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University Faculty Affairs Committee – August 25, 2026

Action Items

None

Minutes 

Present: Nicole Crowder (Chair), Paul Fallon, Ian Finlayson (secretary), Ken Machande, Melissa Wells, Debra Schleef (guest to discuss teaching load and administrator evaluation). 

  1. Ongoing Business
    1. Outdated P&T language in the Faculty Handbook.  We need to make sure that all materials and procedures related to P&T are up-to-date and correct.  For example, current language describes files as being “due in the dean’s office” which is misleading as the files are in Canvas and simply get their permissions changed.  Melissa will look over the handbook and P&T documents housed on the Provost’s website and flag places where there are issues.  The dates on the P&T calendar are also currently incorrect.
    2. Archival of old P&T tenure courses within Canvas.  These should be given back to the candidate once a decision is made, but this has not been consistent.  We should make sure that this is the case and is followed moving forward.
    3. Teaching load discussion.  The provost’s office is performing a workload study, via Navigate and Edify (the vendors for the EAB software), which should be done relatively soon.  It will show median credit hours by department and instructor, and the numbers of students in said courses.  This data will include independent studies, internships, and so on. It won’t take into account WI, SI, or other attributes. The independent studies being included could be confusing since an instructor with 12 “normal” credits and an independent study would show up as teaching 15 credits.  These courses could be later filtered out and could be helpful in a formula where they are worth some fraction of a normal course for a faculty member’s load.  This also won’t include non-traditional parts of a load, such as education professors who work in K12 schools, sabbaticals, special assignments, or other normal load reductions.  The data will be over a three-year period.  Lab classes will be counted by the credit hours as opposed to the contact hours.  We don’t know whether this data will be shared with faculty or not, nor how it will be used.  In this discussion, there is a tension between flexibility for departments and standardization of workloads.  This committee can make suggestions but doesn’t have the power to make decisions.  Having more data available would be helpful in guiding these discussions.  One way we could get this data without needing to rely on a vendor is by making a standard data collection form based on the data reported on the first page of FAARs, which report course loads for all faculty. 
    4. Evaluation plan for administrators.  At the end of last year, a very short administrator evaluation was sent out with free-response questions.  (SACSCOC has a rule that we must “regularly” evaluate administrators, which we have done with evaluations every three years).  Some faculty felt like the instrument used last year was a bit cursory and did not provide adequate evaluation.  In prior years, we used an instrument which included Likert scale questions for different areas of the administrator’s job.  Debra will send us this older administrator survey and is open to using it in the future, possibly in two years from now.  The chair evaluations sent out to CAS faculty for this year included questions about school directors/associate deans at the end.  Chairs were then given these questions in a separate evaluation.  There is no current plan to evaluate associate deans in the other two colleges, so far as we know.  In the spirit of the faculty’s right to evaluate chairs per Faculty Handbook §1.8.3, §2.2.1.6 and §6, these positions also should be evaluated by the faculty every year. However, the duties of school directors are not anywhere in the handbook.  The president also will be evaluated this Fall with a survey sent to faculty and staff.
  2. New Business
    1. Initial Organization.  Minutes will be posted to Teams and then approved electronically.  After approval, they will then be posted to the UFC website.
    2. Handbook revisions to incorporate school directors/associate deans.  As discussed above, these positions are not described anywhere in the faculty handbook.  This should be done first to provide criteria by which they can be evaluated.  One of the duties currently being assigned to these school directors is the writing of chair APRs.  However, the handbook lists this as the responsibility of the dean.  The CAS dean is working on a plan to address these issues.

The meeting adjourned at 4:08. 

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