Department Faculty Meeting - November 20, 2006

I. Call to order

John Hayes called to order the regular meeting of the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at 2:00 PM on November 20th, 2006 in room 376 Newins-Ziegler Hall.

II. Roll call

Elaine Culpepper registered those attending as: Claire Williams, Monica Lindberg, Mel Sunquist, George Tanner, Lyn Branch, Bill Giuliano, George Tanner, Jim Austin, Ron Labisky, Madan Oli, Emilio Bruna, Mike Moulton, Susan Jacobson, Mark Hostetler, Perran Ross, Madan Oli, Katie Sieving.

III. Approval of minutes from last meeting

John Hayes presented the minutes from the last meeting. Last month’s action items were reviewed and status provided. There was a request for any additional items to be added to today’s agenda and none mentioned. Dr. Hayes thanked everyone for their cooperation in making his transition to the department a smooth and pleasant one.

IV. Action Items

Elaine – Info. to Jim Austin on Sexual Harassment course – completed
Hayes – Votes on Jim Nichols to be sent out ref. Grad Fac. Status – by 12-18-06.
Hayes - Landscape ecology instructor for spring – follow up for names from individuals suggested – Next week
Hayes – Develop system & appoint staff to track Information tracking for scholarship – by next meeting
Research Committee/Tanner - Seed funding proposal submitted to dean – by guidelines
Hayes – Retreat Emails
- Email past retreat information to Faculty
- Email the committee chairs has to how they are to organize the process to generate information.
- Email requesting additional people for the committee to establish procedures on conducting/mediating the retreat
Hayes – set date for WEC holiday party – email to faculty/staff

V. Activities in Progress

Hayes – review committee recommendations on NFLREC candidate
Committees to provide information on Landscape Ecologist position
All Faculty - NRC Survey to complete and file – when data is received
Hayes/Elaine - Kenny Krysco re-file the results with Grad School to secure Grad Fac. Status.

VI. Open Issues:

Graduate faculty status for Jim Nichols – Hayes/Percival Franklin not at meeting, but Dr. Hayes provided status. Two issues - one Jim is still listed as Associate Prof. in our university; and we must go through the same process as everyone else. Grad. Faculty status important because he wants to serve as co-major prof. for Fred Johnson who is interested in pursuing the PhD program through our dept. We’ll go through regular voting process but opened up for comments. You will be getting a ballot shortly.
Update on Quincy Position – Hayes/ Giuliano/Tanner – Search committee to meet Dec. 6, to discuss the two candidates and send comments to WEC and REC, where they are meeting on the 6th and WEC on 7th and hopefully will make a decision then.
Update on landscape ecologist search – Sieving Emilio Bruna stated the committee is meeting next week to discuss the over 30 candidates and they have a very good pool. Files are located on line and in Elaine’s office. Please get comments to the committee by the 28th. Dr. Hayes commented about issues with search committees; meetings need to be posted and work with Tom to post on website. Any notes requested will eventually be part of the search. Dr. Hayes will ask not for a ranking, Hayes and REC director will rank.
Landscape ecology instructor for spring – Hayes Needs input from faculty for this position, he received no response from the past meeting. Last year Emilio convinced Nat to put out a general search; and doesn’t feel it generated a good response. $7,000.00 per class is available. Perran suggested we contact the people Margaret Carr in Architecture for some input. Tom Hoctor will be teaching in the spring, so he might not want to consider it. Mike Binford, Reed Noss, Margaret Carr and Tom Hoctor will be contacted.
Update on NEON - Hayes - There is a proposal to have Ordway Swisher Biological Station be the core site. There is a group of people form the SE working on a concept paper to go to NEON, Inc. which is connected to NSF. There will be a series of science questions that will be proposed to in the SE, create an ecological gradient that goes from Archibold up to the Savannah River Ecological Lab. There will be workshop on 12-11-06 to flesh out ideas about what scientific questions will want to be addressed and what are the most appropriate sites to address these questions. There is a group of core folks, interested in developing this information. It is open to anyone interested in developing this concept paper which is due to NEON, Inc. on January 5th. Once NSF gets info, they will probably be making site visits in March and April and by next September or October decisions will be made.
Information tracking for scholarship – Hayes Dr. Hayes has the WEC review with the Deans. Hard to come up with the research accomplishments. He got the link to AG Station and Unifas, but felt both were incomplete. We are hurting ourselves by not having a way to track grants that we receive. Cant’ tell what grants and publications we have done. He wants to make publications available on the website and develop and internal system to track these.

PROPOSAL – Katie Sieving says all this information is in their CV and it would help if we can develop an Excel file where all can enter the data. Labisky indicated that we have won a lot of awards which would be impressive to the deans. Unifas is supposed to be used by the deans; so he suggests that when you publish it should immediately be in-putted into Unifas. The trend is to encourage use of Unifas, including grants as well as published material. Dr. Hayes was given an annual report from Unifas, with names of faculty in the department, however some faculty were not even on the list. CRIS is for reporting to the Dept. of Agriculture and is not related to Unifas.

Bits and Pieces
- Changes in gator jobs postings (PeopleAdmin) - Lindberg Handout provided showing applicants how to apply for jobs and how we can track them. All is in one location. There are some difficulties right now, but hopefully will be straightened out by January. See http://jobs.ufl.edu.
- Changes in access to GatorLink - Lindberg Handout provided, showing why they are trying to increase security at UF. Starting in Oct/Nov to clean up a lot of the access that now exists. Over the next two months, there will be several steps to eliminate old accounts. This affects WEC in that we can give temporary use to visiting persons.
- Departmental budget – Lindberg In process of meeting with the deans, have financial over of the dept. Form provide to show the flow of the money through the dept. with summary at the end showing the figures.
- NRC Survey – Hayes/Jacobson Doctoral Study Program. There are several steps our dept step has provide info on faculty involved in doctoral training and their general areas of expertise. There will also be a stage where individual faculty members will be asked for information. Susan attended the meeting. Handout provided by GIMS through Delores, hopefully to make it easier for you to provide the information to the system. Susan indicated you will receive a survey from NRC, only if you have doctorial students. Survey should only take a few minutes. They will come out in December and are due back in January.
- Seed funding proposal - Tanner On 11th Dean McLellan sent out an email about Funding Guideline for 2007. Looking for six proposals from IFAS Dec. 15th is first deadline, with proposal to Chairs. On Dec. 22 the Chairs will make their selection and put forward to deans. Criteria was read. We still have two proposals which we have on record that can be put forth. The Research committee will do the screen and put forth the info John. 11-6-06 was McLellan’s original email.
- Space changes for 303 NZ and landscape position - Giuliano Move occurs in the summer of 2007.
  - Room 318 will be occupied by the Landscape Ecologist candidate
  - Lab 218 will be shared by Oli & the Landscape Ecologist
  - Room 303 will be Mike Moulton’s office
  - Room 303A remains Moulton lab and his student work area
  - Room 307 will be occupied by Graduate Students
  If there are any displaced graduate students related to the move, then Mike Moulton will attempt to accommodate some in his lab.
- Harassment training – legal issues – Hayes Sexual harassment issues, if you are made aware of any situation, you are legally obligated to pass information up the line. Encouraged not to decide whether or not it is sexual harassment, you pass it up the line for a decision by the higher up. Someone coming to you with a problem, you are obligated to pass it up the line, so let the people know.
- Jim Austin – action item Elaine to send harassment training course information.
- Kenny Krysko status of Graduate School filing – Hayes Voting process Grad Fac. Status, required percentage is of eligible people to vote. An absentee vote is in essence a no vote; so we had to back up and acquire their votes. Kenny has acquired the votes to acquire Grad Fac.
- Holiday plans for department – Hayes Bill volunteered his house again. December. Note will go around with date ACTION item.
- Perran Ross - organizing June meeting with Stack holders and happy to put you on the list.
Strategic planning and upcoming retreat - Hayes - Handout provided that Dr. Hayes had used for Strategic Plan for International program. The decision was made to initially explore structuring a plan around topics of instruction, research, extension and international programs.
General discussions were held as to ways faculty felt the retreat should be conducted; i.e. items to be discussed, ways to facilitate, ground rules for meeting, product to be expected from meeting and etc.

ACTION ITEM: Pass around the last vision retreats data.

ACTION ITEM: E-mail to the committee chairs to organize the process as to how to generate their committees information at the retreat.

ACTION ITEM: E-mail to faculty for anyone to join in on the committee for establishing the procedures for the retreat.

VII. Adjournment

John Hayes adjourned the meeting at 3:50 PM.

Minutes submitted by: Elaine Culpepper
Minutes approved by: John Hayes