Faculty Council Minutes, January 27, 1998

Meeting called to order at 3:45 with 16 faculty in attendance. Guests Steve Warshaw, Jeff Bray

Announcements:

Julie Graves announced that the American High School Math Exam (AHSME) will be given on the next alt day, February 12. Volunteers are needed to help proctor. A sign-up sheet was circulated.

Joe Liles announced that the Pow Wow will be held on Saturday, February 21st. All were invited to attend. Posters and flyers were available to help advertise the event. Joe can use some work service students to help out. Email Joe names and number of hours that your student can work.

Tom Clayton announced that the Leadership Seminar is sponsoring a conference on ethics and technology at NCSSM. Rushworth Kidder, an ethicist, will be the featured speaker. This will be held in conjunction with Broyhill Lecture Series on April 1. On the following day, students from around the area will be invited to come to campus. This will be a regular class day. Tom is taking suggestions about working around our regular schedule.

Agenda Items:

Informing students of grades: Steve Warshaw reiterated that the Department Heads had made the decision not to post for privacy, confidentiality reasons. There were some other reasons, such as students and parents comparing grades, but main issue is privacy. Some students may also learn of a poor grade and this may affect his later work on exams. Several suggestions were made for distributing grades without posting.

As a quorum had assembled by this time, the minutes of the January meeting were approved as submitted.

Edith May Slythe Award: Steve Warshaw announced that Julie Graves nad received the Edith May Slythe Award for distinguished teaching from the Mathematics Association of America. Our students, who placed high on the AHSME in 1997 nominated Julie.

Reporting attendance: Joan Barber, informing us that she was not speaking to address the attendance policy, (that, she mentioned, could be discussed in another forum at another time), but rather to impress on the faculty the importance of following the adopted procedure. Parents are challenging the consequences of each absence, and we need to be diligent in our implementation of the policy. Parent appealed on the basis that student had more absences than reported, but other teachers did not report these absences.

While the administration is not routinely checking to see who is and who is not following the procedure, it is obvious that excused and medical absences are not matching those turned in by teachers. Faculty must follow the procedure in the handbook. Students are coming in and admitting that they missed class, only to find that their absence was not reported. If there are problems, we can change the policy, but we must implement the policy in place. Faculty can send updates or corrections to Department secretaries until 9:00 the next day and after that via email to ABSENCE. A suggestion was made to tell those faculty who habitually fail to report absences that they are doing so.

Alt Day Update: Steve Warshaw reported that a small committee met as a result of a Faculty Council vote, (21-18), to look into the issue of future Alt Days. Two faculty, 2 SLIs, and 2 students met, reviewed our suggestions and reported back to Steve and John Kolena. In summary, their report recognized that it is the students' impression that this day is needed to catch up work. Faculty noted that this was not the intention of the Alt Days. The committee suggested that Alt Days be more structured, reduced to 7 days, and that each discipline be assign a day to organize an activity. Each student taking a course in the discipline would be required to participate in the activity of the day. Students, of course, want Alt Days. The would like more, not less, and they want less, not more, structure. Faculty and staff want these days used more productively. Julie Sikkink, (one of the two appointed faculty) noted that SL101 could not easily move to Tuesday evenings, as had been suggested. Also, much of current Alt Days are already taken up by structured activities. This proposal does not address issue of more class time. It does greatly increase staff responsibility, to produce a special day. It was noted as well that we do not have facilities to do some activities for all 550 student. In the "It could be worse category", it was noted that the South Carolina school takes off the entire month of Jan. The division (as indicated by the votes) is split, those who want more class time, those who think that they are other important activities than just us teaching. Some feel that the daily schedule is too difficult to live with, so we need some breaks, indicating that we should look at the daily schedule as well. One possible compromise, adding a week to calendar, was mentioned with little discussion. No vote was taken on the report of this committee.

Evaluation Visits and Process: The Faculty Welfare Committee has been discussing the evaluation procedure, hoping to find a way to streamline the process. Their first suggestion was to have only one committee for evaluation. This one committee would include faculty and administration and would make the only report. For professional growth, each faculty member would visit at least two other classes each and talk with the teacher being observed. This second type of observation would be a good opportunity for growth, and perhaps provide a way to earn CEUs for the observer. Steve mentioned that the training to become a good observe would be worthwhile. The first recommendation could require a change in Board policy.

Tyjuanna LeBennett announced that she would like suggestions and comments concerning NCSSM's Equal Employment Opportunity Policy. She is serving on the committee to review this policy with Sandy Rothschild and Marlene Blakney.

John Friedrick's Five-year Plan: John Friedrick would like to continue his discussion of his plan with the faculty. John Kolena suggested that there are too many items on the list to discuss, and that we would first try to narrow the issues down. This might be done via the Faculty Council Discussion Board at the Web Site. Some discussion of the plan will be on the agenda of the February meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:03 PM.

Respectfully submitted

John Goebel, Secretary