FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE CALENDAR  

Because the Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC) is responsible for ensuring that faculty serve on Loyola committees, we have developed a recommended timeline based on our experience in the past years.

Summer-The Faculty Affairs Chair works with Academic Affairs Executive Assistant and Secretary to Governance (currently, Sandy O'Neil) on data for the committee membership database and web site, updating information from the previous year.

End of August - First in-person meeting of the entire Faculty Affairs Committee membership.  At this meeting, the FAC appoints one of its members as a liaison to the Faculty Compensation Committee. This cannot be someone from an area that already has two members on the FCC. The chair assigns each FAC member a group of committees for which to be the liaison. Although the chair will continue to oversee all details, FAC members will also keep their own files on their respective committees throughout the year, continually updating any changes, to back up the chair's information come time for elections/appointments in the spring.

September - Liaisons contact all members of their committees, including administrators, to encourage them to have their first meeting soon.  The chair of each committee should have been chosen in the spring; liaisons will find out who that is.

At this time we also ask committee chairs to provide an estimated time commitment for the committee, if that has still not been created in their online committee description. We also remind committees where to find all online information about their committees' charge, by-laws, membership, etc. All committee members should check to be sure their data is accurate.

The Faculty Affairs Committee chair has a number of specific duties throughout the year.  She/he maintains the information for the database (https://inside.loyola.edu/departments/dept-affa/Lists/Committees/Group%20by%20Committee.aspx), records changes throughout the year, and maintains contact with the Executive Governance Committee and the Secretary for Governance. He/she attends Academic Senate, Loyola Conference, Executive Governance meetings and others (such as Living Learning Implementation). He/She works with committees directly as needed.  

September through December - The FAC meets in person once a month, but communicates by E-mail more often as needed. Liaisons report as needed. The chair forwards Senate and Conference agendas and documents received from Secretary for Governance to the rest of the Faculty Affairs Committee membership.

January - Liaisons reach out again.  How are things going? Do they need anything from us? The vice chair trains with the Associate Director of Web Development, Enterprise Applications (currently William White) to learn to run elections. (If needed, this might occur in the fall.)

February - At this point in the semester it is critical to ask about upcoming leaves that will affect committee service for the following year. FAC members note the upcoming vacancies on their liaison committees and compare that information with the chair.  The chair sets up committee sheets for elections and appointments that is provided to the faculty as requested for volunteers.  She/he works closely with the vice chair, who runs the elections and sends out mass emails, through the Secretary for Governance to the faculty, announcing the vacancies, soliciting nominations, holding elections and announcing who has been elected.  Elections are run first, following appointments.

March - The vice chair calls for volunteers for appointed committees.  As the process of appointing members to the rest of the un-elected committees has proven to be daunting to do by hand, by a small percentage of the whole FAC over the past three years, beginning in the Fall of 2013 there will be some kind of technological implementation for the generating of requests for committees.  Each area representative of FAC will be responsible for doing the initial work of discerning the choices of their area's faculty members before the FAC meets in person to discuss all the appointments.

April - The chair will update the "Faculty on Committee" and "New Appointments" files. During Easter break, or thereabouts, the chair will contact by email all faculty members on committees and let them know which committees they are on and the length of their terms.  If any errors turn up, they can be corrected here. After Easter break, FAC liaisons contact the entire membership for their liaison committees, including administrators, providing the list of the committee members and their terms. They ask the committees to compare teaching schedules for the fall and set up a meeting schedule for the next semester.  It is very helpful to have this in place before the first week of May, at which point communication with faculty becomes unreliable.

May - Last meetings for all committees, which should include new members if possible.  A chair for the following year should be chosen from within the committee at this time (unless the committee chair is already an elected position). The FAC chair conveys the committee information to the Executive Governance Committee and to the Secretary for Governance, who makes the updates on the online committee database.

(May 2012)