Present: Mahmoud Abdalla, William Arrocha, Mahabat Baimyrzaeva, Philipp Bleek, Katherine Punteney (Vice President/President Elect), Thor Sawin (President). Absent: Pushpa Iyer, Anna Vassilieva. Staff: Stacie Riley.

Thor reports that Pushpa Iyer is on sabbatical this semester.

Faculty Representation on Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Council: Thor shares an update on the Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Council (DEI) provided by Miguel Fernandez, Chief Diversity Officer. Students and staff have nominated their representatives, all of which are female. Miguel would like to have at least two males on the Council to try and balance experience and representation. Miguel proposed that he and the Senate each pick one nominated and qualified male faculty member and then open the third slot for voting to all faculty from among those who were nominated.

Response to Capitol Riots of January 6, 2021: Student Council will be given an opportunity to present at the Assembly and discuss what they hope to see from faculty to address social injustices. This is a follow-up discussion to the townhall held by the Institute Council on January 15, which focused on the events in Washington D.C. on January 6. Maha attended the townhall and states that a lot of students expressed their feelings/thoughts on social injustice and social change. They were interested in what the faculty’s approach will be in addressing these systemic issues in their classes and in the Monterey community. Thor will be meeting with student representatives on January 27^th to hear what they want to share with faculty.

MIIS Cyber Update: Philipp shared that a new Cyber Collaborative was launched last fall. This is the successor to the Cyber Initiative whose funding ran out at the end of academic year 2019/2020. This spring the Collaborative welcomed Fulbright Fellow and adjunct faculty member, Robert Siudak, who is currently on campus and teaching. The Collaborative is also launching a taskforce with The Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium (GMHEC) due to a strong push to explore cyber across Champlain, Middlebury, and Saint Michael’s campuses. An update on this will be given at the Faculty Assembly on the 2^nd.

Update on Strategy conversation/Assembly meeting of December 8: Thor and Katherine meet with VPAA Dayton-Johnson and showed him the preliminary data from the faculty strategy meeting. The next step is to write up and synthesize the ideas on the padlet for the Institute Council. It was decided that more data is needed before presenting to the Board.

Thor will reach out to faculty to:

1. encourage more asynchronous reaction to the padlet (similar to elections), and
2. schedule another conversation for synchronous elaboration.

Maha shares the themes she noticed during the meeting:

• How does strategic planning involve faculty?
• What is our identity as an Institute/school and how does language fit in?
• Psychological safety, race and equality conversations require more bottom-up work.
• Biggest theme expressed by faculty was the quality of governance, peoples’ confidence in leadership, and helping to de-jade people who feel jaded. This hurdle needs to be addressed. There needs to be a frank conversation where the administration can hear peoples’ frustrations, acknowledge/validate their emotion, and acknowledge the administration’s part.

Proposed topics for February 2, 2021 Faculty Assembly Meeting:

• Miguel Fernandez to give a statement about the hopes and goals of the DEI Council.
• Student Council to share their ideas about moving forward after the Capitol riots and how faculty can help approach these goals.
• Brief overview of the new Cyber Collaborative. 
• Invite Jeff Dayton-Johnson to:
  • Help give closure to the tough fall semester and listen to faculty concerns.
    • Update on what the Administration is doing to move forward.
  • Talk about strategic planning and the faculty role in those conversations. 
  • Build excitement about MIIS’s strategic vision.
• Update the Assembly on next steps from the strategy discussion of December 8.
• Report on the fully online MA degree development (several in the pipeline). 
• Announce new faculty, if any.

Spring 2021 Workplan:

• Faculty Grievance Committee: Thor states that Hannah Ross is willing to speak with MIIS faculty but a formal asynchronous web-based training about faculty protections will not be done. William asks why there has been so much difficulty getting the online training for faculty? Thor and Katherine do not think that Hannah is opposed to presenting the information, but because these instances are not clear-cut it makes creating a video difficult. Thor will ask for the creation instead of an information sheet providing the key information that an ombudsman might provide, addressing hypothetical cases. Thor will work with Hannah to schedule a session with MIIS Faculty.
• Faculty Development and Evaluations Committee: Thor explains that this is a priority for both the Institute Council and the College. Katherine states she will send out an updated version of the Working Group recommendations document to the Senate next week. This gives all Senators one week to review before discussion at the February 9 Senate meeting. Other work to be addressed includes reviewing a) a permanent change of due date for Faculty Activity Reports, and b) a model statement to include on syllabi and evaluation instruments about bias in student evaluations.

Job Description for Senate Leadership Model: Last spring the Assembly voted in a new Senate Leadership model that includes a President, President Elect, and Past President. Katherine and Thor have created preliminary job descriptions for each of the positions. Thor asks the Senators to review the document and send him any thoughts/additions/deletions. Once the Senate is comfortable with the duties for the President, President Elect, and Past President, they can be sent to the Assembly for comment.