Committee Meetings and Minutes

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eStaffing Committee

Meeting Minutes

Current Status of Minutes: Final
Date	October 13, 2014
Time	9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Location	HBC 221

Members Present
Sue Bloodsworth, Andrew Christie, Joe Lostracco, Donald Morris, Tobin Quereau, Hazel Ward, Gillian Waterston
Guests Present
No guest attendance has been recorded.

Item # 1:	Review of April & August 2014 Meeting Minutes
Presenter	Andrew
Discussion	April and August 2014 Meeting Minutes were approved.

Item # 2:	Review & Discussion of Spring 2015 eStaffing
Presenter	Committee
Discussion	System-generated emails within the eStaffing application were created, but never transmitted. The source of the problem was never identified, but the final step in the complete re-engineering of the eStaffing system was initially identified to be rewriting the email stored procedures to use the most up-to-date technologies. This process is expected to take four weeks to complete, and it will be ready in time for Summer 2015 eStaffing in January, 2015. The email problem meant that the courtesy emails informing adjunct faculty, department chairs, and deans when to perform certain tasks were not received by the intended receivers. The email that confirms that section preferences had been made was also affected. A message indicating that email functionality was problematic was added to the eStaffing login page on the third day of Phase 1 of eStaffing. The night prior to the first day of section preferences in Phase 1, the flag indicating whether a course section had already been assigned in Colleague was missing. Although this error was caught around 9 a.m. of the first day, over 100 Adjuncts had already entered section preferences, and some of the preferences included sections that had been assigned to FT-Faculty. IT put in place a corrective measure that cleaned the data and pro-actively informed Adjuncts and Departments of the situation. This was the first semester of the complete rewrite/re-engineering of the 'Executive' modules in eStaffing. eStaffing is now completely written in PHP instead of the original (and now obsolete) ASP language. As it was the first semester, the following challenges were reported by Departments performing the Section Assignments and other administrative tasks: 1) The timing of the 'Draw Report' had to be modified. 2) A couple of departments had problems with the 'Reassign' function. 3) Under some circumstances, the display on the right side of the screen was not visible. (This was corrected in time for Phase 2.) 4) When logging out, and then logging back in, when doing assignments, the process would start up after the record being worked on at the time of the log-out, rather than starting up with the same record that was being worked on. (Logging out during assignments in not a normal process, but departments were attempting this because of the 'display' issue listed above.) 5) One department identified one of the reports that was more preferable in the older version and would like the new version to be the way it was. 6) Combined Courses initially had some data issues that needed to be tweaked. This was fixed early enough in eStaffing, but the fix needed to also be applied to the export into Colleague. 7) One department reported that eStaffing assignments were not displaying ... even after cache clearing. ... However, if this is accurate, it would be the only reported case, whereas for dozens of people who reported not seeing the assignments, clearing the cache was what resolved that problem. 8) There were some questions about the various varieties of 'Distance Learning'. HYC, HYB, PRN, and ONL are valid teaching methods, but DIL and PCM should be eliminated from the code table in eStaffing. 9) For Adjunct Faculty flagged as 'ECS only', it was returning all course sections instead of just ECS course sections. 10) 3 Departments reported a preference for the older version way of assigning all course sections at once for an Adjunct, rather than assigning course sections one at a time for the Adjunct. (One Department explained it as needing the checkbox that used to exist.) 11) One department requested that departments should have the ability to control whether their department can allow faculty to choose their textbook or not. However, this feature does exist; it is found as 'Discipline Options'. 12) There was also a request for a new email 'nag' to inform Deans whenever an Adjunct Faculty had an appointment in Pending status. This represents a new request, and will be explored when all other issues are resolved.

Item # 3:	Policy Changes that could impact eStaffing?
Presenter	Committee
Discussion	The Faculty Emeritus initiative was recently defeated, making the discussion of whether this population was to be included in eStaffing or not, moot, at least for now. The approval of the ECS/ECHS eligibility class means that eStaffing must include a special eligibility designation, and this was completed in time for Spring 2015 eStaffing. It is still unknown what the fate is of the change in name (and policy?) from 'MSTA Exception' to 'MSTA Senior'. The eStaffing Committee is seeking an update from the AFA. A possible, future requirement is being discussed that would mandate that a certain population of students take a 'Student Success' class that would be under the umbrella of the EDUC rubric. The instructors that would make up the teaching population would be drawn from the ranks of Full-Time Faculty and Adjunct Faculty. Given the numbers, it makes sense, in terms of efficiency, to include this in eStaffing. However, the inclusion of Full-time Faculty is likely to cause some logistical challenges given that FT Faculty do not use the eStaffing system.

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