Minutes for September 11, 2023
The Faculty Senate of Eastern Kentucky University met on Monday, September 11, 2023 in the Perkins Building Quads. Chair Kay called the first meeting of the academic year to order at approximately 3:30 p.m.
The following members were absent:
| K. Abdelhay | M. Bane | B. Clark*^ |
| P. Edwards*^ | M. Henton | J. Keller* |
| J. Mayer* | J. McGlown* | J. Palmer |
| J. Plutt | C. Walz*^ |
* Indicates prior notification of absence
^ ALT Matt Sabin attended for B. Clark
^ ALT Anne Kipp attended for P. Edwards
^ ALT Jill Parrott attended for C. Walz
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Chair Kay expressed her thanks to:
- Richard Crosby for his service to the university and to the Faculty Senate.
- The Faculty Senate for the flowers and gift cards she received over the summer.
- President McFaddin for providing the refreshments for today’s meeting.
- Provost Zeigler for her ongoing efforts with the Problem Solvers Group.
- Jamie Hisel for taking photos today so that our website can be updated.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Senator Lauk moved to approve the May 1, 2023 regular minutes as written, seconded by Senator Grabeel. Motion carried. (YES = 47 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 2 votes) (See also: Individual Votes).
Senator Streetman moved to approve the May 1, 2023 organizational minutes, seconded by Senator Dieckmann.
Senator Howell stated that the Budget Committee nominations who were elected by acclamation should be corrected to: Senators Lauk, Feltus, and Howell. Motion as amended carried. (YES = 48 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 1 vote) (See also: Individual Votes).
REPORT FROM THE PRESIDENT: David McFaddin
EKU Highlights in the News - August 2023
The following highlights received coverage in local, state and national media outlets touting our EKU success. Faculty who may be interested in serving as a subject matter expert for Communications and Brand Management (CBM) should contact Sarah Baker at sarah.baker@eku.edu.
- Eastern Kentucky Scholar House
- Housing
- Big E Welcome
- https://www.wkyt.com/2023/08/10/eku-striving-help-first-year-students-outside-class/
- https://www.wflx.com/video/2023/08/10/watch-eku-striving-help-first-year-students-outside-class/
- https://www.kwch.com/video/2023/08/10/watch-eku-striving-help-first-year-students-outside-class/
- https://www.wkyt.com/2023/08/09/eku-move-ins-one-largest-classes-school-history/
- https://fox56news.com/video/eastern-kentucky-university-welcomes-record-breaking-freshman-class/8893484/
- https://news.yahoo.com/incoming-freshmen-move-eku-boasts-035900527.html
- https://fox56news.com/video/move-in-day-for-new-students-at-eku/8891065/
- https://www.richmondregister.com/news/incoming-freshmen-move-in-eku-boasts-high-enrollment-and-retention-rates/article_f814b08a-36f5-11ee-81e6-bf7398a9d9de.html
- https://www.easternprogress.com/news/ekus-newest-freshmen-attend-convocation/article_38a068a4-3ae0-11ee-8e67-a3b6905818bd.html
- https://www.easternprogress.com/news/photos-eku-class-of-2027-greeted-by-campus-during-annual-welcome-walk/article_c8491562-37db-11ee-95bc-6f9c7042f9c0.html
- Spring 2023 Graduation List
- Film Project
- Generative AI
- EKU Sends books to flooded library
- Meteor Shower Expert - Dr. Mark Pitts
- Aviation Record Enrollment
2023-2024 Strategic Plan
This year’s new format for employee convocation kicked off with a performance by our own The Foster Funkadelics. The word of the year with our campus community is FOCUS.
| F | - | Finish What We Start |
| O | - | Outcomes Over Ownership |
| C | - | Communicate, Communicate, Communicate |
| U | - | Understand Our Why |
| S | - | Shared Success |
Here are the 2023-2024 President Cabinet goals for our campus community as outlined at this year’s Employee Convocation.
- Embrace Student Success as our Purpose
- 3,100 Incoming Student Enrollment by 2024
- 8,000 Online Students by 2028
- 15,000 Total Enrollment
- 80% Retention Rates
- Best Value Institution in Kentucky
- Encourage Focused Academic Investments
- Align program proposals with institutional priorities
- Increase sponsored program applications and awards
- Accelerate opportunities for students to earn credit for prior learning
- Provide study abroad experiences for hundreds of students
- Address statewide issues through academic programming
- Ensure Financial Strength
- Identify new revenue streams
- Identify gap funding sources for our students
- Improve financial health indicators
- Employer of Choice
- Continue sustained pay increases
- Increase employee retention
- Improved Onboarding
- Enhance the Campus Beautiful
- Recognize the Facilities Team
- Issue RFP for Campus Master Plan and Finish the Space Utilization Plan
- Create unique and innovative spaces for engagement
- Energize Collaboration Across the Service Region
- Utilize EKU Faculty expertise to assist with issues addressing the region
- Engage alumni through retention events
- Highlight the work of our Regional Campuses
- Enrich Strategic Partnerships
- Enroll 250 students employed by EKU corporate partners
- Collaborate on three or more town and gown projects
- Increase representation on local and state boards and commissions
- Elevate the University Brand
- Enhance digital marketing reach by 20%
- Increase social media engagement on main platforms 5%
- Launch of the a mini brand campaign “Game Changer” highlighting the work of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and everyone with a passion for EKU
2023 Enrollment and Retention Numbers
- Overall Enrollment-14,964 students ( Nearly 5% increase YoY)
- New Student Enrollment-3937 students up nearly 5.5% (2846 Freshman Class)
- Retention-79.9% The highest retention rate in University history
Launch of the Brand Guide
From new accent colors and font changes to applications of logos and promotional materials, the new EKU Brand Guide is the best source for understanding how to put EKU’s best foot forward. If you are interested in signing up for a first Brand Refresh Training for the future, contact brand@eku.eku.
Employee/Faculty Handbook
A committee composed of members from Human Resources, General Counsel’s Office, and Academic Affairs is currently working on a streamlined Employee Handbook with a Faculty Handbook addendum. The project is in response to feedback from faculty and staff regarding New Employee Orientation about wanting one central repository for orientation materials.
Calendar of Events
- September 14-City Fest
- September 23-Family Weekend
- September 26-Chamber of Commerce’s State of the University
- September 28-Celebration of Philanthropy
- October 9-10-Fall Break
- October 13-15-Homecoming
A brand new portal is in the process of being created for university committees and should be available soon. This will provide the membership of committees and will list the terms limits. Lauren Keeler in the University Counsel’s office will be managing that site.
Later in the meeting, the Senate will be discussing a Staff Council proposal on increasing per diem meal rates. Our office is supportive of the proposal.
REPORT FROM THE PROVOST: Sara Zeigler
Academic Calendar
As you know, a Work Group was formed to look at the academic calendar and to make recommendations for changes. The effort included faculty surveys and other kinds of faculty input, and a report was submitted near the end of the spring semester. The report has been shared with this body as well as a number of others. Draft calendars have been sent out to the chairs for review and feedback. Based on the feedback from departments, the 4-day instructional week idea will be tabled for the time being. However, that doesn’t mean it’s abandoned all together, but the first issue is getting the term length and class lengths sorted and making sure there are some breaks between semesters. Faculty input has suggested that we minimize the change in class lengths, so a new draft will be shared soon that will have timeframes of 55 minutes for Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes and 80 minutes for Tuesday and Thursday classes. Evening classes and classes that only meet once a week would not necessarily change in terms of the time length. A draft will also be shared for the eCampus schedule. There were concerns raised with regard to online course terms. Given the changes in the LMS, this is probably the time to make any changes to term length that we want to make so that we can make all of the changes at once and not have to modify later on.
When a final draft version of the calendar is ready, it will be shared with the senators for review and feedback prior to the Senate meeting.
EKU Winter Registration
EKU Winter registration begins Wednesday, September 13th at 8am, so please share that information with students who might be interested in Winter Term.
FCT&L Update
This morning an email was sent out from Dr. Rusty Carpenter for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. Those emails will come out every Monday and will be packed with lots of information. Included in this week’s update was information on how to nominate yourself or other people for faculty awards this year, and information on an artificial intelligence series called “AI Ignite” that is hosted by Dr. Lisa Blue. The first session is on Responsible Content Creation Using Generative AI Tools on October 4th from 1-2pm and is available both in person and online.
On Thursday, September 21 at 2pm, Amy Scarborough, Director of Government Relations, will have a TLI session on what the 2024 Kentucky General Assembly might look like for higher education. She will also talk about how we can help express our views in an appropriate way that is consistent with our roles as employees but also as effective in advocating for higher education and the issues that we care about so deeply.
Fall 2023 Commencement Student Speaker
The Fall 2023 Commencement Speaker application is now live. There’s a competitive audition process for students, so please encourage excellent students whom you would like to hear speak at Commencement to apply.
New Working Groups
There is a Curriculum Development and Re-Development Work Group that will have its initial meeting on September 15th. This group is co-chaired by Ryan Baggett and Rusty Carpenter and has faculty representation from all colleges, EKU Libraries and EKU Online. This work group is going to be looking at the support systems for all modalities (this includes on-ground courses) and will submit recommendations both on format and resources for application processes.
Another working group is the 8,000 by 2028. That group had its first meeting on September 7th. It is a 20-person group, so there will probably be some sub-committees. There again, it has representation from all colleges, and Dr. Kay and Dr. Blair both serve on that body in their capacities as Senate leadership.
Funds Available for Cross-College and Interdisciplinary Collaboration Project
There is a pool of $100,000 available to fund mini-grants through the cross-college and interdisciplinary collaboration project which is co-chaired by Dean Baggett and Dean George. The submission deadline is Friday, September 29.
LMS Review
A notice went out this morning about the LMS Review. There are all sorts of opportunities to experiment with these LMS options and see which one you most prefer and provide feedback. The LMS Committee will use survey results to make informed recommendations during the final deliberation phase in November, so please take some time to play around with those. We want to get the best possible product we can and make it as easy as possible for you to adapt to this new one.
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Student Government Association Update. Camden Ritchie announced that SGA has a lot of great things planned for this year. He encouraged faculty to reach out to him at camden.ritchie@eku.edu to collaborate on issues together.
One of our new initiatives this year is to have a senator for each college who will meet monthly with the deans as a way to stay better informed on the kinds of problems that each individual college may have.
Advising and Career Services. Matt Schumacher and Darlene Stocker from Advising and Career Services were in attendance to discuss the resources available for students and faculty through their office. Their core purpose is to help students get the skills they need to enrich them throughout their journey at EKU and get them ready for their chosen career field. As such, they provide a lot of different opportunities to help students and work with faculty as they meet students in the classroom. This is done through classroom presentations, networking events, job fairs, online tool kits, as well as other types of support. This year they have designed a new series for faculty called Colonel Career Champions (C-3 Series) that has lesson plans and materials for you to be able to utilize within the classroom. To learn more about all the resources available and upcoming events for students, please visit https://www.eku.edu/oacs/.
LMS Selection Process. Senator Slijepcevic gave a brief presentation on the LMS selection process. The selection has been narrowed down to three choices: Anthology Blackboard, D2L BrightSpace, and Canvas by Instructure. For the next two months faculty will have access to sandboxes to test each of the three choices. Visit http://lmsreview.eku.edu/lmstestaccounts to sign up for the sandboxes. Be sure to submit a survey once you have completed your review.
In addition, there will be three virtual demo sessions from each LMS vendor starting next week and the week afterwards, so there will be plenty of opportunities to ask questions.
The survey results will be used to make informed recommendations during the final LMS deliberation phase in November.
NEW BUSINESS:
Staff Council Proposal on Per Diem Meal Rates. Chair Kay introduced the proposal from Staff Council. Senator McGuffin moved to support the proposal, seconded by Senator Cogdill. Motion carried. (YES = 47 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 1 vote) (See also: Individual Votes)
Election for Vacancy on Academic Quality Committee. Senator Streetman nominated Senator Stevenson and moved to close nominations and accept by acclamation, seconded by Senator Manning.
2023-24 Committee Charges. Chair Kay shared the committee charges for the academic year. Please forward any questions on the charges to Chair Kay and/or Vice Chair Blair.
Chair Kay reminded the committees to meet soon to set their schedule and elect a chair and forward the information on to the Senate secretary.
GENERAL & STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS
REPORT FROM SENATE CHAIR: Senator Kay
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met on August 28, 2023. The committee discussed the following items: the appointment of a new Faculty Senate Parliamentarian, Heather Tudor; the LMS update; 8KBY28, the plan to increase the number of online students from 4000 to 8000 by 2028; the status of the Faculty Club; and the 2023-2024 committee charges. The committee approved guests for the September Faculty Senate meeting, and announcements were made regarding the New Faculty Senator Orientation and the vacancy on the Academic Quality Committee.
A report on Faculty Senate was shared with the Board of Regents on May 16th and August 16th. Chair Eaves was impressed with the Faculty Senate committee reports from the spring.
The New Faculty Senator Orientation was held on September 6, 2023.
Our Problem Solvers Group continued to meet over the summer with the Provost, who has been very diligent in following up on concerns. The following are some recent topics of discussion:
- Recruitment of and admissions procedures for international students
- Timing of faculty-related events, feedback gathering
- Efficiency
- Support for programs
- Registry of task forces and committees
- Issues raised by Faculty Welfare Committee
One example of a result of these conversations is that the names of drafting team members for policies and regulations are now listed on the website, providing greater transparency.
Here are some highlights for this year:
- The Faculty Senate is co-sponsoring an event with the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCT&L) on September 19th: “Let’s Collaborate: Transdisciplinary Opportunities at EKU for Your Program and Students.” We are partnering with EKU Honors, EKU Graduate Profile, and the Office of Advising and Career Services.
- Vice Chair Blair is going to discuss the work of last year’s Welfare Committee at a forum sponsored by the AAUP on October 5th.
- We now have an anonymous virtual suggestion box on the Faculty Senate website: https://success.eku.edu/register/faculty_feedback#_ga=2.180267748.1744507794.
1694338296-716225879.1691024679. We are reading all of the comments that we receive and forwarding concerns to the appropriate individuals as needed. Note that we are not able to follow up directly with faculty members who submit comments since they are anonymous. We received one request for access to the recordings of Faculty Senate meetings from last year. Our Senate secretary said that the videos are too large to upload to the website, and the Zoom links to recordings are only good for about 30 days. However, detailed minutes are posted on the Faculty Senate website. If anyone is interested in a video for a particular month, they should contact the Senate secretary.
REPORT FROM FACULTY REGENT: Senator Marion
The Board of Regents will be having their fourth quarterly meeting of the year on Wednesday, November 15. Since our last Faculty Senate meeting, the Board has met twice. The Board met on May 24th and August 16th. A relatively lengthy summary of matters related to the Board was provided by email on August 7th and a copy of that Faculty Regent Update is available here.
Regarding the August 16th meeting of the Board, the agenda was relatively light and mainly focused on updates. The Board welcomed back Regent Vasu Vasudevan who was re-appointed by Governor Beshear following one year away from the Board since completing his last term.
The updates provided included the following:
- Financial Update by Vice President Poynter (linked here)
- Construction Update by Associate Vice President Makinen (linked here)
- Academic Affairs Update by Provost & Vice President Zeigler (linked here)
- Student Success & Student Life Update by VPs Wasson & Moore (linked here)
- Athletics Update by Vice President & Director of Athletics Roan (linked here)
- Faculty Senate, Staff Council, and SGA Updates by their leadership (linked here)
Additionally, President McFaddin provided a report and reiterated the message regarding FOCUS at Convocation in August. The slides related to his message to the Board are linked here.
During the meeting, following the reports of the Faculty Senate and Staff Council, there was some discussion regarding efforts to enhance employee welfare. Referencing information from EKU Human Resources, the President indicated that EKU had the lowest turnover rate for employees among the other public universities in Kentucky. The teasing out of data as they relate to faculty may be beneficial. Based upon perspectives received from faculty and shared, Chair Eaves shared the stated interest in the Board needing greater understanding on personnel statistics in future meetings. Also, as part of the meeting, the Board asked Faculty Senate Chair Kay, who also welcomed the Provost to add comments, on what strategies may be most beneficial for making EKU as great of a place as possible for faculty to work.
In addition to the information provided here, Abby Briggs from the Eastern Progress summarized the meeting, available here, in an article entitled “Enrollment and housing increases, construction projects discussed at EKU Board of Regents meeting.”
Overall, at the Board level, the general mood or temperament remains positive, particularly due to the financial stability of the university, housing occupancy rates, and the enrollment projections. Preliminary indications are that EKU may again lead among the regional universities in Freshmen enrollment increases for another year and the state budget outlook (albeit in the legislature’s hands) for the upcoming fiscal year still looks favorable.
STANDING COMMITTEES
Elections & University Nominations Committee. Senator Spira reported that the committee will meet for the first time on Monday, September 18.
Faculty Welfare Committee. Senator Manning announced that she met with HR last week. The committee hasn’t met yet but will schedule a meeting soon.
Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee. Senator Brent announced that the committee met on August 17, and he was elected to serve as chair again this year.
The committee reviewed last year’s charges and discussed the status of charges that carried over to the fall.
Senator Brent provided the following update:
- The drafting team for the Grievance Policy meets soon to continue their work.
- The committee continued discussions on policy driving policy.
- Steve Caudill is currently working with us to see how much the BookSmart program is being utilized.
Chair Kay stated that upon asking recently which policies come to Senate for approval now, the answer was none of them. She and Vice Chair Blair plan to meet with Senator Brent to discuss the changes made to the Policy on Policies to see what can be done about that.
The next meeting is on September 14th at 10:30am.
Rules Committee. Senator Bishop-Ross announced that the committee will meet on Wednesday, September 20 to elect a chair and secretary and to set their schedule for the semester.
ADJOURNMENT:
Senator Brent moved to adjourn, seconded by Senator Streetman, at approximately 5:15pm.
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(See Also: Polling Results by Motion & Senators)
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