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Executive Council Meeting: June 2021

Meeting Date

June 3, 2021

Call to Order

Facilitator: Bob Wood, Director

In Attendance: Jane Shimon, Jen Eichmeyer, Joie Burns, Leslie Kendrick, Megan Koster, Jenni Gudapati

Welcome and Updates/Announcements:

 

  • Welcome Jenni Gudapati, Director Masters of Population & Health Systems Management
  • Updates/Announcements
    • HSRV 200 (will call meeting to discuss lab management)
      • Project is greenlit; moving forward with plan for a high tech clinical laboratory used for SIM and specialized laboratory work with laptops available
      • Dean supported $70k outlay for project
      • Currently in beginning/design phase of project so will take some time to complete
    • Department updates
      • Kinesiology – Jane 
        • Doing well with advising; likely excess of 250 people coming into department
      • Genetic Counseling – Jen
        • Graduated their first class; held hooding ceremony in the park. All 12 graduates showed up and in same place for the first time!
        • Just completed 3rd match, so starting orientation on next class
      • Masters of Population & Health Systems Management – Jenni
        • Trying to ramp up recruiting; Excited to launch this Fall and get first group started in August
        • Waiting for official contract with HFMA (Healthcare Financial Management Association) – partnering with them means they will have their curriculum ready probaby before it’s even published for the general know
        • Their graduates will have their master’s degree, but also 4 certifications through the process for HFMA – taking their traditional programs and ramping them up to a master’s level teaching and offering. It’s the only partnership of its kind in the country. 
      • Respiratory Care – Megan
        • On-campus program welcomed 26 students, possibly admitting 28
        • DAP continues to roll – still upwards of 400-500 students in the program. Needed to increase the number of summer offerings to accommodate. 
        • MSRC hopefully going to fill all spots in their upcoming cohort
        • Celebrated with their 2020 grads finally on the blue with a hooding ceremony as well; 8/17 were able to show
        • Lonny Ashworth just retired; currently holding a search for his position
        • Lanny Inabnit recently left; he was offered a position with their National organization as VP of educational programming. Hoping to fill his position as well within the same search. 
      • Radiologic Sciences – Joie/Leslie
        • Searching for Joie’s replacement – also hoping to fill two positions with one search. 
        • Completing a software and generator update in the lab to bring radiography lab current
        • Searching for an Administrative Assistant I, adding another admin to the department to accommodate growth
    • Committee assignments
      • Strategic Plan Steering Committee: Lester, Zhang, Lampignano, Grabert
        • Wanting to get input from other staff; we didn’t receive any staff volunteers so Kristy is stepping in 
        • If others are interested in participating, faculty or staff, let Bob know
        • Hoping to get voices from folks that don’t have a leadership role, giving them a chance to sit down with leadership
      • School Faculty Affairs: No vacancies (Moorcroft, Armstrong, Stover)
        • New committee as of last year.
        • Don’t anticipate any changes unless you all recommend. Hoping to have Scott stay as chair
      • School Policy Committee: All are vacancies: Need one faculty and one staff from each unit: SAHS, KIN, RAD SCI, RESP CARE). ACTION ITEM
        • No activity this year
        • Up to departments to appoint individuals to that committee; each academic unit should have a faculty member and staff member on that committee
        • Hoping to have these in place by the Fall; Bob will follow up with you all by email
  • Discussion of Evaluation and Assessment of Teaching and Learning 
    • Bob – Goal is to hear from each of you about whether and to what extent we agree with a model like this (shared) and what we don’t like about it
    • Jane – In Faculty 180, could there be a requirement that faculty fill out a self eval with directed questions in it already. I think a lot of faculty already kind of do that. This could be an easier way to show some self reflection in Faculty 180. 
    • Bob – Do you feel like Criterion 1-4 are reasonable areas to reflect and to provide objective evidence, where appropriate? 
    • Megan – I do a lot of these in general. But for Criterion 1-4, there has to be a formalized process to do it that actually matters in terms of the evaluation piece. One issue, we’re limited on what “matters” or goes into an action item. Would like continuity with what we do as a School and what’s actually going to matter at the University in terms of promotion or tenure or moving upwards. In our dept, we have an undercurrent of expectations for a lot of these but very few mechanisms to follow through on. So, if it’s not included in the Faculty 180 eval, I can’t hold their feet to the fire. 
    • Joie – Couple of concerns; I like the rubric a lot because it creates something concrete. But concerned it will become a mini P and T packet – and there’s already plenty to do. Also, the mid-semester assessment report is a great opportunity; but will we overwhelm the CTL by requesting 35 of these for our school? 
    • Bob – Joie, I had the same thoughts. Good point. 
    • Joie – If we were to put this in Faculty 180, would this be a requirement for every faculty across university, or can we make it only our School or College? 
    • Bob – There’s different ways of handling it. Doesn’t have to be for entire institution; may be able to drill down at dept level but not sure. One, you can require a narrative, asking faculty “in your narrative of teaching, I’d like you to address these points…” Or, you can be really prescriptive within faculty 180 about your specific items.
    • Joie – It would be helpful to know what the questions are ahead of time so I can collect the information beforehand. 
    • Megan – What I do like, this could be a nice tool to plan professional trajectory. It’ll break up the annual evaluation. 
    • Bob – We don’t all need to have the same approach, but we do want some consistency in the culture that these are the things we value. This is about professional development – that’s the goal. Accreditation competencies? 
    • Jane – K-12, it’s more curriculum and standards. But I don’t know what they require in the Athletic Training program. 
    • Leslie – In Rad Sci, it’s not drilled down into the faculty specific evaluations, and faculty outcomes, program curriculum… 
    • Megan – We look at faculty evaluations as a whole and things like professional development, but it’s not necessarily their creditors diving into every activity. 
    • Joie – For Sonography, program director and clinical coordinators or emphasis coordinators must demonstrate professional development and curriculum. 
    • Jen – Ours are pretty regulated, but not that granular. We have to have different kinds of exit surveys, course evaluations, clinical evaluations – they do ask that we show movement in addressing issues that come up in those evaluations. 
    • Bob – We need to have flexibility built in, but I think these are not unreasonable things to ask for. I’d also like to incentivize excellence. So, I have a couple ideas I’d like feedback on in July meeting. One, I’d like to have another Research Conference, though it would be college-wide this time, but I’d like to call it a Scholarly Conference and have some sessions on teaching. We’d invite faculty to share in poster format for scholarship on teaching. And then also potentially an award for one or more individuals who whe get the CTL to help create criterion/rubric where we might evaluate folks who are showing excellence in teaching and learning. 
    • Joie – I think this is a great idea for clinical faculty who sometimes don’t feel like they can participate in the research thing. 
    • Bob – The other thing, if people really get engaged in getting mid-semester feedback and peer observation, it would be overwhelming for CTL. The clinical or teaching faculty feel like they have something to offer in terms of professional development of others and feedback about teaching. Maybe there’s a way we can build in that our clinical faculty could provide peer observation as a way that they can offer professional development feedback in a vehicle for them to do that in the context that would support the professional development of the tenure track faculty member.  And maybe we can do that across departments. Give some thought, and maybe we can do a trial sort of thing. 
    • Jen – I’m concerned about that. 2 things – Clinical faculty would be evaluating tenure track faculty? There is a power dynamic between those two positions that I think would be very challenging to navigate.Having a Masters and not a PhD, providing feedback to someone who already has a PhD could put someone in a vulnerable spot. Two, time commitment…will we get paid to provide those evaluations? 
    • Bob – So what I’m hearing is if there’s going to be peer observation of teaching delivery, it needs to be kind of grassroots. That that faculty member’s just responsible…
    • Jane – I am concerned as well. Not everyone who comes into University is trained in pedagogy, and they may not be able to recognize or evaluate that because they just don’t know. Maybe rubric would help, but I don’t know. 
    • Megan – Echo some of the concerns. We try to do this in our dept in general. We haven’t had to worry about the tenure vs clinical track thing, but I do see how that might be very difficult if we were to go between depts because some of the views on that are very different between depts even. 
    • Bob – On peer observation, it sounds like there needs to be some departmental discussion. Think about all these things. Overall, it’s important to me that you talk about this with your faculty. Not an easy conversation, but I think it will help us in the way we provide guidance to our faculty.

ADJOURNMENT