MINUTES OF THE FACULTY MEETING -- OCTOBER 6, 2005

ATTENDEES: D. Borovsky, D. Boucias, M. Branham, E. Buss, J. Capinera, P. Choate, B. Crow, J. Cuda, T. Fasulo, J. Foltz, P. Goldstein, D. Hahn, D. Hall, G. Hall, A. Hodges, M. Hoy, P. Kaufman, P. Lawrence, N. Leppla, O. Liburd, J. Maruniak, H. McAuslane, F. Oi, M. Scharf, J. Stimac, C. Tarjan, S. Yu, and M. Litchfield. REC stations that joined by PolyCom were Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Pierce, and Gulf Coast.

Meeting convened at 10:35

Announcements:

There are four candidates for the Director of International Programs. One of these is Keith Andrews who was a faculty member here in the department at one time. Keith will be here in the department on Monday from 1:00-2:00 if any of the faculty would like to meet with him.

Jennifer Gillett and Amanda Hodges have assumed the responsibility of the Awards committee. If you would like to volunteer for this committee please see one of them. This committee will handle any and all awards for individuals from the department, local, national, or international. If you have someone you would like to nominate for an award please notify either Jennifer or Amanda.

The new provost will meet with the faculty on November 3, and the Dean for Research and the Dean for Teaching will meet with the faculty at the December 1 faculty meeting.

On December 12 there will be a Grant Training Program and all faculty are encouraged to attend. There will be a second training program later with hands-on experience but you must attend the first session in order to be eligible to attend the second one. There are still slots available so if you can attend please sign up. There will be another training session in the spring. These training programs are for faculty and postdocs to increase the ability to write grants and obtain funds.

There will be new training for the UNIFAS (Faculty Accountability System) and faculty will be notified when this becomes available. Billy Crow attended the test training session and he commented that there had been a lot of changes and the system was working more efficiently than in the past. He encouraged the entire faculty to attend a training session before attempting to input any information in UNIFAS system. These sessions are hands-on and could be held here in the building if there are enough faculty interested. You can go to the PDC website, then to UNIFAS and look at the program now but anything you put in will not stay in the system. If you have questions you need to list them and bring them to the session you attend.

A listing of duties to be reassigned in the Administrative Office was passed out. Since Myrna is retiring this seemed a good opportunity to reassign a few of the duties and take some of the pressure off the Business Office. Below is a listing of some of the duties that Myrna handled that will be assigned to Debbie, Pam or Nancy.

Pam Howell will handle:
1. The Space Allocation Report.
2. Assist faculty with the preparation and submission of Promotion and Tenure packets.

Nancy Sanders will handle:
1. Scheduling of the conference rooms and teaching labs.
2. Keep track of the Departmental parking decals.
3. Allocation of space in the Florida reach-in units, greenhouses/shadehouses, pesticide storage unit, and cages in storage room.
4. Inventory and assignment of keys.
5. Prepare annual inventory of expendable equipment/supplies report.

Debbie Hall will handle:
1. The appointments of courtesy/affiliate faculty and graduate faculty.

Chris Pickles will take over Myrna's position and handle:
1. Maintain all personnel files for faculty, staff, OPS, Post Docs, and graduate Assistants.
2. Handle all aspects of personnel appointments (faculty, USPS/TEAMS, OPS, Post Docs, and Graduate Assistants).
3. Provide assistance to the faculty in writing position descriptions for USPS/TEAMS positions, post vacant positions and assist faulty in interview process.
4. Handle Visa applications for short-term scholars, Post Docs, and international staff.
5. Assist faculty with any personnel issues or actions for their USPS/TEAMS and OPS employees.
6. Assist faculty with annual evaluations of all USPS/TEAMS employees and ensure that evaluations are submitted to Central Personnel on time.
7. Assist faculty with their annual UNIFAS report.
8. Assist Department Chair with the annual faculty evaluations (scheduling interviews and completing and submitting evaluation forms).
9. Projection of payroll and initial distribution.
10. Act as liaison between the department and IFAS Personnel.
11. Supervision of Administrative Personnel (Glinda, Nancy, Pam, and Mike) and responsible for effective office management to insure efficient and expedient flow of paperwork.
12. Handle approval of Medical Attention and submission of Injury Reports to ensure accurate and timely reporting relevant to Worker's Compensation requirements.
13. Interpret and implement rules and regulations pertaining to personnel.
14. Distribute payroll checks to faculty, staff, and students.

Another full-time employee will be hired in the Business Office to handle travel and help faculty with grants. The faculty, staff, and students will have one person to contact if they are having trouble getting their paycheck in a timely manner. Chris should be able to let you know why you did not get paid and get the problem solved.

Capinera will be informing the centers that from now on they should be processing the paperwork for their graduate assistants since only the centers can access their accounts in PeopleSoft. If the Centers do not have access to student records they need to contact Sharon to find out how to fix this problem. The centers should keep the Graduate Coordinator, Don Hall, in the loop by informing him whenever the paperwork has been processed for graduate assistants.

A discussion followed concerning the problems that have been encountered with PeopleSoft in getting the graduate assistants' appointments through the system. Marjorie Hoy announced that the academic committee and the provost are working on fixing the problem. The student records system that was to roll over into PeopleSoft this semester has been put on hold until these problems have been resolved. It was suggested that if you have questions concerning this problem that you present them to the provost when she comes in November.

The faculty should have received the first in-house report from Sharon. You need to check it over carefully and report any problems. A discussion followed concerning the grants and the fact that the Grants office was not billing the agencies thus causing funds to not be released. When PeopleSoft was introduced, it had no way of billing the agencies and a complete new program had to be written to accommodate this aspect of the billing cycle.

Capinera announced that in order to create a stronger link and more interaction with the McGuire Center a joint faculty position is being created that will be linked directly between the department and the center. The incumbent will have an office here in the department but will perform research at the McGuire Center. This position will be a Lepidoptera/Insect Conservation Assistant Professor position with 20% teaching, 60% research and 20% extension. It will be funded by the Museum of Natural History, IFAS and the incumbent will be expected to provide funds for a portion of his salary. The incumbent will be required to create and teach a course in conservation biology and be involved in the ecotourism program. This will be an in-house search since the McGuire Center and the Museum of Natural History have a candidate in mind, Jaret Daniels. The search committee will look at all the candidates and decide which is best suited for the position. Discussion followed with the pros and cons of having an in-house search opposed to a national search. Capinera called for a vote on whether or not we should go forward with this position. The vote was 20 for and 4 against. A search committee will be appointed comprised of faculty from the McGuire Center and the department.

Dr. Lambert Kanga who has requested to be appointed as an Affiliate faculty and to the Graduate faculty was discussed. The faculty voted and it was unanimous.

The candidates for promotion and tenure were discussed. These are: William (Billy) T. Crow, promotion to Associate Professor with tenure; William (Bill) Kern, promotion to Associate Professor with tenure; Roxanne Rutledge, promotion to Associate Professor with tenure; and Gregg Nuessly, promotion to Full Professor. Faculty were reminded to turn in their votes by noon tomorrow, Friday, October 7.

Meeting adjourned at 12:15