Tuesday’s SGA meeting was brief and concise, with no new or old business discussed.
Most of the meeting was spent on open forum, where Craig Wassinger, Jamie Mcgill and Jane Broderick attended to present and discuss some of the recommendations of their teaching work group before the final draft was submitted.
Although there were 10 recommendations in all, one of the most notable includes the suggestion to revise ETSU’s current mission statement to affirm the value and centrality of teaching, because teaching is not currently mentioned in the mission statement at all.
“I think that’s really a problem,” said senator Tessa Branham. “We should probably, really see if we can add that in there officially, because I feel like that’s what we’re here for, to teach students.”
Another popular suggestion was in regards to SAIs, and what could be done to improve both the quality and quantity of responses, in order to help professors improve their performance. Ideas ranged from taking the evaluations in class and making them mandatory, to reducing redundancy in the questions asked.
Some other recommendations included creating university-wide resources to support peer-reviewed teaching, establishing a center dedicated to improving and supporting teaching, and adopting staffing, workload and pay practices that support excellence in teaching.
“Almost every professor I’ve had for the last three years has been involved in some sort of research,” said President Pro Tempore Connor Landers. “I’ve had a lot of adjunct professors that come in, and they don’t make a whole lot, but you can tell that they love what they do. But a lot of times, it seems like the teaching is a byproduct of what some of them are doing in their research.”
In addition, Secretary Emily Marmon’s financial report officially stated that there $50,218 left in BUC fund for the rest of the year.
The remainder of the meeting was spent on remarks, with the mention of going to Health Heroes, the upcoming ETSU Votes faculty panel, the Culp renovations and the diversity meeting being held on October 26.
