Faculty Council Corner

Faculty Council Corner is a regular Thursday morning feature, presenting an open thread for you to bother your HWFC members with pressing questions (or for us to post the pressing questions that you have). Also, you can expect this to be the forum where we post regular updates about what is happening with Faculty Council and when.

Welcome back to the FC Corner.

Last Week’s Pressing Questions:

None!

This Week’s Updates:

~Well, I finally got around to updating the minutes from the spring and the FC4 representative list on the Faculty Council Page, so if you go there, you can see up to the minute accurate information. About time.

~You’ll note if you go there that the Council agreed to appoint Kennette Crockett (English) to serve the remainder of Theresa Carlton’s FC4 position. Theresa resigned this summer owing to her acceptance into a Ph.D. program. The Council thanked her, and gratefully welcomes Kennette to her new role. Unfortunately a change in Kennette’s schedule prevents her from being able to pick up the torch for the rest of the term, which means Theresa’s spot on FC4 will be up for a special election in October.

~Speaking of representatives, at our meeting on Tuesday, the council agreed that we’d kick off the nomination period for local HWFC representation this Friday at the State of the College address, running through the following Friday (9/23). To nominate someone, you need only send their name in an email to any Faculty Council representative, with the nominee CC’d (so we know that they’re cool with it by 5pm, September 23rd. Once we have the nominees, we’ll put together a ballot for the first week of October and count the votes at our October meeting. When that election is held, there will also be a special election to select a one semester substitute for Tom Higgins’ FC4 position to serve while he is on sabbatical. So we’ll need nominees for that, too. If you’ve been thinking that it might be cool to be on FC4, this is your chance to give it a four meeting trial run.

~There were lots of updates and lots of business, but the other two things of note are that A) we discussed the long existing, but long moribund “Social Committee”–specifically whether it was necessary and should continue–and the discussion rolled around to the history (this was a high priority for Isabelle Belance when she served and she and Mike Davis kind of revived it), and why it mattered (morale is a part of our function, too), and whether anyone would be willing to take responsibility for it (no), and what we should do about it (throw it up on the Lounge, they said, with an open call to see if anyone is interested in organizing a social event or two each semester for faculty). And so here it is. Anybody interested? The other update is related to the Honors Program, which we’ve been talking about for awhile, and the upshot is that HWFC resolved to recommend to the Deans that the program (and any “honors class” offerings) go on hiatus until further notice (i.e., someone is able to take over the program and resolve the issues that were raised in HWFC discussions about the program over the last year or so (see the minutes)).

~Yesterday (Wednesday, 9/15), Rosie and I attended an FC4 meeting with Don and John where the plan for Key Performance Indicator Development was presented. I will have more on that later, but the short version is that the District leadership has developed a plan that prioritizes faculty involvement. It is a pretty solid example of exactly what we’ve been saying “shared governance” should be, and so it is heartening. More soon.

~And that’s it for now. Please add or correct anything that needs to be added or corrected.