All right. When we get started, there are empty seats for those of you who are standing. If you'd like to sit, please by all means, do so. Alright. Well, welcome to the two thousand eighteen thousand nineteen academic year, the faculty senate. I'm Chris Williams. I'm a professor in entomology in wildlife ecology. I'm the president of the Faculty Senate this year BY your, your provider of these meetings and social director otherwise. So one thing is before we get started, I wanted to take some time pre meeting to talk through a couple of logistics before we jump into the agenda and minutes and big things that we need to talk about. So that being said, there's a couple of things that we want to remind you about related to activity incentive, and I'm going to give some announcements was to talk about the Senate General once we get to my nozzle section, but just as a starter. So the one is, is that reminder that all these meetings are being recorded through UD capture. Alright, so there's a couple things that relate to that. First is, is that we respectfully ask if you can put your phones on airplane mode or turn them off because there's a little bit of feedback that relates to that signal. So that helps a great deal. Number two is that throughout the year, as always, if you're an old centered, you know, this, that, that is, if you would like to speak, you need to introduce yourself, your name, your department, so it does show up on the recording. So when we go back and listen to the minutes, we know who, who it is. The other thing that Joe mentioned to me is that be very careful about having side conversations with each other as that can be picked up by these mikes that are hanging above. >> Okay, second is yellow cards and clicker. >> So Karen has been passing out the yellow cards. And these cards are there for couple of reasons. We're going to use them for voting for some things and also for attendance. So one quick note about attendance. It is required that you come to the eight meetings of the faculty senate. And if you can't make a meeting, just please contact care and ahead of time and let her know that you won't be an attendance. So so we can mark that down. Technically, if you have three on excused absences, then we'll make a sent a nasty email to your dean and asked to be replaced. But that has never happened in all of our years, but it is technically the rule. So just so please let us know if anything is coming up. The other component is voting. And so the rule that I'm going to follow this year is we're going to use some different technologies for voting for passage of the agenda. For the minutes for German, I'm fine with just a voice vote for yeas are net's for very simple things for the Consent Agenda. So oftentimes later in the semester when we have lots of changes to to academic programs and we're going to put 20 DOD things on the consent agenda, then we can use our yellow cards to vote for those and hopefully get the sense of the Senate as a majority. If it looks tight, we can count or even go to option three, which is our clickers. So option for the clickers we're going to use as we have for the last couple years for all the regular agenda item. So that way we have a precise vote and and we can pay attention to that way. The one thing that we ask, and I know it's a little bit. Wonky is that when you're voting with clickers, and so you've all been given a clicker and it's assigned to you. So your names on the back is, is that when you're voting, you're going to ask you still raise your yellow card in adherence of our old system, and then you're going to vote. You're going to click the buttons. And I want to go through the clickers very quickly here with you as well. Oops, sorry. So there's voice votes is the approval of the agenda minutes. Adjournment in yellow cards will be there for consent agenda clickers, and yellow card for the regular agenda. So for the clickers, so many people are using clickers anymore in classroom. So this may be old hat, but I wanted to just take a moment to go through it if this is new to you, so that's what you're looking at, your clickers. And when we're, when we're using the clickers, the very first thing you need to be aware of is your read on off button. These things will shut down after a minute or two. And so oftentimes we have to continually turn them on. So do that, always look for that ready signal in the, on the screen first. And so you can all do is we can do a practice run, dry run of clicker just so we all understand how this is working. So you can hit your red button for on off, and eventually it'll switch that ready screen as you see up on the screen. And then what we'll do is then I will turn on, let me do that so I can turn on a set appear. Sandy, Let's see. >> It helped me. >> So I've got showing up here, but not that give me a reason why McCarthy. >> Okay. Awesome. Thank you. >> So when we started vote, I'll I'll turn this on so you can see the clock is ticking away and, and the loading is now ready. >> So all of you can do one of three things. >> You can click a for yes, B for no, C for abstention. D is ordering pizza, these ordering drinks. So, so let's just try that out. So if you understand these directions, then you can press a, B, or C. You can do that now. And it should show us. Then we have a running tally of all the votes that are coming in. >> Are you buying our Ok? >> So I will stop it and then I can show the results. And so there we go. So very nicely, I'm I'm happy that you are ordering drinks and it's on your tab. >> Thank you. So right. >> So really easy. That's that's it. And so that way we will have the exact votes. It'll go down in the minutes. >> Ok. >> Any questions about logistics? >> I just pressed IT several times. It seemed to fade. So sorry, MLK, green philosophy. >> So, so, so so I don't know if I'm going to answer your question correctly. So one thing is you can change your vote to So while it's active, Yes. So if you say I click aid in a way, I mean, I really did want to order a drink. >> Then you can switch it and it'll happen until I shut it down so that it's not double counting is not the right. >> It's got you as an individual registered. Any other questions? Very good. >> Okay. >> Then we will jump into the official meeting. Then. Sandy >> That first and then it'll go oops, sorry, and you can kind of answer you them. Yeah. >> Okay. >> So we'll jump into our regular scheduled event. >> So first is the agenda. I need to make one change to the agenda that we send out before we're going to have President Asana speak first, but unfortunately had another engagement. He had to attend at four o'clock. So he asked if we could put him to the end, which is fine. So I'm just making a front end amendment to that agenda that will put dennis at the end. So given that, can I have a motion to adopt the amended agenda? >> Second? >> Right. All in favor say hi against extension. Very good. Thank you. Tend to is approved. And we also need to adopt the minutes from May seventh. Can have a motion to adopt the minutes on favor say I nay. Abstentions. >> Okay. Very good. All right. >> Sandy stopped. >> So my buttons have now stopped pursuit. That is the reason. >> Okay, cool. >> Alright, so we'll skip over Dennison, the first-person we're going to have as Provost Robin Morgan come up and say a few words. >> Thank you, Chris, and hello everybody. It's good to see you here. I realized we're competing with the soul's lecture right now. I'm getting a little bit longer comments today than I sometimes do because I think there's a little more time in the meeting today and as the semester progresses, I'll get shorter and shorter so that we can get out of here before the moon comes up, starting with admissions. So we enrolled a freshman class of 4,254 students, slightly above the target of 4,239. The freshman class has our second largest enrollment of Delaware Arians in recent history. We have a 1378. The out-of-state students come from 35 territories and 40 countries. States and territories and 40 countries. And the class has a record number of international students this year under rapid represented minorities. We have 670 in the freshman class. 323 of them are from delaware. It's the second year in a row that we've been over 300 under-represented minorities from Delaware. And stop here for a minute and say, just get in the numbers is the very beginning. It's really up to all of us to make sure that Students who come in here feel welcome. You're very much a part of this community is starts with us, but we also have to work very hard with our students to make sure that everyone feels welcome on campus. We have an outstanding class, academically, 600, and to honor students. And the average SAT score is 12 points higher than last year. We had a great twilight induction ceremony. I certainly enjoyed it, and I want to thank everyone who participated and everyone who actually work to make that event happen. So right now, the undergraduate enrollment is 18,221 on the new art campus. Another 839 undergraduates are in the Associate in Arts program and graduate enrollment at us at 4,164. I want to talk just a minute about student well-being. I know many of you as our faculty everywhere on the front lines of this, we worry about our students experiencing feelings of homesickness and isolation, and anxiety and depression. Just a reminder that if you suspect, if you have any idea that a student might be in trouble, please refer them to the Center for counseling and student development. Also, if you're worried and you refer them, you can also just contact the Office of the Dean of Students directly and consult with a staff member there and they will step up and help you or take care of it. So really do be mindful of students who appear to be in trouble. Second thing I want to talk about is the Working Group on course evaluations. This is a report from Matt, who was at the souls lecture, met cancer. Vic convened a working group on student course evaluations. The members, in addition to mat or Chris Williams, Allen Fox, Kevin good remarks, survey. And Aaron takes am I pronouncing that correctly? Is Aaron here? Dax. Thank you, Aaron. Dax. Thank you. So this group is going to take up one of the recommendations from the tenure-track Commission Report that had to do with course evaluations, they'll do their charges to fold. The first is to figure out language for the Faculty Senate and for the provost office to use when they are considering course evaluations in cases of promotion and tenure. The second is to consider a new set of evaluation questions that we might want to adopt campus wide, focusing more on student learning than some of our current questions did. So stay tuned for the results from that that Working Group on course evaluations. Next, I'm going to move to a third topic, and that's to give you an update on the budget model. I've met with Benny groups since the school year began. This is number one on my list, my agenda whenever I meet with people, and I'm finding that it's a commonly shared agenda items. So if I I'm guessing that those of you sitting in the seats here as faculty senators would really like to hear something about that. So here goes. The goal is to have a budget model described in a white paper by December. I don't know if that's the beginning of December or the end of December, but by December, certainly before the first of the year. >> And this >> Model will describe how strategic and incremental revenues will be allocated. The idea would be that it would go into effect with the next fiscal year beginning in July 2019. But that during the spring semester, departments, deans, other units could begin to plan for what that programs they might want to put in place or how that model might affect them based budgets have been set. That doesn't mean they can't be modified, but they have been set through the course of the past academic year. They are bare bones. That means they pay for salaries and benefits. There's not a lot of fluff in those bass budgets, but they would put a unit in a position that it has a guaranteed level of funding that will pay for the people who are in that unit. Appropriate reserves still need to be determined. So we still need to figure out for each unit, what is the size of the, the war chests, so to speak, that you need to be able to cover an unforeseen circumstance. We don't want to go back to that situation where at all levels of the university, people were accumulating strong reserves because they had to take care of themselves. They were tubs and their own bottom. And we ended up with tens and tens of millions of dollars in accounts that was not being invested back into the university. Everyone was just being a little cautious and playing it safe, which is good. What we want to do, we don't want people not panic planet safe. But we want those safety nets to be an appropriate depth so that we're investing, maximally, investing money back into the academic enterprise. And finally, the budget office will be comparing actual FY 18 funding, so last year's funding to what it would have been if we had used or BB to try to give people an idea of how different was it last year when we recentralized things. So you will you will see this going on during the fall. Input is still welcome. It isn't that there's no input, but what we're trying to do is take what has been learned from the budget model subcommittee meetings and now take that advice, take that to the next step and get this to a point that we can actually put it in place. The next topic I want to talk about, I'll take questions at the end is operational efficiency. So you're going to hear a lot this year if you haven't already, about operational efficiency and the realignment of some positions and functions, some recentralization of some of those communications is the first unit that's being realigned right now. So the college communications managers have been, we've been working with them and they've been told that they will report directly to o cm, the Office of Communications and Marketing. Specifically, they will report to Katie O'Connell and she will then report up to Glenn Carter. Most of them know katy. They worked with her for a long time. These communication managers will have dotted lines, very strong dotted lines back to the deans of the colleges and the college communications personnel will stay aligned with the college units. This has been deployed in two colleges, ag and education and human development. And where we are now deploying it as we speak. Across the university to try to have more, eliminates some redundancy and communications, have our communications messages be more aligned and to be able to be more efficient with some of the functions we have. We're asking you for three things. First, please help us get the message out there that operational efficiency and realignment are not terms that are synonymous with downsizing. So we live in a world, we live in a community where when people hear operational efficiency, realignment their minds automatically, some people's minds automatically go to, I'm going to lose my job. That is not the case here. And we need you to help us to clarify that with people. If you see them becoming overly anxious about this, you know that we're increasing our faculty numbers across the university with a plan to add 250 more faculty to our, to our group. We also increase in the number of undergraduate students and the number of graduate students. Ok? There are places at this university right now that I know we're about to come apart at the seams. As we add, I probably don't know all of them and I'm not telling you that. I don't think there's some slack out there, but there's a lot of efficiency that we need as we grow more faculty and more students, we don't intend to add staff in a linear fashion. We went to add staff, but in ways that make operational sense, that maximize efficiencies, that make sure that we're using all of our human resources in the best way we can, and that we're investing every dime in the best way that we can. Their main goal being to improve our student success and our faculty success to reach our real mission for what we do. So help us get that message out that there will be some centralization. We're trying to get a balance between decentralization and centralization. There may be some realignments, but this is not about downsizing the staff of the universe. Number two, that's the first thing, number 2, second thing, please give this a try even if you're skeptical. So I'm someone who's been around here a long time and I've seen us go from centralization to decentralization back again, I really believe that what we're trying to do now is strike a good balance. That balance might be different for different functions and we won't get it perfect. But the ideas to improve it and get it as good as it can be. So I'm asking if you're skeptical, I can certainly understand how you might be. Give it a chance, give it a try. And number 3, third, please participate. If you have ideas about how units could combine resources and use them more efficiently. It could be within a department, but it could be among departments, could be different kinds of functions that you see could be done better. Please don't sit quietly and please speak up. You can do that by going to the appropriate functional group. You could go to accumulate OCML communications manager in the case of communications or work through your department chair or dean. But be part of this. I think it would be wonderful if some of our Issues with operational efficiency self solved. And if the ideas came from those who were affected about how we could do it more efficiently. So just going ever again, those three ways you can help, help us get the word out that when we are talking about operational efficiency and realignment, we're trying to be to use the resources we have better. This is not a time when staff members all over the universe, you need to be looking over their shoulder and thinking that they're gonna lose their job. The university is actually growing number to give it a try, even if you're skeptical. And number three, participate. We don't have all the answers. Okay, the next topic I want to talk about is cluster hiring update. Many of you may know, but we did a pilot cluster search and data science and it exceeded my imagination, my expectation. So I'm really happy with this. We're not finished yet that we hired five new faculty members and we have two more appending acceptances for offers. So that would be a total of seven. The president only authorized six, but some of the deans and TDN and we still have went to deans and we still have one position that is still vacant of the original six that searches continuing into the current year. Five of these individuals are in data science applications and two are in foundations. With this search, we're continuing being in foundations. Now hold onto your seats. Six additional hires were made during the year from disciplinary searches where this search committees out in the units we're communicating with the Data Science Search Committee. So in total, we have 11 new fact faces on campus to more pending offers and when search and progress for individuals who are involved in data science. All of these hires have been invited to join the new Data Science Institute, which is being led by Kathy Woo and was launched earlier this month. Now we've also launched three new cluster searches. These are in biopharmaceutical discovery, disaster science and education, and coastal water security. And there'll be taking place beginning now. Finally, my office, me, MacKenzie Vic, and other people, I round up or try and to arrange a series of luncheons and discussion groups for those groups that submitted cluster search proposals that were not chosen to advance. So these could be groups that submitted the original executive summaries, or they could be groups that submitted the larger cluster searches that were not chosen. The idea here is to make sure that ideas are not forgotten. That we appreciate the needs, that we link people up with colleagues who are sharing interests. That we try to see how our, how our disciplinary searches are related to this. And we do whatever we can to help groups succeed in the next round or to achieve their goals. So stay tuned for that. With that, I'm going to stop and I'll be happy to take a few questions if I have time. So I'll be happy to take a few questions if you have any. Yes. >> Thank you. John jet from English. >> Thank you very much. In the spring, you mentioned that your office was going to do a study committee on adjunct faculty. Can you give us an update on how that started your community as Bart? >> I don't know, John. I'll have to ask Matt. One that I know. I know it's been high on the list, but I don't I'm not prepared to give you an update. Apologize for that, but I'll put it on the list for next time. That would that be okay. Would you like me to have met email you before the barn next time. Ok. Thank you. Good, danny. >> Galileo Biological Sciences. >> Thank you. >> You mentioned that there are plans to increase undergrad enrollment or what are those plans? And my question is that you've mentioned boost budget covers the people, but those that also cover the cost of the courses that are taught routinely by departments as well as people. >> Second question. First, it covers the costs that are the base cost. So the current costs that you have, which is not in, that is money that you could invest to grow. So to do something, it might be hard to do that with just that base budget. And there's a recognition of that it would simply covered the cost. So we'd have faculty salaries, staff salaries, and then the general operational cost, but nothing extra base as far as undergraduate enrollments? Yes. There is a plan to increase undergrad enrollments in areas of high demand, areas of high impact, in areas where people, where groups can make a compelling case that an investment in this area where it will yield meter societal need and be a good thing to do for the university. Dennis, You want to say, what are you going to do this? That I was going to put a number on it, but I think I'll let you do that. But we do know that as you increase students, you know, we don't want our classes to get unwieldy in size. I'm concerned about the same things you are. We have to have space to do that. We have to be able to provide the support services that they need that help and didn't give you the number. You have other questions. Now's your chance. Yes. >> Isaac, which is a little bit in the same direction to feeling that there was a lot of problems with rooms at the beginning of the semester. Nurses have to do with the higher enrollment. >> I experienced this in the fall and the spring, sometimes another to fall. >> And that message says that before the beginning of the semester, there are so many courses without rooms and being kept switching rows. >> I feel now basically what I do clarified courses without ruins because I was thinking human dorm rooms. I was going to answer next hop platform Courserians, I'm it didn't reach my level or the degree of difficulty about scheduling rooms. So I am I'm not I'm not aware of that. That there were problems with rooms not being available or People having to scramble creases, raising his hand, I'm going to call on them and got to my lovely. >> Therefore, please, I would love to Y, Y level nodes C Lucy or you don't do well knows sharer. >> I know there were some issues with flooding related to water issues, and some of the classrooms. >> And that did cause some classes to have to be moved to different areas. >> And then as soon as the carpets had been dried out related to the flooding, the classes move back to original location. I'm not sure if that is this particular situation was a contributing factor. >> What are the bigger person appreciative, just let me know. But basically the same thing you said about when I could take that, don't pay me. >> The last thing we want is for it is always stressful at the beginning of the semester anyway. Sometimes you don't know exactly how many students are going to show up, who's going to be there? So if you walk into a class and your classroom is not there, I can imagine that's not a great feeling. >> Thank you. >> If you want to talk about dorm rooms, we'd like and I'll talk about it. We do have students in triples. He can probably tell you about how many. So as a faculty member and as a mother, when I first heard about triples, and Chris knows this I wisdom, how many students do we have in triples? Why are we doing that? And in this particular semester, I have a research associate who's been very dear to me. She's worked with me for more than 30 years and her son is a freshman and he was assigned to a triple. And so she was talking to me in the summer and I'm thinking, what would I do as a mom? And here I am. It's the provost. And I gave her this advice. Find out who the students or let your son meet the roommates and why don't you try to go with it and it's working out great in her case. And so what I learned along the way is that many of the students, actually, their parents are very anxious about being triples. Try to the best of our ability to put them in rooms that are relatively large, still three people in a room. And in many cases, looking back on that for these students, they're very positive experiences. So I'm Sue to changing my mind a bit about how I feel about triples. >> I'm good at defer to Chris and let him say a little something about my esteemed colleague, the vice president for student life, jose, What would you like to know about? Who would you like to defer their specific question? >> How many do we have? >> How many triples here? >> I can get you the number. >> I don't know off the top my head, but yeah, I I would not want to quote a percentage of RAM. >> We can talk more if Jose we do we do confirm what I said. When you disagree with it. They turn out to be relatively positive experiences. For quite a few of our students. >> We think that's accurate, that yes, we've done. >> We collect a lot of assessment data and the residence halls, one of the things we look at really carefully as academic achievement. There are no significant differences in academic achievement of our first-year students are in triples versus those that are adults. >> I think that's probably the strongest data over here to this little question for you. >> Is that likely to change with the decor? >> The university courtyard of entrepreneurs that primarily focuses on graduate courtyards is undergraduate, but it's upper-class, so doesn't affect purchase luxury philosophy. I'm just wondering, it sounds like that small kids and domes or that will RAs to cope with the moral RA, what clothes increasing when we hold a proportion of about 40 students to an RNA that's consistent across a system regardless of how many? Yes, John Jesus, physics and astronomy. >> I've heard some concerns from my colleagues that apparently the University of Delaware was ranked number one party school. But I wondered if the if the administration had any concerns or opinion about this or statement? >> Well, it certainly isn't how I'd like to be distinguished. We've been toggling around this place for, for quite awhile. I think our message is how successful the students are being. So, so that is of course, a uphold that students themselves respond to. But the students success rates at UD are in Crete. They're improving four-year graduation rate, the quality of students, what they do when they get out. So our academic mission is certainly improving. One thing that has shocked me as I've tried to talk this surprised me. Shocked is nothing should shock me at this point. Surprised me as I've talked to students is we have a large number of students who are very embarrassed by that number one party school, who are saying, I come here, I work hard. It's a great academic experience. I really don't want to be the number one party school. But on the other hand, we have some students who are very, very proud. We are the number one party school. Hmm? I don't know that we have any faculty who are proud that we are the number one party school. But we do have students say, from my perspective, it's, it's, it's important to keep it in perspective to tell the story of what a great place we are. I've been, I've been throwing out this should we say we will work hard, play hard school, and I'm not getting good feedback on that. That's not what we should say, but we should say, I am getting better feedback and saying we're a place where we try to help people know when to work, when to play, and anybody who has ideas about how to make this, I don't know how we're going to spin number one party school in a way that I'm going to love it. Or how to make those students who think this is a wonderful distinction for the University of Delaware feel otherwise. But the various perspectives and things we could say that we think more accurately reflect what we've all tried to build here at UT. We would we would love to hear it. So I'd ask you to let Let us now. >> Yeah, Charlie, but look at the data. >> Doesn't support meaning no binge drinking and other things like that. >> Gone down. >> And when I was very proud of. >> Our students are showing in fact, the anger that the number of them expressed when they saw that, that we jumped 12 sports from last year in order to be now number one. >> But we also need to take this with a grain of salt. >> If you look at the methodology, how they do it, I mean, you go to Saturday night to Main Street and you find 300 responders. >> And that's basically the basis. >> And so I mean, I think to some extent were easier target because there is an organized Main Street here and you know, people who like to say certain things. >> And it, we need to continue to promote academic excellence. >> Great experiences that students have. >> And all of our data supports the fact that the school is improving in terms of academic excellence. >> Obviously take some time for this to show in every category. But looking from the intake of the students, I think the SAT this year, Chris was 12 points higher. >> And of course for the incoming class or phenomenon. >> So we could do to improve our retention rates are great, graduation rates are great. >> So I think the market will catch up with Airbnb. >> And one more question. You asking why weren't you know, sorry. >> I apologize. >> And it's hard to say at that precedent I was going to say that quite that that comes to mind is He's trying to be number one in everything we do. >> Alright. I'm going to stop now and I thank you for your attention. I really appreciate how you help. >> Alright, so we'll have done to say a few words at the end of the meeting. More incentive to stick around. So I wanted to take a few minutes and just give you a series of announcements that relate from, from my side. First was I want to take a moment, especially for the new faculty who are new to the Faculty Senate. And just give you a little bit of a context of the valuable work we do. And I wanted to share with you the language that shows up in the University of Delaware charter, as well as well as the board of trustees bylaws and the comments about the value of faculty and why it's important. You're, you're participating in the service. And so when we see in the chart at the faculty are there and they will have the care, control, government, and instruction of students. And that it is our authority to, to work toward academic components and degree and confer degrees and grant diplomas. And then within the board of trustees are much more language that is there and I'm highlighting just a few key components. But again, we are here together to formulate, administer the academic and educational policies of the university and make recommendations concerning policies on academic appointments and promotions, ten years, dismissal, salaries, and then a whole suite of other things that you see up on the screen here related to discipline of student body and the governance of them, policies of admission, et cetera. So, so there's a lot of really important things that we do. And so I wanted to take the time to thank you for serving on the faculty senate. You part of this, this greater effort of shared governance. And we're all working to be number one in the efforts that we do take anyone. But one thing I wanted to mention was in the Faculty Senate, there are 20 Committees that exist behind us and and I've organized them by different categories. So you have a sense. And so for many of you, you're on these committees and I thank you for those as well. But just to give you a quick summary of how we're organized, we do have a suite of committees that are there for just the administration administrative side, the Executive Committee, and the Committee on Committees and nominations. That is helping to fuel all the the members within these committees. We have an academic priorities and Presidential Advisory Committee made up of past presence to provide advice on a series of different issues that come up and also rules. And then within these different categories, we have educational programs. So one is that we have a group that's as Undergraduate Studies Committee and then graduate studies or reviewing the academic programs, all the courses of study, the things that we're going to spend so much time the spring reviewing as a body. And then there's a general education committee that's that's also there to help with those Gen Ed requirements. And a coordinating committee to oversee all of these different components and bring them to the senate floor. We have faculty issues that relate to Faculty Welfare and promotion privilege, rather that relate to just as it sounds, whether it's a grievance issue, whether it's promoting things such as academic freedom, we're there to try to make sure we're, we're providing the best voice we can for the faculty at the University of Delaware. We've got promotion and tenure, as we all know, is another step in that process. And also a group that's working on student and faculty honors in the past. We've always been able to provide awards for teaching and for revising. Those lead to the bricks up and mentor circle where we're now at the point now where we're adding in research as well as engagement. So we're breaching those, those three legs of a three-legged stool. Research, teaching, and service to provide awards for that as well. So that will happen this year. We also are there for an administrative liaison that relates to research and structural computing and research support. Library budget issues were there for student related committees that relate to appeals to student life components that come up on her on a regular basis. And then also we're working very hard to think about diversity and culture, whether that's international, at a diversity inclusion component, where are our cultural activities and public events that we're sponsoring a series of movies and speaking events to promote diversity and culture. So we have all these different committees that are in place. So, uh, thank you if you're serving on these and certainly I encourage you to also participate them in the future for quickly. I just wanted to use our our executive staff too. And they're all sitting here in the front row. There's myself again, so my email's up there. I by all means, have an open-door policy. Feel free to email me about whatever. I'm happy to talk to you. We can meet if we need to and chat about anything that comes up. Then our matt Robinson Here is our president elect, so he's going to be taking over come next year from sports management. Martha Buhl, our illustrious past president Human Development and Family Science, limit over B theatre, or is our new Vice President? Amy Johnson's are Coke and Chair. Alan foxes are philosophical secretary. And John jab, although not a voting member of exactly, has the very important role of being a parliamentarian and keeping us all on track. And so he plays a very critical one thing that we last time in May, we voted on all the dates. So please make a note of these on your calendar when when we're meeting. We're meeting a times. One thing I'll make a note of is that the second meeting date for for October eighth and March fourth is also the general faculty meeting. So we're going to be meeting early 330 in Michel Hall. And it gives a chance for President Assad to speak first to the full faculty before we hold the faculty senate meeting. So please make a note of that. And with that, I wanted to take some time and bring John Jay about for the last couple of years. We've had him come speak about parliamentary procedures. Robert rules of worst, it can be very confusing, especially for new faculty. And we know that. And so we'll have him speak can provide some insight to our actions. Yes. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Henry. >> Henry Martin. Robert was born in 1837 and South Carolina to a family that did not support slavery. He graduated from West Point and 150 7 fourth in his class. He studied engineering, especially involving waterways and harbors. A severe case of fever contracted in Panama while crossing the isthmus kept him off the front lines during the Civil War. But he continued his military career as an engineer in a variety of postings including the Delaware Bay. But usually in the West is service was so long and so distinguished. Did he attained the rank of general and held it for three days until mandatory retirement in 1901 in Galveston, Texas, citizens still revere Robert for his work on the city's effective seawall. The rest of America reveres him or at least knows him. Another reason Roberts created the rules in the 18 seventies in Wisconsin when river harbors were frozen over, giving him time away from his duty so that he could write the rules came from 20 years of experience witnessing local meetings at which members floundered on how to decide procedures and make decisions. Robert felt that the rules of the US Congress, which derived from the work of Thomas Jefferson when he was Vice President, applied awkwardly the smaller groups. So he wrote the rules for wide application Akhil applicable, applicable to group small enlarge ancient, too new. Amusingly, his wife told him that he should not simply offer a numbered list of rules, but should include explanations and discussions from this advice. The book has grown. The 11th edition, published in 2011, comes to over 700 pages. Senate President Chris Williams has suggested that Robert's military background may account for his drive to be orderly and to spread order throughout the nation. President Williams asked for a reprise of my earlier talks on Roberts and our senate. We discussed events that we've seen happen in the Senate in recent years. And so today I offer these guidelines. First, the business of the Senate consists of reports from officials and committee chairs. Then moves to considering resolutions. The resolutions require votes. The debate that leads up to those votes should follow the procedures. And Roberts, many of us can attest that our departments are informal in their procedures and voting. This senate sends its resolutions to the administration and even to the board. So formality is required. We will see a resolution on the agenda. We are obligated to debate it may be amended, then vote upon it. Second Reports are ways that information is shared with the faculty. My firm tradition, each month, the provost speaks to us, the president of the university, as a member of the Senate and often addresses us doing these reports said others may ask questions. Indeed, we might see regular addresses from the leadership of the university as similar to how the British prime minister regularly speaks before the House of Commons, our sanity is usually better behaved in the House of Commons. Okay, third, when the agenda moves to resolutions, we as senators need to follow the proper procedures. In 2013, then Senate President Denny Galileo, still a senator, had a special PDF placed on our website with the most frequently used procedures. We have a print out of that PDF with us today and our voting cards. Among the most significant procedures, the mover of emotion may speak first, but members may speak only twice on emotion because the right to speak and debate is limited, senators should prepare their remarks, even write them out, so that senators may use opportunities to speak to the full effect amendments. The motions should also be prepared in advance, not done on the fly forth, the preside or controls the floor during debate, senators should get into the habit of addressing the preside OR, and NOT previous speakers. You might recall on from television. Members of the US Congress opening their speeches with the formula, mr. speaker and members of the House, or madame chair person and members of the committee, we actually should do this, should direct matters that we want answered to the preside or not to individual members. >> Why this habit? >> It keeps out back forth between members and brings down heat when this body has become most disorderly. And rancorous is when members speak out to each other, not to the whole assembly, not through, not through. The preside or fifth calling of the question is a tactical move during debate and is not necessary otherwise. If a resolution and genders no debate. Preside or may ask if the assembly is ready to vote. Calling the question from the floor is not necessary. In the absence of debate. The preside or has the right to move us through the agenda. Indeed, we should restrict ourselves to calling the question only during debate. Then members must consider the tactical matter of when during debate to try to shut it down. Calling of the question is on debatable and requires a two-thirds vote. Though the preside or has a lot of power. The preside or may never call the question such as a grave sin. And Roberts sixth, after we somehow dispense with the resolutions are meetings, go to new business, which is a sacred time and air assembly. During new business, a senator may introduce a resolution or express a concern about the university without risk of ridicule, reprisal, or negative votes. All that can happen to a piece of new business is that it be sent to a committee. This procedure is unique in our body. It is a valuable and special right to those of us who are senators. >> Sources about General Robert often speak of his guiding values. >> He saw value in hearing from all sides. >> So his rule sought to ensure opportunities for minority views to be heard. >> He saw value in the process. >> Decision should not be arbitrary, but should result from a rational and explainable procedure. >> He saw value in the acceptance of votes. His rules expect the losers of votes to acknowledge defeat and support the majority. >> And he saw value in human nature last spring, I share this line from roberts with the executive committee. >> Quote, when a departure from water is justified, however, it is usually easy for the chair to obtain the necessary authorization from the assembly. >> Well, really, the assembly will almost always be reasonable. >> But henry martin, Robert seems to have really believed that people want to cooperate for the common good. >> May we all share this bracing optimism? >> Thank you. >> I should ask, Are there any questions about Robert's Rules for I let John truly escape? >> All right. >> It's not going to always be easy. We'll go slow, do our best. Ok, so related to some announcements of actual business. The first is, is that we're going to try very hard this year to start Faculty Senate newsletter. So we're working with communications. They'd build a template force. And the hope is, is that every month, if we're lucky, maybe more, but we'll be able to put out a newsletter that will provide information related to things that we've discussed in past meetings, to things that are coming up in the future is a general announcements. If there's something very important that you would like to Tell the faculty it is an opportunity that we can perhaps do that instead of use of time on the floor for that and maybe an opportunity for us to meet each other. Just get to know a few of the faculty center. So we're working on this and hopefully it'll be coming out in a couple of weeks. The first 1 second is some different resolutions that are coming forward. In October. First last May, Martha Bill had announced that we are going to have a resolution this September that relates to amending our constitution for to clarify the apportionment of non-elected centers in the body that is still in committee. So it hasn't been finished. So I'm just formerly letting you know that we're going to push that back one month and then we can we can have that discussion. And October second, the Martha or Robin had rather as it made the motion, or may be the notion rather about the adjunct faculty. And as well also this idea about teaching evaluations. And one thing that we're going to try very hard this year is to go back into that tenure track Commission Report that was finished last year and pull out as many of those suggestions and resolutions as is possible so that we can hopefully lay that too bad that we will make as many positive additions to the promotion and tenure process for the tenure-track faculty. And to that end, there are three resolutions that are in committee right now that we're going to bring forward in October. One relates to just clarifying the appeals process. The second is clarifying workload reporting. And the third is clarifying expedited tenure for faculty coming in at rank and what the process should be for that. So so those will also becoming in October. And third, there's also a resolution that's in committee right now that is there to try to clarify the faculty handbook as it relates to the register and grades as it relates to enrollment. So if someone doesn't show up and they would fail the class, is that because they were there and they failed or because they didn't show up, in which case it's a Z. We need to clarify this for some federal reporting rules that are coming down the pike. So that resolution is in process as we speak and it will come forward. I don't want to take any debate or discussion about these right now because they are in process and changing. But I wanted at least give you a heads up that they're coming for the next meeting. Next is the process of graduate college. So for those of you who were here last year, this resolution was passed last May that it was resolved that the Faculty Senate intended to establish a graduate college by January first, 2009. But that was contingent on a couple different things. One is that we as a body would, would continue to vote and establish resolutions on, on a couple different components. Number one would be the organizational structure that would show that relationships among the new graduate college, existing graduate programs, departments, colleges, the Provost Office, Research Office. And number two, that there would be a draft version of the bylaws for this new graduate college. And so these would be discussed by a new ad hoc committee from the Faculty Senate. And we establish that as per the request of the resolutions that happened this summer, and Martha Buhl is leading that that committee has been meeting over the summer and they are working on that. To that end, Martha has asked me to show you these. This is A draft versions of the vision statement as well as a mission statement, and I won't read them, so I will let them let you stare at them. But the point of this is these are the first steps in the bylaws. Martha would like you to look at these, think about them and if you have any feedback in this preliminary level to please email her and provide suggestions? Again, we don't need to talk about it today because these are just in process, but we want to really share these with you and so we're making forward progress. >> Martha, anything else you'd like to add? >> Some. >> I'll give you seconds to keep reading crystallised. >> Be available someplace later for people to look? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So you can go back and fair. >> So please please provide comments. I'd be fantastic. Next, on behalf of rusty and Paul. They wanted to announce that there'll be a town hall meeting, so it's not an open hearing that will be recorded. A town hall meeting, the honors program is going to conduct on October first in this room from S3 to five o'clock on October first. And it's a chance to discuss a new second track within the honors program called scar a leader program. So I'm just letting you know that this is coming forward and they're looking for feedback on advancing that. And then this will come forth is as a resolution in later this year. >> So anything else? Paula? >> Russ, do you want to interpret? >> So just as a heads up that that's their next. >> We don't have any consent agenda, which is great and regular agenda. We have only one resolution that stands before us. And it just so happens this is one that I introduced last year. And so I cannot preside over this resolution and I need to switch seats with our president-elect, Matt, to do just this. >> If you can see the resolution, the resolution is recommending promotion of UD self grown organic foods and encourage it native plannings on the star campus. >> Does the mover want to provide an explanation? Guardian? >> So and so because the University of Delaware has been increasingly working toward sustainability issues as well as environmental science. A series of faculty members from College of Ag and Natural Resources, myself, Doug Ptolemy jewels brought my pop this on the farm as well. >> Others. >> Kate Jenkins in English, Lindsay Naylor, geography wrote this this resolution to provide a recommendation for the administration to consider two things. First was, as we are currently in negotiations with arrow mark, that we could try to encourage the use of our organic foods that are grown on the farm by staff and students. And that's currently not possible. So the possibility of bringing them into the dining halls, also to have them a partner on the Farmer's Market, on Mentor circle, which they cannot do right now. Possibly a food bank for students who are in need of food. Those are all possibilities. And the second The idea about promoting native plants which are better ecologically. But one thing that was very interesting in this last year was New Castle County pass a law that on their county lands that only native plants can be used and grown now. And so it brings a little bit of a consistency at least to New Castle County. And so we recommended that at least as we continue to develop a master plan for star campus that we promote organic plants. These are just recommendations for the administration. There is no economic analysis behind it, and it's a simply for their consideration as they continue to think about these issues. >> Thank you. >> Is there any discussion on this resolution? >> Realistic linguistics, linguistics and gone designs? >> I noticed a couple of years ago there was a really nice Farmers Market at the university campus that was every Thursday or so with local farmers. That farmer's market seems to have been killed by our mark, actually, because they came and took over and whatever they provided was was completely not very good at telling check out as far as market. So I'm really, I'm very skeptical about involving our mark and it's kind of Africa. I don't, I would be surprised if there are even interested in it. And especially when the Farmers Market was kind of ruined by artwork very negative about that corporation. >> So maybe you can address something like that. >> Sorry, it's true. So, SO two components. One is that certainly in the negotiated their mark to get at least the foods into the dining hall, which is the first component. But it is true that we can't use our own organic vegetables on the farmer's market and Mentor circle. So this is because they have control. This at least allows us to hopefully get back in and provide our own foods. >> Is what charity and science and physics perhaps related to that is the food wasted issues that are associated with food that is supplied by earmark? >> Do we suffer functions? And I've talked to them many times, although there is a in fact, I think it's a federal law that if the receiver signs off or document that they're okay with the quality of food and whatnot. They can't donate the food, but earmark doesn't go with that. And I've approached them several times and each time I was denied the desktop within our contract with the university. >> So either University has to do something about but whenever they do the contract or make it part of this resolution, I don't think that that's appropriate at this point, but just wanted to bring it up to the attention of the discussion. >> Okay. Let's see. >> Now for this discussion, are you ready? >> Ready for the question? >> Please use your clickers. Will vote all those in favor and make sure we answer clickers. >> All that, all those favorite press a and raise your yellow card and all those opposed press B ratio card It's nothing like thrown him into the fire. >> So we just have to that's our only resolution. We have two presentations. The first is, is that I wanted to bring up Sarah meadows, and she's going to give a discussion about the university's current work for Digital Accessibility Initiative. >> Hopeful, I think received some emails about and try to provide some clarification there. >> Thank you, Mr. chairperson. Members of the Senate, I hope I'm doing that right. John, terms of Robert's Rules, My name is Sarah and that is I'm from the IT department here at the University of Delaware. I'm a project manager for the University of Delaware is Digital Accessibility Initiative here on campus. This has been an ongoing effort for the past year to roll this out to campus. I'm sure as as Curtis mentioned, that you've received a few emails letting you know that this is coming and letting you know, starting to provide you with some resources to make the university more accessible and inclusive experience for all students, faculty, and staff here at the University of Delaware. Throughout the past year, we have engaged many different audiences on campus, including faculty, including multiple units. This has been a very collaborative effort, working with the communications office, working with our IT staff, working with the provost office, the President, the EVP General Counsel. Again, many, many different apartment departments and units had been involved to to support this initiative and to actually make this happen. To, to put in the effort to get us where we are at the moment. And I wanted to share a quote actually from Robin Morgan. But you actually kick this off really well with your message about inclusion here at the University of Delaware. Inclusive excellence is very important to us here at the University of Delaware. It's one of our core beliefs. It's one of our core things driving what we do here. And I think her quote says it very well. We also have quotes from other leadership here at the University of Delaware on the UD accessibility website, just showing how, how important this type of initiative is. So I wanted to share how this impacts faculty and how you can start getting, how you can get started with digital accessibility here at the University of Delaware to start making a difference. And this is going to be an ongoing effort, rights not snap your fingers and suddenly everything is accessible. But we hope that we will, we are putting a plan in place to help make good strides forward to increase the accessibility of all of our digital assets here at the university. Just to give you a little bit of idea, an idea of the diversity here at the University of Delaware in terms of disability, about 6% of our population includes students with disabilities. These are students who are registered with our disability support services office. A lot of times when people think about disability, you think about the apparent disability rights. So mobility, vision, hearing, speech. But a lot of people don't necessarily realize that disability also encompass cognitive disabilities, chronic health conditions, and those are things that impact student success here at the University of Delaware as well. And these numbers are from our spring semester, this past spring So that's about 6% of our population of students registered with our disability support services office. But that's not everyone. The number is actually pretty small. A lot of students, faculty, and staff choose not to register with our disability support services office for various reasons. But the point of this initiative is that people shouldn't have to asked to be included things should, accessibility should be baked into the things that we're creating here at the University of Delaware. And again, just to give you a little overview of some of the different types of disabilities that we have here. Beyond some of the more apparent. One's 60% of our students, of students registered with our DSS office have a learning disability. 50% have anxiety, and 40% have multiple conditions. Our DSS office is also seeing more trends towards chronic health conditions. Things like fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease, asthma, diabetes, different types of disabilities that impact a student's success. So how can faculty get involved? I'd like to think that with any change, right, you kinda have these three A's. One is awareness, action, and then advocacy. So this is very new for many people. We've been working closely with staff here at the University of Delaware to try and make sure that our communications office is prepared for this, that OR IT professionals are prepared for this, that anybody working with digital content is going to have the tools and resources necessary to be successful. But this is also new for many people. It's not something that we have always baked into the digital content that we're creating. So awareness is always going to be the first step. And especially this first year awareness and learning about how to make content accessible. And more specifically, the types of digital content you work with is going to be very crucial. Next steps are going to be putting that into action, coming up with a plan. The best way to get started is to identify the different types of digital content that you work with and prioritize it, break it into manageable chunks that you will be able to slowly corrects over time. And I'll get to our timeline in a few minutes. Next is advocacy. Once you've started implementing these best practices to make things more accessible, then it's best to also inform others. We might have new faculty, new staff, new students coming into the University of Delaware who won't be aware of some of these best practices. So it's important to make sure that we're taking them under our wing and showing them what the best practices are. Showing them, putting them to the correct resources to make sure that they're successful. Types of digital content that faculty typically work with. And again, this is just a lot of people don't realize what really applies in this realm, right? A lot of people tend to think of just websites. It's a lot more than Websites. We're talking about Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, so even social media video, your content, or your Canvas Learning Management System as well. All of these different types of content can be made accessible so that someone with a disability can better understand it. There's also a lot of other benefits to making things more accessible, something called universal design. It actually improves the experience for everybody. It makes content easier to understand, more readable, more legible, and easier to navigate. So it's actually an overall improvement to the way that you are designing your digital information. We are working on bringing on some resources here at the University of Delaware to support this effort, right? So there's a lot of content out there and it's not always going to be easy to identify accessibility issues, but we are bringing on resources that will help you along the way. We actually just had a web accessibility consultant start today. He will be advising us and helping us assess and remediate certain accessibility issues when they come up. Or if certain units or folks are having running into challenges when it comes to making their content more accessible. We're also implementing a tool in our Canvas Learning System environment that will help gauge the accessibility of uploaded documents. This is currently being piloted with our IT ON academic technology services group here on campus. And we hope to roll that out in the spring. We're also, we've already implemented site improve, which is a web accessibility monitoring platform. So if you have a website out there that maybe you're using for your class or maybe your professional website here at the University of Delaware. You can request to have your website added into that platform, which will help you track the accessibility issues that are in there, as well as some other performance issues such as broken links, misspellings, that type of information. Culture is another tool that we are working to implement, that is a video captioning tool. Captions are very important to make sure that things like podcasts, lecture content, any types of videos produced at the University of Delaware accessible to someone who may have an impairment. This tool we are currently working on testing and we hope to roll out in the spring or next fall. Eeg is another tool. You probably won't have too much exposure with this. This is a live event captioning tool. So you might see this typically at graduation ceremonies or large events. And we're also working on providing training and other events to help support accessibility. We know that it can be a very complicated topic. Some people don't have an exposure with it at all. So we're hoping to provide you with different types of resources to dive a bit deeper into different sections that are important to you and important to the different types of content that you create. This, again, it's not going to be a snap your fingers and make everything accessible overnight. This is going to be at least three years if not longer. But the goal is to make everything accessible by the end of 2021. >> So what does this mean? >> You want to start small, right? So you gotta, you gotta get your feet under you before you can actually start running with it. I would highly recommend that faculty start off with making your syllabus accessible. That's a very relatively short documents to assess and learn about. And we actually have a Udi accessibility website up that can tell you how to make your Microsoft Word file or a PDF document accessible. >> Do we have time for questions or elastic linguistics and cognitive science questions about this initiative. I looked at the training website then, and when I saw the things that I have to learn to do, it looks like I have to. It's almost like a getting a second job. >> It's an enormous amount of work to register every piece of electronic material that you're ever using Anaconda teaching context. >> And it seemed, it seemed it was concerning to me the amount of current cataloging that weird >> So my my my specific question is I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by making things more accessible. So if I have a Canvas site and I click OK, make this public to my class. And also for universal Delaware, or at least to say, and it was registered for class and my syllabus is online, how can it be more accessible that sure, a sub-sampling explained that before. >> So accessible I'm in this context. So right there, there's just being able to get to the material. But in this context we're talking about someone with a disability be a being able to have the same access to the content as other students. So in some cases, a blind student or someone with low vision would need to use a screen reader. A lot of times documents and the content that we're creating is not set up for a screen reader to read it appropriately. So they end up running into barriers. It'll take them a lot longer to try and access that information then than the average student versus if it is created in a way that is accessible. And again, there's a, we'd go into the details here, but there are there is documentation describing how a Word document or a PDF can be made accessible to the student? Does that help answer the question from a full up? >> So does that mean we have to make every document say translate to virial, someone's going to use it or not to spoil braille books up as well. >> So we're not talking about rail, we are talking about in a digital context, right? So, so we're not talking about printed material. Printed material would, would refer more to braille. But actually there is digital technology that can plug in and translate document that has been formatted, formatted with accessibility best practices to a Braille reader. So as long as the element itself is created with accessible best practices, then the assistive technology that the student is using. Regardless of what type of technology as. It could be a Braille reader, it could be a screen reader, it could be something else. >> It will be more accessible, it will be more understandable so that help with your faith and physics. >> Is it too cumbersome to have that happen automatically? >> You bet I go public with my Canvas site. Why doesn't the syllabus at least become accessible, completely automatic? >> So because those tools aren't built into the platforms that we currently have fresh Yes. >> Itself. >> So the doctor and he built into platforms and actually a lot of tools, they don't have that built-in. It's something that's an add-on. It's something that is oftentimes a manual step. There are automated processes that you can do to check the accessibility. But the best practices are usually on the content creator because you have so much freedom to design the information, to format it in specific ways that if you're following accessibility best practices, that will be accessible. >> But if you're not, it can be very confusing for someone with a disability that help from an agenda studies My son graduated here 23 years ago. Made much you so DSS, foreigners, learning disabilities and what, and I also teach law students who use DSS. And what I discovered is they have technology that translates our material. So I am trying to figure out what our new responsibility is in this process. >> When DSS are the experts can take textbooks, etc. and untranslated Sure. >> And how this has changed our responsibility in that context. >> So DSS comes in for it with accommodations where accessibility fails. You want to make sure that things are accessible to start with. So that because not every student registers with their disability support services office, they for some reason they may not want to. I'm oftentimes I've talked to a few students who have had a disability but not necessarily want to register. And they believe that there is sometimes a stigma around this, so they, they go at it alone. So the goal of this is to make sure that no one has to ask to make something accessible because then they're running into these barriers. If it's accessible to begin with, then they are more likely to just run with it and not feel like they are they are exposing themselves or identifying that they habits, certain type of disability. >> Does that make sense? >> So I'm Fred Hofstetter from the school of education. >> It might help people understand to give just a couple of simple examples of what it means to make a document accessible. >> So in a, in a syllabus, for example, or in any kind of writing you're doing. >> I'm sure we've all tried to make a heading in our document and we highlight the heading, and then we use bolding and coloring, and we give it a style, but you're not really giving it a Microsoft Word style. >> It really helps people reading with screen readers if you actually use a heading style. So these things are actually very simple to learn how to do. Another one is when you have a picture in a document is giving, it's what's called alternate text in the world of web accessibility. So that a screen reader will know what to say to a student who can't see the, the image through normal perception. >> So these are some of the simple things that these web accessibility guidelines are teaching us to do. >> Yeah, exactly that. That's probably a great. I like giving examples, things like color contrast. A lot of people have different forms of colorblindness. One of the most communism red-green colorblindness. So making sure that there's enough contrast. Usually black and white text is good enough, but you're absolutely right. It's usually very simple to make things more accessible. It just making sure that you're following those best practices and using the appropriate tools, such as the actual headings, versus just using styles alone to make something look like a heading. >> Marketing resources available on campus where we can send these documents for conversion because I've been in an institution. >> Teaching it for ten years. And for me to convert every single piece of information that I put on my website. >> It'll take me years. >> And again, so this is going to be an ongoing effort writing. We don't expect everything to be accessible overnight. But prioritizing the kinds and, and information, I mean, there has to be some level of fading and some level of resource that's available. >> Have been at, at another institution earlier that had this practice and they actually had a center where we could send the documents and they would actually convert. >> Because honestly speaking, I mean, I don't know all the guidelines we're going through. >> As as my colleague pointed out, the amount of information that's there in terms of making documents accessible is humans. We dig one presentation with three slides of naked completely compatible with field. >> I know it is a, I know it is a big undertaking and there is going to be support along the way. We are still working on trying to create more resources that you can leverage. I'm not sure if we'll have a center like that that will convert, convert things for you. But again, it's your best effort. So maybe it's just your syllabus, maybe it is the documents you upload to your site and sort of prioritize things in the way that's going to make the most sense in terms of your time, but also the most sense in terms of the information that your students are going to get from these documents. >> So by all means, please reach out to them if you have further ideas or questions. Alright, present status. I thank you for your patients. Come up and he would mind coming to the podium so it can pick up your voice better. >> Thank you, Mr. President. >> Mr. President Elect Madame ex-president steamed. Senators, distinguished members of the executive committee. It's a pleasure for me to welcome you into this new academic year, which happens to be the 275th year in our history. So it's a special time for all of us to celebrate, but also take stock of the future. I keep emphasizing that this institution has been built on very solid foundation for the signers of the Constitution, were students and all that great stuff. We've accomplished amazing things over the year, from Nobel Prize winners, too, fantastic artists and everything in between. But it's all about the future. What I spend a lot of my time, and I encourage you to spend a lot of the time, is how we can basically bestow on the future generations that kind of excellence that we have inherited here. And so we'll have a lot of opportunities too. Think about that and talk about it during the year. I want to touch upon a few things and I know Robin already covered a number of those things, but I wanted to just touch up a few of those. Address also some of the comments that were raised before. The first thing is, in terms of the class of students this year, the new freshmen, Very, very excited, 4,253 or so. We were aiming for, for 2050. So we were very close. There was a question raised before about the growth, then nothing has changed. So, you know, I spoke before a couple of years ago, about 1000 undergraduates or so. And we'll continue to do that with great care. And of course, also looking at the facilities that we have, the, the faculty and trying to improve in the process the student to faculty ratio, which has been continually coming down nights at 13 into one overall. So it's very, very good. We are planning for next year's class, for example, today. And the instruction I've given to Chris, who just left, is 4300 students, so just 50 more. So we're just point up modestly as we're bringing the new facilities online, the new faculty online and all that. And of course, the new class is to give the students, one of the things that I'm really proud of is the diversity that we have in the mix of this class. You got all the numbers from our Provost Before. I just wanted to especially highlight that we have between our program and the Associate in Arts Program, a record class of our students, close to 2 thousand. And within our class of Delaware and students we have about 330 were underrepresented. Minorities is exactly 1.5 of the 660, which is the total number of under represented students. If you look at the 313, you're good in math and you divide that by 4,253, you get 23.5% population of Delaware and students are underrepresented minorities. That's very, very good. And so it almost mirrors the population out there. If we look at their Associate in Arts program, the number is 35% under-represented minorities. That's phenomenon. Now this is the challenge that we have. The challenge says now about the other students that we have in the class and the majority of the population still how they embrace and include within our spirit than represent minority students. So I'm going to talk more about it at the general faculty meeting. Going to issue a special challenge to the faculty senate and all the faculty about a new idea. And you can tell me if you like it or not. But we absolutely need to worry about being inclusive. Initiatives like the Accessibility Initiative is obviously great to help us with our inclusivity. I'm also very pleased to announce that all last year, almost like for a year and a half. And I've been working with our development team and JP Morgan Chase on bold idea. And I can tell you now, because in reality, we will be signing this program next Monday. It's called the Spectrum Scholars Program. So our commitment is we have received the $7.5 million gift from JPMorgan Chase to help us create a program to to admit, enroll, and graduate with Same degrees. Everybody else, students who are in the autism spectrum. So we'll start with about ten year and we'll try to grow the cohort to about 40 at steady-state. And again, that might be like in an all first, Somebody said there, you know, that we want to be, that our first. We truly want to do things that truly move us along and what we care about. Another thing that we are very passionate about, and I have seen some work here, is the honor students. We have the second largest honors class. And again, we need to continue to think about through onerous experiences that we can define and that we can give our students. I wanted to address a question that is mud and others had about the food, the food and the sustainability of the planet and bring more organic food and farm fresh food, in fact some from ourself farms. So first of all, I'm all for it. I highly endorse that initiative. And there are challenges to work with their mark as you've seen. And this contact is coming up in three years. So please give us more feedback because that would be extremely valuable unless we negotiate with them. I'm pleased to say though, that last Saturday, this saturday, we had an opportunity at the tail gate to celebrate our College of Art international resources. We convinced, I don't know what it took. They told the President is interested in this. So we convinced there mark to use food from ourself farms. All the vegetables and the Angus, beef and everything else came from our own farms and they accepted it and they used it well. Let's hope that started with a more positive relationship. Speaking of ag and natural resource, I don't know if markets here, baby's gone by now, but very, very pleased to announce on behalf of Mark that we have received a new grant from NSF and the state renewal essential of our F-score grant, $23 million, which is fantastic, 19 million coming from NSF and for from, from the state as a much. So they'll continue our efforts into sustainability and other things that I wanted to mentioned. And I will be brief because I know that you all are anxious to go home and you'll hear from me on October eighth, things, a general faculty meeting. Our efforts to support our students and lead them to success are resulting in improved graduation rates in Great SAT is another credentials of the incoming class. All wonderful things. Our 25th to 75th percentile SAT band has been phenomenal this year. And yet we know a great but we're still rely a ONE old information and be rules that other people make. I don't know if any of you took notice of the US News rankings that we recently got, we're in good company along with some other universities, Minnesota, Iowa, and others who actually suffered. A decrease in a rank, you know, went from 81 to 89. I don't think that this necessarily represents reality, but I always said that we are here to, to build lasting excellence where institution were still being scored on, on classes and cohorts we brought several years ago, 2011, who just graduate and so on. But that's not an excuse. I will always say that we need to put first our own values and mission and work on the parameters that define excellence in Arise. And could you do that? We're proud again of our graduation rates, were proud of many of the things we do this year. What's interesting is the rules keep changing. Us News decided to introduce it with a significant factor, a new index. That's what really changed the scale for so many of the campus is called the social mobility index and outcomes. And in particular, they give major weight to how many Pell eligible students you have and what is the rate that you graduate to spell algebra students? So my former institution, we passionately work on that for years, jumped from 100 to like 81. So obviously that's a significant factor for us. The math doesn't work as well because we're small state, dominantly Pell students come from in-state. It's extremely expensive to attract out-of-state Pell students could work on that, but it's extremely expensive. So the smaller state numbers don't help us. We've moved from, for example, 2124% percent and last year, and we're going to move more next year. But other states have much bigger feeder of Pell students. Again, we're paying attention to everything, but we're dedicated to create true excellence. The other thing I want to mention is that there is a resource that we're going to need in the ecologies that departments everywhere within the institution, we need to raise resources. We're going beyond the state money. We've talked about that many times. So the philanthropic campaign has been a key catalysts for some of the changes that you see. When I came to the institution, we had about $420 million in the bank, you know, since 2010. That's what we had raised and we had a goal of coming to 50-50 by 2020. In fact, we hadn't even designated When will end that campaign. We came in as as you know, last November, said we're going to end the company 20-20. We increase the goal to 7050. And I'm very, very pleased to say that thanks to your love, your support, engagement of the alumni or faculty or students or friends of the university, philanthropists, everybody. Today we have $640 million raised. So we're continuing to work hard and you will see a lot of that money go to very good use. As always, our needs are higher available resources. And when we think we're catching up, something happens right now. This is called McKinley. We need to rebuild McKinley. As you know, it has been out of commission for and while we're dedicated to rebuild that, that's going to be huge project. You've seen some of the plans that we have four star right now, about 800 thousand square feet of space, or it's going up at once, you can't miss it. That, of course, includes the 300 thousand square feet of commerce, but it's on our yard. They start our people, they are smiling. You know, thanks to the efforts of Kathmandu, many others is up and running, almost were moving in while the construction is continuing. But Certainly moved into a number of those seven floors. And so those are going well. I should also mention that the whole project is well on track. It's about a $30 million project with a $10 million goal in terms of fundraising. And we've raised nine out of ten. So Chris, good news. You know, we'll continue to push forward. And athletics also had a very tall order to, to basically raise a lot of money. We had a target of $60 million so that we can add a, the Athletic Center for athletes to study and train and other students to come there together. And I'm pleased to say we have now $57 million in the bank. So we also hope to, to, to work on that project. You know, at the end of this year, our football team is improving. You know, what else can you hope for? So I'm I'm happy to answer your questions. >> Thank you for the question. >> Yes. >> Joe, thank you so much. >> For once. I'm going to throw you a softball. >> Thank you. >> Several several years ago factor into harsher administration and the medical gracile was proverbs. I pointed out to him that in the parking lot behind the Galleria, where grottos Piazza is, there's a large poster encouraging people to drink during the day. It says something like $3 v0 ears all day long. >> And it features a blue hat, which is presumably the result of the University of Delaware signing a contract with an alcohol companies allowing bits, images to be used to advertise alcohol. >> I think we would all agree that it would be inappropriate, university of delaware, to allow its image to be used to advertise cigarettes. >> And I would like to suggest that it would be appropriate to the University of Delaware administration to no longer signed contracts with alcohol is allowing the use of its logo or blue hands or such things like that. When I mentioned this to Provost Rosseau, It was very receptive, but it was not within his domain of the foreign. >> Okay, so first of all, thank you for bringing it to my attention. I never noticed that you must be paying attention to early scholarly work or I don't know when I'm, when I'm working, what I'm thinking, but I've not seen it. I'm going to check it out today and we are going to take action or meaning and again, within the legal authority that we have, I don't even know if it is suddenly we endorse. I mean, sometimes you need to dig into the past, but but certainly I would not have ever done it. And so thank you for mentioning that. >> Yes, realists linguistics, and I have a scope about what the scope of the Accessibility Project for listening to the logic that was present. It seems to me that they would entail that present, the entire library holdings will be converted to meet certain accessibility standards? That's right, including every scientific journal and every publication that's coming that type with something. >> I think that Zubaida ambitious, she I don't know if you guys have those resources. I would like to know where they're coming from, but I'd be very don't order students use the library, right? >> The stable tones so that especially the efficiency. So there, there are some things that are going to be impossible to speak fully accessible. And they're so there are cases where that's where accommodations office comes in at five on the goal is to make everything accessible accessible. If it hadn't been accessible, then we need to make sure that you have an accommodation for it. >> I know this is not the answer you'd like to hear, but a lot of the new volumes that students use digital to start with the journal Soil the things. Now this is not helping my colleagues in philosophy, the ancient Greeks and others. But you know, there's a lot of new stuff that's coming in. And I think we need to set their expectations realistic so we don't set up ourselves for failure. If we if I promised or anybody here promised would do everything by 2021. I mean, I think we're not going to deliver. So it is fair though to say we're going to change our practices little by little and we're going to start putting our new things where we can. And we're going to be encouraging people will use more digital materials that are accessible. I mean, That's realistic. You know what happens to the past volumes. I know that some other universes with deeper pockets, if I remember correctly. But years ago, when I was at Michigan, the President then went to work with Google to digitize little volumes. And perhaps in some case we can partner with other libraries that have digitized materials and make them more accessible that way. But here is a very good point. We don't have a great answer for that. I think it's getting late. Chris, Mr. President, thank you. >> Okay. >> Is there any new business that we need to introduce? >> All right. Seeing none, then we are at the end. Can I get a motion to adjourn? Second Welfare? Thank you so much and we will see you next general faculty meeting at 330. In this off, thank you.
2018-2019/videos/01Faculty Senate Meeting Sept 17th 2018.mp4
From Joseph Dombroski May 06, 2020
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