FACULTY SENATE MINUTES
January 19, 2021
ATTENDING: Julie Bannerman, Sheila Black, Silas Blackstock, Serena Blount, Seth Bordner, Ibrahim Cemen, Jeremy Crawford, Rona Donahoe, Alexis Davis Hazell, Andrea Glenn, Holly Grout, Heather Gunn, Luvada Harrison, Courtney Helfrecht, Conor Henderson, Jolene Hubbs, Christopher Lynn, Preethi Nair, Regina Range, Ignacio Rodeno, Rainer Schad, Kelly Shannon-Henderson, Jenny Shaw, Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, Edith Szanto, Bulent Tosun, Vaia Touna, Jonathan Whitaker, John Vincent, John Yoder, Greg Cottrell, Jennifer Dempsey, Todd DeZoort, Chapman Greer, Ruth Ann Hall, Matthew Hudnall, BC Kim, Lexi Lowe Edwards, Brian Britt, Leah LeFebre, Bharat Mehra, Alyx Vesey, Steven Yates, Cecily Collins, Suzanne Henson, Nelle Williams, Andrea Wright, Stephanie Buckner, Joy Burnham, Nirmala Erevelles, Kelly Guyotte, Latrise Johnson, John Petrovic, Sriram Aaleti, Jaber Abu-Qahouq, Ajay Agrawal, Sushma Kotru, Sundar Krishnan, Patrick Kung, John Van Zee, David Taylor, John Latta, Carla Blakey, Wanda Burton, Barbara “Babs” Davis, Michelle Tong, Jeri Zemke, Mirit Eyal-Cohen, Courtney Cross, Heather Elliot, Barbara Dahlbach, Russel Peterson, Susan Appel, Michael Callihan, Rebecca Owings, Teresa Welch, Leah Cheatham, Amy Traylor, Donna Meester.
ABSENT WITH ALTERNATE: Dianna Dolliver/Matthew Dolliver; Lyndell McDonald/Matt Reynolds; Mary Stone/Eric Williams; Keith Williams/Kaylan Srinivasan.
ABSENT: Tony Buhr, Michael Lawson, Shuhui Li, Robert Riter.
GUESTS: PSA Representative Lynette Campos, TUARA Representative Hank Lazer, Strategic Communications Laura Braddick.
Speakers for today’s meeting are Dr. Ricky Friend, Dean of College of Community Health Sciences and Ralph Clayton, UA Associate Vice President for Public Safety.
Dr. Ricky Friend began the meeting with some information regarding the COVID virus vaccine. UA began preparations for administering the vaccine coordinating with the Alabama Department of Public Health in October of 2020. Around December 15, 2020 UA was told they would not receive the Pfizer vaccine allocation due to temperature excursions during the shipment to the Southeast and some manufacturing issues. UA’s order was for 48,000 doses of the vaccine. The request for Moderna vaccine was 7,000 and 3,500 was received and another 1,000 received last week. Moderna is easier to handle regarding temperature control and has a 28-day waiting period between doses with full immunity of 14 days following the second dose. ADPH has instructed UA to concentrate on 75 and older and UAPD. The vials sometimes contain different numbers of doses but those are not wasted. There is just over one thousand faculty members qualified to be in group 1A. The same brand of vaccine will be given for both injections. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is a single dose vaccine, however, it will not be released until the end of February but production has slowed down. The antibody treatment is available and very effective.
Ralph Clayton, UA Associate VP for Public Safety, addressed the coordination between UAPD and the Tuscaloosa Police Department during the National Championship celebration. January 4, 2021 student messaging began with requests for responsible celebrating due to the COVID situation and potential spread. Coordination with city leaders and law enforcement also began on that date to have a plan in place by January 6, 2021. Tuscaloosa Police Department dedicated thirteen officers and additional personnel to patrol The Strip. Barricades were set in place to prevent parking on University Boulevard. UAPD had seven officers dedicated to The Strip and ten officers on campus. There was a unit assigned to “The Walk of Champions” and other roads around campus were blocked off. Monitoring cameras were in use and masks were distributed throughout the day. About 11:00 P.M. the area was saturated with people and the order was given to close down the bars and to work toward clearing the area. The crowd number drastically increased with surrounding apartment residents. There were no injuries or property damage reported.
Roll call and quorum check by Faculty Senate Secretary Barb Dahlbach.
The Faculty Senate meeting minutes of December 8, 2020 were approved as distributed.
President’s Report – (Rona Donahoe) President Donahoe gave an update from the Presidential Advisory Committee which met last Thursday. The Situational Committee met often during the holidays. Appreciation was expressed to Provost Dalton for allowing faculty to make their own choice concerning online or face-to-face teaching format for the first week and a half of classes. The return to the original teaching format will be next week.
The Federal government has paid for the vaccines and they are free. Some hospitals or others administering the vaccine are charging a $42.00 administration fee but the fee does not apply the UA employees under the UA health plan. The University Medical Center must adhere to the Alabama Department of Health guidelines. Group 1A vaccinations should be completed within the next two to three weeks. Sentinel testing began last week.
The add/drop date has been moved to Friday, January 29, 2021.
UA employees with the dental plan received a small rebate from the November premium.
UA is providing leave time up to 80 hours for COVID related health issues paid at 2/3 the normal rate. The employee can choose to use accrued leave, annual leave or sick leave to cover the other 1/3 salary. Qualifying conditions must be met and this will be active all semester.
There were some problems with employees accessing their flexible spending accounts during the semester which seems to have been resolved. It is more complicated to access and bids have been sent out to other providers for flexible and spending accounts.
According to Provost Dalton spring enrollment compared to last spring is down only 51 students. The number of undergraduate students lost is balanced by the number of graduate students we have gained. Most of the undergraduate students lost were from out-of-state. The majority of graduate students are part-time. The financial planning UA did last summer and fall has put UA in good shape. Faculty and staff searches begun last fall will continue.
Vice President’s Report – (Chapman Greer) This past year the General Education Taskforce worked on defining Student Outcome Learning and the High Impact Practices that were determined to be the most important to the University and those are a first-year community engagement and a Capstone project. Models were also drafted. In 2020 the taskforce went outside to seek subject matter experts. In 2021 the taskforce will be seeking approvals, initiating feasibility studies and will be beginning implementation in October of 2021. In 2021 implementation will continue with going live in 2023. The goals for Spring of 2021 are to begin the walking tour with forums to begin in March. Models will be submitted to the Faculty Senate in April. Preparation for AAC&U summer institute visits are being made if travel is an option due to COVID virus. Feedback will be obtained, there will be meetings with different departments, and a meeting with the Board of Trustees for final approval. This summer will hold meetings with summer institutes, introduction of models to the Faculty Senate in August for a final vote in September and beginning the implementation process in October.
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Secretary’s Report – (Barb Dahlbach) Secretary Dahlbach is in the process of obtaining faculty head count for appropriations to apply in the upcoming senator elections.
Academic Affairs – (John Vincent & Babs Davis) Babs Davis was welcomed as the new co-chair replacing Andre Denham.
The committee was asked by the Provost to review the final exam schedule proposal recommendation. Courses have been added over the past years without final exam schedule revisions. Some evening courses have pushed some students into multiple finals on the same day. In the proposal, final exams have been shortened from 2 ½ hours to two hours with a 30-minute break in between instead of an hour. One hour between 12:30 and 1:30 has been scheduled for lunch. Exams would end at 8:30 PM instead of 9:30 PM. Five finals are scheduled in a day rather than four exams. Overall, the committee strongly supported the proposed final exam schedule. The only suggested was to examine committee examining the final examination schedule to determine whether the final exam could be made to match the students’ schedules even more in terms of the days of the week. With the Registrar’s Office needing a rapid response on this issue, a motion was made to suspend the rules allowing the Faculty Senate to vote on the resolution in today’s meeting. There was one “no” vote to suspending the rules with the majority vote allowing suspension of the rules. Discussion included the issue of compression of final exams for students, classroom scheduling, earlier ending of exams, increased burden for faculty, the survey of peer institutions, and Saturday finals. On the motion from the Academic Affairs committee (including the caveat that the suggested change switching days will be considered by the taskforce), the vote with 67 participants was Opposed 8, Abstentions 20, and Approved 39. The vote will be forwarded to the Office of Academic Affairs.
Faculty & Senate Governance – (Ibrahim Cemen & Jeri Zemke) One nomination for Ombudsperson has been received with Monday, January 25th as the deadline for nominations. Letters of intent from those wishing to run for Faculty Senate officer positions are due by February 10, 2021. Nominations can be made from the floor at the February meeting. The vote will be taken at the March meeting of the Faculty Senate. The call for the Mediation Committee nominations has gone out. JoAnn Oliver has served as chair for two years and is rotating off the committee. Nominees should be one not serving on the Faculty Senate, not members of administration and have knowledge of the tenure promotion process. The nomination deadline is February 8th for two vacancies (JoAnn Oliver & Cassie Smith) with the election to be held in March.
The Financial Affairs Committee has John Van Zee replacing Mary Stone as co-chair.
Research & Service – (Ajay Agrawal & Kelly Shannon-Henderson) The Research and Service Committee has received a draft of a policy on routing, review and approval. One of the main issues is the requirement to provide all final documents at least two business days prior to sponsor deadline which seems too strict. The committee feels this should not apply to the technical portion of the proposal. There should be time to improve the proposal and have collaborative input. The committee supports this proposed policy and provided input and feedback. The committee suggested an explanation of the policy should be made including the reasons changes are needed. The policy should have a graduated rollout and grace period. The proposed date was in April. The committee suggested a summer rollout.
The committee also met with the Alabama Department of Transportation and suggested visiting their website to be involved in developing future plans of the department.
Meeting adjourned 6:00 PM
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Contact: Sarah Miesse, semiesse@culverhouse.ua.edu