CAL Faculty Council Minutes - Jan. 21, 2025
2024-2025 Faculty Council Meeting Minutes
CAL Faculty Council Meeting
Location: Recital Hall, Center for Performing Arts
Time: January 21, 2025 4:00PM–5:20PM
Voting members = 41 Quorum = 22
Attendance
Present (36): Alamina, Alam, Al Hariri, Allred, Baltus, Christman, Damschroder, Edgington, Feldmeier, Fitzgerald, Foss, Grazzini, Kim, Layng, Rouillard, McBane, Mezo, Miner, Kinsey, Kistner, Moteleone, Mossbland, Mungo, Nelson, Nemeth, Sakowski, Semaan, Smirnov, Smith, Stauch, Taylor, Wang, Ward, Yamazaki, Zeigler, Zych
Absent (5): BeattyMedina, Bland, Dudley, Crookston, Amialchuk
Guests: Cheng, Mcinnis, Pryor, Gregory, Keith, Lawrence, Lingan, Sullivan
Call to Order
Approval of the agenda; Second; Motion Approved (22 Yes, 0 No, 19 Abstain)
Approval of the minutes; Second; Motion Approved (25 Yes, 0 No, 16 Abstain)
Dean’s Report (Dean Melissa Gregory)
- No formal report due
- Undergrad research looking for applicants for summer research
- Comments trended to the positive on the Dean’s report
- If links to policies and procedures could be included that would be helpful
Executive Committee Report (Jami Taylor)
- Discussed agenda items
- Discussed procedure of vote for the College Curriculum Requirements
- That date will likely be February 18th, and that will be an in person meeting
Faculty Senate Report (Gaby Semaan)
- Two faculty were added to the President’s search
- Search will be confidential, no announcement about candidates or campus wide meeting
events
- Consulting company recommended it, seems to be going on at multiple institutions
- Stated that it leads to better caliber candidates
- Provost application is live
- Faculty concerned about SLOs without faculty review
- Interim President talked about 3 main focuses
- Stabilizing and growing enrollment
- Connection to the community
- Stabilizing financial situation
- 565 students dropped out because of budget issues by the registrar but 324 were recaptured
- Reaching out to students who started here but never finished or came back
- President mentioned mergers and centralizations with IT, HR, Marketing, Recruitment
- President has not made a comment in Senate about bathroom bill
- President talked about the importance of summer teaching, as that is lost revenue
- Told faculty to promote their summer classes
- Hard to promote if we don’t know if they are going to run or not
- No clear indication that President’s office is going to support or invest in summer classes, when they get canceled because of budget issues at college level
- We should offer classes we don’t offer in the fall, and that students don’t need to graduate
- Higher core classes tend to enroll better
- Bigger the degree program, the more likely summer classes will fill
Graduate Council Report (Kristen Keith)
- Provost talked about President and Provost search, gave timelines
- President search completed about early to mid April
- Provost should be hired by July 1st
- VP for Research should be made by end of May
- Program Prioritization, Investment, and Reallocation committee has been sat, we’ll get info soon about who the members are and what the charge is
- 3 minute thesis winners and their advisors
- Graduate research symposium will be in person this year, call for judges will go out soon
Elections Committee Report (Sam Nelson)
No report
Bylaws/Constitution Committee Report (Jami Taylor)
Have not heard back from education folks, no progress since last meeting
Curriculum Committee Report (Anthony Edgington)
- See the curriculum report for six course modifications that were up for voting
- Three programs were brought forward for voting
- All programs and course mods were called to vote, and all passed (30 Yes, 0 No, 11 Abstain)
New Business
- Tech fees; brought forward by Barbara Miner. How are tech fees now being used?
- Asking for clarification on how they are being used
- CAL Council has no control over tech fees
- Dean’s office handles tech fees, used to be a committee that would hear solicitations for proposals, committee does not exist anymore
- Tech fees has declined substantially, what is left over after salaries that come out of that money, is used for equipment and software upgrades.
- Labs get updated on rotation, and years between updating labs has increased
- Theatre dept. design lab was updated after nine years
- Dean’s office is happy to bring back more transparency and Rob may want to do a presentation
- Could consolidate labs possibly, or shared tech space
- People would have to want to sign up and be on the tech fee committee, or could be added to the budget advisory committee
- Send emails to Kristen Keith with concerns about tech fees so they Dean’s office can collect that data
- Charles was not in attendance to present proposal
- Some of the proposal are things that Council can’t do
- Proposal is in the folder for review
Announcements
Next CAL meeting – February 4th – WebEx
Adjournment
Motion to adjourn; Seconded; Motion approved (27 Yes, 0 No, 14 Abstain)