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January 2021 Minutes

January 7th 2021 at 10 AM

Absent Representatives

Tenure & Academic Freedom, Chloe (committee did not meet)

Student Admissions, Aid & Affairs, Dave (committee did not meet)

Benefits & Welfare, Sowmya

Community Relations, Mariarosaria

Athletics & Recreation, Mariarosaria

Equity, Inclusion & Anti-discrimination Advocacy (EIADAC), Danny

Library, Seungil

            [Not present; sent via email]

Discussion of the pro-tem co-chair position and a vote on its continuance.

Continue co-chair position by who is a faculty member.

Discussion of promoting OA to faculty.

The cost and source for payment rising argument. It would be considered Tenure and Academic Freedom depending on how the discourse develops around OA.

Present Representatives

Governmental Relations, Stephanie (committee did not meet)

Plant Utilization & Planning, Bruce (committee did not meet)

Faculty Affairs, Ashley (committee did not meet)

Computing & IT, Doug

No meeting since last month. The committee has set up a website to facilitate the migration to OneDrive. Regarding last month’s meeting, Pitt has an option for Google Drive through Pitt accounts.

Bylaws & Procedures, Sushobhan

Formalize a setup where all schools get sub-committees for faculty (and postdocs?) to bring issues to Faculty Assembly

  1.             Plan for AY 2021
    1. Review of mission and bylaws wrt social justice
    2. Update to policy for senior administrative hiring – still using 1995 policy! Also review policy website to ensure everything is up to date
    3. Procedure 02-02-10 (appeals for non-renewal of contract/tenure): Sent to faculty tenure committee and discrimination committee. Includes appeals based on discrimination, need to compile comments
    4. Audit of faculty evaluations: Need an appellate procedure (AC 22 or 02-03-10, last changed 1988, has typos and substantive problems) consonant with 02-02-10
    5. Terms of Senate officers. Favoring two 2-year terms, reduced terms make recruiting easier (no compensation!), which is otherwise difficult
  2. New business
    1. Selection of representatives from regional campuses (elected vs appointed)
    2. Anti-racism action plan, especially to allow part-time faculty to opt-out to participate in the Senate (currently have to opt-in). Women and POCs are over-represented in these groups.
    3. Constituency committees in the faculty assembly
  3. Priorities for AY 2021
    1. Anti-racism
    2. Policy documents (AC22 and 02-02-10)
    3. Guideline for search committees
  4. Proposed anti-racism action plan
    1. Grievances appellate panel – include non-tenured faculty, representation of panel members to reduce bias, include policy for short-term (<1 yr) faculty hires. These are not administrated by the office of diversity (Title IX), but the difference is not clear (including existing appeals) and needs to be discussed

Budget Policies, Jenny

Faculty Salary Benchmarking Peer Analysis & Cost-of-Living Salary Adjustment Analysis

The stated policy of the university is for faculty salaries to meet or exceed the median within each peer group.

These were two individual reports, but will be consolidated into one report in the future.

Cost-of-Living Adjustment (using 35 AAU public institutions for peer group and using the ACCRA Cost of Living Index): Pittsburgh is ranked 20th out of 35 by COL Index. The Johnstown, Bradford and Greensburg campuses COL adjustment was defined using a different peer group (see part II below) and ranked 1, 3, and 58, out of 101 institutions, respectively.

  1. Review of average salaries of professors, associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, and lecturers at public member-institutions of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and determine the ranking of average faculty salaries at the Pittsburgh campus within this peer group. 

Full Professor: 16/36 (adj rank = 13)

Associate Professor: (adj rank = 17)

Assistant Professor: (adj rank = )

*Instructors:

**Lecturers:

 

Combined Instructor/Lecturer adjusted rank = 28/34.

 

*Several schools did not submit data for this category.

**The ‘lecturer’ category will be recategorized in the near future. It is currently a very heterogeneous group (e.g. can include visiting professors from another institution of any rank).

These rankings are similar to 2018-2019 except for Associate Professor, which fell from 21 to 25.

  1. Same analysis as I but expanded to all AAU members (public and private).

Full Professor: 40/63

Associate Professor: 49/62

Assistant Professor: 53/63

Instructors: 33/38

Lecturers: 49/51

  1. Same analysis but applied to regional campuses (Bradford, Greensburg and Johnstown). A different peer group is used (based on data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)): includes baccalaureate colleges without a professional focus (as defined by the Carnegie Classification-2018) located in Delaware, Maryland, New   Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The group includes only public or private-not-for-profit institutions and excludes institutions in the New York City and surrounding area.

Full Professor: 48/100 (adj rank = 23)

Associate Professor: /100 (adj rank = 23)

Assistant Professor: /100 (adj rank = 20)

Instructors/Lecturers: /93 (adj rank = 26/93)

Educational Policies, Tenzin

            Could not attend in person.

Details surrounding black studies course have been resolved. Now working on rolling out course.

Copyrights on course syllabus materials – who has it?

Discussion on implementing a website called Outlier for students that cannot attend in person. Raises IP concerns.

Research, Amanda

            Similar to IT committee: discussion of OneDrive migration.

            Increasing diversity in departments.

Miscellaneous

How long is a term for Senate representative? Senate officers have four-year terms.