Senate will vote May 1 on NTE faculty changes

By Erin Rosacker
April 19, 2018

Meeting coverage

Substantial changes for nontenure-eligible (NTE) faculty could be approved next month. Nine amendments -- and an amendment to an amendment -- for the revised policies were debated at the April 17 Faculty Senate meeting. The revisions will come up for a vote on May 1, the senate's final meeting of the academic year.

"There are few items that have come before the senate that have received such in-depth attention," said president-elect Peter Martin. "I want to commend all of you for a serious-minded debate. Thank you for that."

After setting a one-minute limit for individual comments, senators spent just over an hour discussing the amendments. As amended, substantial changes would include:

  • Renaming the NTE faculty category "term faculty"
  • New and revised term faculty titles, ranks and tracks
  • Consistent procedures for term appointments, evaluations, reviews and career advancement
  • Unit-level flexibility for term faculty responsibilities

The proposed titles and ranks in five term faculty tracks are:

  • Teaching faculty -- lecturer, associate teaching professor and teaching professor
  • Practice faculty -- assistant professor of practice, associate professor of practice and professor of practice
  • Clinical faculty -- clinical assistant professor, clinical associate professor and clinical professor
  • Research faculty -- research assistant professor, research associate professor and research professor
  • Adjunct faculty -- adjunct assistant professor, adjunct associate professor and adjunct professor

"This is the time to take this back to your department, and your college, and your caucus and get their input before we do this again in two weeks," said Jonathan Sturm, senate past president and 2018-19 president-elect.

Classroom disruption policy

Recommended changes for the Faculty Handbook policy dealing with classroom disruptions were introduced (chapter 10.5) for a May 1 vote. The proposed revisions expand the policy to include all learning environments, such as studios, labs and online courses. The changes also provide clearer procedures and tools to determine and address disruptive student behavior.

Representatives from multiple units -- including ISU Police, university counsel and the student conduct and student assistance offices -- served on a working group that provided input on the policy and faculty resources.

"This whole initiative really grew out of their [student assistance and student conduct offices] plea to the academic division to provide more tools to address situations that come up in the classroom," said Dawn Bratsch-Prince, associate provost for faculty. "Faculty did not know how to handle disruptions in the classroom and this aims to provide them with more guidance and steps to follow."

Other business

Senators unanimously approved: