Committee Work at the Department Level
During my time at Florida Southern, I served on three hiring committees, each for a visiting position in the math department:
Faculty Search Committee (2018): Along with my colleagues Susan Serrano (chair), Dan Jelsovski, and Silvano Falco, I participated in the faculty search leading to the successful hire of a one-year position, Rebecca Wooten.
Faculty Search Committee (2019): Along with my colleagues Susan Serrano (chair), Dan Jelsovski, and David Valdivia, I participated in the faculty search leading to the successful hire of a one-year position, Jennifer Hoyt.
Faculty Search Committee (2020): Along with my colleagues Dan Jelsovski, and Silvano Falcao, I participated in the faculty search leading to the successful hire of a one-year position, Susan McLoughlin. Susan remains at Florida Southern.
Creating an Applied Mathematics Major
While this is technically not a committee, the math department did meet many times during the 2018-2019 year to discuss the details of a new applied math major. We discussed ideas for different concentrations, and deliberated over which courses should be required for the applied major as well as which courses should be electives. Once the general course load had been decided, we all pitched in to author a template for the generic syllabus for some of the courses. The amount of time we met and the amount of work needed to prepare this new major felt as though I had been on a separate committee, and so I include my experience of it in this section.
Committee Work at the College Level
Academic Standards Assessment and Improvement (ASAI) Committee (fall 2020 - spring 2023)
For several years, I have served as the Arts and Science representative on one of Florida Southern's standing committees called Academic Standards, Assessment, and Improvement (ASAI). After a few semesters of being on the committee, I began serving as sub-chair to oversee a smaller sub-committee of faculty who split up reviews a given set of artifacts (including myself). Our task as a committee is to check that faculty assignments and corresponding student submissions align with one of the school's learning outcomes and suggest improvement if they do not.
In each year I served on ASAI, I also served as a subcommittee chair. My task as sub-chair is to divvy up the artifacts we need reviewed among myself and the member of my sub-committee. After we all have made our reviews and submitted them through SurveyMonkey, I reviewed the data, organized it, and described whether it indicated any areas of improvement. My report then went to the chair who then summarized all sub-chair feedback into one final report. Since faculty tend to rotate on standing committees, some semesters I work with faculty that are new to the process of reviewing student artifacts. As a sub-char, I also check in with the faculty I oversaw and offer to meet with any new members. For example, one faculty I oversaw was heavily involved with accreditation within her department and I offered to take her part of the student artifacts in addition to my own. Serving on this committee has helped me to reflect on my own course materials because I got to see many project ideas from different areas while I was rating the student artifact submissions.
Honor Code Infraction Review Board (spring 2019 – spring 2022)
This committee comes together whenever an academic dispute between a student and faculty needs remediation. As a committee, we hear both sides of the story, then deliberate on any consequences.
Travel Committee (fall 2019 – fall 2022)
This committee reviews all the proposals for Junior Journey student abroad trips offered by Florida Southern College. As a committee, we discuss the learning outcomes for the trip, and check that the plan of the trip is feasible and logical. We submit feedback for any proposals the committee feels require revision.
Faculty Search Committee (2022 – 2023): Along with my colleagues Shameka Shelby (chair), Ron Pepino, Jason Montgomery, and Carmen Gauthier, I served as the outside representative on a hiring committee for a physics position for the new physics major planned to be rolled out in spring 2023 at Florida Southern. We brought to campus three candidates, and gave an offer to one of them. Unfortunately, that candidate declined our offer. We interviewed two additional candidates and have decided to invite them both to an on campus interview in the spring.
A second time the committee conducted on-campus interviews, and was fortunate to find a second candidate worth giving an offer to. That candidate accepted our offer and became a faculty in the physics department at Florida Southern. Unfortunately, Florida Southern ended up cancelling the physics major (along with two other engineering majors) after hiring the new faculty. They have decided to go elsewhere as a result. I wish her the best in her endeavors and I am disappointed that Florida Southern has cancelled these majors.