Faculty Assembly Meeting Minutes, Aug. 20, 2026

Aug. 20, 2026, 10 a.m., Tucker Hall

Approved.

 

I'm grateful for all of you. I’ve already started sharing your voices; conversations happened over the summer; shared faculty concerns with the board and with President Atkin. Those conversations will continue to happen. I'm available, so reach out. My office is on the third floor of the ATC, 345.

Need a volunteer for Professional Standards & Responsibilities.

Encouraging faculty to volunteer for hearings and committees; need faculty representation and input, especially for academic and conduct hearings, to be able to give our perspective as experts in the classroom, curriculum, and pedagogy. What can we do to address these issues so we can be proactive to make sure some of these conduct or academic issues don't happen in the future?

Benefits: Kathleen Pastore
No report.

No money for travel; hopefully that will change.

Professional Standards and Responsibilities
Vacant — no report.

Honors and Recognition: Carl Taylor
No report.

 

Comments by Jacob Atkin, or other representatives of the administration

Update on facilities master plan regarding future expansion: Currently in ideation phase, will move to planning, then finalization. Our current campuses are Main, Liberty, McNair, and Barbers Hill. Want to share thoughts/themes emerging in ideation process related to the McNair and Main Campuses.

McNair is experiencing a growth period and the demand for programs is outpacing capacity; looking at options to expand these programs to meet community needs; difficult to grow programs at McNair due to property conditions (in flood plain), and these issues are expensive to fix. A possible solution is a new north campus (100 acres off N Main and I-10). Note: under the current grant agreement, must offer courses at McNair until 2034, so this is not an immediate change.

Discussed plan to revitalize the main campus to create a collegiate atmosphere. Aware that there are issues with aged and aging buildings. Discussions have focused on what to do with core buildings (with foundation, plumbing, accessibility, and roofing issues) that will be the first to go.

Atkin asked the audience which building they thought was one of these core buildings. Audience member responded with Bonner Hall. Atkin acknowledged issues in Bonner Hall but stated Moler Hall creates the most problems for us.

Discussed issues with Moler Hall, Huddle building. Discussion of elimination of some facilities and the creation of an east-west corridor and a central plaza for the college.

Discussed issues with north/south corridor; looking at creating connection between the north and south and creating access around the outside of campus. In summary, plan to create the courtyard, the north-south connection, and the 360-degree access to campus.

New buildings/ construction: if Huddle is removed, the proposal would be to add a welcome center where Huddle currently resides and to connect it to Rundell Hall for a centralized location for student services. Student Center only for support, resources, and entertainment.

Barbers Hill; model to duplicate with other ISDs; the next branch campus after Barbers Hill would likely be in Dayton as a more centralized location to service students from Crosby, Dayton, Liberty.

Our dollars are very limited, and we have to be wise and prudent in the way that we invest. Please be patient as we finish this out. There are many things that we know that need to be done, and we are intentionally pausing on some of this work because we want to make sure that we're investing in a way that makes sense long term.

Upcoming construction project is the replacement of the elevated piping system. There will be many changes while moving piping underground; there will be disruptions; notify us of your needs; communicate when having issues; be willing to compromise to keep work going.

Questions?

Audience member 1: we've heard about the evolution of Vision 2028 as a strategic plan as it relates to technical programming and facilities, but we didn't hear much about the baccalaureate programs for academic and transfer. How is that going to be evolving?

Answer: We are looking at the development of a university center on campus where universities can teach their courses here, providing an opportunity for our students to continue their education. Overall, more unmet needs on the career and technical side than the academic side. Not waiting until 2028; this year, we will do a significant review and revision to our overall strategic plan. Faculty assembly will have key roles in the revisioning. Transfer and time to completion are significant concerns, so we still want to invest in those. However, we need to work through the seven or more existing initiatives before introducing new ones.

Audience member 2: Thank you for the open discussion and comments. Referring to relocating technical programs to the north campus: many students in these programs need academic coursework; what will that look like for students going between two campuses?

Answer: Academic courses at new north campus have been discussed; considering options; goal is to provide all services at north campus.

Audience member 2: What is the root cause of the foundation issues in Moler Hall? Is it a geologic issue or is it a construction issue?

Answer: Do not know the root cause; doesn’t matter: that location would be the center of the main courtyard and green space.

Audience member 2: Regarding the possible disruptions to buildings while relocating the pipes underground: is there a way to coordinate the projects so that it helps deal with bottlenecks that exist in our facilities, such as only having one chemistry lab to support all programs at the college?

Answer: Most disruption will be external (taking place in courtyards, digging up walkways, etc.), but disruption to buildings will be limited to short time periods; the piping project will require architectural work and planning; will share when have more details. Referring to bottleneck concerns: in the utilization study that we've conducted, we have tremendous capacity but are grossly underutilizing our space; solving bottleneck issues is a future project separate from the piping project.

Audience member 2: What is the timeline for the bonds?

Answer: the earliest a bond will go out for vote would be the spring of 2028, probably pushed to 2029; construction could start in 2030; about 2033 or 2034 before you see completion on some of these facilities.

Audience member 3: I teach millwright studies; people can leave my program and make 60 to $80,000 with a certificate, and we can also bring people in that are wanting to pursue engineering; however, we have problems attracting and enrolling students in the program. We need more advertisement and recruitment to programs people are not aware of. There's always a need for millwrights and industrial mechanics. How can we get that out there?

Answer: We need to do a better job of recruiting students early; our junior high students in our ISDs need to have a better understanding of what these programs are and how beneficial and financially successful they could be with some of these certificates and degrees. Need more traditional advertising for adult / returning students. The recruitment and advertising budgets and approach will be an integral part of the plans that we're making as we're talking about growth and advancement of some of our programs.

Dr. Norris: Marcus has been working really hard to market those programs; Dr. Moreno and I have been in discussions about how to incorporate CTE programs into kids at campus, kids at college; goal is to create junior high based camps in the summer to be able to do some hands-on activities to help students better understand these programs before they choose a pathway in the eighth grade.

Any other questions?

Audience member 4: I was just curious if we could learn more about what's happening with the English department grading with a new AI program and what that'll look like in the syllabus. Are privacy issues being considered regarding student work and faculty feedback? Is there an update on department scholarships?

Answer: No department scholarships this year. Due to legislative changes no longer requiring dual credit students to take the TSIA, concerns arose about maintaining college-level grading expectations and identifying discrepancies in grading between high school-based dual credit courses and those taught on our campus (30-point difference on average). An AI Agent is a potential solution to these concerns; still in the developmental stage of being trained in a closed-loop system using anonymous (all identifiable personal information removed) student work and specified feedback designed to grade student work at college level expectations. A blanket statement for the syllabus was created to inform students.

Discussion of the developmental stage of AI Agent research and training process, focusing on the protection of privacy using anonymized student work and a human-first approach, with a controlled system of college-level grading and feedback to train the agent.

Audience member 4: Are other divisions going to be required to start using something similar?

Answer: No

Audience member 4: Are students able to say, I don't want my work to be graded this way?

Answer: The student is still getting the instructor's grade. This is just a potential solution to see where grade norming needs to occur and where there's big discrepancies in grading (referring to high school-based dual credit courses and those taught on our campus).

Audience member 4: To clarify, students are receiving feedback and grades from faculty, not generated through this system?

Answer: Only faculty have authority on the grade and feedback.

Audience member 4: It’s helpful to know that there is a statement for the syllabus. It is important to inform students of the closed loop system and reaffirm that grades and feedback are from their professor.

Answer: Yes, and moving forward with professional development on media literacy; critical media literacy connected to critical AI literacy.

Dr. Cook: I have a meeting with the president next week. If you have questions or concerns you would like me to present, email me.

VIII. Adjournment
Adjourned at 11:11 a.m.