Announcements President Barrington

1.       Welcome to the CCSU Faculty Senate’s first meeting of the spring semester.  The Steering Committee has put together an exciting semester, full of opportunities to make decisions regarding the Senate’s Constitution and Bylaws, the Faculty Handbook, Faculty Mentoring,  Grade Submission policy, the formation of a Construction Advisory Committee, the issue of course shopping, as well as IT and Academic Governance.  In addition, we’ll continue our discussions regarding Assessment of Teaching, NEASC, and Intercollegiate Athletics.  And looming over all these will be financial questions, both those of the university and of our students. 

With all these issues in mind, I expect every senator to do three things: (1) prepare for each Senate meeting by reviewing the agenda and soliciting feedback from their constituencies; (2) attend every Senate meeting—or arrange to have an alternate attend; and (3) report back to their constituencies regarding decisions made and issues raised at each meeting. 

2.       As you remember, last September the Faculty Senate extended the deadline for submitting Departmental P&T Guidelines; that new deadline, 2 February 2009, is fast approaching.  To date, I have not received Guidelines from 9 Departments: Biology, Computer Science, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Engineering, Geography, History, Management & Organization, Music, and Political Science.  I have been assured by Geography and Political Science that they will meet the deadline.  The other seven departments, however, are less certain.  Senators for these departments: please convey to your chairs and DECs the importance of submitting these guidelines by NEXT MONDAY.   If your department needs help or guidance, please contact me immediately, so we can help.

If you represent one of the 22 departments that submitted guidelines before 1 November, then your department has been given feedback generated by the university’s Human Resources, CCSU-AAUP, and me.  We ask that your department respond to the feedback early. If you represent one of the 8 departments that submitted guidelines after 1 November, then your department will receive our feedback within the next two weeks.  In both cases, I appreciate the help you’ve provided to make certain the guidelines were submitted in a timely manner.

Sometime after Spring Break, we will begin posting the Departmental Guidelines to the Faculty Senate website.

3.       During the winter break, we all had the opportunity to read and comment on President Miller and Provost Lovitt’s proposal for rethinking and reorganizing CCSU’s Student Advising process. In the two weeks since the proposal’s campus-wide dissemination, I have been share ideas and concerns with many of you.  Here’s what I have learned.

a.       Everyone agrees that our current process is a hodgepodge that serves some students very well but many others not at all. 

b.       Some departments and schools have diligently developed very thoughtful advising programs that need to be embraced, supported, and even emulated by any new process.

c.        Whatever we do cannot be done with the expectation of new resources. Any extra resources devoted to Advising will have to be diverted from elsewhere.

d.       We need a 12-month advising program with the authority to address the needs of transfer and current students who need help and guidance between semesters.

e.        Strong advising from faculty must be rewarded; at the minimum, it should be recognized during the Promotion and Tenure process.

f.         And perhaps most importantly, I have learned that when it comes to advising, Faculty, Staff, and Administrators do not trust one another. 

Now, most certainly, the lack of trust was not diminished by the proposal’s wording, which suggested the plan was a fait accompli. But let’s set that aside for a while and remember two things: (1) advising is consistently identified as a source of dissatisfaction, (2) we‘ve been asked to provide feedback on a project that addresses a hole desperately needing to be filled.   Thus, today’s meeting will include a discussion of ways to improve the plan.  Equally important, though, is the discussion that should take place in each of your departments:  how can your department’s current advising process fit into this new plan?  How can your department improve its advising process?  Please take these questions back to your departments.  But don’t dither.  Changes need to happen.  We owe it to our students to have something better in place by the Fall 2009 semester.