LFA Exec - General Assembly - Minutes - November 12, 2024

LFA Fall General Assembly Minutes 
November 12, 2024 

3:40-4:30 pm

Present[BJ1] [2] :  Jon Giullian, Brian Moss, Rebecca Schroeder, Kodjo Atiso, Marianne Reed, Carol Smith, Brooke Harris, Angela Andres, Milton Galvez, Cecilia Zhang, Adrienne Sanders, Jill Becker, Erin Wolf, Brian Rosenblum, Jamie Brook-Kiefer, Gwen Geiger-Wolf, Andi Back, Scott McEathron, Michael Peper, Scott Hanrath, Josh Bolick, Mary Roach 

Absent: 

  1. The meeting was called to order at 3:40 pm.
  2. Welcomed new member, John McEwan, Digital Humanities Librarian
  3. Minutes from the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 general meetings were approved 
  4. LFA committee reports
    1. The Libraries Committee on Promotion and Tenure (LCPT) met once. There were no P&T files to be considered this fiscal year. The committee will be meeting in early January to begin evaluating six PTTR files.
    2. The Sabbatical Leave and Post Tenure Review Committee reviewed two Sabbatical Leave applications and forwarded them to the Dean for consideration. The committee recommended moving up the deadline for applications in future years in order to have more time to review applications.
  5. LFA Executive Committee Priorities for FY 2024-2025  
    1. LFA Exec will review the Mentoring Guidelines during FY 2025-2024. 
    2. LFA Exec is in the process of forming an Ad hoc Committee for the Review of Promotion and Tenure Procedures in response to a recommendation by LCPT. It has been ten years since the procedures were last reviewed.  
      1. The Annual Report of the LFA Executive Committee for FY 2023-2024 recommends several potential charges for future committees. One of those potential charges includes the following: “The Libraries Dean and the chair of LCPT in 2023-2024 recommend charging an ad hoc committee to review promotion and tenure guidelines.” Since the Promotion and Tenure Procedures for the Faculty of The University of Kansas Libraries were last approved in 2016, it seems appropriate to conduct a review as we approach the 10-year mark.  
      2. Therefore, the LFA Executive Committee seeks volunteers from among the members of the LFA to serve on an ad hoc committee, consisting of 5 to 7 tenured and tenure-track library faculty. This committee shall be appointed for a term of two years (FY 2024-2025 and FY 2025-2026) or until the work of the ad hoc committee is completed, whichever comes first.  
      3. Committee Charge: 

The Ad hoc Committee for Review of P&T Procedures shall review the Promotion and Tenure Procedures for the Faculty of The University of Kansas Libraries (and in particular the Scholarship section) in order to: 1) clarify what constitutes scholarship; 2) clarify and potentially expand examples of scholarly work in the table at the end of the document; 3) make the information contained in the table's footnotes more concise and easier to understand; 4) elaborate on what is meant by a "program of research," 5) and clarify the standard of expectations (both quantity and quality) for promotion and tenure. The ad hoc committee will use a variety of means to solicit input from all LFA members and will deliver a report with progress and/or recommendations to the LFA Executive Committee and the Dean of Libraries no later than two weeks before the spring general meeting of the LFA. 

  1. Discussion ensued about the following topics: 
    1. Information needs to be concise and clear.
    2. Potential conflicts of interest.
    3. There are already three volunteers to serve, so an additional two to four people are needed to serve on the committee.
    4. P&T Procedures should be reviewed regularly.
      1. Remarks from Dean Carol Smith
        1. Need to clarify language on P&T procedure.
        2. Need to understand bias and inequalities.
        3. There is a need to increase expectations of research output
    5. Service capacity/load: inventory/audit
      1. The LFA Chair described how the idea of a service inventory/audit emerged and the rationale for it.
        1. LFA needs to know who is available to serve when it comes to time to fill positions (elected and appointed). 
        2. There needs to be equity in service loads.
        3. What is the best way to collect this data? 
        4. Service roles and the amount of time devoted to it must be clear.
      2. Remarks from Dean Carol Smith
        1. Results of an audit may show that everyone doing great on service
        2. We need to ensure that service does not eat into research time.
        3. May need to look at what kinds of services can we stop doing.
  2. New Business

Meeting adjourned at 4:30