Faculty Meeting

Faculty meeting
Body

The regular meeting for the faculty of the Department of Statistics was held in a hybrid format via Zoom and in Padelford Hall, room C-301 at 12:45 p.m., February 2, 2026. Abel Rodriguez, Department Chair, presided at the meeting. Kristine Chan was recording secretary.

 

New Business

  • Discussion of Statistics Certificate Proposal: The Chair shared a draft of the full proposal with the faculty to gather feedback. Faculty will have three weeks from this meeting to review and provide feedback about the proposal, after which another department meeting discussion and electronic vote will be conducted.
  • DICE name change proposal: The DICE Committee has proposed changing its name to the Statistics Outreach and Community Committee (SOCC) to better reflect the focus of its activities. An electronic vote will be distributed in the coming days to finalize the proposed change to the department bylaws.
  • Open Records requests – syllabi and faculty IP rights: There has been a recent increase in open records requests, particularly for syllabi, prompting discussion about how they are stored and shared. In addition, the department does not currently have an automated mechanism to enforce its record retention policy on syllabi or to ensure that syllabi comply with accessibility rules.  A proposed solution for all these issues simultaneously is to require all instructors to populate the syllabus page of the Canvas course site and make it public within the institution. Faculty raised technical questions that the Chair will consolidate and forward to UW-IT, and another discussion will continue later in Winter Quarter or early Spring Quarter.
  • Preview of Spring 2026 work: 
    • MS and PhD admission rubrics: As part of our mandated review of processes to ensure compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in federally funded programs, the faculty will need to review and update our admissions rubrics for our gradaute programs. This revamp ensures that the admissions process remains equitable, compliant with federal regulations, and reflective of our department’s values.
    • Review of faculty promotion and tenure guidelines: The Chair recommended faculty review the  document pertaining to the Provost’s charge for the upcoming internal review of promotion and tenure guidelines. 
    • Provost curricular refresh – PLOs: The Provost has asked departments to map undergraduate student learning outcomes onto course and degree program learning outcomes. In preparation for that, there is a possibility of running a workshop in collaboration with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) focused on writing Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs). A second on facilitated discussion on designing parallel courses might also be organized, if there is interest.

 

Adjournment

There being no other items to discuss, the meeting was later adjourned at 2:00 p.m.