July 2025 Faculty Senate Newsletter

Published Jul 28, 2025 by
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Welcome to Our New Faculty Officers

July 1st marked the official beginning of the term for the new faculty officers. We are excited as they begin their work and learn their roles. The 2025-2026 Faculty Officers are:

  • Chair of the Faculty: Mark Bowler, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology. Professor Bowler has been at ECU® since 2007 and is the program director for Occupational Health Psychology. He has served on several university academic and administrative committees and taskforces, including the Educational Policies and Planning Committee and the Fiscal Sustainability Coordinating Committee. He previously served as Vice Chair of the Faculty for three years and has also served as a Faculty Senator and one of ECU’s delegates for Faculty Assembly.
  • Vice Chair of the Faculty: Lisa Ellison, Senior Teaching Instructor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Professor Ellison has been at ECU since 2013 and is the program director for Interdisciplinary Programs within the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. She has served on the Writing Across the Curriculum Committee and on Faculty Governance Committee. She also served on the Professional Track Faculty policy workgroup for the UNC System and has served as a Faculty Senator for her unit.
  • Secretary of the Faculty: Donna Roberson, Professor, College of Nursing. Professor Roberson has been at ECU since 1995 and previously served as Secretary of the Faculty during the 2017-2018 academic year. She has served as a Faculty Senator, and has served on many committees, including most recently the Committee on Committees and the Appellate Committee.
  • Parliamentarian of the Faculty: Gabriel DiMartino, Associate Professor, School of Music. Professor DiMartino has been at ECU since 2016. He has served on several committees, including the Libraries Committee, the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, and the Academic Awards Committee. He has also served as a Faculty Senator for his unit and served on the Awards and Recognition policy workgroup for the UNC System.

60 Years of Faculty Senate: A history of advocating for faculty rights

When you consider the fact that the first Faculty Senate meeting at ECU (then East Carolina College, or ECC) occurred in March 1965, it may seem astonishing to come across the Letter from James E. Poindexter to Governor Dan K. Moore, 5 June 1965. The first Chair of the Faculty, James Poindexter, professor of English, sent a letter to Governor Dan K. Moore expressing “deep disappointment” over the General Assembly’s Speaker Ban Law. The Speaker Ban Law barred members of certain groups from speaking at public institutions in the UNC system. Mere months after being elected Chair of the Faculty, Poindexter’s letter raised the voice of the faculty of ECC to speak against the loss of freedom of speech and inquiry due to the law. From the very beginning, faculty officers at ECU used their role to advocate for faculty rights and to speak out against restrictions on those rights. With resolutions about a multitude of issues affecting faculty brought to the Senate floor for endorsement over the years, this is a tradition that continues to this day.

What’s New

Syllabus Updates are Required for Courses Previously Designated as Domestic Diversity, Global Diversity, and Service-Learning

Deans and chairs of units that offered Domestic Diversity, Global Diversity, or Service-Learning courses received a memo from Chair of the Faculty Bowler requesting their help in communicating with their faculty about the changes to those designations. Faculty teaching those courses will need to update their syllabuses to include the updated definitions, learning outcomes, and names of the designations. Domestic Diversity is now Domestic Learning, Global Diversity is now Global Learning, and Service-Learning is now Community Engaged Learning. Although no longer graduation requirements, these designations remain in the undergraduate catalog.

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):

  • Reappointment of Probationary-Term Faculty Members in 2nd Year of Employment with Credit for Prior Academic Service – 9-month faculty will meet with their unit administrator to verify that all required documents are in the PAD by the 4th Tuesday in August.
  • Post-Tenure Review Timeline – unit administrators will inform faculty of the post-tenure review deadline and Tenure Committee of the need to form a Peer Review Committee by the 3rd Monday in August.

Requirements for Accessible Course Materials

The Distance Education and Learning Technology Committee Report on Accessibility (PDF) presented during the March 2025 Faculty Senate meeting described requirements that ECU must meet by April 2026 concerning the accessibility of digital content (course materials, websites, and teaching tools). As noted in that report, there are many resources available to faculty to help them meet this requirement, like an Accessibility Workshop Series offered through the Office for Faculty Excellence or consultation services with staff in Learning Technologies. With these resources, faculty can begin getting their materials ready before the spring semester, to meet the April 2026 deadline.

Syllabus Requirements and Collection

As faculty prepare their for the upcoming semester, it is a good idea to remember that a syllabus is required to include the following information (Faculty Manual Part VI.I.V. Course Expectations and Requirements):

  • Office hour availability schedule
  • Instructor’s office location
  • Instructor’s office phone (if available)
  • Instructor’s email
  • Statement on continuity of instruction and contingency plan
  • Student Learning Outcomes
  • Academic integrity information
  • Accommodations for students with disabilities information
  • For courses with online proctoring: Technical requirements and information about data collected
  • Instructor policies on:
    • Textbooks and other required course materials
    • Assignments
    • Tests
    • Evaluation system and grading scale
    • Late work
    • Attendance

Below are some syllabi resources:

Unit administrators must have copies of syllabuses for all courses taught in the school or department.

Stop Using PDF Versions of the Faculty Manual

Faculty and administrators with PDF versions of the Faculty Manual should discard them and instead bookmark or link to the online Faculty Manual. The Faculty Manual is updated multiple times each year, and it is important to always consult the most recent version.

Comments on University Policy Items

Revisions to the Animals on University Property Regulation and the Administrative Separation and or Return to a Faculty Position Policy were posted for open commenting periods on July 29, 2025. The University Policy Manual site has a link on a sidebar that will allow you to submit a policy action and/or comment on a policy. That link does require you to login with your ECU credentials. If you would like to comment on a policy but do not wish to be identified, you may use the Faculty Senate Office’s contact form. You may identify yourself on that form if you do not mind being contacted with questions about your comments by the Chair of the Faculty, but you are not required to provide your identification. Either way, the Chair of the Faculty will submit the comment without identifying individual faculty.

Faculty Volunteer Opportunities

Incoming Chair of the Faculty Bowler is still 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).

Upcoming

Faculty Convocation is Friday, August 22, 2025 in Wright Auditorium, beginning at 9:00 AM. More information about the schedule will be sent closer to the date.

ADA Accommodation: 252-737-1018 or ada-coordinator@ecu.edu