Faculty Meeting

The regular meeting of the faculty of the Department of Statistics was held on Zoom at 12:30pm, February 6, 2023. Abel Rodriguez, Department Chair, presided at the meeting. Kristine Chan was recording secretary. 

Announcements 

Husky Giving Week: This event will be coming in April 2023.  Our Director of Finances & Operations, Vickie Graybeal, is taking the lead on organizing the departmental participation. One of the first steps is to identify “champions”, so to faculty, please look out for an email from Vickie. We will be spotlighting two funds – (1) Friends of Statistics and (2) Graduate Student Dissertation Fund. Contributions to Friends of Statistics, which are down by more than 50% since the pandemic started, are especially important given that many of our department functions rely on this fund. 

New Business 

Including Names of TA in Time Schedule: The Chair discussed going back to the previous practice of including the names of TAs in classes without quiz/lab sections in the time schedule in order to reduce staff workload. Faculty brought up their concerns about grade submissions and whether these TAs should get evaluations in the first place. 

Regarding concerns about grade submissions and grade changes, the Chair explained that there is a safety net in place. Both Ellen Reynolds and Mee-Ling Hon get notified of any grade changes and know to check on the identity of the individuals who submit them. There is also the option of requesting an audit of all grade changes submitted during a prespecified period. Another solution would be to remove the names of the TAs at the end of the quarter. However, this option can become burdensome to implement for all courses. 

As for the course evaluations of TAs with non-instructional roles, the key issues raised were: (1) some faculty feel that TAs that do not interact with students should not receive individual student evaluations, and (2) evaluations for the lead instructor of such classes should not be accessible to the TAs.  The Chair will discuss the issue with Kristine Chan, Mee-Ling Hon, and Kris Shaw and report a solution via faculty mailing list. 

Evaluating independent study/thesis courses (STAT 600, STAT 700, STAT 800): The Chair posed questions to the faculty about how our department can evaluate STAT 600, 700, and 800, on how that evaluation interacts with any assessment of their job performance if they also are employed as Research Assistants with the faculty member overseeing the independent study / research courses. His suggestion was to have an ad-hoc committee to settle on a policy for evaluating these courses.  The discussion will continue at a future meeting, and no decision was taken. 

Executive Session 

Updates on faculty search: The Chair provided updates on the status of the ongoing Tenure-Track Assistant Professor search and discussed the process for the upcoming Acting Assistant Professor search. 

Faculty appointments and reappointments: Faculty present discussed the new appointments and reappointments of affiliate and adjunct faculty. 

Adjournment 

There being no other items to discuss, the meeting transitioned to an executive session at 1:13pm, and was later adjourned at 2:00pm.