Steering Minutes
April 25, 2019
302 Lowder Hall

Present:   Michael Baginski (Chair), Beverly Marshall (Secretary), Nedret Billor (Chair-Elect), Adrienne Wilson (Secretary-Elect), Dan Svyantek (Immediate-Past Chair), Emmett Winn (Associate Provost), Jung Won Hur, Robert (Bob) Norton, and Michael Tillson

Absent: Bill Hardgrave (Provost)

Chairman Baginski called the meeting to order at 3:30 pm. The committee was provided with an agenda via email prior to the meeting.

Agenda items:

• The minutes of the April 4, 2019 Steering Committee meeting were approved by unanimous consent.
• Beverly Marshall said Senate leadership need to follow up on progress toward a university-wide parental leave policy. Currently, Auburn has no official policy and so by default we follow FMLA. Federally, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides unpaid leave for qualifying employees. Some colleges and departments are doing more but the issue is that we have no unified policy. This continues to be a conversation that comes up including the October 2018 Gender and Higher Education event and the WISE luncheon on April 17, 2019. There are memos on this topic and a report from Faculty Salaries and Welfare dating back to 2014.  Beverly Marshall met with President Leath earlier in the day and mentioned parental leave concerns. She provided some of the research on policies at other universities. 
• Beverly Marshall updated Steering that she is requesting time estimates for each Senate and University from each of the committee chairs. She discussed providing this information to department heads so that they could better evaluate a faculty’s service contribution. Further discussion suggested that the importance of these committees be relayed to department heads, via the Deans. 
• As Faculty Athletics Representative, Beverly Marshall indicated she continues to see syllabi that are in clear violation of Auburn’s makeup policy. She plans to prepare a presentation to the Senate reminding faculty of the official policy. In correspondence to department heads, regarding Senate and University Committee service, we may also want to mention their responsibility to monitor their faculty’s syllabi for compliance with university policies.
• In addition to communicating with department heads regarding committee service and makeup policies, it seems appropriate to make sure department heads are familiar with concerns regarding the use of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) in faculty annual evaluations raised by the Committee on Teaching Effectiveness Committee’s report.
• Beverly Marshall indicated that there are only three possible agenda items for May Senate meeting. Gina Bailey, Contracts and Grants Accounting, will be available to provide an overview of the Grant Listing tool. Beverly Marshall would summarize the official makeup policy and ask Senators to reach out to faculty to make sure they are compliant. She also should have the remaining Senate committee volunteers for approval. 
• Beverly Marshall indicated since the handbook amendment failed to pass we would have both the June and August Senate meetings. Nedret Billor indicated that the August Senate meeting should have Senator Orientation as an agenda item.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:16 PM.
Prepared by:  Beverly B. Marshall, Secretary, AU Senate