Faculty Governance Updates, October 2012
ShareIt’s warmed my heart to have some of you stop me in the hallway and ask about the video portion of these messages. I’ve actually had some technical problems, the upshot of which means that I’ve endured the work of creating a video without the reward of sharing it. Rest assured that where I can do it without delaying important information, I’m committed to adding the video component.
2013 Benefits Enrollment
Insured employees – tomorrow, Friday, October 26, is the final day to confirm your health benefits for the upcoming year. Detailed instructions on this process should have come to your Outlook emails from Laurie Youngman under the subject line “2013 Employee Benefits Open Enrollment”. If you missed those, you can find links to the steps in The Grove.
Adjunct instructors, if you are a member of, or choose to join, the Association of Florida Colleges (AFC), you can access affordable health insurance through a partnership between the AFC, Legacy Insurance Solutions and Florida Blue – formerly Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Click here for more details.
Faculty Governance Positions
This has been an incredibly active month for faculty governance between the presentation of post-tenure review, the online discussion about hours of service to the college, and the survey we’re doing on the Student Assessment of Instruction. This is also the perfect time to get involved in faculty governance directly, or to convince friends who you think would do a good job in governance to give it a try. October, November, and December are the months your campus associations and senates typically replace outgoing representatives. Members of these campus groups make up the Faculty Council, and fill the roles of the association president and vice-president. You should hear this call come through your divisions, but you can also contact your associations and senates directly to let them know you are interested.
Seneff Faculty Development Program
Our faculty development area is offering courses targeted on the concept of teaching honors students. These include an overview of the concept of honors, best practices in honors education, and specific courses in research and project-based approaches.
This professional development is open to all faculty who are interested. One important note: how someone is assigned to teach an honors course is still worked out at the level of the dean and faculty in a discipline with honors coordinators and a director advising that process. Although it provides the dean additional information to consider when staffing, completing this professional development does not guarantee someone an honors class, nor is taking these courses required to teach a section of honors.
