Faculty Association Meeting Minutes
All Staff Day, January 4, 2019
Minutes compiled by Karen Kaiser on 1/7/2019
Immediately Prior to the meeting, we had two presentations:
-Dr. Schindler discussed the “Poker Run” for professional development during the week of January 7-11.
-Karen Kaiser presented an interpretation of how the Pathways model might shape events at the departmental level and classroom strategies.
Meeting Agenda Items
- Faculty Association Account Balance
- Phillip Lowe Performing Arts donation
- Faculty Titles
- Travel/Professional Development
- Bookstore Discussion
- Food Pantry
- Published Authors Recognition
- New Business?
Proceedings
-The call was reiterated for donations to the Faculty Association Account. Current balance after Fall 2018 expenses is in the $400 range. It was mentioned that folks can now donate electronically, if they choose, via Paypal. The PayPal Group web address is ... .
-Agreement was reached to donate $100 from the association account to list the Faculty Association as Benefactors for the Phillip Lowe Performing Arts Series.
-The discussion then turned to titles.
-Faculty Titles
-Discussion of Faculty Titles was opened. Faculty Survey from August 2018 of 56 faculty members submitting their opinions on paper suggested about 70% of the faculty favored changing faculty titles from Instructor to either tiered titles or some other word, with tiered being the most common preference. These results led to meetings and information gathering throughout the Fall Semester. This included an investigation of what other Texas Community Colleges are doing, meetings with HR and Admin, and communications with a variety of department coordinators across several disciplines in the college, both academic and technical.
-Data was presented regarding titles used by the 50 Texas Community Colleges. Information gathered (to the best of my ability and with help from others!), was presented via PowerPoint.
Titles used for Faculty by the 50 Texas Community Colleges
Tiered titles, such as IAAP 34 Colleges or 68%
Instructor for Everyone 8 Colleges or 16%
Professor for Everyone 6 Colleges or 12%
Faculty for Everyone 2 Colleges or 4%
-Of those who use tiered titles, Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor (IAAP) or just Assistant Prof, Assoc. Prof, & Prof is almost universal. Dallas County uses “Faculty Range 1, 2, 3, 4.“
-If the title Instructor was used at a tiered college, it referred to the following:
-starting rung for new hires
-faculty working on a probationary/temporary basis
-adjuncts
-dual credit faculty.
-A handful appear to use tiers for academic but Instructor for all technical faculty.
The meeting then turned to a live, real time poll as a starting point for discussion. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties with the polling process. Rather than having everyone participate in the poll, we ended up with a semi-random sample of 43 participants, or about half those present. Here are the results of Friday’s sampling:
Sample Poll Responses—Opinions on Titles,
What titles do you want for Hill College faculty?,
Tiered titles, such as Instructor, Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Prof, 57%
Professor for Everyone, 23%
No Preference, 13%
Instructor for Everyone, 5%
Faculty for Everyone, 2%
Other, 0%
If titles are tiered, what titles do you prefer?,
Instructor, Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Prof, 55%
Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Prof, 28%
No Preference, 15%
Other, 3%
Should technical and academic both be tiered the same way?,
Yes, they should be the same, 53%
No, technical should be tiered using different criteria than academic, 25%
Neither should be tiered, 13%
No, technical should not be tiered at all, 5%
Other, 5%
,
What criteria do you feel tiers should be based on?,
Some combination of education and teaching experience., 65%
Teaching experience, 20%
Education, 13%
Other, 13%
What division do you belong to?,
Academic, 57%
Technical, 35%
I prefer not to say, 8%
Our bookstore is doing a great job!,
Strongly Agree, 3%
Agree, 33%
Neutral, 28%
Disagree, 35%
Strongly Disagree, 3%
There was a lively discussion following our poll, both of the (disappointing? flawed?) polling process and of the issue of how and whether to proceed with the information at hand regarding titles.
A motion was made and seconded to take a vote to assign a committee of faculty members to make recommendations, based on education and teaching experience, of how tiers might be assigned to Hill College faculty members.
Discussion continued, which included requests to table the whole thing, to redo the poll in another form and come back, to do a show of hands for the poll instead of using technology, to do paper so answers could remain anonymous, to start over with an entirely new poll with different questions, or to move forward with the information at hand. Concerns began to be raised about running over on time.
A vote was called for the motion on the floor—to assemble the committee to decide on a suggestion for how tiers would be assigned. The motion passed with the overwhelming majority of voters agreeing to proceed with forming a committee to work on a suggestion of how to tier titles.
There was discussion of who would be on the committee. Part of my clumsily worded vote suggested including the folks who already helped with the preliminary work. I suggested volunteers were also welcome. Three people volunteered Friday. Here are the committee members thus far:
Technical Academic
Dawn Cox, Nursing Frances Burt, English
Chris Andry, Cosmetology Rukma Kuppuswami, Biology
Kyle May, Criminal Justice Rosalyn Hunter, Biology
Jack Mitchell, Vocational Nursing Karen Kaiser, Behavioral Science
If you would like to be a part of this committee, please let me know.
To my understanding, this recommendation from the committee about specifically how to tier titles would then be brought back to the Faculty Association at a later meeting for a vote to determine whether to proceed with passing the recommendation on to Admin/HR, or revise the recommendation, etc.
Additional agenda items were addressed
-Congratulations to published authors on your impressive achievement!
-Mr. Curbo asked for feedback on the bookstore. My hastily assembled bookstore question on our poll didn’t really give us much to report back.
-The discussion of the fate of the Food Pantry was tabled due to time limitations. Currently, $3830.02 remains in the Food Pantry account.
-The meeting was adjourned.