The Council on Academic Affairs still has not received nominations for Faculty Laureate.

Stacey Ruholl, a CAA member and member of the Faculty Laureate selection committee, said during a meeting Thursday that she will be sending an email Friday to announce an extension for nominations.

The length of the extension is unknown.

The council discussed changing the Faculty Laureate nominations process to make it easier for those interested in nominating someone else or themselves to do so.

Currently all nominees have to be a full-time professor who has taught a general education course in the past three years.

CAA member Claudia Janssen Danyi suggested opening the criteria for nominations to include more faculty members.

“I wonder if just widening the criteria would be the solution for it,” Janssen Danyi said. “Maybe we should change it so that it is someone who has made significant contributions to undergraduate education at EIU.”

Ruholl mentioned turning the nomination process into a selection process to decide the next Faculty Laureate but was unsure of how the changes would be made and she could not find anything in the CAA bylaws outlining the nominations process or where the process originally came from.

It was unclear among the CAA members if they could vote and enforce a new selection process for 2019 or if the changes would come into effect for the 2020 Faculty Laureate selection committee.
CAA Chair Marita Gronnvoll said she thinks the CAA should try to change the process during the 2019 fall semester.

“Maybe we can take this up in the fall, changing the process though I don’t think it’s a bad idea to do it earlier,” Gronnvoll said. “Maybe they could begin (searching for the Faculty Laureate) at the beginning of the semester next year.”

Gronnvoll also mentioned she has talked to someone who said he would be okay with being nominated but the amount of work that goes into the nomination process was a concern for him with how little time he would have to get the information together.

With the current process, nominees must turn in a letter of nomination, no more than three letters of recommendation, one coming from a student and one from a faculty member or administrator who has observed the nominee teaching, all available information on student evaluations of the nominee for the past three years, a list of general education course taught in the past three years, and a statement from the nominee of the importance of higher education.

“The sticking point is always how much work it is to put this together,” Gronnvoll said.

Among other topics discussed during the meeting, Gronnvoll announced the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be testing the new electronic course proposal form during the Fall 2019 semester.

During the semester all course proposal from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be done electronically.

“I think this will be a really good test,” Gronnvoll said. “If it works out okay then maybe we can do a university-wide rollout next spring.”

Corryn Brock can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].