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July 2026 Faculty Senate Newsletter

Published Jul 20, 2026 by
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What’s New

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 2026-2027 Faculty Officers are:

  • Chair of the Faculty: Donna Roberson, Professor, College of Nursing.
  • Vice Chair of the Faculty: Lisa Ellison, Senior Teaching Instructor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
  • Secretary of the Faculty: Charity Cayton, Associate Professor, College of Education
  • Parliamentarian of the Faculty: Ryan Martin, Professor, Department of Health Education and Promotion

Featured

Call for Volunteers: Appellate Committee

The Appellate Committee needs 9 more members to complete their roster for the 2026-2027 academic year. The number of vacancies is due in part to the recent increase in the number of seats on the committee from 30 to 35. All full-time voting faculty holding no administrative title are eligible to volunteer to serve on the Appellate Committee.

The Appellate Committee serves as a pool from which hearing panels (of 6 members) are formed during faculty appellate processes. Appellate chairs select panelists for hearings by using a random lottery assignment to determine the order in which members will be asked to serve, as well as automatically recusing members in the same unit as the parties involved in an appeal. Members serve on no more than one panel in a year and hearings are completed within one business day (with very few exceptions).

If you are interested in volunteering to serve on the Appellate Committee, please contact Rachel Baker (bakerr@ecu.edu). She will send the names of faculty volunteers to Committee on Committees for consideration. Appellate Committee members cannot be appointed by the Chair of the Faculty and must instead be nominated by the Committee on Committees and elected at a Faculty Senate meeting.

Reminders

Comments on University Policy Items

Three policies, rules, and regulations (PRRs) have been circulated for open comment. The Faculty Officers consider the PRRs that are opened for comment and decide whether they should be assigned to committees for review. They agreed that none of the below PRRs require assignment to a committee for comment:

Faculty are encouraged to submit their own feedback on the items through the system, but they will be required to sign in using their ECU credentials. If faculty wish for their feedback to be anonymous, they may send their feedback to Dr. Donna Roberson, Chair of the Faculty, and she will submit it on their behalf, or they may submit an anonymous comment to the Faculty Senate Contact Form.

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 – for 9-month faculty, the faculty member meets with the unit administrator to verify that all required documents are in PAD (optional but recommended) by the 4th Tuesday in August (August 25).
  • Post-Tenure Review – for both 9-month and 12-month faculty, the unit administrator informs faculty of the post-tenure review deadline and the Tenure Committee of the need to form Peer Review Committee by the 3rd Monday in August (August 17).

Upcoming

Faculty Convocation is Friday, August 14, 2026 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