April 22, 2010 - Faculty Governance

Faculty Governance News

vol. 4.13

April 22, 2010

From the UNC Office of Faculty Governance
200-204 Carr Building
UNC-CH Campus Box 9170
Contact: Anne M. Whisnant (anne_whisnant@unc.edu)

Faculty governance elections turnout was 24%; results are now online

The results from the 2010 faculty governance elections are in. Eight hundred and thirty-three faculty members voted this year, for a turnout rate of 24%. Thanks to all candidates and voters who participated in keeping faculty governance vibrant at UNC this year.

You can view the complete elections results here.

Faculty Council meets Friday, April 23; will consider new Educational Policy Committee resolution on undergraduate grade reporting

Faculty Council meets this Friday, April 23, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the Hitchcock Multipurpose Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center. A major item of business will be consideration of Resolution 2010-3 “On Enhanced Grade Reporting,” in which the Educational Policy Committee (EPC, an elected university-wide standing committee of the faculty) proposes a new system of contextual reporting of undergraduate grades. The proposed system, EPC hopes, will make it easier to interpret grades on individual transcripts and will provide more detailed ongoing information to faculty about departmental and campuswide grading practices.

The EPC has been tracking grading practices at UNC since 2000, and discussions of grading issues punctuated Faculty Council years before that. In 2009, EPC presented the Council with its most detailed reports to date demonstrating the interrelated processes of grade inflation, grade compression, and grade inequality that have made it more difficult to interpret the meaning of grades at UNC. Responding to this work, Faculty Council in the fall of 2009 adopted Resolution 2009-4 (“Endorsing Educational Policy Committee Efforts to Investigate Grading Policy Reforms”), in which the Council “endorse[d] the EPC’s goal of investigating specific options for grading policy reform during the 2009-10 academic year and anticipates a policy proposal during the spring, 2010 semester.” Resolution 2010-3 is the anticipated policy proposal.

The complete Faculty Council agenda is online here.

All faculty members are welcome to attend the meeting.

Faculty invited to participate in Commencement Weekend events, May 8-9; Inclement Weather Tickets must be obtained in advance from Office of Faculty Governance

All faculty members are invited to participate in the 2010 Commencement weekend events.

The Doctoral Hooding ceremony will be held Saturday, May 8, at 10 a.m. in the Dean Smith Center and will feature remarks by Dr. R. Barbara Gitenstein, President of The College of New Jersey. Non-hooding faculty members who wish to march in the academic processional should arrive at the Smith Center (Entrance A) no later than 9:30 a.m. and take the elevator or stairs down to the first floor.

University Commencement is on Sunday May 9 at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Stadium. This year’s speaker is novelist John Grisham. Faculty are asked to gather on the second floor of the Kenan Football Center at 9:00 a.m. Faculty Marshal Valerie Ashby will lead the faculty processional. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will move to the Smith Center (faculty should use Entry A and go directly to the court level for seating). If you plan to participate in the Commencement ceremony you will need to obtain, in advance, an Inclement Weather Ticket to admit you to the Smith Center if the ceremony has to be moved because of rain. Inclement weather tickets may be obtained by contacting David Thompson in the Faculty Governance Office at 962-2147 or by email at dthomps3@email.unc.edu.

Full information for faculty about Commencement may be found here.

Voicemail Transition Underway

Have you updated your voicemail yet? On Friday, April 30, 2010 at 6:00 p.m., UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and staff will transition to a new campus voicemail system. Between now and April 30, UNC-Chapel Hill employees who currently have a voice mailbox will be required to initialize a new, personal voice mailbox on the new CallXpress platform. New voicemail boxes that have not been initialized by April 30 will not receive messages until a new mailbox has been initialized. To learn how to do this, visit: http://its.unc.edu/CommTechnology/engineering_and_operations/voicemail or e-mail voicemail@unc.edu. User training sessions are being offered extensively throughout April.

BRIDGES: Academic Leadership for Women program accepting applications through May 3, 2010

BRIDGES: Academic Leadership for Women is accepting applications for the fall 2010 program. The application deadline is May 3, 2010. If you would like to speak with someone about BRIDGES, please contact Annette Madden at 962-1123 or madden@email.unc.edu. For more information about BRIDGES or to apply, visit their Web site: http://fridaycenter.unc.edu/bridges

Institute of African American Research celebrates 15th anniversary, May 7

The Institute of African American Research’s 15th Anniversary Event will take place Friday, May 7 from 6pm-9pm in the Trillium Dining Room of the William and Ida Friday Center. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Troy Duster, Professor of Sociology, New York University and Chancellor’s Professor, University of California at Berkeley. Donation tickets are $30 per person and $50 per couple. For more information about tickets, please call (919) 962-6810 or visit http://www.unc.edu/iaar/15th_Anniversary_Event.htm.

Faculty Governance Resource Room

Articles, books, or other resources of interest to faculty. This week’s selection:

ProfHacker Blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Group blog, which started in 2009 and just moved to a new home at the Chronicle. Delivers daily tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education. As described in a recent OASIS article, ProfHacker “is a community of and for higher education faculty (and others). The goal of the community is to improve all aspects of academic life by talking about them openly and honestly and to debunk the assumptions of ‘everybody knows that!’ (ie. They try to expose some of the hidden assumptions of academia.)”

About Faculty Governance News

The Faculty Governance News is published every two weeks throughout the academic year by the Office of Faculty Governance. Archived issues and the publication schedule for 2009-10 are available online here. Information to be considered for inclusion should be sent to Anne Whisnant (anne_whisnant@unc.edu) by Monday before an issue is scheduled to appear.

For more information on any of these items, please contact Anne Whisnant in the Office of Faculty Governance.