Faculty Council Minutes
April 8, 2005

In attendance:

Bert Pooth	Judy McKenzie	Chris Siefert
Sheila Broderick	Patrick Lanning (OISS)	Nanci LaVelle (Eval. Comm.)
Dennis Gilbert	Jim Salt (LCCEA)	Carol Watt (Eval. Comm.)
Stephen Selph	Susan Brous	Craig Taylor (Eval. Comm.)
Mark Harris	Sue Thompson	David Shellabarger (Eval. Comm.)
Ray Smith (Classified)	Sharon Savage Hagan

Approval of the minutes of the Council meeting of March 11 2005 will be done by e-mail. Please send corrections, comments to Bert Pooth.

Introductions and Announcements

Patrick reported that the college needs to increase enrollment by 4% to maintain sufficient funding. Increased enrollment can be realized through increases in retention and through recruitment.
Patrick noted that the request to modify Banner so that multiple e-mail addresses are automatically placed in the “Blind Copy” field was not considered justified. The reason is that only about 30% of students provide e-mail addresses, so using Banner for e-mailing whole classes is not a good idea to begin with.

Jim Salt noted that faculty council needs to discuss with LCCEA how bargaining on Article 39 will proceed. Article 39 concerns the formation and operation of the Faculty Council.
Jim also noted that Faculty Council needs to make recommendations to the College Council concerning the college’s committees and their relationships to Faculty Council and the governance councils.

Stephen Selph announced that the Math Skills Fair held on April 6 was attended by students from 9 area high schools. The teams from Pleasant Hill and Willamette tied for first place.

There was a discussion of the move to allow students access to wireless network. It was noted that the same access would only be available to faculty and staff who are enrolled in a course. We urge OISS to make wireless access available to all.

Dennis Gilbert reported that the Science Division is discussing the adoption of a statement about the teaching of evolution.

Faculty workshop on PTSD issues
OISS is funding a workshop on dealing with students and the families of students returning from the Iraq war who might suffer from PTSD. The workshop has wider applicability to students with emotional concerns in general. The workshop will be conducted by Zak Schwartz. There will be a follow-up training in May.
There was some discussion about:

whether this would stigmatize all returning vets, and
whether the Faculty Council should endorse or co-sponsor the event.

A motion to encourage all faculty members to attend and discuss the workshop with colleagues was passed.

Faculty evaluations
David Shellabarger led a discussion on the work of the Faculty Evaluation Committee. He noted that response rates to electronic evaluations are trending upward, but remains below 40%. Craig Taylor reported in an e-mail sent to the council members on 4/13 that response rates to scantron evaluations in 2003-04 were between 40 and 60%.
David noted that it might be time to move beyond the issues of electronic vs. paper and response rates. He also reported on research indicating that there are correlations between student ratings and student success and student ratings and ratings by other observers, but not between student ratings and teacher popularity.
In the ensuing discussion, the following points and suggestions were made:

• Student evaluations are currently used for two different purposes:

1. as formative evaluations allowing teachers to improve the learning process, and
2. as part of the summative evaluations of faculty members.

• These two functions need to be separated, probably using different evaluation instruments.
• There needs to be training

1. for faculty members in how to devise a useful evaluation instrument, and
2. for managers to properly interpret evaluations when making summative assessments.

• We should survey faculty to see whether and how evaluations are used.
• The issue should be how evaluations are used, not whether they should be used or not.
• Student evaluations are a poor way to inform the public of the relative success of courses or programs.
• Faculty should be in a position to make their own evaluation instruments, but some faculty like the electronic format and consider making their own instruments to be an unacceptable increase in workload.
• There is an issue of keeping evaluations out of faculty hands until after grades are submitted. That would be the individual faculty member’s responsibility.
• No League of Innovation College uses electronic evaluations. (One of our representatives to the League has reported to the Learning Council that there is one League school that uses electronic evaluations, but only for distance learning courses.)
• The issue of the anonymity of students conducting electronic evaluations remains unresolved.
• Providing class time for doing electronic evaluations would increase response rates.
• This item should remain on the agenda.

Future Agenda Items:

Faculty Evaluations
Faculty Decision-Making Grid (March 11)
Faculty Certification (After Bargaining)
Unit Planning
Classroom Availability