President's Report: 9/23/22

September 22, 2022 / Anna Carlin

BOG Updates

The Board of Governors met Sept 13-14 at UWF. Full meeting documentation: https://www.flbog.edu/meeting/florida-board-of-governors-meeting-olma5qlg/

The BOG is talking about changing PDF metrics. They are talking about changing the wage threshold from $30K to $35K for metric #1. The following document shows that FGCU would have the largest negative change as a result of that change, though BOG staff says they would do some normalization on the benchmarks. https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/BUD-11b-2022-PBF-Workshop-Discussion-Items.pdf

FGCU Student Success Plan (https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/BUD-05b-FGCU-Student-Success-Plan-FINAL.pdf) was submitted and approved.

BOG Statement of Free Expression

The Advisory Council of Faculty Senates (ACFS), the group of Faculty Senate leaders from all SUS schools, is meeting on Friday Sept 23. All members have already agreed that we would like to compose a response/statement about the BOG’s recommendation that all faculty senates review and endorse the SUS Statement of Free Expression. For this reason, I suggest that we delay action on the statement until ACFS finishes their work.

BOG Post-Tenure Review Regulation

The BOG was scheduled to have a virtual meeting this week to formally notice the post-tenure review regulation draft, but the meeting was canceled. I don’t know why, but we can at least know that no action is planned at the moment until the November 10 BOG meeting. There were a number of changes in the draft that was circulated last week from the last draft that had been kicked around in previous months. The draft does currently say that “if a university does not have a tenure system, the board of trustees must establish, if not currently present, a regular, comprehensive review policy for faculty members on contract that meets the requirements outlined in sections (3) and (4). Faculty members at these universities must undergo a comprehensive review during subsequent contract extensions or renewal. Universities without a tenure system must also comply with all other requirements outlined in this regulation.” The ACFS group will be discussing how to respond this newest draft of the regulation on 9/23/22.

Service Learning Changes

If you read the Student Success Plan closely, you might see an item under #4 about re-imagining Service Learning Across the Curriculum that says that a pilot program to infuse service learning across select lower-level courses will be launched in the semester in order to assess effectiveness and launch a full implementation in Fall of 2023. Academic Affairs and Student Success & Enrollment Management have started discussions about how to shift the service learning requirement away from an hours-based fulfillment to a course-based experience. All of the leaders involved say that this will help impart a more meaningful service learning experience for students, get them connected with the community and potential employers, and may also improve graduation outcomes as students will eventually be able to complete their service learning as a part of the curriculum instead of an extra-curricular activity. Nothing has changed about the graduation requirement yet. Some courses are being piloted now with the service learning outcomes embedded. SSEM is still talking about what a timeline might look like for implementation of the change, and we (faculty) still have an opportunity to be involved in the planning for moving service-learning into our academic programs. Your Faculty Senate leadership has met with service learning leaders and we have encouraged a slow and generous timeline to allow for full faculty involvement and responsible planning. I will keep you informed as I learn more.

Colloquium Changes

I have also heard of some very early discussions about making changes to University Colloquium. My understanding is that is has become difficult to find enough people to teach enough sections of University Colloquium to continue to require that all students take it to graduate. The cost of delivering the course to so many students has also become unsustainable. It is for these reasons that the burden of teaching sustainability outcomes may be distributed to other places in the existing curriculum. From what I have heard, the University Colloquium course is not being eliminated, but there may be academic programs that choose to address sustainability as a learning outcome through other means than requiring that students take Colloquium to graduate. I will continue to learn more and make sure that we stay informed and involved as this shift in policy may move forward, but nothing has changed yet.

Logo Redesign

President’s Cabinet will make new logo decision on Thursday 9/22. Additional information about cost, timelines, process, and results from the survey are available on the Faculty Senate meeting webpage.