisors:  Wednesday October 1, 12-1 in Craig 337.  If you need a refresher or are new to advising, please plan to attend this interactive workshop. In addition to a number of topics, we will briefly discuss how the new Banner system will require a change in how we process major requests.

Don't forget about a few upcoming Academic Advisor Forums: Connecting with Diverse Students, Thursday, 12-1, PSU 313 and Identifying Students in Distress, Monday, Sept 29, noon-1, PSU 313

2. Major equipment requests ($5000 or more) from all departments in COAL were recently forwarded to the college/provost. Attached: Equipment Prioritized FY09 Requests.xlsx is a list of those items sent to the provost in priority listing. Notice the two COM items (SMART Classroom upgrade and Color Laser printer) were listed in the top ten--this rating bodes well for us getting these items. Word of caution though, the provost will say grace over these items next. 

3. I'll share with you efforts to co-host an NFA tournament with Drury next April. National Forensics Association is a collegiate tournament for debate and individual events. Curt Gilstrap from Drury approached me about this and I will brief you on what would be involved in co-hosting the tournament on campus next April.  No final decision has been made yet, but we are investigating the opportunity.  If we agree to it, there could be a significant financial gain for the department.

4. At the faculty meeting we will revisit the discussion about writing in the majors that was developed at the August faculty meeting. I will likely request that those folks constitute an ad hoc committee to develop the writing project ideas further.

5. Finally, I'll also share efforts by Randy Dillon and I to host Dr.Scott Titsworth in October as our invited scholar.  You'll recall we had Dr. Lynn Harter here last spring for a visit with graduate students and faculty.  We've invited Scott to do the same thing this fall. Please put these dates on your calendar, Oct 19-22. We will host various events that everyone is invited to.

See you Wednesday at 3:00.

Kelly

Good Monday to you. I hope you have a great first week of the semester. Please check your classrooms for necessary equipment (instructor table, overhead, lectern, etc.) and let us know if something is missing or if the room is in disarray.

Faculty Meeting Overview

Thank you for a very productive meeting last Friday. I think we made some good headway in getting a number of issues developed for this year. Thanks to John we have a rough draft of a leadership minor. I am meeting with Dean Adams tomorrow and will have him review this proposal and we'll move forward from there. We also have some great ideas ruminating about a writing test for admission to the major (among other writing ideas). The catalog copy was reviewed and we have a number of clean up items to attend to this fall. And finally, the discussion of speech and theatre led to some movement on course rotations and staffing of new courses.  Thanks to each of your groups for the effort and enthusiasm put forward.  We will continue to work on each of these topics, among others, as the semester goes on. I'll be in touch with a couple of members from each group to follow up on the ideas fowarded.

We also completed a number of elections for various committees this year. 

Merit Committee:  Randy Dillon (1 more year), Janis King and Char Berquist (2 year term)

COAL Scholarship Committee:  Lynn Borich

COAL Student Success Committee:  Jerri Lynn Kyle

QUICK NOTES

Merit Report:  I will work on the annual merit report form in the next couple of weeks. As soon as I get it done, I'll send it out for your review. We should have a brief discussion at the next faculty meeting to confirm the changes from last year and have an opportunity to make further amendments.

Next Faculty Meeting:  Wednesday, September 24, 3:-4:30, Craig 337

Colloquium:  Monday, September 8, 12-1pm, Craig 337: "Is There a Doctor in the House?"  Stephanie Norander and Heather Carmack 

THANKS to Gloria and Noah for hosting the beginning of the year party at their house Friday.  Great place, good food, and good company!

Additional Agenda Items not covered Friday

A.  Current class enrollments and major numbers.  I will provide these at the next faculty meeting in September.

B.  Departmental commitments/activities this year:
i.    Your requests for travel and equipment.  Please submit your anticipated travel requests for this year. I've put the travel request forms in your mailboxes this morning and attached it here as well.  You may also submit a request for additional equipment and that form is provided here.  Please have both those submitted to me before our next faculty meeting in September. I have to submit a budget request to the dean immediately after that.

ii.    Space issues:  Depending on how you look at it, our temporarily cramped quarters in Craig this year is either a good thing or bad thing. The good news is that we moved all the Siceluff occupants into Craig hall.  Additionally, we have welcomed two new faculty members into Craig hall.  While Siceluff is being renovated this year...we are admittedly very cramped.  That a number of you are sharing offices, in some cases 3 of you, is not the optimal situation for meeting with students nor having privacy to do your work. That is the bad news part of it.  I ask that you be patient with one another as you share office space. It is temporary.  The plans are to have Siceluff remodeled for a fall 2009 move in for the Language and English departments.  When Languages moves out, we will reconfigure their offices across three departments (COM, Media, and Theatre). Those discussions are happening this year.  Suffice it to say that I anticipate everyone having their own offices sometime during the 2009-2010 academic year.

iii.    Banner changes affecting registration, class enrollments, and major admissions.  These issues will be at the forefront this year as we will need to develop strategies for enrolling our students for fall 2009 classes when they don't meet pre-reqs related to admission to the major.  The new banner system will NOT allow students to register if they don't have pre-reqs. This is a significant change from our current web reg system. I will continue to work with Nicole Rovig on solutions to our admission pre-req and share those ideas with you at faculty meeting. 

iv.    If you want to have a wireless account through the university, we can get that started for you this fall. Currently we pay $5 per month, per faculty, per wired port in offices.  If you want to go wireless, it is a $5 additional monthly charge as well. In order to save on these costs, if you want a wireless account, we will de-activate your wired port. We will do your wireless set up first and get it established before we de-activate your wired port. Let me know via email if you want to do this. BTW, this does not apply to those already set up on wireless, obviously.

v.    Bulletin boards. Thanks to Susan's offer to provide the department with a PR intern (1 or 2 credits probably)  for the year, I will work with that person revamp, upgrade and maintain two of our current departmental bulletin boards this year (one in the first floor lobby and then the board to the right of the dept office, which currently has grad school brochures on it).  We will then utilize Jerri Lynn's PR class to revise the "School" bookcase to the left of the dept office.  If you have ideas of one of these boards/bookcases, let me know.

vi.    COM Week, Sept 15-19.  The theme this  year is "Get your Reality Check:  Making it in the real world with your communication degree."  I've attached the current draft flyer here for you to review and then share with your classes to attend. I will be putting this information in the student InCommon blog this week too.  We're still fine tuning the master classes, but the general ideas apply across them. Eric and I are working with Tom Black (alum) to give a keynote address at the luncheon on Friday and as we get that finalized (hopefully) we'll include that in promotional materials. I will also follow up with folks on the other possible master class presenters (from Noble and Penmack).

vii.    Debate Watch Oct 15 at the Gilloiz Theatre. I mentioned this at the faculty meeting.  As more details are ironed out, we'll share them with you. 

viii.    Rhwanda documentary and forgiveness in Com 405. Deborah Craig is taking a focus on forgiveness in her class this fall.  She is planning to screen Patrick Mureithi's documentary in her class as well as  (hopefully) invite him to speak with her class about the film.  This is a great opportunity for the COM 405 students.  As this opportunity develops, I'll have Deborah share her experiences at a faculty meeting. You can view a trailer for the film on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IUZSBGe2G4.  You also can read Patrick’s blog at http://patrickmureithi.blogspot.com/.

ix.    Will continue to use Head’s Up and InCommon blogs this semester...as you can read right now. 

That's it for now.  As other issues come across my desk this well, I'll send out brief emails.  Have a good week.

Kelly

Good June/July to you,

Hope your summer is going well and that June was productive.  We've still got July and part of August to make progress on all our summer projects.  I keep telling myself that "there is still time!" so that I don't keep "lamenting" that the summer is almost over.  In keeping with that notion that there is still time, I've got a couple of items for your consideration.

1. For full-time faculty, your 2008-2009 salary statements are here and have been placed in your mailboxes!

2. GOOD NEWS: Stephanie Norander has successfully defended her dissertation as of June 24.  If you get a chance, do drop her a congratulatory email: snnorander@yahoo.com or sd829494@ohio.edu
MORE GOOD NEWS:  Russ Keeling again scored among the highest honors teaching evaluations for COM 115 last spring, according to Art Spisak.  Congrats to Russ for posting some of the highest evaluations in all honors courses for fall 2007 and spring 2008! 
**Russ will be inducted in the PSU Wall of Fame this October. The entire 2008 class of inductees will be honored during a special ceremony at 3:30 October 10 in the Plaster Student Union's West Ballroom. The event will be open to the public.  We should show up en masse to support Russ in this recognition of his service to MSU. Russ joins Holt Spicer, a 2002 inductee.

3. As you work on your syllabi for fall classes, please be sure to include the required boilerplate info from the Provost.  Here is the link the that information: http://www.missouristate.edu/provost/syllabi.htm

Also remember that if you are using Turnitin (the plagiarism detection system), we recommend that you inform students via the syllabus.  Suggested wording is as follows, and this could be included in the section on academic dishonesty:
“Students’ papers may be submitted to Turnitin, plagiarism detection system.  Students will be allowed to submit their own papers, and the instructor may also submit a student’s paper.  Please visit the Turnitin website at http://turnitin.com.”

4.August 22 is the date for our beginning of the year faculty retreat. 
  The CDR is hosting us in their downtown space this year.  Some of you may remember the old Bank of America building. It’s now called the PCOB (Park Central Office building) and the CDR is now located there and has some great space there for training and other programs. We have three dedicated classrooms for COM 115 there as well.
We will meet in PCOB, 2nd floor room 209 for a continental breakfast and tour. So, please schedule 8:30-4:00 for our retreat. As the summer progresses I’ll send you draft agenda items.   

5. A couple of items for your calendars:
• The COAL all college faculty meeting is set for Thursday, August 21, 9-11 a.m., in Karls 101.
• NCA panel information has now been posted for your review.  You are advised to register immediately for the conference, if you plan to attend. I would also recommend that you reserve your hotel space and start checking on flights as soon as possible. Hotel space is at a premium this year, so reserve early. You may contact Karen to reserve your hotel room centrally on our departmental budget.  Please keep in mind that your travel allocation will be roughly $750 from the dean, and likely another $350 from the department for a total of $1000 for one major conference this year.  I will be asking for your travel requests again at the first faculty meeting.

6. Two Upcoming Issues for consideration this year:

• Plus/minus grading approved at June Board of Governors Meeting

The plus/minus grading proposal passed by Faculty Senate (VD BOG Resolution Plus Minus Grading System.pdf) was approved by the BOG in June, specifically:
   
• This new grading system will be slated for implementation in Fall 2009 and should be included in syllabi statements. 
• The grade C- is defined as “slightly below satisfactory work” and is assigned a point value of 1.7. 
Two very practical implications of this:
• Students with a cumulative “C-“ average fall below the 2.0 threshold of academic
 eligibility.
• A course grade of C- will not satisfy course and program requirements to earn “a C or
better.” This means we will have to discuss how this affects our core and overall gpa requirements for admission.

Also important to note: Faculty have the choice of whether to use pluses and minuses or not, but your choices must be explicitly noted in course syllabi.

• There will be an appeals process created for students whose eligibility for scholarship
renewal is adversely affected by plus/minus grades.
• There will be a study of the impact of plus/minus grades after two years to determine any
effects on GPAs and scholastic honors at graduation (cum laude, etc.), the results to be
shared with both Faculty Senate and SGA

• SB389
Senate Bill 389 requires that state colleges and universities publish certain “quality” information, ncluding information about their faculties and student evaluations. Based on the preference of Faculty Senate, MSU is attempting to comply with the student evaluation requirement by having students voluntarily answer online five global questions for each of their classes.  However, out of over 4000 sections offered this spring, fewer than 1% of those sections had at least 10 student responses.  ALC has asked Senate Chair Pauline Nugent to approach the Senate Executive Committee about endorsing the idea of administering these five standardized questions as part of the written, in-class evaluations that students already complete.

Take care and we'll be in touch soon,

Kelly

Greetings everyone,

Hope you are enjoying the early part of your summer break. Things are rockin' and rollin' here in Craig Hall. As many of you know, Siceluff is being vacated for renovations and the big move day was today. This move included our Basic Course Staff.  Thanks to those of you who boxed up all your belongings and marked them accordingly. With John B's able assistance and direction, we got all the furniture, journals, and random items marked and boxed up yesterday for the move today.  John's also been working hard these last couple of days to get the GA office in Craig 394 ready for the grad students this fall.  I appreciate all your patience as we make this transition. I'm sure it will take a few months to get everything where we want it (including my office...what a pit!).  Thanks also go to Karen for her great work in getting all the phone transferred as well as data ports and name plates for the offices. I'll send out another update later this summer when things get more organized.

The real reason for this email is to make some exciting announcements.  Please be sure to congratulate these folks on a job well done!

Isabelle has been named the COAL Dean's fellow for graduate education and research. Isabelle will be working with the dean's office next year to coordinate research efforts and graduate program initiatives, all with a one course release.  We know Isabelle will represent us well.

Randy #1:  has graciously agreed to be acting director of graduate studies next year while Isabelle has her new appointment. "Second time around" Randy, as we like to refer to him, has been grad director before and so he knows the ropes quite well. He'll be teaching COM 601 this fall and working with all things graduate students.

Randy #2: was recently notified that his manuscript "How alumni narratives of intercultural competence can inform the scholarship of teaching and learning of intercultural communication" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Congrats Randy!

Robyn has been appointed Assistant Director of the Basic Course!  She will be assisting John with administration of the COM 115 program. A few things she'll sink her teeth into are graduate assistantship mentoring, weekly staff meetings, and other duties as assigned.  I'm sure everyone will give their support to Robyn as she embarks on this administrative journey.

Dr. Russell Keeling, Emeritus faculty member has recently been approved by the Board of Governors to be accepted to the Wall of Fame in the Plaster Student Union.  He will be officially inducted at a ceremony October 10, 2008 at 3:30 in the PSU ballroom. I hope you will join me in attending the ceremony to support Russ for his "too many to count" accomplishments while a member of this university for 34 years.

Char and the fine folks at the CDR have recently announced the start of Missouri's first ever adult victim offender mediation program with the Greene County Prosecutor's office. You received an email about this earlier in May, but it bears repeating that this is a cutting edge program in restorative justice and our hats go off to Char and Heather and the rest of the many volunteers with the CDR!  They want me to remind you that there are trainings coming soon for this program.

FREE VOLUNTEER TRAINING May 30 - June 1, 2008

The CDR is offering a two-and-a-half day victim-offender mediation training on May 30 - June 1. This training will prepare volunteers to mediate juvenile and/or adult victim-offender cases. Click here for more information. <http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderMediationTraining.htm>

Basic Juvenile Victim-Offender Mediation Training (Friday, May 30, 5:30 - 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 31,  9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sunday, June 1, 9 a.m. - noon)

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER

Click here to read more about the training <http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderMediationTraining.htm>  or to register now! http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderRegisterNow.htm. You can also read more about our Victim-Offender Mediation Program at http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/JuvenileVictimOffenderProgram.htm

If you have other exciting news you'd like to share, please do by posting a COMMENT here on the blog for others to see and appreciate!   Have a great summer!

Kelly

We had a faculty meeting Wednesday, April 30. At the end of it we realized it was the last one of the year. Can you believe it...we've completed an entire academic year together.  So many accomplishments to recognize, so little time.  Here are a few highlights:

• Isabelle was promoted to Associate Professor (and now bearer of the gnome)  
• Eric was granted tenure and completed a record breaking debate season and now the "grand poobah"  
• Debate Team finished finished 3rd in the NDT and received two top speaker awards from NDT and CEDA
• The CDR staff secured the adult victim offender program through the Springfield Prosecutor's office
• Our undergrad and grad students presented an impressive number of conference papers this year (it's probably a record)
• Faculty completed a successful year of conference papers and publications.
• We hired two new excellent faculty members (Heather and Stephanie)
• The BC staff and graduate assistants return to Craig Hall and the CDR gets great space downtown

Faculty Meeting Highlights

1. Faculty recommended promotion criteria for senior instructor.  Eric moved the document be accepted, and Randy seconded.  Based on the attached document, the guidelines were unanimously approved. Attached COM Dept senior instructor guidelines-revised.doc are the guidelines we approved (with revisions) and these have been forwarded to the personnel committee and Dean Adams.  Both he and the Provost will review these guidelines and provide feedback to the department. At that time, the personnel committee will revise and then submit approved criteria to be included in the departmental guidelines.

2.  We also approved a number of changes to the merit plan. These changes will apply to the 2008 calendar year for merit. These revised guidelines are provided COM Merit 04_30_08.doc (these weremoved by Gloria, and seconded by Isabelle). The vote to approve these changes was unanimous).  To summarize, here are the following changes:

• Serving as a mentor to probationary faculty (5 points), or other faculty (3 points).
• Points for a 4 in teaching now 20, and 30 points for a level 5
• Points for a 4 in service now 15, and 25 points for level 5.
• While not included in the document, faculty were open to instructors moving some items from level 3 in service to achieve a level 4 or 5 in points.

3. Elections: our numbers were dwindling when time to elect for various committees. The university committees needed nominations, so a couple of you self nominated. I will forward those to the Provost. We needed to elect two new members of the merit committee. Randy is the returning member.  I will submit a ballot to you of tenured faculty. Please choose two and the top getters will be elected for 2 year term (tenured faculty cannot refuse a nomination).  Members may be re-elected to consecutive terms, but not more than two without the lapse of an intervening term.  I also need a volunteer to serve on the COAL technology committee next year and I will be soliciting potential candidates if no one volunteers.

4. Updates

Banner changes are provided for reference COM Undergraduate Banner changes.doc. Please review them, they will go forward as is unless you have a concern.

All Siceluff occupants should have items boxed up and ready to be moved by Monday, May 26. Please identify boxes and furniture in one of three ways. 1) to Craig Hall, room XXX, 2) warehoused to keep 3) surplus.  #2 means you want to keep the item but want to have it stored.  #3 means you don't want it.  All items will be moved from Siceluff to Craig during that last week of May. 

If you want a wireless access account through the university, please let me know so that I can set it up for you. We will be adding an additional access point on the 3rd floor of Craig on the northeast corner for better signal.

The COM advisory council met last weekend. If you would like a summary of the meeting and other notes, let me know and I'll forward you the email minutes. I'm going to be asking you next fall for new member referrals.  The council would like to grow to 25 members, currently we have 12.

That's all for now. Have a great rest of the semester and summer.

Kelly

In attendance:  Galanes, Bauman, King, Waters, Craig, Kyle, Ireland, Walters, Morris (E), Bourhis, Dillon, Coltharp, Dudash.