January 2016 News Release

Faculty Advisory Council News Release -- January 2016

BYU Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) is working hard to represent the faculty’s ideas and concerns to the administration in order to help make our wonderful university even better. This News Release summarizes what the FAC has done on behalf of you, our faculty, in the 2014-2015 academic year. Please visit the FAC website to learn who represents your college on the FAC and what they are working on: https://fac.byu.edu/ .

Spring Holiday Added to BYU Academic Calendar, Beginning in 2017

Academic Vice President Brent Webb announced the addition of an annual class holiday to the academic calendar, beginning in 2017 on the third Friday in March.

“The new spring holiday was proposed by the Faculty Advisory [Council] because they recognized that a day off in the long stretch between President’s Day and the end of winter semester would benefit the students,” Webb said. “We are very grateful to the Faculty Advisory [Council] for this proposal and their initiative and collaboration.”

Summary of 2014-2015 FAC Proposals

Most of the proposals FAC made to the administration this past spring were fully supported by the administration, and we believe some important steps were taken. We summarize the 2014-2015 FAC proposals, together with the administration’s responses, below.

Transparency of the Process for Determining Annual Merit-based Salary Increases

Purpose: Enhance the transparency of the salary-determination process for merit-based annual faculty salary increases by allowing the faculty to know the university’s policies and procedures.

Planned Administrative Action: Post a document showing the university’s merit-based salary determination policies and process on the AAVP-Faculty website (http://avp.byu.edu/associate-avp-faculty/), the Faculty Center Department Chair/Administrator website), and include this document as part of the training for deans and chairs.

Guidelines for Determining Annual Merit-Based Salary Increases

Purpose: Establish clear procedures and metrics for determining merit-based salary increases and allow all faculty members to be informed of the performance metrics used by their department and college for merit-based salary determinations. Sharing department and college metrics, processes, and best practices will facilitate training of deans and chairs in the Annual Stewardship process, improve the transparency of the evaluation process, and improve faculty morale and buy-in to the Annual Stewardship process.

Planned Administrative Action: The Faculty Center will establish a clearinghouse for such documents that will allow department chairs and deans to share ideas that will enhance the process of determining merit-based salary recommendations.

Retirement Options for Surviving Spouses

Purpose: Faculty members have expressed concern with the rare but potentially devastating circumstance to a surviving spouse in which an employee of retirement age applies for retirement but dies before retirement is “official.” This circumstance results in a reduction in the payment of earned retirement benefits to the surviving spouse (join annuitant) to 50% of what would have been paid had the employee not died in service.

Planned Administrative Action: The university requested that DMBA investigate additional options to financially protect the surviving spouse should an employee of retirement age die before officially retiring, including the possibility of changing the surviving spouse benefit to 100% of the standard joint benefit. This investigation is being considered by DMBA. Also, work to have enhanced training for new faculty; help them understand role of life insurance—the primary protection for spouse and family prior to earliest eligible retirement age of 55.

FAC and Benefits Office Work Together to Help Faculty Understand Retirement Benefits

Purpose: Work in tandem with the Benefits Office to foster sufficient opportunities for faculty to learn about and understand their benefits in order to better facilitate the exchange of ideas between faculty and the Benefits Office and allow the FAC to play a role in objectively gathering data that could be useful to the Benefits Office in making or proposing policy, as well as communicating to the faculty.

Planned Administrative Action: A member of the Benefits Office was invited to act as a liaison to the FAC with a specific assignment on the Compensation and Benefits Committee. Also the Benefits Office will post online (e.g., training.byu.edu or byu.edu/hr) the PowerPoint slides used for their presentations or they may include recorded seminars or develop video(s) of these presentations.

Center for Teaching and Learning Advisement Council (CTLAC)

Purpose: There have been some notable cases where the development of projects within CTL has not matched the needs of instructional courses, especially large-enrollment General Education (GE) classes. Direct faculty input, in the form of a faculty advisement council, can help CTL set priorities for future projects, understand the needs of faculty and students, and make decisions on the overall direction of CTL projects and/or priorities.

Planned Administrative Action: The Academic Vice President (AVP) has created a CTL Advisement Council (CTLAC, hereafter referred to as “the council”) composed of one tenure-track faculty member from each academic college and the Harold B. Lee Library to work with and provide input to CTL administrators. The membership of the council includes one member of the FAC, appointed at the discretion of the FAC chairs. Members will serve for a term of 3 years and will be appointed by the dean of each college. The council will report to the AVP but will communicate and consult regularly with the FAC and its teaching subcommittee.

Department Expectation Documents for Advancement

Purpose: To help candidates feel less uncertainty with respect to how much and what types of activities are expected of them for successful advancement and to aid College and University R&S committees judge acceptable quantity and quality of activities within disciplines.

Planned Administrative Action: Require departments to create an expectations document for advancement. A department may wish to separate minimum promotion standards from goal aspirations. These are to be reviewed by the Dean and Associate Deans, and the College R&S Committee and then returned to the Department with suggestions. Once approved at the College level, the document will proceed to the University level for final approval by Academic VPs. R&S Committees have the right to make decisions that they feel are most appropriate, but the intent is that the existence of departmental documents will encourage decisions to be based primarily on whether the candidate has sufficiently met the requirements of the College- and University-approved department document.

Other FAC Initiatives and Accomplishments 2014-2015

Enhanced Faculty Moving Allowance. The FAC brought to the attention of the administration that faculty moving allowances for new hires had become insufficient to cover reasonable moving expenses in many instances, and provided data to substantiate the point. The administration responded by significantly increasing moving allowances for new faculty.

Request for Review of Decision to Close Campus Drive. In November the FAC communicated faculty concerns relating to the then pending closure of North Campus Drive. In addition to concerns about possible danger to pedestrians crossing streets immediately south of campus, the FAC also expressed reservations about increased difficulty of ingress and egress to campus. While the closure proceeded as planned, a careful and thoughtful response, including traffic engineering data, was delivered to and reviewed by the FAC in January by Vice-President Webb.

CAPS Syllabus Information and Magnets. BYU’s office of Counseling and Psychological Services offers a variety of supportive services to help manage stress, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, interpersonal conflict, marital problems, self-esteem, social relationships, and other emotional challenges. Counseling is available and free of cost for full-time students. The FAC worked with the administration and CAPS to develop an informative “blurb” to be used in syllabi and the creation of magnets to be placed in faculty members’ offices, giving information on how to handle and refer student crises. If you have not received a magnet, talk to your department chair or dean!

Title IX Recommendations. The FAC provided in-depth feedback on BYU's Title IX policy, to be considered when the policy is next revised.

Research Tab Update. Last year the FAC proposed a Research tab be placed on the University Home Page that links to a page acknowledging the extensive and substantive contributions of BYU faculty research. Currently, we are in discussion with ORCA regarding the research tab and the best means of populating it. This tab has already received tens of thousands of “hits.”

Assisting with Issue of Failure to Advance in Rank to Full Professor. We interviewed multiple faculty members regarding the reasons for failure to advance in rank from associate to full professor. We are currently working with the administration to develop and weigh possible ways to support faculty members in moving forward to advance in rank. The administration is very supportive of these efforts.

Creation of FAC Handbook. Faculty newly-elected to FAC often do not understand the role of the FAC or the scope of their responsibilities. To facilitate their transition, we prepared a handbook that explains their role and responsibilities and provides a copy of the by-laws, a proposal template, and the submission timeline for future proposals. The handbook was delivered to all FAC members this past fall semester and will be given to incoming FAC committee members in the future.

FAC Updates. Faculty often do not know the status of FAC issues and proposals, so we designated communications representatives from among FAC members to provide colleges and schools with regular updates. We prepared short announcements of FAC successes and requests in fall and winter semesters for the communications reps to share with their peers.

FAC Website. The FAC website was out-of-date and unmanageable, but has now been re-created to help faculty understand the role of FAC and to share our successes in addressing faculty concerns. Website address: fac.byu.edu

Other FAC Actions

FAC established a draft of long-term goals, some of which will be added to the FAC Bylaws to guide the aspirations and tenor of FAC initiatives going forward.
FAC reviewed and provided feedback on newly revised faculty termination guidelines as requested by Brent Webb. In the FAC’s view, these revisions add faculty protections in the process.
FAC is working to recommend ways to enhance the safety of pedestrian crossings at critical places on campus.
FAC is working to create a new open-ended survey to solicit ideas from the faculty at large on how we can best take steps to improve the university and further the faculty’s interests while also protecting and furthering the interests of all stakeholders.

Be sure to check the website for current information. We will be adding the topics being researched by each committee for submission to the administration.

We are also interested in “reports” of successful faculty experiences in teaching, mentoring, research, etc. Please consider sending brief “stories” of experiences of your own or fellow faculty! Let your college FAC reps know how we can serve you better as “the voice of the faculty to the administration.”