President's Report 9/22/23

September 22, 2023 / Lyndsay Rhodes

Senate Standing Teams By-Laws Updates

Several Senate Standing Teams have submitted proposed changes to the Senate by-laws regarding team composition and responsibilities. I have asked all Standing Teams to review their section of the by-laws and suggest any changes by the end of the fall term. Once we have a comprehensive list of proposed updates, we will bring this to Senate for review and a vote in the spring. If anyone else has suggested revisions to the Senate by-laws, please submit those to the Executive Team prior to the end of the fall term for consideration. The current by-laws can be found on the Faculty Senate website under Governance Documents.

Our Senate Teams are hard at work, and there are several items in the pipeline headed for Senate. FAT is currently reviewing the Emeritus guideline revisions that had come before Senate last spring. FAT has also been asked to do a more comprehensive review and revision of the FPED. If you have any suggested revisions for the FPED, please submit that to the FAT members for consideration. This will likely be a longer process and I don’t anticipate formal presentation for Senate consideration until later in Spring.

President Timur Visit

President Timur will attend Senate October 20th, 2023. She will give a brief presentation followed by Q&A. We will collect your questions ahead of this meeting to organize questions into themes. We will send a survey asking for your submissions. Please share this survey with your units.

Board of Trustees & Board of Governors

At the September 12th, 2023, BOT meeting, the Trustees voted to approve the revisions to the CBA article 23, including a 5% across the board base pay raise retroactive to August 7, 2023, $300,000 to address Compression and Inversion, and 1% of base salary for Merit pay. Committees consisting of faculty and administration will be formed to address each of these areas. The BOT will meet next Tuesday, September 26th, 2023, from 9am to 4:30pm for a Strategic Planning workshop. The next full BOT meeting will be December 7th, 2023.

Office of Public Policy Events

The Office of Public Policy Events directed by Provost Rieger was created to foster civil discourse on contemporary public policy issues of interest to our FGCU community. The next event will take place on October 16, 2023, featuring Marc Lamont Hill and Robert George debating Affirmative Action and the Cost of Higher Education. Be on the lookout for additional information.

The OPPE would like suggestions from Senators for the third event of the year to be scheduled in January or February 2024. I will be sending out a survey to collect ideas which you can share with faculty to gather additional input.

John Herman Award for Excellence in General Education

You received an email 9.19.23 with information on the John Herman Award including the guidelines document. In memory of John Herman’s contribution to general education at FGCU, this award recognizes one member of our teaching community for their commitment to enhancing the liberal arts experience of FGCU students. Nominations should be sent to the Director of General Education, Dr. Joseph V. Ross (jvross@fgcu.edu) by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 17, 2023.  

New Communications Strategy

In an effort to increase transparency and communication with the full faculty body, Senate Leadership is trying a new communication strategy. Following each Senate meeting, the Communications Officer will pull together language summarizing key action items that require feedback from faculty. An email with this information and supporting documents will be sent to Senators for distribution to the faculty in their unit. We expect these emails to arrive by the Monday following Senate meetings.

Each unit should identify the Senator responsible for sending out these unit-wide emails.
This can be one Senator, or the responsibility could be shared through a rotation. The goal here is to clarify the process for your unit and to ensure clarity in responsibility. The designated Senator should send out an email including the information from the Communications Officer and supporting documents. Units are encouraged add additional information as they see fit. The goal is to increase clarity in sharing information with faculty and gathering feedback to inform Senate action. We request this information is shared by the Tuesday following each Senate meeting. Be sure to indicate to faculty the deadline for feedback, as appropriate. Bcc the faculty in your unit to prevent reply all, and please Cc Senate Leadership on these emails to allow faculty to provide feedback directly if they wish. Feedback can also be shared through the “Questions & Comments” link on the Senate website.

 We hope Senators will find this new strategy helpful, but with all things new we are sure there will be some growing pains. We are open to any feedback you may have, and we sincerely thank you for trying this new approach.