Minutes Meeting - February 15, 2006

Call to order by President Rogers at 3:35 p.m. Quorum declared.
Minutes of the January meeting were approved as written.
Election Committee

An election committee is needed to organize the election of Members-At-Large as well as the election of Faculty Senate Officers. The election for the Members-At-Large is scheduled to take place in March. The election for Faculty Senate officers takes place at the end of the semester. Members of this election committee must be current Faculty Senators.

The following three people will constitute the elect committee: Susan Dooley, Janice Close, and Lucia Dzikowski.

Adjunct Representation

Several adjunct faculty members have expressed an interest in becoming representatives on Faculty Senate. One person volunteered from the Adult High School and one from Career Programs. There were nine volunteers from Arts and Sciences. These nine will decide amongst themselves who will be the representative from that area.

Meeting moved to V-003 to accommodate the number of guests in attendance.

Report from Faculty Compensation Group

Lane Vosbury presented an update from this group. The issue of critical jobs has not been resolved. It is hoped that as salaries for all faculty increase, there will be no need for incentives for those areas considered "critical."

The previously proposed increases of $1,200, $1,300, and $1,400 are still scheduled to be implemented. Our funding appears to be average among the 28 Florida community colleges.

The salary increases for the last two years have been set up to favor those at the bottom of the salary schedule. The recommendation from the group is for this practice to continue next year. However, the group feels that this practice should NOT continue after next year.

Currently, the proposal for next year is for a 3 percent raise for Level 16 that would be added to each level. This percentage increase would allow us to keep pace with the other colleges in the state. The two proposals (3 percent plus $1200) would move our faculty salaries to 14th place among the 28 Florida community colleges.

The special $500 one-time faculty salary bonus was mailed today.

It was agreed that all future salary changes will be effective on the first day of the new contract, rather than in October.

VP Carol Hawkins revealed that some data indicates that the percentage of the Seminole State budget allocated for compensation is high compared to the rest of the state. In fact, Seminole State is fourth in the state for percentage spent on 'instructional compensation.' She is attempting to discern this apparent contradiction. Possible causes of this include our three term vs. two and one-half term vs. two term contracts, our average class size and our faculty loads. She stated that the Board of Trustees is backing an increase in faculty salaries and want to see a plan for funding these increases. Ms. Hawkins is looking at all expenditures at the College to determine if our costs are significantly different from the other Florida Community Colleges.

Lane suggested that our full-time/part-time faculty ratios are lower that other colleges. The group will also be looking at class size and contract length of the other schools.

Recommendation: Faculty Senate requests that Human Resources make available the complete compensation packages of all members of the Executive Staff for the last 10 years.

Meeting adjourned at 5:10 p.m.

Member in attendance: Angela Aiken-McDonald, Linda Berlin, Patricia Cason, Janice Close, Rafael Davila, Mary Dettman, Frank DiGiacomo, Susan Dooley, Lucia Dzikowski, Barbara Entwistle, Mayra Eschbach, Greg Garrison, Dan Gilmartin, Jonathan Green, Barbara Hunnicutt, Sue Kellicut, Alan Kraft, Debbie Mead, Jenny Middleton, Naomi Rivera, Jeri Rogers, Karen Schwitters, Jay Spalding, Laurel Stevenson, Pat Tanzi, Ben Taylor, Debbie Warfield.

There were 22 guests in attendance.

Contact

E. Julie Edstrom
President, Faculty Senate

407.404.6193