EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

2007-2008 FACULTY SENATE

 

The sixth regular meeting of the 2007/2008 Faculty Senate will be held on

Tuesday, February 19, 2008, at 2:10 p.m. in the Mendenhall Student Center, Great Room.

 

AGENDA

  I.  Call to Order

 

 II.  Approval of Minutes   

 

      January 29, 2008

 

III.  Special Order of the Day

 

A.  Roll Call

 

B.  Announcements

 

C.  Steve Ballard, Chancellor

Report on Faculty Employment, to include a longitudinal profile of faculty tenure status and tenure status of permanent and temporary faculty (by unit).  Link to Report of the Task Force on Fixed-Term Appointments (9-06)

     

D.    Phyllis Horns, Interim Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences

 

E.     Dorothy Muller, Interim Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence

            Early College High School at East Carolina

 

F.   Mark Taggart, Chair of the Faculty

 

G.  Election of Faculty Officers Nominating Committee

      According to ECU Faculty Manual, Appendix A, Section VIII.

 

H.  Question Period

 

IV.   Unfinished Business

 

V.     Report of Committees

 

A.  Educational Policies and Planning Committee, Dale Knickerbocker

1.   Department of Economics’ request for intent to plan a Ph.D. program.

2.   Department of History’s request to add a new concentration in Atlantic World history to the department’s MA in History.

3.   Department of Geography’s request to add a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science and Technology.

 

B.  Unit Code Screening Committee, Garris Conner 

1.   Proposed revised School of Communication’s Unit Code of Operation. Discussion postponed on this unit code until March 2008.  

2.   Proposed revised Department of Psychology’s Unit Code of Operation. Discussion postponed on this unit code until March 2008.   

3.      Proposed revised Health Sciences Library’s Unit Code of Operation.   

 

C.  University Curriculum Committee, Janice Neil

Curriculum matters contained in the minutes of the January 24, 2008, Committee meeting.  

 

VI. New Business

Resolution on the Student Opinion of Instruction Survey (SOIS), Ken Wilson (attached)


 

 

 

Faculty Senate Agenda

February 19, 2008

Attachment  1.   

 

RESOLUTION ON STUDENT OPINION OF INSTRUCTION SURVEY

 

Because of a series of transitional problems, the Faculty Senate believes

that the Student Opinion of Instruction Survey (SOIS) results for Fall 2007

are flawed and should not be used for any purpose.

 

Principles to Guide the Use of the Student Opinion Data
(Faculty Senate Resolution #95-24)

Principle 1:  That student opinion of instruction be only one of the ways to evaluate teaching.   Unit heads, and others who evaluate teaching, should seek additional ways such as peer reviews, reviews of course syllabi, and other methods depending upon   their particular needs and interests.

Principle  2:  Faculty in all eligible courses will allow time for student evaluation forms to be distributed and collected by a student enrolled in the class. This is necessary in order to ensure completeness and reliability of data.  Units would be free, of course, to develop other instruments for use in addition to the Teaching Effectiveness Committee form and, in accord with Appendix C, to use only data from those other instruments.

Principle 3:  That the approved form be administered every semester.

Principle 4:  That data from the approved form be processed in such a way that both individual faculty and unit heads know the following:

a. the mean, median, and standard deviation for items 1 through 23 for each course.

b. A frequency distribution of the responses to each of the 27 items.

c. A summed score for items 1 through 16, a measure of teaching effectiveness.  In addition, unit and institutional means, medians and standard deviations of the effectiveness score will be included for all courses of the same level taught at the university that semester.  For example, statistics will be provided for all 1000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 1000-level course, for all 2000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 2000-level course, and so on up to all 6000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 6000-level course.

d. A summed score for items 17 and 18, a measure of course difficulty.  In addition, unit and institutional means, medians and standard deviations of the difficulty score will be included for all courses of the same level taught at the university that semester.  For example, statistics will be provided for all 1000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 1000-level course, for all 2000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 2000-level course, and so on up to all 6000-level courses if the course evaluated is a 6000-level course.                

Principle 5:   That any analyses of student opinion pay attention only to data that indicate a statistically high or statistically low performance when compared to the standards.

Principle 6:   That, except in the case of new faculty, administrative evaluations be based not on course-by-course or semester-by semester data but on patterns established over the past several semesters in all courses taught by a faculty member.