The Boulder Faculty Assembly held a regular meeting on Thursday, November 2, 2023 via Zoom. Don Oest, chair of the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (IAC) introduced Kris Livingston, Executive Sr. Associate Athletic Director of Student Success at the Herbst Academic Center which provides academic support services for student athletes. The center provides a number of services and resources for student athletes including items with direct faculty involvement such as: Summer Bridge Program, Class Absence letters, and academic travel support. Additionally Livingston noted that there are some key areas the center needs faculty engagement including: recruiting, completing "faculty feedback requests" & early alert emails*, as well as considering exam proctoring by Herbst staff. She also announced that as of last spring, CU student athletes had the highest cumalative (3.18) and term (3.14) GPA's in campus history. Please see the presentation slides and contact Kris directly: kris.livingston@colorado.edu or bfa@colorado.edu for more information.
Sr. Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Assessment, Katherine Eggert then followed up on a business item from the October Assembly meeting on Academic Calendar Reform. In October Eggert and Kristi Wold-McCormick, Campus Registrar presented to the BFA Executive Committee, the BFA Academic Affairs committee, and Assembly representatives on a first calendar reform proposal designed to increase student success and to resolve issues with the current calendar. After reviewing feedback from campus faculty, BFA representatives and committee members, Eggert's team revised a second option (also called the "early start" option) to address concerns presented with the first option. Representatives were asked to review the two options with their departments/units and respond to a survey about the two options. (please see post meeting notes below on this item)
In other BFA business, representatives heard about three notices of motion including:
- BFA-R-1-100923 Resolution in Support of Urgent Climate Change Action sponsored by the BFA Climate Science & Education committee. Committee Co-Chair Carol Cogswell emphasized that the resolution is only a baseline starting point to be followed with future resolutions containing specific climate action solutions for campus. Representatives are asked to share this with colleagues and send feedback and questions to committee co-chairs at bfa@colorado.edu.
- And two motions sponsored by the BFA Bylaws committee:
BFA representatives are asked to review all items with their constituents and send questions and feedback to bfa@colorado.edu, which will then be forwarded to the committees. The items are under consideration for thirty days and will be voted on at the December 7, 2023 Assembly meeting.
BFA Vice Chair and CU Faculty Council Chair Alastair Norcross gave members an update on faculty title changes per two system administrative policy statements - APS 5060 Faculty Titles and APS 5053 Multi-year Contracts for Instructional, Research, and Clinical Faculty. Each campus is currently reviewing how the modified statements will be implemented and rolled out. CU Boulder's Office of Faculty Affairs has been working with campus deans and human resources to review processes. Boulder will be using the Teaching-Track title series for all faculty who specialize in teaching: Asst. Teaching Professor; Assoc. Teaching Professor; and Teaching Professor. CU System Employee Services will be rolling out the new job codes related to this series over the winter. Once those are finished, Boulder will determine the final implementation process.
Andrea Feldman, BFA Diversity Committee chair reviewed survey results gathered from the Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group on how units are incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion work into faculty merit reviews. Feldman reminded representatives that as their units work to review their merit review processes that examples from other campus units are available on the BFA DEI in Merit Evaluation webpage.
BFA Chair Shelly Miller updated members on her meeting with CU President Todd Saliman regarding processes and search committee composition for the new CU Boulder Chancellor search. Miller submitted a list of thirty-three faculty nominations as submitted to the BFA Executive Committee, and asked Saliman to reserve eight seats for faculty on the search committee with a mix from colleges/schools/institutes as well as both tenure/tenure-track and teaching/clinical faculty. She also noted that other institutions - such as Stanford, Michigan, and Purdue - have a range of six to nine faculty on their search committees. President Saliman will also be speaking with faculty at the February 1, 2024 BFA Assembly meeting.
Post-Meeting Follow-Up on the Academic Calendar Reform poll - at the end of the meeting, the BFA Officers determined that the poll should be revised to include a third option of "prefer no calendar change" in order to be receptive to comments and chat feedback about the poll. After further discussion, it was decided that the poll should be revised entirely and the deadline extended to mid-November to allow representatives more time to consult with the faculty in their units, as well as with their college/school faculty governance bodies. The new poll will be sent to BFA representatives on Wednesday, November 8th and will close at 11:59 pm on Friday, November 17th.
*Early Alert Emails for student athletes - Teamworks emails sent to faculty on October 24th have been going to the new Quarantine folders. Faculty are asked to double check for those and/or to reach out to Livingston for questions.