Attending: Judy Erlen, Patricia Beeson, Andrew Blair, Troy Boone, Sheila Isong, Kathleen Kelly, Neepa Majumdar, Ivanka Nikolova, Tony Silvestre, Charlene Trovato

Update on Advisory Council of Instructional Excellence: Judy Erlen, joined by Andrew Blair, reported on the recent activities of the Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence. Information can also be found on this group's website: http://www.pitt.edu/~facaffs/acie/index.html Updates included:

RFP for teaching proposals revised and completed, to be sent to the faculty in the next few weeks.

Teaching Excellence Fair will be held Nov 8 in the ballroom in Alumni Hall. All are welcome. Please distribute this news.

Small group meetings for new faculty are being planned in these "focus-group" style meetings which will introduce new faculty to resources available to them for their successful development at Pitt. These are likely to be co-led by a CIDDE member and a current or past member of the Advisory Council. It is expected that these groups may lead to suggestions for topics for future faculty forums.

Proposal regarding part-time faculty: We reviewed a draft proposal for policies pertaining to part time faculty, submitted by Lisa Brush, 2005-6 President, University of Pittsburgh United Faculty/AAUP. The proposal is attached. Comments from the committee included:

There was discussion about the ways in which part-time faculty work can be grueling and poorly remunerated, and there was discussion about ways to enhance coverage of courses with tenure stream faculty instead of relying on part-time people, who bear many of the burdens, but do not enjoy the privileges and protections, of tenure stream faculty. The value of the tuition to the university appears to far exceed the per-course value to the instructor, which can be as little as $2500.

The proposed grievance procedures regarding reappointment were in general more generous than those extended to tenure stream faculty. Many units intentionally ensure that individual faculty members do not "own" a course, but must be reassigned to it each time they teach it.

Extending job security for time of service, rather than merit considerations, does not conform to the standards for tenure-stream faculty.

One or both of the above proposals could require changes to the university by-laws, which would necessitate action by the Board of Trustees. This is, of course, possible, but is lengthy, involved, and rather rare.

More systematic information about the current practices is regarding contract-signing, course assignments and pay for 'part-time' faculty at Pitt would be helpful before accepting these recommendations. It may be that the proposed regulations would not be welcome by some of our part-time faculty or that they would want changes in the proposal. The issues covered in the proposal were not raised when the last survey of part-time faculty was conducted, and input from part-time faculty would be useful before adopting the recommendations.

Further clarification of the people to whom these policies would apply would be helpful. It appears to apply broadly to all definitions of "part time" and "adjunct", but questions were raised about occasional lecturers and field instructors, and possibly others as yet unidentified.

A question was raised about whether this proposal can be amended, or if it is being proposed across AAUP chapters, and needs to go forward exactly as it is.

Use and misuse of electronic devices in the classroom: Last year, an informal request was made by a member of the faculty assembly for review of practices for dealing with use and misuse of electronic devices in the classroom. We have developed the following list of topics in response:

Plagiarism, cheating, or other fraudulent activities

Classroom incivility

Generational differences

Ideas about how to disseminate current practices and existing information on these topics to faculty were discussed.

Soliciting new action ideas: Proposals for other topics on which to focus activities will be welcome.