University Faculty Meeting resulted in approval of all presented policies
University of Idaho faculty members gathered Tuesday afternoon for the University Faculty Meeting (UFM) to vote on more than 13 policies, but it took a second head count to reach a quorum and get to business.
Irish Martos | Argonaut
Faculty members gather in the International Ballroom Tuesday to vote on more than 13 policy changes.
All of the presented policies were passed by the faculty and are subject to approval by UI President Chuck Staben before being presented to the State Board of Education later this year.
The polices passed include extended family leave, new student evaluation forms, dependent tuition waiver expansion and reserved graduate credit restrictions, among others.
Family leave
Amendments to the employee leave policy approved at UFM would expand the definition of family to include adoption and foster care as circumstances eligible for parenting leave.
“We needed to liberalize the policy so we recognize all the different types of families that are present,” Staben said.
Another amendment passed would allow each parent, if they are a UI employee, to take full parenting leave. The current policy requires UI employee couples to share one parenting leave period.
“There are costs to doing that … that the university is willing to bear,” Staben said. “It’s important for us to have family friendly policies.”
A third approved amendment would extend the family leave period from 12 to 16 weeks. Twelve weeks is the requirement under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
“I don’t see the extension from 12 to 16 weeks as reasonable,” Staben said. “I will urge that we stay with 12 weeks.”
The last amendment passed would allow one parent to transfer leave to another if all leave resources were exhausted. Staben said he does not see a prominent reason for the last amendment.
“What I favor will be a significant change and dramatically effect the experience for university employees,” Staben said.
Student evaluations
The student evaluation form was revised to remove questions with numerical ratings and those about the personalities of professors, said Patricia Hartzell, Teaching and Advising chair.
Hartzell said the committee worked diligently to create a form that would best evaluate UI courses and the abilities of instructors. She said the committee conducted thorough research on what an effective evaluation looks like.
“The outcome really came from people who looked at a lot of scientific studies,” she said.
Hartzell said the goal of the form is to find out if students think a course’s learning outcomes were met by the end of the semester.
“We didn’t want this to be a personality contest — a popularity contest,” she said.
Hartzell said the revised form is the best option to assess UI’s curriculum and the teaching ability of instructors without receiving post-graduation feedback from students.
“The best assessment we could do would be to monitor their success in the real world, but we can’t do that,” she said.
Dependent tuition waiver expansion
A policy expanding the dependent tuition waiver to 100 percent was approved at UFM.
James Foster, chair of the task force that developed the proposal, said if the policy is approved at a higher level, there is an estimated $300,000 cost for the first year.
“I think that’s an underestimate and we don’t have the money,” Staben said. “It was not a recommendation that I could possibly support.”
However, Foster said he thought UI’s savings would come through retention of employees and recruitment of potential employees.
Staben said alternatives to help improve employee morale are increasing compensation.
“One of my concerns with the dependent tuition benefit (expansion) is that it actually benefits a moderate number of people,” Staben said.
Although Staben said the university is considering many ways to increase employee satisfaction, UI does many things for its employees currently.
“We have various recognition and awards,” Staben said. “There are many things that we do for our employees that are great and we’re very happy to do those things.”
Reserving graduate credits
The amended policy on graduate credits passed at UFM would prevent students from counting the same course for multiple degrees.
Jerry McMurty of the Graduate Council said students are able to transfer credits from an undergraduate transcript to a graduate transcript until a bachelor’s degree degree is awarded.
“We wouldn’t pull credits off of the undergraduate record,” McMurty said.
Stephan Flores, Faculty Senate member from the Department of English, asked if courses could be waived if they could not be transferred.
McMurty said courses could be waived, but additional credits would be required to reach a given degree requirement.
Katelyn Hilsenbeck can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Katelyn_mh