home items of interest

Highlighted Faculty Senate Activities:  2008-2009

• Working together, the Senate and the University Standing Committee on the Evaluation of Teaching improved the university regulation on the evaluation of teaching.  We removed the rule preventing students in small classes from filing course evaluations, clarified what approval is needed for instructors to get optional questions into ClassEval questionnaires (department head and dean approval are no longer needed), stated instructors should not offer incentives to students for filing class evaluations, made improvements regarding confidentiality of evaluation data, and specified that departmental voting faculty will establish guidelines for the use of course evaluation data in decisions affecting “employment status or compensation”.
  
  
• To shape and improve the post tenure review (PTR) mandated by the UNC Board of Governors, the Faculty Senate established an ad-hoc committee consisting of senators, department heads and senior administrators that held hearings open to all faculty and administrators and then drafted a new PTR regulation that would meet the BOG requirements while not being an excessive administrative burden, a “reevaluation of tenure,” or a mechanism for faculty discipline.  Under this policy, PTR can where necessary promote improvement in faculty performance, and is limited to once every five years.  This policy is awaiting formal approval by the UNC General Administration, but has successfully completed other levels of review.
  
  
• The University Budget Advisory Council established several years ago by request of the Faculty Senate, along with the Faculty Senate, engaged in extensive budget discussions and catalyzed transparency such as is now available at the Budget Central website.  Specific legislative budget issues, including the importance of the campus initiated tuition increases, instate tuition for students on full academic scholarships, and the need for the university (rather than the legislature) to make decisions regarding budget cuts to centers and institutes, were identified and the Faculty Senate led an effort to help communicate these university-based priorities to legislators.  The final 2009-2010 budget reflected success in addressing each of these initiatives.
  
  
• Faculty Senate resolutions on a range of topics can be seen at http://ncsu.edu/faculty_senate/resolutions/2006-2007/2008-2009-resolutions.php.