Minutes

Faculty Senate Student and Faculty Honors Committee

Friday, September 21, 2007

Room 130 Hullihen Hall

Members Present: Linda Gottfredson, Rhonda Hyde, Katharine Kerrane, Zachary Schafer, Jonathan Urick, Michael Gilbert, Ismat Shah, Mark Serva, Kirsten Andrews, Karren Helsel-Spry

A. Approved minutes of 5/11/07 meeting with the following changes:

1. Bob Davis’s recommendation for reassessing the grandfathered awards in the Honors Day Booklet (HDB) was clarified

B. Chair’s Report

1. Linda described for the new members how the duties of the committee have evolved greatly over the decades, as well as reviewing its current three major duties. She introduced the website (www.udel.edu/teachingawards) and its features to new members, explaining the role of the public site in enhancing the transparency of committee procedures in administering faculty awards (Excellence in Teaching and Advising/Mentoring Awards and the Alison Faculty Award) and the role of the secure site in facilitating its work. She demonstrated the calendar feature in the secure site, which links to all instructions and templates for the chair. This is part of an ongoing effort to provide an institutional memory for future chairs and members.

2. Linda explained the history of the University Honors Day Program Booklet, whose content the committee oversees. She described the committee’s effort in recent years to reassess its content, in part to keep it manageable in size.

3. Linda stressed that the committee must complete its various duties in a timely manner, beginning in early Fall, in order to meet awards deadlines in the Spring. Representation from students, colleges, and administration in all deliberations have been essential, as last year’s contributions from student members Zach and Jon illustrate. She stressed the importance of member attendance at meetings, and asked that members e-mail her before meetings if they are unable to attend.

4. She provided a brief overview of the new and continuing technical problems the committee needs to resolve, including:

i. Alumni nominations are important, but Excellence nominations must be submitted online and alumni currently cannot get UD email accounts

ii. Nominations from matriculated students are crucial, but numbers have been going down because students pay less attention to email. Moreover, we can no longer use the majors lists from User Services to invite students’ nominations, because these lists have been discontinued. We will now need to go through contacts in each college so that they can send out our invitation to their pobox lists of undergrads and graduate students. This needs to be arranged. We will continue developing other ways to contact and motivate students (and alumni) to submit Excellence nominations.

iii. The committee still lacks essential technical assistance (to maintain the website, Access database, etc.), partly because the Senate Office itself lacks sufficient support.

iv. Without such assistance, it appears that no one will agree to chair the committee

v. With UD’s change in administration, we have lost some of our usual contacts (e.g., in Public Relations). We need to identify new ones as the new administration settles in

5. Katherine described more fully the committee’s efforts to digitize, modernize, and document the committee’s work since 2001, contrasting current practice with prior paper-based nominations. The new, online procedure has increased security and legitimacy of nominations, in part by authenticating all nominators. The online forms have increased the quality as well as quantity of nominations.

C. Discussion of next steps

1. Zach suggested that copies of the Honors Day Booklet be distributed at the next meeting, so that the committee can begin reassessing all currently listed awards.

2. Michael volunteered to identify contacts for committee needs in Alumni, PR, and other pertinent offices and will update the Chair at the next meeting.

3. Unfinished committee tasks were delegated to the following sub-committees, which will report back at the October 12 meeting:

i. Michael, Zach, Jon, and Kirsten will tackle strategies for increasing student and alumni Excellence nominations.

ii. Mark and Linda will work on the committee’s technical needs.

iii. Linda will get copies of the Honors Day Booklet for the next meeting

iv. Rhonda and Ismat will work on updating the draft Alison rubric and instructions to deans (Mohsen will be invited to join that effort)

v. Kirsten and Katherine will talk with the Alumni office about ways to reach alumni and interest them in the Excellence awards.

D. Meeting adjourned 10:05am

Minutes prepared by Zachary Schafer