Troy University Faculty Council Town Hall

20 responses so far ↓

• 1    Associate Professor // Sep 10, 2007 at 7:41 am

  This is a sample comment.
  Scout Blum (your name is optional)
  Associate Professor
  Troy campus

• 2    Professor // Sep 12, 2007 at 10:15 am

  The number of long-term “interim” administrators is unacceptable. A cynic might suggest that these appointments are simply a way for the chancellor (or board or whoever thinks such things are a good idea) to avoid the input of faculty in the governance of the university. A bigger cynic might even suggest that appointments such as these violate the spirit if not the letter of laws governing equal employment opportunity.
  Location?

• 3    drjblog // Sep 12, 2007 at 11:41 am

  Hi Scout! Great job with the blog!

• 4    CA Professor Troy Campus // Sep 13, 2007 at 8:28 am

  This is a great idea, Scout, especially for the far-flung faculty. Hopefully it will help them feel more a part of the Council and the university.

• 5    Associate Professor // Sep 14, 2007 at 8:15 pm

  I think this site is an excellent idea for UC faculty who are not physically located in Alabama.

• 6    K // Sep 16, 2007 at 5:16 pm

  I would like to inquire about whether or not full-time University College tenure track or tenured faculty are eligible for sabbaticals. I cannot find anything in the Faculty Handbook or related literature that restricts University College faculty from being granted sabattical leaves but I have never heard of anyone being granted one. Some University College faculty do engage in significant research projects that warrant sabbatical leaves from their regular teaching responsibilities.

• 7    sblum // Sep 17, 2007 at 6:25 am

  Response to “K”: about sabbaticals. Sabbaticals are handled through the Faculty Development Committee. All full-time, tenure-track faculty are eligible for a sabbatical. When we moved to the OGU handbook, the requirements for the sabbatical were dropped, and development of the actual policy was left to the FDC, working with the Provost’s office, and subject to approval up the administrative chain. The main priority of the FDC this academic year is to develop those procedures and policy.

  Forms are available on the Faculty Development Committee’s website: http://www.troy.edu/facultydevelopment . Any faculty member having a question about the process or whether they should apply or not should contact me (sblum@troy.edu) - I’m also chair of the FDC.

• 8    Assistant Prof in Augusta // Sep 19, 2007 at 2:10 pm

  Assistant Professor in Augusta - Thanks for doing the blogging for UC. We often feel left out. I think that the UC professors and Troy professors do not all follow the same office hours. I was told bu a colleague it was 10 hours a week in the handbook and yet we have 16 hours required in Augusta. I think all sites should be the same so what are procedures to ensure this?

• 9    Associate Professor UC // Sep 21, 2007 at 6:45 pm

  I am not sure about the Alabama campuses, but I was under the impression that 10 hours/week is the requirement throughout UC. Is 16 hours/week required only in Augusta or is that the standard in the SE region?

• 10    Troy Ft.Benning Adjunct // Sep 24, 2007 at 2:15 pm

  I can agree with having different religious denominations.I can not agree to eliminate prayer.Even though there are challenges to prayer every where we turn, remember Congress begins with a prayer as do all Federal Courts.The Judge in Alabama who was removed vwas not really thje issue of the c10 commandments but the fact he failed to follow a federal court order.

• 11    K // Sep 25, 2007 at 12:34 pm

  Dr. Blum, thanks for the info on faculty sabbaticals and your efforts to help with this blog. Second question, where can University college faculty obtain information about university-wide average student evaluation numbers? Different administrators have differing opinions about what values are considered to be ’statisfactory.’ This is especially important to adjunct faculty who are totally dependent on these numbers for evaluation. These surveys are the closest thing the University has to ‘objectively’ assess faculty teaching performance.

  K

• 12    Don McDonald, Montgomery Faculty, // Sep 26, 2007 at 7:57 am

  Thanks for setting this up, Scout. I’ll bookmark the site. I’ll be moving away from Alabama next year, but efforts like this will mean that I’m not moving away from Troy.

• 13    Asst Prof, A&S, Troy // Sep 26, 2007 at 1:45 pm

  I wasn’t able to attend the town hall meeting, but I’ve looked over the summary of faculty concerns, and I’d like to echo a few of those while adding a couple of my own.

  One *significant* problem for adjuncts is the way they’re paid. A colleague in my department is teaching six classes but doesn’t get paid *at all* until the end of October. That’s absurd. The teaching is this person’s only job—indeed, there’s no time for anything else with that load—and expecting someone to work half of August, all of September, and all of October without being paid until the end of that time is ridiculous. Either people like this should be paid each month or they should be placed on full-time status so that they can get paid regularly. But because they’re adjuncts, they’re afraid to say anything lest they lose their jobs. I wonder how many professors and administrators would be willing to work without pay until the end of October.

  I agree that faculty should have more input into policies and other areas of governance. The common textbook issue, for example, is just one of the most recent. Faculty in my department were simply told that we were going to be using the same book as everyone else in the system. No discussion. Period. I understand the desire for standardization, but there are other ways to do that. It makes no sense to use the same book for Troy (mostly traditional students), Montgomery (mostly nontraditional students, as I understand), and other venues. The books need to be chosen based on the students, and faculty should have greater decision-making freedom with their own courses. As I see it, e-campus *has* dictated this choice, despite the fact that my dean looked me in the eye and said that wasn’t the case. Another recent issue—a colleague of mine was *informed* that his students would be taking the CAAP in November. A request would have been nice, considering the need now to reschedule items later in the semester.

  I do not like the online evaluation system. Out of my four classes last semester, only six students bothered to complete the evaluations. If only one student in a class completes the evaluation, and that student happened to be unhappy with the course, then you’re left with an overall negative evaluation when maybe the course actually went okay. Likewise, if the student was happy, you get a positive evaluation when, in fact, the course might not have gone well at all.

  Yes, teaching loads definitely need to be reduced if publication and research are to be required components of tenure in the way we’re being told.

  Yes, last fall’s exams were too bunched together. And it’s frustrating to have the exam times change, too, or be listed as p.m. when they should be a.m.

  Yes, prayers at our ceremonies are completely inappropriate and should have no place here, especially considering the push to internationalize the university.

  Yes, new faculty need mentoring. When I started here, no one really acted as a mentor, and I must say that the transition was quite difficult. And to top it off, I’d ask how to do something (fill out a faculty development plan, year-end self-evaluation, or supervisor’s review, for example), and the response would be usually “I don’t know” or “Don’t worry about it.”

  Privacy issues need to extend to students as well. I’ve many times seen old student papers, graded exams, etc. (including items with social security numbers on them), piled in the hallways waiting for the cleaning staff to carry them away. These items should be shredded and definitely not left in the hallways.

  As for the library, well, it’s embarrassing. If we’re to have graduate programs, we need a larger one and a better stock of books. The number of journal subscriptions cancelled in 2004 is shocking to me. Perhaps some kind of federal grant could help us there?

  I told myself I wasn’t going to rant when I started writing this, but I’m afraid I’ve ranted anyway.

• 14    K // Sep 30, 2007 at 11:50 pm

  I was wondering if someone could enlighten me on the reasons why we are moving to an all electronic format for student evaluations? They have been trying this for years with eCampus with little success. The crux of the matter is response rate. If response rates decline significantly, the survey results cannot be treated as valid because there is no way of knowing that the views of the few people that bothered to participate (a suspect that most won’t bother) are respresentative of overall beleifs of the group. This will become the focus of the debate as certain subsegments choose to express their views about teachers while the ’silent majority’ sits in the sidelines. If response rates are low, the student survey will not stand up in a court of law the next time an administrator repremands faculty based on the results. It is a risky move with SACs right around the corner. So, what evaluative tool will be used in its place to make personnell decisions, possibly personaly relationships or favoratism?

• 15    S in the South // Oct 1, 2007 at 12:06 pm

  I am an adjunct and have been teaching for Troy since 2003. I used to feel like Troy treated us well…and then, once ecampus was created, everything seemed to change. Scheduling seems to be some sort of secret, for example. I once asked how scheduling was done and was told by ecampus that, basically, it was too difficult to explain. I asked if there was any type of priority given to those of us who have been teaching for Troy for 5 years with a doctorate compared to someone with a masters and no experience—the answer yes. Yet, the new adjuncts coming on board constantly trump my being assigned any ecampus classes. When I pushed the matter further, ecampus finally admitted that experience and a doctorate does not always dictate class assignments and that in order to accommodate all the adjuncts in my area, they rotate some matrix….so, in essence, there IS no priority given, though the scheduling guidelines published by the University insist there should be. Out of the past 5 terms, I’ve only taught twice while an adjunct I myself trained last fall has taught EVERY term since his hiring (6 terms ago). I’ve been watching the schedule every term and there seems to be a pattern evolving of the same people showing up time after time while others are predictably left off…..All one needs to do is compare term to term and it is obvious that some people are receiving preferential treatment….for whatever reason. Like others have said, it is difficult to speak up because many of us fear losing our jobs.

  Sorry to have turned this into a rant! But this is the first place and time that I’ve been able to say this since these problems began after ecampus was created.

  I also feel like those of us teaching for ecampus, adjuncts and full-time faculty alike, are being treated as though we don’t know how to teach! I, too, understand the need for some standardization, but the type of oversight being wielded, here, smacks of the same type of stronghold high school administrations hold over their faculty. The wondrous thing about higher education is the freedom we have (had) to explore our areas in unique ways…using whatever tools, books, and approaches which make for a richly varied college landscape. I think it is a fabulous thing to be able to take the same course with two different instructors and come away from both with unique impressions of the same class. My guess is that they’ve had to take this step because with all the new adjuncts Troy has hired (FAR more than some areas needed), there was a need to be sure many of these new instructors, who have limited experience, knew what to do. In fact, a lot of these new people are being hand held along, given classes to teach, while the experienced faculty sit on the sidelines with no classes assigned, watching the program try to find its bearings….strange, I know, but true.

  OK, enough for now. Thanks for providing this area. I think it’s a great idea!

  S.

• 16    K // Oct 2, 2007 at 4:03 pm

  To S in South,

  The Faculty has been trying to expand its governance over eCampus. A committee was set up more than a year ago to study eCampus hiring and faculty evaluation policies and it evidently issued some recommendations to the administration but not much has happened since. You might want to contact the Chair of your department about possible future teaching assignments or other concerns you might have. The Chairs are supposed to oversee scheduling but some are more active than others in carrying out this responsibility.

• 17    K // Oct 2, 2007 at 4:26 pm

  To Assistant Prof. in Augusta. 16 hours of office hour time is atypical for Troy in general as a requirement but I think it is fairly common in the Southeast. However, the bigger question is: what you are required to do during those 16 hours? Are you being asked to spend most of your time answering phones and doing general office work or carrying out research or other activities as outlined in the Faculty Handbook? When tenure time comes along, the Committee is going to look at publications, teaching and research. I have seen many faculty give their all in other areas who later find themselves rejected for promotion. Also, without publications many faculty find it almost impossible to find equivalent teaching positions at other schools. If you feel that your immediate supervisor is not sympathetic to your workload needs, you might want to contact Human Resources on the main campus about this issue.

• 18    assoc prof troy // Oct 11, 2007 at 5:47 pm

  On the Troy campus, we generally have 10 office hours per week. Don’t know if it’s official…it seems to be a holdover from the old days when we were on the quarter system. Sixteen seems like a lot.

• 19    Instructor, Library // Oct 22, 2007 at 11:07 am

  To A & S in Troy,
  I’d like to address your comments about the library. In terms of the “largeness” of the book collection, the Troy Campus library has around 400,000 book volumes in the print collection and almost 50,000 electronic books for use by all TROY students, faculty and staff.
  On the issue of a “better stock of books,” the Library always welcomes suggestions for the purchase of books from faculty members. We have rarely, if ever, turned down faculty suggestions for book titles unless the suggested titles do not support the curriculum.
  Regarding our journal collection, it is possible that some titles were cancelled in paper format because they are now available in electronic format. (TROY students, faculty and staff have access, through electronic databases, to over 20,000 unique journal titles.) Also, we may not get some titles anymore because they are no longer published. In addition to journals available in electronic format, the print journal collection is approximately 2,300 titles with another 400 (plus or minus) received as subscriptions in microform.
  If the library does not have the material (i.e. books, journals, etc.) you need, you can request a loan from another library from the Interlibrary Loan Department. If you have any other questions/concerns, please contact the Dean, University Libraries. Thanks.

• 20    Associate Professor UC // Dec 6, 2007 at 2:46 pm

  Since there have been some comments posted regarding the electronic end of course surveys, I would like to add my opinion. I do agree that there is going to be an issue with response rate. However, administrators are doing everything they can to increase it by periodically sending out reminder emails during the “evaluation season.”

  However, response rate apart, I actually like the electronic format. The evals. for every course taught during a term will be returned at one time via email as opposed to coming back piecemeal - if at all. In the old days, there were several courses for which I never saw the end of course evals. since they “got lost in the system.” This is especially true for international courses.

  Furthermore, it significantly reduces the administrative workload on the staff who have to prepare the packets, send it out to intered for analysis and then return the tabulated data to faculty. The process used to take several weeks. Now we should have our end of course evals. back in 2-3 weeks.

  Furthermore, I like the fact that the playing field has been leveled with respect to in-class and online courses. It is easier to prepare promotion packages, etc. when the evals. for all classes taught (in my case that includes in-class, online and international) are uniform.

  Bottom line: All things considered, I am glad that we have gone to the electronic evaluation format.

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