COACHE’s Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey
Check your email for the survey link. The survey is designed to enhance our understanding about faculty members experience at WSU. When the results are in hand, we plan to share the findings broadly and work with faculty to build a concrete action plan.
The NSF ADVANCE Catalyst Team will use the outcomes to develop a five-year strategic plan based upon documented best practices to increase the representation of women and minority faculty. While the focus of the NSF ADVANCE Catalyst award is on women and minority STEM faculty, all WSU faculty will benefit from the strategic plan. All that to say, these results will not just sit on a shelf.
Faculty (full time teaching, tenure track and non-tenure track as of Nov. 2019) who for some reason did not receive the email or have other concerns should contact coachefaculty@abtassoc.com. The COACHE team typically responds within two business days.
NSF ADVANCE Catalyst: A Catalyst to Increase the Representation and Advancement of Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Academic STEM Careers at Wichita State University; HRD1937921.
Principle Investigators: Jan Twomey, Linnea Glenmaye, Moriah Beck, David Eichhorn, Jean Griffith, Rhonda Lewis, Gergana Markova, and David Wright.
Wichita State to announce strategic partnership with Lightning Diversion Systems
Wichita State University and Lightning Diversion Systems (LDS) will announce details of a new strategic partnership at 10 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday, Feb. 26) in the 3DEXPERIENCE Center, Room 151, in the John Bardo Center.
Jay Golden, president, Wichita State University
Dave Wilmot, president, Lightning Diversion Systems
Billy Martin, senior research scientist, Environmental Test Lab, National Institute for Aviation Research, WSU
Institute of Innovation to host professional workshop
The Institute of Innovation is hosting a professional workshop April 16-17 that consists of two days of interactive and hands-on Design Thinking training. You will learn to how discover insights that can lead to new product or service opportunities, align teams around user’s needs, and ideate to solve defined problems. Plus, you will learn how to bring this process direct to your department or team.
The cost of admission is $550. Early-bird pricing ends Thursday, Feb. 27.
Find more information about this workshop, go to Wichita.edu/designthinking.
President Golden talks about vision, academics and growing Wichita State on KSN-TV 3
Craig Andres of KSN-TV 3 interviewed Wichita State President Jay Golden for a weekend news program.
The story read as follows:
Jay Golden took over as President of Wichita State University this year, and he is passionate about growing the university.
“Success. I want Wichita State to be one of the most successful in the United States,” said President Golden in his one-on-one interview with KSN. “I want Wichita to be thought of as really an innovative community and one that is inclusive and one that will attract the talent.”
President Golden has plans to grow the Wichita economy as well as grow the WSU student population and academic programs. But it’s not just numbers Golden wants to increase.
The complete story and video are available here.
Legislative Update No. 7
WSU Government Relations has provided Legislative Update No. 7 for spring 2020.
The legislature heard budget testimony from each of the universities, technical colleges and community college for the first time. The majority of the CEOs for the universities focused on the need to invest in higher education to maintain affordability and access in order to grow the economy. Legislatures asked CEOs about the impact of past reduction on higher education, enrollment trends and what the future of higher education will look like as scarcity of high school graduates becomes an issue.
The House Higher Education Budget Committee recommended the Governor’s Budget which includes $11.9M for the four-year institutions as well as an additional $10M for the four-year universities to be reviewed at omnibus which occurs in May when the legislature returns for Veto Session. Comments were made by legislators that they took note of the Governor’s Budget not including higher education in the employee pay plan, and this $10M is designed to help mitigate that.
An amendment was added to allow WSU to issue bonds, subject to KBOR approval, to buy the Flats and Suites. The $5M need-based-aid was moved to the comprehensive block grant after the private institutions voiced their concerns about creating another financial aid grant when the comprehensive grant already exist. $1M was also added for career technical education funding as well as an additional $1M to be reviewed at omnibus for capital improvements for technical colleges. Technical colleges currently do not have property tax to levy to fund capital improvements like community colleges do. These recommendations will be heard, and possibly altered, in the full House Appropriations Committee (yesterday) Monday morning.
The Senate Ways and Means sub-committee for Higher Education also met and heard presentations from the CEOs this week. In addition to the Governor’s $11.9M, the committee recommended an additional $12.3M be added for consideration at omnibus that would specifically go for pay increases. In addition to that, there’s $1.5M for career technical education funding for each FY20 and FY21. The committee also included the bonding language for WSU to buy the Flats and the Suites subject to KBOR approval.
Given that both committees have recommended that language, it unlikely it will be reviewed further during the legislative process. Also added for review at omnibus was $5M for WSU to develop a National Institute of Digital Transformation and Convergence Sciences. The full Senate Ways and Means committee will review these recommendations March 4th.
Bills Monitored:
SB 466 – This bill was introduced in Senate Tax Committee last week. It would delete the dedicated 1.5 mills of property tax that is used for maintenance of State buildings including higher education buildings. This currently generates approximately $40M for higher education to do rehab and repair work. The bill also proposes replacing this funding with State General Fund dollars.
HB 2521 – This bill was passed by the House last week, and it is seen by legislators as the first step in expanding rights for student athletes in Kansas by updating legal language in the Uniform Athlete Agents Act (UAAA) now retitled in the bill as the Revised Uniform Athlete Agents Act (RUAAA). This bill provides greater reporting requirements for agents to report their contract with student athletes to college athletic departments.
HB 2515 – This bill passed out of the House and established the Kansas Promise Act which would fund two years of community college for all high school graduates with no limits on income or requirement to use federal financial aid (although it does require you to fill out the FASFA). The bill has a $14M fiscal impact. There is a similar bill in the Senate Education Committee.
How to reopen a step – myPerformance tips and tricks
“I missed my self-evaluation deadline, what can I do now? Can I get an extension?” or “My direct report missed the Self-Evaluation deadline, but no longer has access to their performance evaluation. What can I do?” These are the most common question the myPerformance Team gets this time of year. Here’s what you should do.
Employees – ask your manager to reroute / send your evaluation back to you.
Managers – you have the option to send your direct report(s) evaluation back to them by using “Reopen Step.” This will reroute the evaluation back to your employee so that they may complete the Self-Evaluation step of the evaluation cycle. Once they have saved and submitted their content, the evaluation will automatically route back to you. INSTRUCTIONS: 1) Open your direct report 2019-2020 evaluation 2) select “Reopen Step”. It’s that easy.
Remember: Manager Review is due by the end of this month (Feb. 29). Only managers will have access to performance evaluations during this step, unless they have used the “Reopen” step function to extend the Self-Evaluation deadline to their direct report.
More information, including myPerformance training, go to www.wichita.edu/myPerformance.
Severe weather preparedness drill scheduled for Tuesday, March 3
This year, as we have done in the past, WSU will participate in the annual statewide severe weather preparedness drill.
The annual drill this year is Tuesday, March 3. If the weather is clear that day, all of the severe weather sirens in Sedgwick County will go off at 10 a.m. When the severe weather sirens sound, proceed to your designated severe weather shelter area.
Emergency Building Coordinators in each building will ensure that all building occupants safely make their way to the designated severe weather shelter area.
Departments should use this opportunity to ensure that all faculty, staff and students know where to go to protect themselves in a severe weather event.
HCEA Cybersecurity Speaker Series presents Alex Roberts tomorrow
Join the Hub for Cybersecurity Education and Awareness from 2-3:30 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday, Feb. 26) in Partnership 2 Building Room A131, to hear Alex Roberts from the AGCO Corporation and learn more about threats to connected agriculture and what it’s like to hack a tractor. Find out more and register at wichita.edu/cyberhub.
Talk in the Language and Linguistics Colloquium Series features Francis Connor
We invite all of you to the first talk in the spring 2020 Language and Linguistics Colloquium Series. Dr. Francis Connor, associate professor and Interim Chair, Department of English, will give a talk at 3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, in 208 Hubbard Hall. The talk is titled "Shakespeare's Imperfect Verses." This event is free and open to the public.
You’ll find an unfamiliar version of a famous William Shakespeare poem in a forgotten seventeenth-century book. Is it Shakespeare's first draft, a revision by another writer, or something else? My colloquium presentation will use such a poem as a case study to consider different language-based approaches to authorial attribution, focusing particularly on ways that digital corpora such as EEBO-TCP have changed how we approach questions of authorship.
Nominate a phenomenal woman at Wichita State University
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion is celebrating the 12th annual Phenomenal Women Award. Nominations close at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 4. This award recognizes Wichita State University women for their accomplishments and contributions to our community through their scholarship, activism, and commitment to excellence. Individuals are encouraged to nominate women who have made a difference in their lives. Learn more and nominate women at wichita.edu/phenomenal.
Attention faculty with advising responsibilities
Would you like access to tools and resources to help support your advising work? TAN (The Advising Network) is here to help.
TAN is WSU organization that promotes student success through professional development for academic advisors at WSU. We would love to include faculty with advising responsibilities in our network!
TAN provides members with access to professional development resources from across campus, as well as through NACADA, the global community for academic advising.
If you are interested in joining TAN, sign up here.
Free academic resources are available through TRIO Student Support Services
Student Support Services (SSS) is funded by the U.S. Department of Education to provide free academic services to students from First-Generation (FG) and Limited- Income (LI) backgrounds, as well as students with disabilities.
The free services include individualized tutoring, academic advising, textbook loans, assistance completing financial aid applications, and scholarships exclusively for student participants.
We are located on the third floor of Grace Wilkie Hall, in suite 309. For more information, visit our website or contact our offices at 978-3715.
Documentary filmmakers talk about their films
The Ad Astra Film Studies Conference - Spring 2020 - is featuring regional and local documentary filmmakers who will discuss their films on Monday, March 9.
This event is being held from 9:15 a.m.-3:30 p.m. (break from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). Talks begin on the half hour.
The event is free and open to students, faculty, staff, and community members.
The keynote speaker is Carol Zuegner, Ph.D., holder of the Joella Cohen Endowed Chair in Journalism at Creighton University.
Local documentary filmmakers include Jim Grawe, Sara Harmon, Rocio del Aguila Carreno, and Enrique Navarro.
For more information, contact Marti Smith at martha.smith@wichita.edu or 978-6679.
Lean into discomfort as we engage in a discussion around the 400 years of inequality
A 400 Years of Inequality workshop will be held from 6:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, in 208 RSC.
Join us at 6:30 p.m. in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion as we review the 400 years’ timeline. We will engage in tough, but necessary dialogue. 2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival in 1619 at Jamestown of the first Africans to be sold into bondage. These Africans were the first of millions who followed as slaves to work on plantations established on land stolen from the indigenous peoples of the continent.
Colonialism and slavery were soon codified into laws promoting inequality and legitimating oppression and terror. These laws and the practices they encouraged were and remain formidable barriers against efforts by Native Americans, African Americans, poor whites, and numerous other groups, to unite against the dispossession and occupation of lands, and exploitative and oppressive life and work conditions.
We need desperately to link arms in radical equality. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion asks attendees to lean into discomfort and go through the 400 years’ timeline with reflection, discussion, and a call to action.
For more information go to Wichita.edu/odi or contact the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at 978-3034.
Women's Summit at WSU
The Center for Women's Studies, in sponsorship with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, League of Women Voters of Wichita and Centennial Celebration of the 19th Amendment, convenes the annual Diverse Women’s Summit (DWS) March 10-11 in the Shirley Beggs Ballroom, Rhatigan Student Center. It is a meeting of individuals and groups from different backgrounds on local, regional and global diversity issues. The theme will be “Expanding Equality.”
The purpose of the event is to celebrate women’s right to vote, its implications for different women, and increasing opportunities for the future of women and gender with challenges posed by class / poverty, race / ethnicity, sexuality, disability, religion, and other pyramids of power.
- Students Show Case (presentations - papers, art, posters and other projects by students) from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday, March 10.
- International Women’s Day Keynote Speech, “Citizenship before the Women's Suffrage Amendment: African American and Native American, Rights and Resistance,” will be delivered by Professor Kim Warren of Kansas University at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 10.
- Creative Concourse: (poetry, skits, stories and other presentations by community members including students) will be held from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 11.
All events are free and open to the public.
Register to attend the Tilford Symposium at Wichita State Feb. 27-28
Wichita State University, in accordance with our refreshed strategic plan, is committed to providing engaging conversations and discussions centered on diversity and inclusive excellence. To that end, WSU is hosting the first-ever Tilford Symposium, which is an homage to not only the work started by Dr. Michael Tilford—a former WSU Graduate School Dean who was committed to diversity within higher education, but also a way of bringing students, community members, faculty, staff and business and industry leaders into an active discussion centered on diversity and inclusive excellence.
The Tilford Symposium on Thursday, Feb. 27, and Friday, Feb. 28, is committed to providing a supportive ecosystem in which a variety of stakeholders (students, faculty, community, staff, and business and industry leaders) can openly discuss how diversity is impacting student, employee, and leadership experiences from all over the state of Kansas.
Donations needed
The Career Development Center is in desperate need of professional clothing for our Career Closet event! Donate your professional dress items now through March 17 to Brennan III, M-F 8 a.m.-5 p.m. (closed Tuesday mornings).
Professional dress items include suits, dress pants, professional shirts or blouses, professional skirts, belts, neckties, briefcases, cuff links, tie clips, and more. We particularly lack women’s petite and men’s small. For questions, contact Kim Kufahl at 978-6981 or kim.kufahl@wichita.edu.
ADA testing accommodation has been moved to Testing Services
The Office of Disability Services (ODS) would like to give a friendly reminder to WSU professors of the changes in ADA testing accommodations. All ADA accommodated tests are proctored at Testing Services located in 320 Grace Wilkie Hall. The office hours of Testing Services are Mondays from 8 a.m.-5 pm, Tuesdays from 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesdays from 8 a.m.-7 p.m., Thursdays from 8 a.m.-5pm, and Fridays from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
The ADA accommodated test will have to start and finish during the hours when Testing Services is open. The professor and/or the department will have to proctor the test/exam and provide the appropriate accommodations (i.e. extended time and quiet testing environment) if the test is not set during Testing Services hours.
The student must schedule their ADA accommodated test by registering through WWW.RegisterBlast.com/wsu. The professor needs to complete the test form that was attached to the accommodation letter from ODS and send the test form to Testing Services at testingcenter@wichita.edu. The phone number for Testing Services is 978-TEST (8378).
There will be no cost to ODS students for the ADA accommodated/proctored tests at Testing Services. Call Isabel Medina Keiser, director of Disability Services at 978-3309 or email ODS at disability.services@wichita.edu if you have any questions about the changes.
Audiology doctoral students need participants for their research projects
WSU graduate students in the Doctor of Audiology program need participants for their research projects. They are studying clinical techniques in audiology for evaluating function of the ear.
Participants must be between the ages of 18 and 35, have normal hearing, have not had an ear infection in the past three months, nor had symptoms of cold, flu, or nasal allergy in the past two weeks.
Participants will receive a free comprehensive hearing evaluation and ear examination prior to testing. The testing will take about one hour. If you are interested in volunteering, contact Brigid Derby at brderby@shockers.wichita.edu or 816-405-4969, or Professor Xiao-Ming Sun at Xiao-Ming.Sun@wichita.edu.
Volunteers needed for research study
Study name: Effects of Lower Extremity Blood Flow Restriction Exercise on Strength Generation and Interleukin 6 Levels in the Elderly
Research Topic/Purpose of the study: To determine whether Blood Flow Restriction therapy during moderate exercise by people 55 years of age or older results in improved functional activity and health outcomes. Such findings may provide a new approach to promoting health through moderate exercise.
Procedures: Participants will pedal an exercise bike with or without Blood Flow Restriction therapy for approximately 30-minutes, three times per week over a 12-week period. At the beginning of the study and every two weeks, blood samples will be collected and tested for proteins related to exercise and a 30-second sit-to-stand activity will be performed to assess exercise functional outcomes.
Time: Participation is expected to last about 45 minutes. Inclusion / Exclusion Criteria:
- Participants must be age 55 or older
- No known muscular disorders
- No known neurological disorders
- No known cardiopulmonary disorders
- No use of nicotine products
- Not have diabetes
- Not be in an active exercise program
Location: Wichita State University Heskett Center Cycling Studio
Contact: If you are interested in participating in this study, contact: Dr. Nils Hakansson at nils.hakansson@wichita.edu or call 316-978-5909, Chris Deck, PT, at cdeck@providence.org, or Dr. Heidi Bell at Heidi.bell@wichita.edu.
2nd Annual Cops for Shocks Food Drive now to March 31
The WSUPD challenges departments all across campus as we did last year to help stock the Shocker Support Locker.
Donations are accepted at the Police Department lobby from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. We will be glad to pick up and deliver for you, or give your donation to any WSUPD officer until March 31.
Donate shelf stable pantry items, baby food and diapers, hygiene products and bottled water.
Avoid canned green beans, corn, high sugar foods and food past the expiration date.
Join Counseling and Prevention Services and Disability Services for the Autism Spectrum Support Group
For students who self-identify with the autism community or who may be questioning if they fall on the spectrum, join Counseling and Prevention Services and Disability Services for the Autism Spectrum Support Group. In this group you can connect with other students on the spectrum, build a social group, make friends and learn skills to support your social and academic success.
Call 978-4SWC (4792) for more information.
Counseling and Prevention Services
The Wellness Expo is coming to Campus Recreation on March 4
Join Campus Recreation as we host an educational and interactive wellness and health-focused expo from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday, March 4, in the Heskett Center gymnasium. Join your fellow Shockers as you receive free medical screenings, wellness tips, and prizes from vendor booths from campus and the community. Stop in and see what the Wellness Expo is all about.
Are you interested in being a vendor at the Wellness Expo? It may not be too late! Click this link and fill out the form to reserve a spot.