June 2025 Faculty Senate Newsletter

What’s New

2025-26 Faculty Assembly members

The Faculty Assembly is a body of faculty from each of the UNC System Institutions who meet at least six times per academic year to learn about and discuss matters affecting all the institutions. They provide feedback and advice to UNC System leaders and bring information back to their institution’s faculty. The new terms for the ECU® Faculty Assembly delegation begin on July 1st. Incoming Chair of the Faculty Mark Bowler’s regular delegate seat will be vacated and a call for volunteers to fill his vacated seat will go out at the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester. The delegates and alternates beginning their terms on July 1st are:

• Mark Bowler, Chair of the Faculty, Department of Psychology
• Annette Greer, Delegate, Brody School of Medicine
• Meghan Millea, Delegate, Department of Economics
• Toyin Babatunde, Delegate, College of Allied Health Sciences
• Gerald Prokopowicz, Alternate, Department of History
• Laura Gantt, Alternate, College of Nursing
• Melinda Doty, Alternate, College of Engineering and Technology
• Susan Sayger, Alternate, College of Engineering and Technology
• Anne Ticknor, Alternate, College of Education

Chancellor’s Action on Faculty Senate Resolutions; Updates to Faculty Manual

The Chancellor recently acted on resolutions from the April 22, 2025 Faculty Senate meeting, with several resulting in updates to the Faculty Manual:

• Resolution #25-44, revisions to Faculty Manual Part VI.III.VIII Evaluation of Distance Education, which aligns the evaluation of distance education instruction with revisions that were made to the Procedures for Peer Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness (PDF).
• Resolution #25-49 and 25-50, revisions to Faculty Manual Part VIII.I.III.1.C, which provides clarification for peer assessment by including additional examples of what counts as documented review of teaching portfolios, as well as a Peer Assessment Record form for use in documenting discussions regarding pedagogical goals and methods.
• Resolution #25-53, revisions to Faculty Manual Part VIII.I.I.D.3 Titles of Fixed-Term Appointments, which clarifies that faculty members who meet the title criteria may receive advancement in title earlier than the minimum years of service noted for each title.
• Resolution #25-54, revisions to Faculty Manual Part X.II Advancement in Title Timeline – Fall and Spring of Decision Year, which extends the deadline for the committee recommendation to the unit administrator and the Provost’s decision by one week.
• Resolution #25-55, revisions to Faculty Manual Part XII Faculty Appellate Provisions, which aligns the faculty appellate processes with UNC System and ECU policies.
• Resolution #25-56, revisions to Faculty Manual Part IX.I.IV, which clarifies the requirement that a voting faculty member is not a unit administrator or an individual whose appointment letter assigns administrative duties as half or more of their total duties.

Featured

Thank you to the Outgoing Faculty Officers

As the month of June ends, the 2024-2025 Faculty Officers will step down and the 2025-2026 Faculty Officers will begin their roles on July 1st. We want to express our thanks to the outgoing officers for their service and representation of their colleagues in the wide-ranging matters that affect the university. We also want to highlight their continued service in new roles.

From left to right: Bill Staub, Parliamentarian; Melinda Doty, Secretary of the Faculty; Anne Ticknor, Chair of the Faculty; Mark Bowler, Vice Chair of the Faculty

Chair of the Faculty Anne Ticknor will begin her role as Immediate Past Chair. She will serve as an ex-officio member on the Faculty Senate, Committee on Committees, and Agenda Committee, and a regular member on the Faculty Governance Committee. She is also an Alternate member of ECU’s Faculty Assembly delegation and serves as Parliamentarian on the Faculty Assembly Executive Committee.

Vice Chair of the Faculty Mark Bowler was elected as Chair of the Faculty for the 2025-2026 academic year and will begin that role on July 1st.

Secretary of the Faculty Melinda Doty was elected as a Faculty Senator for the College of Engineering and Technology and will serve on the Distance Education and Learning Technology Committee, the Technology Acquisition Committee, and Agenda Committee.

Parliamentarian Bill Staub’s term on the Faculty Senate has ended, but he will serve as a regular member of the Faculty Governance Committee.

60 Years of Faculty Senate: historical records and cyclical issues

On occasion, a question is posed regarding the origin of or change to a policy, procedure, or requirement that merits delving into past committee and/or Faculty Senate meeting records. A cursory scan of our records from any given year reveals that many of the challenges and issues facing the university are recurrent. This is why our long history of shared governance is so valuable: it furnishes a history from which we can learn.

When a committee is assigned business by the Chair of the Faculty that is of this recurrent nature, they are provided with information about the surrounding context and recent history, which helps them focus their work and address the issues that remain or that have emerged from the last time the matter was a topic of discussion. The recommendations of past task forces and ad hoc committees are examined and considered anew. The record is mined for ideas that were not adopted or for warnings of paths to avoid as our faculty committees propose new and innovative solutions to old problems.

As we celebrate our 60th year, we celebrate our long memory, our resilience, and our enduring commitment to doing our part to preserve shared governance.

Reminders

Faculty Personnel Deadlines

Below are the deadlines for personnel actions that are coming up soon (see the full Faculty Manual Part X, Section II Schedule for Personnel Actions for more information):

• Workplan and Annual Evaluation Timeline – for 12-month faculty, the workplan and annual evaluation are due to the Dean on June 30 and to the Provost by July 15.
• Progress Toward Tenure Letters – for 12-month faculty, the progress toward tenure letter is sent to higher administration by June 30.

Faculty Volunteer Opportunities

Incoming Chair of the Faculty Bowler will be appointing faculty to committees, so if you are interested in serving on a committee, please reach out to him via email or to Rachel Baker (also via email).