REGULAR MEETING OF THE FACULTY SENATE

The University of Oklahoma (Norman campus)

November 9, 2009, 3:30 p.m., Jacobson Faculty Hall 102

AGENDA

1. Approval of the Senate Journal for the regular session of October 12, 2009.

2. Announcements:

A. The Faculty Senate is sad to report the deaths in October of retired faculty Cedomir Sliepcevich (Chemical Engineering & Materials Science), Leale Streebin (Civil Engineering & Environmental Science), and Lloyd Williams (Education) and of active faculty member Roger Young (Geology & Geophysics).

B. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee nominated two faculty members for the faculty-at-large position on the Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences dean search committee. From the nominations, the administration selected both nominees (Mark Yeary from Electrical & Computer Engineering and Hank Jenkins-Smith from Political Science) to serve. The search committee will be chaired by Dean Rich Taylor from the College of Fine Arts.

3. Remarks by Ghislain d’Humieres, director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

4. Action Item: Research Council recommendation to revise the process for hiring research faculty and change the appropriate section of the OU-Norman Faculty Handbook.

According to the OU Faculty Handbook, the Research Council is responsible for reviewing Research Faculty candidates. The Research Council voted unanimously to recommend that the Research Council be replaced by the Vice President for Research for this approval process. The council believes there is enough oversight in the process to remove the Research Council endorsement. See also VPR’s letter – http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/RC Faculty Senate Letter.pdf – and recruiting form – http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/request to hire research professor.pdf.

Proposed change in Faculty Handbook, section 3.5.3(A) (deletions crossed through; additions underlined):

“Once the academic unit has made a recommendation and the academic dean has endorsed this recommendation, the credentials of the candidate and the final recommendation to hire the candidate for the research faculty position shall be reviewed by the Research Council Vice President for Research, whose recommendation shall be forwarded to the Senior Vice President and Provost for review prior to presentation to the President and the Board of Regents. All subsequent practices currently in place for temporary faculty appointments would apply in these cases as well. Contractual documents shall state clearly these appointments will not become tenure-track.”

5. Senate Chair's Report.

6. Discussion Items:

A. Posting course materials to learn.ou.edu.

Background: In 2005, the Student Congress passed a resolution requesting the posting of course syllabi and current grade information on learn.ou.edu. After discussion, the Faculty Senate approved a resolution stating: “Faculty Senate encourages faculty to make undergraduate course syllabi available online.” On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, the Student Congress passed a resolution about the availability of exam preparation resources. The resolution encouraged “…the Faculty to provide study guides, lecture notes, previous tests, syllabi, grades, and/or sample exam questions to all students in their classes by utilizing the Desire2Learn (D2L) platform.”

Nearly 5 years later, we are a campus that has long-term experience with learn.ou.edu, encourages green initiatives, and employs alternate course delivery formats (especially with the advent of absences caused by H1N1). In addition, there is an emphasis on improving graduation rates and time to graduation and increasing retention rates.
Should the current policy be revised to reflect minimum expectations for faculty posting of course materials?

B. Digital tenure dossier review.

Background: Each year roughly 40-45 tenure dossiers are reviewed by the Campus Tenure Committee. Added to this are 10-15 promotion dossiers reviewed administratively. Currently departments prepare paper dossiers for internal and external review. Seven complete copies of the candidate’s dossier are required for internal review. External review dossiers, normally smaller, are estimated to require 6-12 paper copies of the candidate’s dossier. In 2009, the review for Honors and Awards was streamlined to require paperless submission for most dossiers.

Best practices research of Big 12 schools and schools recognized in a recent Chronicle article suggests that technology has advanced to the point where creating electronic dossiers is more efficient and that secure submissions and reviews of digital dossiers can be assured. Digital submission could allow electronic access for reviewers at any setting they choose and would greatly reduce the amount of paper used, enhancing green campus initiatives.
Should the current policy be revised to encourage electronic review of tenure and promotion dossiers?

7. New business (any matter not known about or that could not have been reasonably foreseen prior to the time the agenda was prepared).