The Faculty Senate (FS) held their meeting on Oct. 19 to discuss upcoming proposals and vote on approving minutes of previous meetings. FS President Joshua Butler, representing the art department, called the meeting to order and addressed the agenda, noting that the agenda was fairly short.
After addressing the agenda, Butler allowed Vice President James Ayers from the Colorado Faculty Advising Council to discuss upcoming proposals to be discussed in two weeks, at the next senate meeting.
Ayers outlined the proposals and gave a brief description of each proposal, adding that the proposals could be found on the hard drive and urged senators to familiarize themselves with each of them prior to the next meeting.
Proposal one regarded moving tenure possibility from a professor’s seventh year with Colorado Mesa University to the sixth year. Proposal two involved the issue of early tenure promotion. Proposal three centered around mentoring. Proposal four regarded evaluation methods for tenure and promotion. Proposal five revolved around an increase in the review process. The final proposal discussed changing rating.
The proposals were written and presented to the senate by a proposal committee made up of FS members. The proposal committee is not listed among the senate standing committees.
After providing a description of the proposals, Ayers again encouraged senators to review the proposals for discussion in two weeks.
Senator Jared Workman, an associate professor of physics, drew attention to a typo in the first proposal that discussed tenure possibility in the fifth year, rather than the sixth. Ayers thanked Workman and noted the correction to be made.
Biological Sciences Senator Thomas Walla asked about the size and focus of the committee.
“I guess I want to know […] what aspect is supposed to be improved,” Walla said.
Not all of the information was provided to Walla. Butler told Walla that absent members of the committee would be at the next meeting to address the measures.
After addressing the proposals, the senate turned to approving minutes from previous meetings. Before voting, the discussion turned to the wording used in previous meetings. Walla was concerned about comments in the meeting getting recorded in case the wording was something that might be frowned upon within respective departments.
“You can have a comment stricken from the record,” Physical and Environmental Sciences Senator Chad Middleton said.
The minutes were approved unanimously.
The next matter of business was to approve upcoming discussions. Topics of discussion including the military credit policy were approved unanimously.
Associated Student Government (ASG) President, Ben Linzey, was present at the meeting as a non-voting representative. Linzey provided an update about ASG, including the amount of diversity the student government has this year.
“It’s really cool to have that diversity in our group,” Linzey said.
Linzey also discussed the recently contested votes in ASG and stated the increased discussion was exciting to be a part of.
The next FS meeting will take place Nov. 2 and will feature more discussion and voting on policy changes.
