Faculty Senate heard feedback from a faculty survey, discussed hiring equity and passed changes to the forestry degree in Tuesday’s meeting.
Attendance
Diane Kelly-Riley, vice provost for faculty, presented the feedback from a survey given to instructional faculty on student attendance. Kelly-Riley emphasized that this wasn’t a comparing trend of other years but a quick measurement of overall conditions.
The survey had 277 responses from faculty that spanned over 546 courses. The survey asked teachers to give an estimate of attendance a week before midterms.
It was found that 44% of teachers had 90% of their students attend class. 35% of teachers had 75-90% of the class attend. 21% of teachers less than 75% of the class attend.
According to Kelly-Riley, some key complaints that faculty have had include issues with masks, COVID-19 testing access and the lack of a vaccine mandate.
Teachers also gave feedback on concerns about mental health among students.
“Many have said that this is the worst shape they have seen students in their entire career,” Kelly-Riley said. “Students are experiencing a great deal of stress.”
UBUNTU
Kristen Haltinner, chair of UBUNTU, presented the senate a draft of equity in hiring best practices. With practices that UI doesn’t do and possible options of what it can do to hire a more diverse pool.
Making cultural competency a required qualification for jobs has helped universities. Public or engaged scholarships focus on supporting underserved or historically marginalized groups. Another practice was posting job ads for a longer duration to increase the diversity of candidates. Haltinner also described ways to reduce bias in search committee members for potential candidates through changing how guidelines are presented to search committee members and open discussion.
Bachelor of Science in Forestry
Senate members voted to pass changes to the Bachelor of Science in Forestry, adding a new emphasis under forest hydrology and watershed management. Charles Goebel, professor of forest ecosystem restoration and ecology, spoke to the senate about this change.
“It is focused on providing the additional physics and math associated with our forestry degree,” Goebel said. “We are training a forester with this degree that would have the additional skills in hydrology that would qualify them for an office of personal management hydrology position with the federal government.”
Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @DVR_Tweets