Chair notes from Anthony Sams (new chair of statewide faculty council):

This is the first of what I hope will be regular “Chair’s Notes” from the Statewide Faculty Council. These notes cover our 03.26.21 meeting. My notes are an effort to be more communicative and transparent about the SFC’s meetings with other stakeholders in the college’s governance structure.

1. Goals for the Statewide Faculty Council in 2021
   1. This was the first meeting where I served as chair. I laid out my goals for the SFC in 2021. These goals can best be summarized as “three D’s”: dialogue, distribution, and development.
      1. Dialogue: I shared that I would like to bring the SFC into greater dialogue with other governance bodies at the college. I hope to have an opportunity during the next year to share what the SFC is working on and ask how other groups see the SFC fitting into the college, how the SFC can assist these groups, how the SFC can contribute to the mission of the college and the Strategic Plan, and what other opportunities exist for collaboration.
      1. Distribution: I recognize that the business of the SFC has not heretofore been widely shared among other groups at the college. As such, I want to ensure that the SFC’s work is better communicated. I also recognize that the business of the SFC could be shared better among the entire faculty. The SFC has many ideas about distributing more information to faculty, including but not limited to a website, monthly updates or a newsletter, weekly office hours by SFC leadership, and virtual visits from SFC leadership to campus councils.
      1. Development: The college is making great strides in the formalization of academic freedom, academic due process, and faculty participation in shared governance. Our work for 2021 will include an update and revision to the SFC bylaws and continued conversations around shared governance at Ivy Tech.

1. Additionally, the SFC will continue to pursue projects as they come to us from senior leadership and stakeholder governance bodies, and we’ll continue to solicit recommendations from the faculty on proposals we can advance through established channels.

2. Banded Inclusive and Inclusive Tuition
   1. Emily Sellers, William Bogard, and Dominick Chase attended a portion of our meeting to present the latest details on the proposed Banded Tuition and Inclusive Tuition initiatives.

2. The Inclusive Tuition team brainstormed ideas with the SFC about communicating the latest details of Inclusive Tuition more widely to all faculty (as every faculty member at the college will be touched by this change in some way) to be prepared for an anticipated Fall 2021 rollout.

3. Emplify
   1. The SFC discussed how faculty are (and aren’t) being included in discussions around Emplify at the campus level.
      1. The representative from one campus shared a follow-up survey conducted among their faculty on the “rest” driver in Emplify. The goal of this survey was to drill more deeply into the idea of rest in order to gather more specific information and produce faculty-driven proposals.
      1. The representative from another campus shared an analysis that compared the driver scores of different faculty groups (part-time, full-time, chairs, administrative faculty). This campus used “gaps” in driver scores to narrow the scope of its work. For example, full-time faculty scored much higher on the professional development driver than part-time faculty, so that campus council is exploring ways to bolster professional development among part-time faculty.
      1. Other representatives shared that their campus council chair has met 1:1 with the campus HR director and/or the chancellor, or there has been an all-faculty meeting to discuss the general results of Emplify and brainstorm ideas.
      1. Some representatives shared that they had not had any discussions around Emplify and sought advice from their SFC peers on beginning those conversations at their campuses.

3. At the end of the discussion on Emplify, I made the case that reviewing and discussing the general Emplify results at each campus would be a great project for campus councils. Sharing Emplify results not only fosters a sense of collaboration between campus leadership and campus councils, but it would allow campus councils to invest energy into faculty-driven proposals that could contribute positively to this Strategic Plan metric.

If you have any questions regarding the content of these notes, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thanks,

Anthony Sams
Professor of English | Department Chair
Ivy Tech Community College Sellersburg

(812) 246-3301 ext. 4221