PCC Vice-Chair Griffiths presented an action item revising the section of the Faculty Handbook dealing with appointments of deans and chairs. On the hiring of deans, the item outlines requirements for faculty representation in the process, adds language calling for candidates to have “national recognition” for scholarship or creative activity in their discipline and details a process, including screening by KSU faculty in the relevant discipline, for awarding tenure to these administrators.
Concerns were raised about the necessity and feasibility of the tenure screening process described in the action item. After some discussion Vice-Chair Griffiths agreed to withdraw the action item for this week and have the committee look at that section again.
The proposed changes regarding selection of chairs called for them to be elected from within the academic unit and serve a three-year term. A senator asked who can vote in those elections? Response was that the faculty handbook currently says that only tenured or tenure track faculty may vote. The senator expressed concern about that, saying that instructors should have some voice in the evaluation of chairs.
PCC will reconsider this item with Senate feedback in mind at its next meeting. Anyone with more questions or feedback on the whole deans and chairs issue should direct their comments to Senator Alexander Lai.
Beverly Schneller and Jason Keeler were guests at BASC's last meeting. Dr. Schneller was there to work with the committee on developing a survey of student technology needs after the campus closes November 20. Committee Chair Noel Novelo noted that the purpose of this survey is to determine the scope of the problem regarding technology needs. It does not constitute any commitment to meet every need. The survey says explicitly that its purpose is help the instructor better understand the student's situation. Senator Ballard-Kang is taking the lead on this survey, and she said it would be set up for use both through Blackboard and Qualtrics.
Wilfred Reilly was unable to attend the Senate meeting, but sent word that faculty should contact him with any questions related to Covid-19 and the university response.
Senator Helen Smith presented this resolution on behalf of the two committees. This action item is intended to persuade President Brown and the Board of Regents that faculty salaries must be addressed. It calls on President Brown to establish a timeline for addressing problems of faculty salary compression, equity, merit pay and COLA (cost of living allowance) raises and for these issues to be addressed at the next quarterly meeting of the Board of Regents.
One senator raised a question about the drastic discrepancy between the lowest and highest assistant professor salaries shown in a table of high, low and mean KSU faculty salaries. The senator was assured that the figures were accurate and that these figures did not include any administrator pay that some faculty might receive. It only reflects base pay. There was some discussion about inclusion of this table in the resolution, resulting in a consensus that it should stay. In addition Senator Gyawali asked that tables he found showing salary ranges at Tennessee State University and Alabama State University be included as supporting documents with the resolution since those are peer 1890 land grant schools and the tables show salaries much higher than KSU's. Senator Smith agreed to add those documents. A non-senator faculty member