The committee discussed faculty dining: faculty used to use the unofficial faculty dining room in the Student Center. The sign above that dining room now reads “Presidential Dining Room.” However, faculty can feel free to use that area. Gibson added that many students think there is no food service contract, but there is one.

The committee looked at sections of the faculty handbook.

A Senator asked if PCC will be revising the wording on interim appointments in the Faculty Handbook. Gibson replied, yes, the committee is looking at clarifying the distinction between faculty and interim appointments.

PCC 18-19-03: Change of Evaluation Calendar: This action item is a proposal to change the current faculty evaluation calendar to coincide with the calendar year as opposed to the academic year. Thus, faculty evaluation would take place earlier, and faculty would be evaluated on the full calendar year from January to December. The rationale is that this change would give faculty members a longer period to collect data to compile self-evaluations and Tenure and Promotion information.

Moffett noted that President Brown had asked him to bring this issue to Senate. He added that there could be several benefits to this change. There is the expectation that merit pay will come online next academic year. This calendar change would obviate the loss of merit pay due to budget freezes later in the spring.

Gibson noted that Faculty Senate cannot look at any such changes [as a merit pay policy] before they are officially announced, so the committee won't have much to say on implementation before Brown's criteria are published. She stated that she wished to retract a document that the committee had sent forward regarding implementation of merit pay.

Moffett responded that this is a discussion we should bring the Provost into, and that there may be some role the faculty should play here.

Provost Yates replied that he hadn't been in on any conversations about merit pay. He added that it would be a good move to change the calendar, and the administration is interested in the thoughts of the Senate.

A Senator asked how the calendar-shift would affect the Tenure and Promotion process: if the evaluation is part of a faculty member's T&P packet, which is submitted in August/September, but evaluation doesn't happen until January, is the T&P calendar also moving?

Yates replied that all activities up to the time the dossier is turned in will be included the dossier. –

Moffett noted that this issue wouldn’t come up often.

A Senator asked, if in the current system, a faculty member is evaluating himself from April to April, will we now be evaluating ourselves over two contract periods?

Moffett acknowledged that this might be a logistical issue.

A Senator pointed out that another concern is that the fiscal year is July 1 to June 30 of the following year, but faculty assignments may change depending on demand in a particular semester. He noted that how we are reporting that might have implications for SACS: if we do an evaluatory period that is different from our reporting period, we might run into problems.

Gibson noted that we will have a trial period to work out bugs for succeeding years.