A senator inquired about the status of board approval for last year's faculty handbook revisions. Dr. Moffett said that the Handbook revisions had not made it to President Brown yet, but they will be on the agenda for June. Last year they were approved at the June Board meeting.
a. Bruce Griffiths
No news. Committee is meeting today.
Regarding the repopulation of the campus, Dr. Dailey reported that the hybrid-flex model will be based on CDC guidelines. There will be training of faculty for this process, starting with faculty champions who can then train other faculty. In most cases this will involve splitting classes into "A" and "B" groups that meet on different days, in order to allow distance in the classroom. The model classroom will allow the class session to be seen remotely by students enrolled in the class.
Dr. Dailey also announced that, starting next year, the Blackboard virtual classroom will allow instructors to see up to 25 students on the screen at one time. He also noted that Blackboard video needs to be upgraded. That upgrade could include the capacity to record video. However, our Blackboard cloud storage is near capacity. Dr. Dailey is looking at that.
A senator asked if existing smartboards will work with the new Blackboard virtual classroom. Dr. Dailey said that they should, but may require some updating.
Another senator asked if Dr. Dailey could explain the rationale for pushing face-to-face instruction for the summer when summers have been almost entirely online for the past several years, long before the pandemic. Why aren’t we instead waiting for fall when the situation regarding vaccinations and COVID-19 variants will be clearer? Dr. Dailey said that this was beyond the scope of his responsibilities, and he couldn’t address the question.
No report.
Nurse Todd reported that 130 employees have been vaccinated through the Franklin County Health Department. She said we also have priority with a few other agencies distributing vaccines. She noted that UK will start vaccinating their students next week. She advised those having difficulty getting a vaccine appointment to consider looking outside their county of residence. We’ve recently had two surveillance testing events. There will be another on April 6. At the second event, the majority of those tested were students, and no positive results were found. In response to a question, Nurse Todd said that there has been no decision to make the vaccine mandatory at KSU. She anticipates that masks will still be mandatory into the fall and winter. She noted that the CDC would be deciding today about reducing social distance requirements in schools. A senator asked about plans to vaccinate KSU students. Nurse Todd said she had no information at this time. Franklin County could do it, but that would be May at the earliest. Another senator noted that KSU graduate assistants are employees and should have received the invitation to be vaccinated, but did not. Nurse Todd said to give her the number of people who would participate in a vaccination for graduate assistants or other unvaccinated employees, and she would try to arrange it with the Franklin County Health Department.