[phas-faculty_staff_others] Senate meeting March 04, 2025

[Carlos Bertulani]

Dear Physics Faculty,

Yesterday I’ve participated in a senate zoom meeting. A short summary follows (I forward you the full minutes at the end of this month).

* Please notice that what I find relevant is not the same as what the senate president and senate secretary do because their minutes sometimes omit some of these info and includes other infos that I oversee.

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1- A report from Dean Romero and Venu Cheryiath (Chemistry).  The quest is to create a profitable number for the summer courses ($100/student/credit hour). 

(a) Romero mentioned that replacing faculty by adjuncts is not priority. Adjuncts will be hired when faculty are not available.

(b) Someone mentioned that the 15% payment to the department head should be prorated and not taken from this sort of income.

(c) Someone mentioned that one should work with what was wrong with the previous model and not rewrite everything. But Romero mentioned that this is not so because the provost thinks there are too many things wrong in the model (?!). That is why she asked him and others to review the summer model.

(d) Mentoring students during the summer should count as teaching in the model. This is mentioned over and over during our meetings (specially by Stephen Starnes, Chemistry), but I have the impression that the upper administration likes the argumentations, says it agrees, applauds it, cheers, …,  but does not move one finger in this direction. I hear this sort of “protest” for almost 20 years now. 


2- Report on finances by Tina Livinsgstone.

(a) merit raise is the most important thing for the upper admin. The university will place merit raises in 2025 on top and before any salary study.

(b) representatives of the consulting company studying special faculty salary raises (from the $500k set apart by the provost) will be on campus maybe in two weeks for Q&A.

 (c) who should pay more for parking, students or faculty? Some mentioned that faculty are here to serve the students and the students should therefore have parking priority. I said that based on this argumentation, the priority should be students, followed by faculty, followed by the upper administration (the least important servants). The president should park far, very far away (not so bad for his heart).
I think a more important issue for us are the few parking spots faculty have in the science building. Tina says that she agrees. But I have the impression she will not do anything.


3- Report from space committee.

(a) how to make more space? No clear answers. More in the minutes.

(b) Binnion will become a dormitory.


4- Report form a senators' meeting in Austin, Texas. 

(a) New chancellor will be announced very soon.

(b) Elimination of “shared governance” is eminent, meaning:
- No senate participation in the decision of faculty hiring, 
- no senate decision in curriculum changes, 
-senate will only be good for advising (it is already advising!). 

My interpretation is: no more “we the people”.
 
(c) do not be so happy that we became an R2 institution because it is clear that the expectations are now much lower. There are many new designations of  R2, or R1 institutions now.

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Professor Carlos Bertulani
Department of Physics & Astronomy
East Texas A&M University
http://faculty.tamuc.edu/cbertulani/