Senate  

Question:  List what you believe are the three top issues you think are most important for the FACULTY SENATE to work on behalf of the faculty for the next two years
Items in Ariel 12 pts font are actual responses
Format of responses: (Issue Rank [1…3]) <Response>
Edited responses are in […]

Improving Senate

Involvement

(2) Ensuring that the faculty and Senate are involved in and informed about the capital campaign as it builds momentum

(2) Monitor UH IP policy, management and practice

(3) Assure strong Senate participation and shared governance in the changes that are inevitable

Effectiveness

(1) I like this 2 year vision, the change of officers and committees in January hinders progress in the senate, also need to get senators active, not just attend meetings and hear reports that are not reported back to colleges

(3) Minimizing the number of silos of decision making and broaden the scope of participation

Communication

(1) Better communication between Senators and their faculty constituents

(2) Legislative outreach providing info about activities& problems

(3) Educating the faculty to what shared faculty governance actually means (i.e. their rights and their responsibilities in the process)

(3) Raise the level of discourse on how the faculty can help the University compete to attract undergraduate and graduate students, to attract faculty, to attract research dollars and to retain students and faculty

Legitimacy 

(1) Becoming a credible body with the faculty. I hate to tell you, but right now it is taken as a completely ineffective body

(2) Enhancing the role and visibility of the Faculty Senate across the University

(3) Increase visibility of the faculty senate, many faculty, especially the new faculty are clueless what the faculty senate does or can do

Building Relationship with UH President and Administration

(1) Developing a strong relationship with President Khator to make sure faculty priorities get her attention

(1) Developing a strong relationship with the new President

(1) Establish strong relationship with new administration

(1) Broader faculty input into the Senate activities. Mechanisms to disseminate senate activities to faculty

(2) Be an advocate and mediator between faculty and administration

(2) Continue to establish a strong working relationship with Renu Khator

(2) Continue with the good relations we have had with past administration with the new administration so efforts are directed toward moving the institution forward rather than open communication

(3) Cooperation with the UH administration

(3) Engagement with the political forces that drive resource allocation

(3) Ensuring that the Senate and the new administration build on the current rapport between the two bodies

(3) Ensuring that the Senate and the new administration build on the current rapport between the two bodies

(3) Induce familiarity and cohesion between all UH faculty in disparate departments

Improving University through Senate

University Governance

Budgeting

Process

(1) Budgeting process

(1) Ensuring that academic priorities for the university are foremost in planning and budget matters

Transparency

(2) Open, correct and transparent budgets

(3) All budget data be available online

Expansion and Allocation

(2) The continuing deficit in financing athletics at the expense of the academic departments

(3) Building the university’s financial foundation: looking into funding from state, building endowment, etc.

Shared Governance

(2) Establish better communication between faculty, depts. and administration for issues that affect us all for example, the administrations position seems to change often on satellite campuses vs. online/distance learning vs. weekend university

(2) Extending governance to the Departments and Colleges

(2) Shared governance

(2) The folks in E Cullen need to have a better understanding of how their actions effect faculty and students. Peoplesoft. Room Assignment. blah blah blah

(3) Establish a mechanism to allow faculty has more role in upper level hiring

(3) Maintenance of shared governance

(3) Maximum information and transparency from the administration in decision making

Policies in Relation to Faculty and Students

(1) Policies governing students progress towards graduation and completion of degrees

(2) Faculty policies governing the quality of professional opportunities and recognition of contributions of faculty

Planning

(3) Exploring and leading in developing methods of growing the university through more efficient use of resources

(3) Being involved in the long range plan of the university with regard to the development of commercial interests around the perimeter of the university

UH Competitiveness

Benchmarking to Assess Current Position

(1) provide information to compare UH environment (faculty condition, merit promotion, etc.) with other equivalent university

Improving Student Quality

(1) Improve quality of students

(1) Improving student quality

(2) Increase quality of students (undergrad and grad)

(2) Need for significant increase in quality of undergraduate students

(3) Improve graduate student quality.

(3) Improving ranking and student body

Improving Faculty Quality

Recognition of the Need to Attract and Retain

(1) Addressing issues that relate to retention and recruitment of quality faculty

(2) Attraction and retention of minority faculty

(2) Develop strategies to facilitate faculty recruitment and retention

Attraction and Retention using Compensation

(1) Salary adequate to retain top faculty

(1) Faculty Compensation. If the administration wants to be in charge of a top tier university, then they should pay its faculty like they deserved to work at a top-tier institution. The FS salary survey shows that lots of people are not being paid what it would take to replace them

(2) Better conditions for being competitive on the job market: domestic partner benefits, support for international candidates (working papers), spousal hires

Improving Work Conditions

(1) To improve overall working conditions for UH Faculty: salaries, benefits, research support

(3) Contributing to an intellectual environment that will attract high quality faculty

Improving Reputation and Ranking

(1) University image and standing

(1) Work towards UH being research 1 institution

(1) UH ranking in US World News is very low, lower than what the faculty deserves. Figure out a strategy to improve it. Higher ranking will get better students and better new faculty. We need them

(3) Improve the TX Senate and legislatures impression of UH

(3) Help the university have a stronger reputation in the city and the state

Participating in QEP Initiative

(1) Continuing work on the QEP proposal

(3) Ensuring involvement of all interested faculty in the QEP

Participating in Tier 1 Initiative

(1) Issues related to Tier 1 parity in state funding support

(2) Making sure interests of all faculty are taken into consideration in UHs drive for Tier 1 status

(2) Tier 1 research university related issues (course loads, research support, etc.). One issue of interest to me personally has to do with teaching loads: music history profs have a 23 load, despite heavy research expectations

Changing Mentalities and Values

(1) To broaden the perspective and involvement of the faculty to be more involved in designing and maintaining the competitiveness factor of the university. Help faculty discard the "hierarchy" and "silo" mentality and embrace "partnership" mentality; replace "me" with "we"

(3) Improve the intellectual lives of our students

Nurturing Excellence

(1) Advancement of Excellence on Campus, and development of adequate resources to attain that excellence

(3) Support academic and teaching excellence

Faculty Recruitment

Increasing Tenure Track Faculty

(1) Continue to build the size of the full time tenure track faculty, but not on the backs of continuing faculty

(2) Increase the number of tenure track faculty so that we can be competitive with other major universities in the State and Nation. Compare our number of tenure track faculty with other universities per student, per revenue dollar, per geographic location, per research output

Increasing Faculty Size

(1) Increase faculty size

(2) Increase size of faculty

Salary and Benefits

Informing about Retirement Options

(3) More info about retirement choices, I have independent financial advisor who has made it easy for me and taken charge, without this help I would not be doing so well and would be in the same boat as many of my coworkers. Figure out a way to sustain Dale Rudes efforts

Improving Pay Fairness

(1) Salaries should better reflect performance

(2) Inequalities in faculty between various colleges

(3) Professors should receive course equivalent or financial compensation for supervising doctoral students

Improving Benefits

(1) Benefits for faculty retiring with over 2500 hours of accumulated sick leave

(1) Salaries, benefits

(2) Benefits

(2) Good health insurance coverage

(2) Making sure faculty is better informed - from the outset -- about benefits. Insufficient information is provided at key times about pension benefit choices. Also, given the huge cost of health insurance to the university, wouldn’t it make sense to give faculty free Fitness Center membership

(3) UH Benefits packages are not on par with many universities, and need to be improved

Addressing Salary Compression

(1) Develop a plan to reduce salary compression and increase salary compensation

(1) Develop a plan to reduce salary compression and increase salary compensation

(1) Salary compression and related issues

(1) Salary Compression issues

(1) Salary issues (keeping with national averages, compression, etc.)

(2) Salary compression of longtime associate professors who were not HIRED to do research

(2) UH Salary Rpt indicating compression, inversion & regression in long-term faculty salaries. Long-term commitment does not appear to pay off here. Merit raises to supplement, based upon merit & achievement; But also Cost of Living increases are warranted, & merited by faculty

Increasing Salaries (General Request For)

(1) Pay raises for existing faculty

(1) Salaries

(1) Salary raises

(2) Faculty Salaries are a problem

(3) Faculty salaries

Facilities

(2) Assess space issue with respect to the faculty in each college and advocate adequate space requirement for all faculty

(2) The SERC building should be finished

(3) Campus master plan

(3) improve physical image of university (i.e. promote high-level design for campus buildings, etc)

(3) Improve the neighborhood surrounding UH campus. The students and faculty should feel safe in and around campus at any time of the day

Relationships among Faculty

(1) Creating a climate of collegiality among the faculty

(2) To help librarians be seen more as partners and colleagues by the faculty and administration

Clarifying Promotion and Tenure Standards

(2) Clarifying promotion and tenure guidelines

Research

Research Support

Internal Support

(2) Increase research infrastructure

(2) Sabbatical policy

(2) Supporting research

(3) Work with administration to make it more possible for faculty to undertake and complete research projects

Social Science Research Support

(1) Research support for the humanities (increase publication grants, promote university wide research leave policy, promote post third year review, pre-tenure leave, etc)

(1) The lack of infrastructure to support research in the social sciences. That includes many items: Inadequate internal UH funds for research. No common statistical and computational resource center. Burying the online research tools of the library

Travel Support

(3) Professional resources (e.g., travel)

(3) Additional travel money

External Support

(2) Find funds to support more seed grants for faculty research (29)

(3) Research support increase research grants directed to scholarly work as outcome and not solely focused on increasing external funding

Research Quality

(1) What constitutes research-when research is mistakenly thought to mean funded grants that produce IDC... We need a campus wide discussion on this topic

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