Present: Mahmoud Abdalla, William Arrocha, Mahabat Baimyrzaeva, Philipp Bleek, Pushpa Iyer, Katherine Punteney (Vice President/President Elect), Thor Sawin (President), Anna Vassilieva. Student: Madeleine Smith (Student Council President).
Joint work areas between Student Council and Faculty Senate:
A. Issue of student grievances/faculty grievances:
In the light of recent high-profile grievance situations, faculty report being on edge about having reasonable protections in the event of a student grievance – especially if a faculty action is found from the perspective of a student to be offensive. We need to come up with a procedure and perhaps relevant policies that the students, administration, and faculty can all agree to.
How could we create a culture in which students would come to a faculty member before going elsewhere? Create a procedure of resolving interpersonal situations – mutually aware of the rights and responsibilities? Restorative-justice-type mediations have their limits, because what is said in those settings can eventually be used against use in a legal suit. We need to focus on three strands in this work:
- Policies – which ones exist.
- Procedures – how could a policy be carried out.
- Design so as to preserve interpersonal capital, encourage accountability on both ends.
B. Pulse on how students are doing with the remote format:
So many variables were changed at once. Course structures and calendars changed. Locations changed, modalities changed. Many students are requesting another semester with the pass/fail option. (Having an out which would ease some stress).
Senate needs to ask: Is pass/fail related to the distance learning constraints? Are students really best served by having this option? It is very late in the semester to try to bring this in now, although we aren’t out of the woods yet related to the pandemic. Student Council will provide a fuller sense of student though on this matter to administration.
Maha and Mahmoud asked if Madeleine had the results of the online learning survey sent out earlier in the summer. She didn’t have them, but would ask about getting them. Senate can ask too in meeting with JDJ if those results could be made available to student council.
C. How do students respond to the changes in curriculum – in terms of the language requirements, the change in the DPP program and specializations?
Madeleine didn’t have a systematic sense of this. Not many students are in a place to compare the prior models with the current. There is also some discontentment with half-term structure in terms of IPD.
D. Longer term issue raised by the pass/fail question was raised for future work – whether MIIS should adopt mastery-based, specifications-based assessment, vs. grade-based assessment.
Discussing Faculty Protection work:
Madeleine then left the meeting. It was agreed that work on these joint efforts with students would be involve three steps:
- Asking if Hannah Ross could address Senate at our Oct 13 meeting or near that time regarding the faculty protections that are available.
- Asking HR/Legal to design a training on the rights of faculty members in those situations – to be launched perhaps in January of this year?
- A subcommittee to be convened with student, faculty, and admin representation.
Commenting on Faculty Senate work plan draft:
Having already discussed the faculty grievance issue, Thor shared a more comprehensive plan of work for the coming academic year. Assignments to these tasks are listed below.
Strand 1: Protections for faculty with student grievances
End goal: Faculty at MIIS would have confidence in a clear set of policies and procedures to follow in event of a student grievance/tension which would result in preventing tears in the community. The policies in section 8 of our handbook is rewritten to reflect this: http://www.middlebury.edu/about/handbook/iv.-policies-for-the-institute/c.-faculty-handbook/8.-other-faculty-matters
- Invite Hannah Ross to brief faculty on existing protections, and any procedures for responding.
- Convene sub-committee with student council rep, HR rep, legal rep, two faculty senate reps, (one other faculty rep?) with the following goals: [Pushpa, William, Anna]
Strand 2: Review of faculty load
End goal: Faculty at MIIS would have clear standards for faculty load determinations (including independent studies) and equitable course release policies applied across programs.
- Convene sub-committee with HR rep, two faculty senate reps, (one other faculty/APSIC/FEC rep?) with the following goals: (Mahmoud, Philipp)
- What are the roles for which course releases are offered? Are these roles equally available across programs?
- How many hours of course release are given for roughly what workload?
- What instances of courses with discrepancies between student meeting hours, student credits, and faculty teaching credits in each program?
- Are the procedures clear?
- Can a procedure be jointly agreed on?
Strand 3: Design the task distribution for president-elect/president/past-president
End goal: Faculty entering the senate leadership track would clearly know which duties fall under the jurisdiction of the past-president, the president, the president-elect, and what consultation among them should look like. There will also be a workable transition plan for the AY 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 until the pipeline can be taken over. Handbook will be reviewed to address any changes that might need to be made when mention of Senate president is made.
- Thor and Katherine worked on an initial draft of this here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ncLV9WS-rpbQmf782MmSdoFQeXgxJ8f-e8DY3844iBc/edit?usp=sharing
Strand 4: Review handbook and student policy manual for online/distance learning
End goal: The Faculty Handbook and Academic Policies and Standards manuals will both be reviewed to ensure that their stipulations and protections cover faculty and students engaged in distance learning, whether in a degree- or non-degree-program.
- Convene sub-committee with student council rep, student services rep, one faculty senate rep (one other faculty rep?), one APSIC rep [Thor]
Maha asked that we add to this Senate priorities gathered from a faculty survey, sent out via Google forms, with one reminder. We work shopped the question a little bit. The Google Form is here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ncLV9WS-rpbQmf782MmSdoFQeXgxJ8f-e8DY3844iBc/edit?usp=sharing
These will be reviewed before our next Senate meeting and integrated into our work plan.