May Newsletter

Archived Content

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Salute to Faculty ExcellenceOct. 5 Mark Your Calendar!Salute to Faculty Excellence logo

The date of UNT’s annual celebration of faculty has been set. Salute to Faculty Excellence 2018 is scheduled for the evening of Oct. 5, 2018, in the University Union Ballroom. Please come celebrate the achievements of UNT’s accomplished faculty, including recognizing faculty award winners and faculty recently tenured or promoted.

 

 

Policy Updates The 2017-18 has seen a number of revisions of, additions to, and deletions of policies affecting academic affairs. The process by which policies are changed is a collaborative one, involving the Faculty Senate, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the President, and the Office of the General Counsel. Policies that have been changed in the past year are listed below. For more information about the process of policy change or the details of the changes, please contact Terri Day, Vice Provost for Academic Administration.

Policy

Type of Change

Effective Date

Non-Tenure Track Faculty Reappointment and Promotion (06.005)

new policy

Aug. 2017

Academic Appointments and Titles (06.002)

new policy

Sept. 2017

Course Syllabus (06.049)

revision

Sept. 2017

Academic Program Review and Discontinuation (06.029)

revision

Oct. 2017

Continuing Education (06.045)

deletion

Dec. 2017

Part-Time Faculty (06.024)

deletion

Jan. 2018

Faculty Development Leave (06.010)

revision

Jan. 2018

Tenured Administrators Returning to Full-time Academic Status (06.009)

revision

Jan. 2018

Graduate Fellowship/Research Assistantship Load Specifications (06.043)

revision

Feb. 2018

Recruitment and Selection of Teaching Fellows and Teaching Assistants (06.020)

revision

Feb. 2018

Library Faculty Reappointment and Promotion (06.006)

new policy

Feb. 2018

Review of Tenured Faculty (06.052)

new policy

Feb. 2018

Open Access, Self-Archiving, and Long-Term Digital Stewardship for UNT Scholarly Works (06.041)

revision

Apr. 2018

Safety in Instructional Activities (06.038)

deletion

Apr. 2018

 

Making Processes More Efficient: the Workflow ModuleHand drawing chart

The larger an organization is the more processes it seems to have. UNT certainly has its share, and many still involve paper. In an effort to improve the efficiency of processes and to live up to our reputation as an ecologically responsible institution, the Office of the Provost has recently purchased Workflow Module. Beginning this fall, Workflow will be used in the promotion, tenure, and reappointment process. A candidate will be able to upload the parts of the dossier for which he or she is responsible (e.g., the CV). The unit review committee will be alerted when this is accomplished, and will be able to upload the committee’s review document when it is ready. Chairs, college review committees, and deans all will be able to access material from previous steps and upload their own recommendations. The material required will not change, and each stakeholder in the process will play the same role. Workflow will make the process by which information is transmitted and stored more efficient and less time-consuming.

Other processes may lend themselves to Workflow. Examples include accreditation, program review, faculty development leave, faculty awards selection, and many more. Look for details in the next academic year.

Open Access Symposium 2018

Open Access logo

The UNT Libraries and Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library at the UNT Health Science Center are pleased to announce UNT Open Access Symposium 2018, to be held June 6–7 at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth. This year’s theme is Open Medical and Health Information, and we have an exciting program of presentations that complements this theme and the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, an international conference being held this year in conjunction with the symposium.

Registration is free for students and quite affordable for all others: see more on the registration page.

UNT International logo

Teach Your Course Abroad!

The Study Abroad Office (SAO) is currently accepting proposals for summer 2019 UNT faculty led programs. Visit the Faculty Led Program Proposals webpage to learn the requirements and how to submit.  Applications will be accepted through July 15, 2018.  

SAO is available for meetings with faculty leaders to help clarify and refine ideas, coordinate logistics, collaborate with international institutions or program providers, and discuss UNT processes. Email facultyledprograms@unt.edu to request a consultation.

Your destination awaits you!

UNT Study Abroad logo

 

The Latest from CLEAR

May 2018 Teaching Excellence Spotlight

Picture of Dr. Becky Knight

The May Teaching Excellence Spotlight awardee is Dr. Becky Knight, adjunct professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Health Services in the College of Health and Public Services. Dr. Knight specializes in teaching courses in gerontology for majors and non-majors alike; including such courses as AGER 2250: Images of Aging in Film and Literature and AGER 4750: Sexuality and Aging. In order to make such topics accessible to college students, Dr. Knight has students look to their own lives to illustrate theory, concepts, and research and uses a team-based learning approach to build an interactive learning environment. 

Faculty Focus

Picture of Lauren CrossLauren Cross is a Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Art Education. Professor Cross joined UNT’s faculty in 2015 after running a successful non-profit gallery space, and completed her PhD at Texas Women’s University in 2017. She is a practitioner, carrying out research and working as a curator, and she’s especially proud that she is training students in the same tradition. She routinely takes her students into the community to visit museums and galleries. While these visits clearly further the students’ educations, they have an important additional benefit: they help the students to network and build connections with arts professionals. This is useful for her students who go on to work as creative entrepreneurs, pursue graduate school and those who enter the job market. Her students do quite well and give Professor Cross some of the credit. One who landed a job at Facebook found the negotiation skill he learned in Dr. Cross’ Art and Business class especially helpful. Professor Cross sees her work as a practitioner as a series of teachable moments. A recent example involves an exhibition of her work scheduled for the Dallas Museum of Art for Fall 2018. This will be an interactive installation designed to engage visitors with art on topics of cultural diversity. It is a challenge to design this in such a way that it will speak to visitors of all ages. Her students get to watch as she prepares this work, and learn how an artist and educator operates. Professor Cross feels very fortunate to be in a field in which she gets to help students reach their goals, including advising them on resume preparation, helping them find rewarding internships, and landing jobs.

Dan J. Kim, a Professor in UNT’s Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, is exploring issues of security, privacy, and trust in information technology. In particular, his recent research involves what he calls the “dark side of IT” – trust-building in online interactions. Much of the framework of today’s online world depends heavily on the confidence and trust of users. Professor Kim has explored a variety of topics in this area, including the degree to which trust (or the lack thereof) affects consumers’ e-commerce decisions, and the factors that are necessary to ensure this trust. His work has received considerable support from the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, and the National Research Foundation of Korea, and others, and a paper of his was selected in 2009 as the Best Published Paper by Information Systems Research, the premier journal in information systems. Professor Kim teaches mainly Master’s and doctoral-level security courses, and brings his passion for his research into his classroom. His work as an educator is noteworthy: he was one of nominees for the statewide Minnie Stevens Piper Award in 2010-11. Professor Kim is recently selected for a Fulbright Scholarship – he’ll teach and research at the Korea University Business School in South Korea during the Spring 2019 semester.

Picture of Ruth WestBig data has met its creative match in the work of Ruth West. Appointed in the College of Visual Arts and Design and College of Engineering, Professor West was brought to UNT in 2013 to lead a purposeful and coordinated effort to integrate the arts and sciences. Exploring the power of integrative education through hands-on research-based teaching, her xREZ Art + Science Lab engages students from over a dozen disciplines, spanning the gamut from 16-year old Texas Academy of Math and Science students, to undergraduate and graduate students across disciplines as disparate as computer science, anthropology, design, new media, music, geography, philosophy, art history, and psychology. Current projects include a National Endowment for the Arts Sponsored interactive artwork and art-science collaboration that is transforming 758 million data points about 817,373 astronomical objects into a luminous virtual world where multiple participants can explore and create visual and auditory remixes of the data. The lab’s work in understanding the cognitive and perceptual basis underlying 3D volumetric data segmentation is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The lab also does a broad range of work in human-computer interaction and immersive systems for working with big data, including publishing recent advances in the understanding of presence in virtual reality. We are entering an era where immersive technologies and data will transform not only education, but how we communicate across generations and cultures and Ruth’s lab and her students are part of creating that future. Learn more at: http://xrezlab.com

May Give-AwayUmbrella

Are you ready for the rainy season? This month’s newsletter giveaway is the stylish and functional Office for Faculty Success umbrella pictured. UNT faculty members who register by May 10, 2018 will be entered into this drawing. Please register here.

 

Important Dates 

Pre-finals Days

May 2 - 3

Reading Day

May 4

Final Exams

May 5 - 10

Commencement

May 10 - 12