Penn State Mont Alto Faculty Senate minutes, March 23, 2016

Penn State Mont Alto Faculty Senate minutes, March 23, 2016

Meeting began at 2:02 pm. Chairman Somjit Barat opened with an update on campus theme vote. All faculty were encouraged to submit their opinion before the voting deadline.

Linda Monn then discussed an update on several aspects of LionPath. First of all, wait lists are no more. The new term is “watch lists”. Students can put a class on a watch list and the system will schedule the class when a seat opens up in the desired class. A question was asked about the sequence of events: when a class is on a list, will it be added automatically? Can students take a class off the list if they change their mind? Can a class be dropped that was automatically added? The answer may be found in the variety of options available when setting up the watch list. One word of advice is that students be sure that web sections have not been selected.

Next, class lists are now called “class rosters”. The fall lists will not be available to faculty until June. Since Linda and Deana have access now, you can request a list from them if you need it before June.

Faculty should look for a future message from Linda about course controls. The site Pulic.lionpath.psu.edu was shown on the screen and the steps involved in conducting a search. One key piece of advice is for multiple searches, use modify search instead of selecting new search each time in order to save time in repeatedly selecting the options. Also, you should uncheck the box to show open classes only. A few other simple searches were shows, such as how to look for available general education classes.

One of the next areas that Linda will work on are room assignments. Watch for a message from Linda on when to check on these. There is a chance that some glitches could pop up; such as over-enrolled classes and double-booked rooms.

For advisors, if you have a student with hold issues in LionPath; make sure they have taken care of the “To Dos” in ordere to get rid of the hold message. Access showed be allowed once these are completed.

Finally, Spring 2017 classes will go live July 18. Directors will have to provide all information before summer break. Everyone can check the recent helpful e-mail from Lauraine for assistance.

 

Mike Doncheski then spoke about volunteers for Faculty Scholar Award. Peter Dendle will call for self-nominations and faculty can submit the scholarly part of FAR.

A second topic addressed was the ENTI minor, which has one course online with a limited number of seats. Students interested in the class should let Mike know ASAP.

 

Dr. Francis Achampong then delivered a bit of good news regarding the ongoing issues with the state budget. In the spending plan presented last week, the appropriation proposal was not vetoed by Governor Wolf. That does not mean that everything is fine and will go back to normal, but it is an encouraging development.

The deadline to submit 4% of funds back to University Park was the day of the meeting. Mont Alto sent $294,000, which included $155,000 earmarked for a campus beautification project. A question was asked about the nature of the project put on hold, which involved the PT lab in the Sci-Tech building.

Plans are still in place for a 5% cut in permanent budget for 2016-17. There will be a wait-and-see approach for now before going forward with any plans on dealing with Mont Alto’s operating deficit for 2016-17.

Robin Yaure then addressed travel grant. Reimbursements are still on indefinite hold despite the recent budget development. Funding for anything other than licensing and tenure track (something for your job) will not be available. Also, the teaching support fund is completely spent for the current budget year.

Committee chairs were then given an opportunity to speak, but there were no updates.

Kate Chronister then gave an update on Starfish. EPRs are now called “Raising Flags”. Faculty can mark flags for positive performance as well as warning flags.

Advising notes were discussed, which is not something that can be done in LionPath. Hence, the need for Starfish. Do not add advising notes into eLion after May 9. NSO advisors will be the first to learn this feature in Starfish due to their work over the summer. Other faculty members who use the feature should get training from the DUS office before the first official training in the fall.

A question was asked about older notes getting transferred to the new system. At this point, it’s assumed this will happen. But no one is sure how it’s going to look.

Starfish trainees were promised that the system will have more functionality. What that means is not known since no details have made available at this time. There is a question about some of the new functionality being compatible with the current email usage. It appears that in order to use the new functions, faculty will have to be able to uses the calendar in the Starfish system. IT will need to be consulted about the issue.

One of the basic guiding forces of Starfish is the roles and relationships of the user. Users will be granted roles in the system. Roles dictate access and what information can be seen. Instructors will be asked to set up a profile that includes contact information. Student ID photos eventually will be viewable. Additional roles will be added in the future. Lastly, The Phase 2 roll out is planned for 2017, which will connect to Canvas. It is not yet known how access to Starfish will be handled.

The meeting concluded at 2:53 p.m.

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