College of Liberal Arts NTTF Advisory Committee

Meeting Minutes
January 17, 2024

Agenda:

Item Type of Action Decision Required
A. Approval of minutes from 12/12/2023 meeting Vote Yes
B. Ellie Light: Dean’s Office update Info-Sharing No
C. Tom Conway: CoNTTF Updates Info-Sharing No
D. Department Equity Checklist – continue discussion from December meeting, form sub-committee to write a draft Discussion No
E. Spring semester organizing – ideas for projects and topics, choose open meeting Discussion No
F. Wrap-up and adjourn N/A N/A

 

Members present: Eli Alberts, Niroj Bhattarai, Keri Canada (Non-Faculty Teaching Rep), Thomas Conway, Sadie Kinney-McGrath, Megan Lanz, Ellie Light, Gregory Luft (TTF Rep), Layla Malander, Gina Robinson, Emily Wilson, Amanda Wright (late)

Members absent: Dan Goble (Chairs Rep), Frankie Wilcox (teaching)

Meeting notes:

Meeting Began – 10:01 AM

A. Approval of Minutes from 12/12/2023 Meeting

Motion: Megan
Second: Niroj
Minutes approved unanimously.

B. Dean’s Office Updates – Ellie Light

We do have funding for the 2024 CCAF Summer conference (less than in the past), courtesy of Ben Withers.

C. CoNTTF Updates – Tom Conway

No updates – committee meets next week

  • Bring any issues/inquiries to Tom so he can bring those to the meetings
  • Ellie: Any languaging changes in faculty manual regarding contracts?

D. Department Equity Checklist Discussion

Goal: Provide a tool for a department to open discussion about issues relating to CCA faculty equity (a tool to guide discussing concerns, not a tool to solve all problems)

  1. Language usage – framing matters, not a top-down approach, collaborative
  2. Involvement in meetings, decision-making (include stats re: how many departments allow this type of CCAF involvement, etc.)
    • National research also gives us insight into what the “problems” are (Faculty Workload Equity Project, Kezar equity video)
  3.  Ground our document in something that is research-based.

Audience: chairs, administration, and faculty within CLA departments
Do not overlook teaching Administrative Professionals within this document.

  1. This is basically a hidden population that hasn’t been included in much discussion.
  2. How can AP contracts be altered to reflect teaching? This, as well as supplemental pay caps, are causing some of our teaching AP to lose salary. This change might need to happen at the HR level with their software, but the discussions need to begin at the departmental level.

This document is a product of our continued momentum from mentoring and service documentation discussions. We will use our proactivity to bring all these issues farther up the chain. We will be slated to present this to Conference of Chairs before Spring Break.

In December, we reviewed the Sociology document, and we will move forward with that document in mind.

Group of 1-2 people will be tasked with making a rough draft of this checklist.

  • We will look at, discuss, and edit it together in our next meeting (via MS Teams)

Brainstorming/sharing activity will become a draft for the document.

  1. Onboarding, Space/Tech/Promotion and PD/Governance, and Misc.
  2. Emily will organize today’s information into department-level, CLA-level, and university-level categories and see how that structure works.

E. Spring Semester Organizing

Are there new priorities or topics anyone wishes to discuss?

  1. Emily: It would be good to get organized and present what we would like to see, what our goals are, which directions we’d like to move, to the incoming new Dean.
  2. Tom: Are there any discussions to be had with the Interim Dean?
    • Her teaching schedule makes it so that she could attend the second half of one of our meetings, not the first.

We have one open meeting per semester, earlier in the semester, where all CCA folks are invited. We will benefit from providing questions to those who might attend.

    • Spring open meeting date: will be scheduled via email

F. Wrap-Up Meeting & Adjourn – 10:54 AM

Minutes respectfully submitted by Megan Lanz