Service on University-level Committees

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to become increasingly active at the university level. I am in my sixth year on the JMU Faculty Senate, and my fifth year as the Chair of the Academic Policies Committee (APC) and on the Senate Steering Committee. As a result of having served in those roles for so long, I feel I've been able to use my talents to make a significant impact on JMU as a whole. I'll be more specific below.

JMU Faculty Senate Steering Committee and APC

Since the fall of 2012, I have been a member of the JMU Faculty Senate as the ISAT Department's representative. Since May 2013, I have been the chair of the Academic Policies Committee (APC) and hence, a member of the Senate Steering Committee. I have become increasingly involved in faculty governance, i.e. the collaboration of the academic faculty with the JMU administration to help make important decisions about the operation and future direction of JMU. Here are some of my activities and accomplishments.

Gathering Faculty Opinions

In my role as APC Chair, a number of times I've been in charge of getting feedback from the entire JMU faculty and summarizing it to facilitate some decision that needed to be made by university administration. As a result of the successes I've had, I believe the JMU administration is more likely to consult faculty in the future, and more positively disposed toward including faculty in JMU's governance. I've been able to manage this process in a way that keeps to a minimum people from being brash and rude, and maximizes useful feedback. Here are some of those times.

Online Course Evaluations

During the 2013-2014 academic year, the administration was gearing up to roll out a university-wide implementation of online course evaluation. They had spent several years studying the topic, reviewing questions, selecting software, and running pilot studies. (See my "other service" section below for my involvement on some of those other committees.) Now that the change was looming, it was my job to collect feedback from all over JMU. As a result of the feedback I collected and summarized, the administration decided to back down and relax the timeline for implementation. They also backed down on the idea of having university-wide questions which faculty widely distrusted.

New Exam Schedule/Pre-Exam Reading Period

After his year-long listening tour, President Alger decided to re-institute a university-wide graduation ceremony. By this time, however, people had become fond of their college-only graduation ceremonies. To accommodate both, starting in May 2014, spring graduation had to be separated into two days. This forced the registrar to shorten the spring semester by one day and start exams on the Friday before exam week in the spring. The APC was tasked with collecting and summarizing the thoughts and feelings of faculty across JMU with respect to the new schedule, and the possibility of adding a "reading day" in spring and possibly in fall, as well. We also did a multi-university study, and also analyzed grades of students who took Saturday finals versus Wednesday finals. We discovered that although there was a loud minority, the faculty as a whole didn't really support adding a formal reading day, nor did a comparison with other universities. As a result, the administration halted plans to further disrupt the academic calendar because of perceived dissatisfaction from faculty.

Other Changes to the Academic Calendar

In 2016-2017, a year-long study was done to answer questions like:

  • Can and should we have "reading days" before exams in fall and spring?
  • Can and should we observe Labor Day?
  • Should we find a way to re-institute a fall break?
  • Can we have a 3-week winter term every year and start spring semester later?
  • Would adding 5 minutes to every class section in order to shorten the number of days of the semester be a good/popular idea?
  • How would making any/all of the above changes impact academics/student life/revenue/faculty work load and salaries/facilities management/financial aid, etc?

As APC chair, it was my role to gather feedback about ALL of these questions and more from the entire JMU faculty. I led the committee in designing and implementing a questionnaire in Qualtrics. I was then successful in getting an over 80% response rate from the university faculty. All of this information was compiled, analyzed, reported back to faculty and to the administration. They have yet to make any decisions about if and/or how to change the academic calendar, but as a result of my efforts, the faculty will definitely be consulted again.

Exploring More Radical Change at JMU

Another impact I think I've been able to have, is in exploring ideas for more radical change at JMU. The administration tends to be cautious and relatively conservative in their approach to change. I have been able to broach and discuss ideas for broad new changes in a way that is controlled and non-threatening. As a result, the administration, while not expressing eagerness for change, has not actively or openly blocked it, and has even been supportive. Here are two examples of what I mean.

A Micro-Course Proposal

Between 2013 and 2015, I introduced an idea that Dr. Radziwill and I had come up with to allow faculty to offer courses for as little as 1/2, 1/3, or even 1/4 of one credit hour. There was a lot of discussion, and back and forth. We had to consult the registrar, business office, and financial aid. In the end though, we were able to get the administration to give approval to our proposal for a limited pilot of 1/2 credit micro-courses. Because Dr. Benson was leaving, and we wanted to wait until a new provost was hired, the pilot study has not been scheduled yet.

Changing JMU's Grading Scheme

This year (2017-2018) the Vice Provost for Academic Development, Dr. Marilou Johnson and JMU Registrar Michele White have agreed to participate in exploring the idea of changing JMU's grading scheme from ABCDF to ABC-No-credit, which is a scheme used at schools like Brown and WPI. Part of the goal is to foster a university-wide discussion into how the way we grade has an impact on students' motivation and engagement. Since JMU aims to be the "national model of the engaged university," they have been open to having some conversations about some more radical proposals. I think my past track record as being able to lead reasonable and calm discussions has earned us the right to explore some potentially controversial topics.

Faculty Senate Service Summary

Part of my transition from Assistant to Full Professor at JMU has been about how to maintain an innovative approach to my teaching and scholarship. It has been about developing courage and risk-tolerance, but at the same time developing a way to communicate and plan to adopt new, possibly scary, ideas in a way that is controlled and non-threatening. As APC chair, I've had the opportunity to practice this at the university level. Having the opportunity to influence the direction of the whole university without having to become an administrator has been a really satisfying experience for me. I hope to continue in this role for at least a couple more years.

Other University-Level Service

  • Qualtrics Replacement RFP, 2018-2019: Our contract with Qualtrics is set to expire soon. I have been asked to help JMU decide whether or not to replace it, and if so, what to replace it with.
  • Provost Search, 2016-2017: In my capacity on the Faculty Senate Steering Committee, I met all of the provost candidates, ate with them, and watched their presentations. I delivered written feedback. I had the most favorable opinion of Dr. Heather Coltman, whom we ended up hiring.
  • President's Academic Calendar Committee, 2016-2017: Led by Donna Harper, JMU's Vice President for Access and Enrollment Management, this was a team with representatives from all divisions of JMU. I represented faculty via the Faculty Senate. Our task was to devise, consider, and make recommendations regarding JMU's Academic Calendar. The immediate need was to come better into compliance with federal financial aid regulations, but it became an opportunity to take a holistic look at overhauling the schedule. I ran a data-gathering effort that ended up receiving feedback from 80% of JMU faculty, and I wrote and delivered a summary report on that. A decision on changing the calendar is still pending.
  • JMU Fueled Steering Committee, 2015-present: See my description of Fueled here.
  • JMU SET Steering Committee, 2012-2014: This was in the year following the Provost's SET Task Force (see below). In year 1, we helped select the software that JMU eventually bought: Blue. In year 2, I was asked to serve on the follow-on committee charged with overseeing the rollout of online course evaluations across JMU. I helped write the guidance to faculty on how to administer and improve response rates.
  • Initial 4VA Consortium Task Force, 2012: This was the original committee when 4VA was in its infancy. Although I didn't remain on the committee, I have stayed involved in 4VA activities and have been an extensive user of the JMU XLabs which were built with 4VA funding.
  • Sarah Cheverton's LMS Task Force, 2011-2012: Sarah Cheverton was then the head of CIT. Our contract with Blackboard was expiring and the cost of an upgrade was prohibitive. JMU evaluated a broad range of learning management systems (LMS), including open-source options such as Moodle and Canvas. Although I was not the person who discovered Canvas, I did offer a strong recommendation to the committee that we adopt it over the other options. This has had a big hand in shaping interactions between students and faculty in important ways over the years.
  • Provost's Task Force on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET), 2011-2012: This group of about 20 faculty from across JMU made a thorough study of all of the various SET instruments used around JMU, and made recommendations about the direction JMU should go. I was the primary author of the report produced by my subcommittee, and this has been used in ISAT in our current SET instrument development efforts.
  • Provost's Madison Institute on Academic Rigor, 2012: I was one of 34 faculty from across JMU to participate in this 2-day workshop that resulted in a number of specific recommendations for enhancing the level of appropriate challenge that our students encounter.
  • CFI TAP Consultant, 2007-2013: This actually was a role that was particularly influential in helping me hone my own pedagogy, and also allowed me to have an impact on the pedagogy of colleagues from across JMU.
  • Asian Studies Minor Committee, 2008-2014
  • JMU Web Strategy Consulting with JMU PR Office, 2009-2010
  • JMU Debate Competition Judge, 2010
  • Faculty Advisor to the Japan Club, 2009-present
  • QEP Whitepaper Team, 2011
  • Online Course Evaluation Software Evaluation, 2010
  • Preface/Conversations with Faculty, 2009, 2010, 2011

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