Publications Committee For October-14-2021

The Academic Senate Committee on Publications met on Thursday, October 14, 2021, 1:08 PM-2:07 PM, via Zoom

Committee Members in Attendance:

Kerri-Ann M. Smith (co-chair), Christina Manzo (co-chair), James Geasor, Wenli Guo, Sushma Teegala, Patrick Byers (secretary).

Liaisons in Attendance:

Not Present:

Steering Committee Liaison: Philip Pecorino

President's Liaison: Stephen Di Dio

Business:

The meeting was called to order at 1:08

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved with a small spelling correction.

It was announced that Phil Pecorino has been requested as liaison to steering committee. He cannot attend today as he received the invitation late. He has helped tremendously with the faculty handbook.

 

Sub-Committee on Academic Aspects of the College Website:

The publications committee has a subcommittee which was formed to train webmasters for different departments. The goal in doing this was to ensure department websites are uniform so that information can be found. Dave Moretti has been the only one available to train new webmasters and oversee the various pages (e.g., to check and change links). Given that the college has 10,000+ webpages, the marketing team (in charge of website) suggested that videos be made for new webmasters instructing them about standards for updating and maintaining department websites. The subcommittee was formed to aid in development of video to facilitate these trainings. Complications led to this being put on pause, and the subcommittee didn’t meet. More recently, new charges were made for the subcommittee.

Arthur Adair felt the sub-committee wasn’t needed as the task seemed too broad. He has taken on the tasks of the subcommittee as a part of his job. In this capacity, he would not have fully autonomous control. His duty would be to help webmasters know how to streamline and maintain consistent standards.

A discussion was held about whether to dissolve the sub-committee. James Geasor expressed some concern about fully giving up the the task of overseeing the website as the latter may be expanding. As a result in cuts to print services, more content will be put on the website as opposed to printed, although the extent of this is unclear. He suggested that we continue to consider this issue, even if Arthur takes on the role of the sub-committee.

James Geasor suggested that we consider the transition towards more digital content for the college’s communication. It was suggested that this be put in the committee’s charges. It was decided that edits to the Committee’s charges will be edited next meeting to incorporate these considerations into the charges.

Vote to Dissolve the Sub-Committee:

Christina Manzo made a motion to dissolve the committee. Wenli Guo seconded the motion. A vote was taken which was unanimous in favor of dissolving the sub-committee.

 

ACTIVITIES FOR 2021-2022:

Faculty Handbook:

The main mandate for the committee at the moment is editing the updated version of the faculty handbook, which is being revised by Phil Pecorino. There was a discussion of the format of the updated faculty handbook (PDF or interlinked websites, and how the content would be made available/interlinked).

Assigning Committee Members to Periodically Check Particular Sections of the Website

Going forward, another possible task of the Publications Committee is to assign members to regularly check different sections of the website, e.g., to ensure links work. Each member would be assigned to a different section of he site. This would provide a role for the committee after the faculty handbook is completed. This role is particularly important given upcoming changes to the college (e.g., initiatives related to equity).

 

Tenure and promotion guidelines:

Departments are developing and sending in new tenure and promotion guidelines. These will be developed by each department, and then reviewed (by Kerri-Ann Smith, the provost, and others). By Spring 2022, junior faculty will have access to more clear guidelines for tenure and promotion. The guidelines shouldn’t be established informally and not made available to junior faculty. Faculty are reporting inconsistent expectations across departments and evaluation criteria actually used being unavailable or differing from what is officially posted. The publications committee will review the standards.

The idea is that when untenured faculty are considered by the P&B, faculty reviewing must have access to guidelines to use and that they be for the appropriate department, as opposed to their own.

The question for the committee going forward, is whether to push for including tenure/promotion guidelines available in the faculty handbook.

 

Publications Committee Email:

There is now a dedicated email address for the committee: [email protected] 

Use of this address will enable continuity (e.g., any information sent in previous years will be accessible rather than in member’s personal emails). All email for the committee should be sent through that email address.

Upcoming Meeting:

Next meeting will be on the second Thursday of November (11/11).

 

A vote was made to adjourn the meeting at 2:5pm

Respectfully submitted,

Patrick Byers
Committee on Publications, Secretary