The majority of the faculty spring meeting was spent reviewing the new core curriculum.
During the rest of 2016, the curriculum will be reviewed in the fall by Faculty Senate and then sent to and reviewed by the Board of Visitors in the winter.
The revision of SCHEV competencies and development of requirements for core courses, as well as the professional development for the Foundation level of the core curriculum will be done in the spring of 2017.
The piloting of the Foundation level courses will be during the spring semester of 2018.
By the fall of 2018, all incoming freshmen will be in the core curriculum. Incoming transfers will be placed in the current general education curriculum due to the inability to complete the core curriculum before their anticipated graduation.
During the same semester, the Perspectives level courses will be piloted.
By the fall of 2019, the placement of transfers in the general education curriculum or the core curriculum will be decided by individual departments. The Symposium level sections will then be piloted during the fall and spring semesters.
During the 2020-2021 academic year, an external and internal assessment will be conducted.
By the academic year 2021-2022, the current general education curriculum will close and all students will be under the core curriculum.
Some concerns raised during the meeting included the possible need for more adjunct professors to teach the core curriculum courses, instead of hiring and filling needed faculty positions within departments. Concerns concluded with the inquiry on whether there would be enough funding.
During the meeting, the changes to the bylaws of Faculty Senate were reviewed. There was an addition of a graduate student representative and ex officio members will not have voting privileges, but will be allowed to participate in discussion. The bylaws were passed by the faculty present at the meeting. A faculty representative for the Faculty Senate of Virginia was also voted into position.
Dr. Bill Abrams, a member of Faculty Senate, provided an update on a salary study. The current statistics and data for the study come from early November 2015.
The mean salary for faculty increased by 4.65 percent, and increased by 3.86 percent for continuing faculty.
The university has added five more faculty than last year, and are in the fifth percentile compared to peer institutions, as well as the second to last in mean state salary for faculty. The salary study and salary summary can be found on the Faculty Senate web-page under “Reports.”
