President's Report: 12/2/2022

December 01, 2022 / Anna Carlin

New logo updates:

The new university logo launch event is scheduled for December 7. University Marketing and Communication had a meeting yesterday with web editors and others that work with marketing to share information about the logo roll out. They are requesting that all “e-signatures, website pages , and social media avatars be updated by 1/6.” Examples of new logo layouts can be found here: https://www.fgcu.edu/advancement/universitymarketing/logo-request.aspx and new logo images will be ready for download on 12/7.

Excellence Awards:

Guidelines have been created for the reinstated Excellence in Advising Award and we are working on making those available on the web. The Provost’s Office will be sending out an announcement asking for nominations soon. Faculty in the library are meeting soon to work on creating guidelines and criteria for a librarianship excellence award that we hope can be made available this year.

Winter Commencement:

There are three commencement ceremonies planned for December 17the and 18th. These are our first in-person traditional commencement ceremonies since the winter of 2019. Last I heard, one ceremony only had 7 faculty members that RSVP'd to participate. The others are at 20-27 faculty participants. If you were on the fence about getting dressed up and celebrating with our graduates, please consider attending. We expect about 900 graduates over the three ceremonies. Faculty have until Monday, Dec. 12, to fill out the following participation form: www.fgcu.edu/commencement/faculty-participants.

COACHE Survey

I am very excited about the Provost’s decision to administer the COACHE (Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education) Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey in the spring. This is a chance for faculty to participate in a survey that will give our administrators actionable data that can improve our work experience at FGCU. The survey will be made available in February and I hope ALL of you will complete it. Not only is it important to capture the breadth of experience of all of our faculty members, it is important for us to meet our shared responsibility in shared governance. We have to show up and respond when we are asked to provide information on how we are doing.

Tuition Exchange Program

At our last meeting, as draft resolution in support of joining the Tuition Exchange program was on the agenda, but that item was tabled in the interest of time. I was also asked to provide more information about the financial impact to joining the Tuition Exchange. To that end, the Executive Team decided it would be best to ask the Institutional Affairs Team to do a little research and information gathering and provide that to the Faculty Senate at a later meeting.

BOG Post-Tenure Regulation Updates

10.003 Post-Tenure Faculty Review https://www.flbog.edu/regulations/proposed-regulations/

The comment period on the draft regulation is open until December 9. We can all individually submit comments through the website. Faculty Senates at Florida Poly, FAU, USF, FIU, UWF, and FSU have all passed resolutions regarding this regulation. UF will consider on one Dec 6. The BOG will most likely have the regulation up for a vote at the January 24-25 meeting, so we could still draft and approve a resolution before that meeting.

As a non-tenure granting institution, some unique points we might make to those considering this regulation are:

Item 8(b) in the regulation; it seems to indicate that non-tenure granting institutions like FGCU and Florida Poly need to abide by all elements of 10.003 despite the difference in our faculty contracts.
All faculty at FGCU are non-tenure track faculty. At other institutions, non-tenure track faculty are exempt from the procedures in the regulation. Would Instructors I, II, and III at FGCU be considered the equivalent of other schools’ non-tenure track faculty? Or would all faculty need to follow the 5 year review process?
Evaluating progress every year (as we do at FGCU) is more efficient than waiting every 5 years to review someone.
Promotion is discussed every year for faculty at less than full rank, which is the vast majority.
Our annual review process is comprehensive because we use a PDP as the cornerstone, which has both long-term goals and annual objectives.
Our faculty are reviewed annually and they can apply for promotion review after 4 years in rank. Adding an additional 5-year review cycle only adds to the administrative workload of faculty to prepare for and undergo those reviews and creates an undue burden of proof on the faculty member to justify their worth to the institution multiple times a year.

BOT

The next Board of Trustees meeting is December 8. The agenda for the meeting is not yet available but it will be focused on the reopened Presidential Search.