Faculty Senate met for the first time in 2018 Jan. 16; there, Interim University President Dr. Rodney Rogers addressed the senate for the first time in his new role following the departure of the previous university president, Mary Ellen Mazey.
Rogers and John Fischer, acting senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, called for continued engagement and commitment to giving students a first-rate education as a public institution.
“We know we are at a time of great change in higher education,” Rogers said, “and I just hope that we will focus on continuing to adapt to the world around us. We must meet the needs of our students and society.”
Rogers called for a continued commitment to engaging students in their education through learning communities, study abroad opportunities and undergraduate research, as well as a willingness to open discussions around student success and preparation after leaving the University.
“We’ve got to ensure that students not only graduate in a timely way, but that they are prepared to be successful and happy in their lives after Bowling Green,” Rogers said. “So, are we doing all we can do so that they are prepared to face a world that will ever be changing?”
Later in the meeting, Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness Julia Matuga gave a presentation on the upcoming implementation of EvaluationKIT. EvaluationKIT will be a new program for student evaluation of teaching and learning.
She said EvaluationKIT will give students throughout the University a program to evaluate professors and courses, as it will be fully integrated through Canvas. The program will be accessible from computers, tablets and other mobile devices, and it will provide faculty with immediate feedback and storage for course evaluation information.
After collecting surveys and piloting the program in the fall 2017 semester, the working group will be selecting different departments from various colleges to pilot the software. The software will also be piloted during the summer of 2018, before full implementation in the fall 2018 semester.
Open forums about the data collection and piloting process, as well as plans for implementation, will occur in Olscamp 109 on the following dates: Thursday, Jan. 18 1:30-2:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Jan. 23 1:00-2:00 p.m.; Monday, Jan. 29 11:00 a.m.to noon; Wednesday, Feb. 7 10:30-11:30 a.m.; Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2:00-3:00 p.m.; Monday, Feb. 26, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Additionally, the assembly voted to bestow honorary degrees to Maryrose Sylvester and James L. Bailey. Sylvester, a 1987 alumnus, is the president and CEO of Current, a company under the General Electric Co. Bailey, a 1967 graduate, worked as executive vice president at Citibank’s North American Consumer Bank, as well as serving as chief operating officer of the U.S. Trust, under the Bank of America Corp.
Faculty Senate will meet next on Feb. 6, from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in the McFall Center.
