The minutes for the previous general faculty meeting were approved as posted. They can be found on the Senate web page at https://auburn.edu/administration/governance/senate/schedule.html.

Nomination and Election of Senate Officers: Dr. Barry Burkhart

Dr. Burkhart thanked members of the committee for the work that they did in identifying candidates. He also thanked the Provost for the policy that allows leave time after the year of service for the Chair and the Secretary of the Senate. The nominees for Chair-elect are Jim Bradley of Biological Sciences and Alex Dunlop of English. The nominees for Secretary-elect are Carole Corsby of Biological Sciences and Isabelle Thompson of English. He thanked the nominees for their willingness to serve in these offices.

Dr. Jo Heath (Chair): There were no other nominations from the floor. The ballots were passed out for Chair-elect and Secretary-elect.

President’s Address to the Faculty: President William Muse

I am pleased to report to you on the state of the University. Before doing that, however, I want to commend Dr. Jo Heath for her leadership of the University Senate this year. Jo has been a delight to work with. She has invested considerable time to become knowledgeable about the issues and has been persistent in pursuing those matters that are important to the Senate. We should all be grateful for her efforts.

In my fall State of the University address, I provided a rather comprehensive assessment of a number of issues including the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on the Role of the University in the 21^st Century. My objective this afternoon is to give you an update on that topic and other matters.

We have fully implemented all of the recommendations that were adopted by the Board of Trustees and are on target with our objectives for the first year of the five-year plan. We provided salary increases of an average of five percent and increased our spending on deferred maintenance by one million dollars, increased departmental operating funds by three percent, funded the campus-wide initiatives, and implemented the Peaks of Excellence program.

We are considering proposals for additional programs that might be identified as Peaks of Excellence. Sixteen applications were received and are currently under consideration. We should have a list of finalists selected by the April Board of Trustees meeting and hope to eventually recommend from one to three additional programs for inclusion in this opportunity for enhancement funding.

At this juncture, the budget that is being considered for higher education and for Auburn University for next year by the Alabama legislature looks favorable. Governor Siegelman recommended an increased appropriation for Auburn University of 5.4%. If we secure increased funding from the state of that magnitude, we should be able to meet the objectives of our plan for the year 2000-2001.

The principal obstacle to the approval of the Governor's recommended budget is a bill that is before the legislature that would mandate salary increases for teachers in K-12 public schools sufficient to raise their salaries to the national average over the next five years. While I support, and I'm sure all of you support, adequate compensation for teachers, I am opposed to this legislation for several reasons.

1. The national average is an inappropriate benchmark. The cost of living in Alabama is about 11% below that index nationally; therefore, if the national average is used, it should be deflated by approximately 11%.

2. Teachers in K-12 in Alabama do not compete in a national market. School boards rarely hire teachers from outside the state. By contrast, the faculty that we hire are recruited from a national pool.

3. Beginning teachers in Alabama are already paid at rates substantially above the national average.

4. If the total compensation package is compared, including health benefits, Alabama teachers would be very close to the national average in total compensation.

5. Teacher salaries in Alabama currently rank the state 23rd nationally. The ranking of K-12 teachers in Alabama increased from 41st to 23rd over the last five years because of the massive shift of resources away from higher education to K-12 under the James administration. Our estimates are that approximately $600 million that would have gone to higher education, had the traditional one third/two-thirds split been maintained, was shifted to K-12. This cost Auburn University approximately $100 million that would have been added to our base budget during that period. By contrast, the average salaries for faculty in higher education in this state rank Alabama 43rd nationally, worse than K-12 was five years ago.

All of us must work to keep the legislature from caving in to the pressure of Dr. Paul Hubbert and the Alabama Education Association on this issue. If teaching is to be truly valued in this state, it needs to be valued at every level, not just at K 12. Higher education needs an equitable share of the resources.

At the April board meeting, we will be presenting to the Trustees a recommendation for an academic forgiveness policy. This is in response to a specific request. I have been pleased with the discussions that have taken place on both campuses between faculty and students concerning the development of an appropriate policy for the University. I am hopeful that we can reach reasonable concurrence on such a policy that can be presented to the Trustees for their consideration. The debate on this issue is important,

as any policy we adopt should attempt to balance the need to protect the academic reputation of the institution with the desire to provide students with some limited means to recover from a bad academic experience.

We should avoid changes that will weaken Auburn's academic reputation. A university's academic reputation is its most valuable asset. It affects the number and quality of students we attract, the quality of faculty we can recruit, the kinds of graduate and professional schools our graduates can attend, and the quantity and quality of potential employers that our graduates have. Fortunately, Auburn has an excellent academic reputation. That is reflected in numerous rankings of colleges and universities and the opinions expressed and actions taken by employers and admission committees for graduate and professional schools. Auburn's reputation has been forged over the years by the work of talented and dedicated faculty who have done an effective job of teaching, resulting in students who are well prepared for the responsibilities they assume after graduation, and through their research and publication efforts that have achieved for them stature within their academic disciplines. The perception is that Auburn offers a challenging academic environment and that a student who is successful here has earned the grade point average he or she possesses. Any drastic change that would be perceived by various audiences as substantially weakening or watering down our academic expectations for students would be, in my opinion, disastrous.

At the same time, I am sympathetic to the student who got off to a bad start because he or she was in the wrong major or for various personal reasons may have done poorly for one academic term. Most schools, many with academic reputations as strong as Auburn's, offer some limited means by which the student can redress those mistakes. I can support a policy that allows a student, for a limited number of courses, to re-take the course and to compute his or her grade point average using the second grade acquired. In those cases, in my opinion, there should be full disclosure on the transcript, listing both courses taken and the

grades earned with a notation that the second grade is utilized in computing the GPA. A policy that allowed for limited opportunities to do this under conditions of full disclosure would, in my opinion, not harm the institution's academic reputation.

At the opening of this legislative session, I had an opportunity to testify before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, along with the Presidents of each of the other universities in the state. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Howard Hawk, had asked the Alabama Commission on Higher Education to supply data about each of the universities. The committee members seemed to be impressed with two statistics about Auburn. First, they learned that our graduation rate is considerably higher than that of any other institution in the state. Second, they learned that our enrollment has been growing, while the enrollment of many other institutions in the state has not, and in some cases, has declined markedly. I was surprised they did not know that and was impressed that they asked. Auburn's attractiveness to potential students continues to grow. This year we have had a 12.7% increase in applications, forcing us to close our admissions process for the fall semester as of March 1st. Even with this early closing date, we anticipate that our freshman class may be the largest in our history and we are working to ensure that we can adequately serve this population.

Auburn, it seems, is never without its challenges. But, on balance, I believe the state of the University is solid. I appreciate your support and your efforts to keep our performance levels high in all areas of our operation.

Conner Bailey: How will your presentation on academic forgiveness to the Board vary from what you told the Senate?

Dr. Muse: The policy that was approved by the Senate was presented to Dr. Walker and Dr. Muse. He plans to present that policy to the Board with one anticipated change. The approved policy excludes nursing. There is not a reasonable rationale for excluding this program. Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy are excluded, but they do not have baccalaureate programs. Nursing is only a baccalaureate program. It would be difficult to exclude nursing without also offering the possibility of excluding other baccalaureate programs. Other than that change, they intend to recommend the policy that was approved by the Senate.

Glenn Howze (Immediate Past-Chair): It may be that this forgiveness policy will not do anything damaging to academic standards. But what will do harm to the reputation of academic standards at Auburn, is for the Board to keep imposing changes in our academic standards. From his point of view, and most faculty at major universities, academic standards should be left to the faculty. When the Board of Trustees starts threatening, "either you make a change or we’ll do it ourselves," then that does real harm to our reputation as an institution.

Conner Bailey: The policy that the Senate approved does not match what a Board member called for at the last Board meeting. What outcome do you anticipate?

Dr. Muse: He refrained from anticipating, but he plans to present a case that is as convincing as possible. He will present the policy as a reasonable one, a responsive one, and one that will be best for the institution. He hopes that the Board will be persuaded in that regard.

Announcements: Dr. Jo Heath, Senate Chair

Remember to volunteer for Senate committees on the Senate web page. The form can be found at https://auburn.edu/administration/governance/senate and it is listed as the fourth item on the page.

Committee Reports: Faculty Welfare Committee: Dr. Efrossini Albrecht-Piliouni

Before I tell you what our group has been doing during the last few months, I would like to acknowledge its members, the members of the Faculty Welfare Committee, and to thank them for their time, their help and their promptness in collecting the information we have accumulated so far. The members of this committee are alphabetically:

Mary Sue Barry- Curriculum and Teaching

Geneva Brown- Sociology

Dennis Drake- Career Development

Ronnie Herring- Insurance and Benefits

Paul Mask- Agronomy and Soils

Tony Moss- Biological Sciences

Martin Ollif- Library

Eva Sartin- Pathobiology

Michael Solomon- Consumer Affairs

I also want to thank Mary Boudreaux for keeping us up-to-date on the tuition assistance project and Marilyn Bradbard for informing us on the Day Care survey conducted by her department in 1995.

WHAT WE DID LAST YEAR

Last year the two major issues this committee worked on were:

a) tuition assistance for faculty and their dependents and

b) the status of the non-tenure track faculty and medical benefits for the part-time non-tenure track faculty at Auburn.

Right now the first item is in the hands of the Insurance and Benefits Committee and the second is dealt with by a new senate group, the Instructors’ Committee.

OUR CHARGE THIS YEAR

This year we have been investigating the possibility of establishing a day care center on campus for the children of the A.U. faculty and staff. The need for such a facility was identified in 1995 when a survey was conducted by the Family and Child Development Department. The results of the survey were never considered and never went beyond the Provost’s office. The problems which Auburn has had with faculty retention and recruiting rekindled our interest in such a possibility.

Right now, according to the university BC/BS list of dependents, there are 592 children, ages 1-5, and 738 children, ages 5-10. As you see, the need is definitely there.

One good recruiting/retention tool for Auburn University is that the local schools are well-ranked within our state and region, which is an important consideration for young faculty starting out their families. Most of the time people are happy with the education their children receive in Auburn. However, the demands of faculty life are stringent, requiring long hours and rarely allowing sufficient flexibility for faculty to return home at the end of their children’s school day. Auburn’s poor salaries make it imperative that both spouses work. Consequently, there is a great need for quality day-care for children on a year-round basis. It is of paramount importance that the " Auburn Family" take better care of its individual families. When parents know that their children are in good hands while they themselves are fulfilling their commitment to this institution, everybody fares well-Auburn University, its faculty and their children. A functional family is supposed to meet most of the needs of all of its members so that they all have a chance at progressing and prospering. Apart from the mild climate and the Spring azalea trails, there should be some more substantial incentives for recruiting and retaining faculty to make up for salaries which are below the regional and the national averages.

Our research into the issue included other institutions similar to Auburn and some local programs, like the Auburn City After School Programs and the EAMC. The University of Alabama, UAB, the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt all have day care facilities. The tuition for these facilities tends to be somewhat high, but the faculty at those institutions have assessed their day care programs as important enough to deserve their continuous support. The Auburn City After School Program is rather poor. Members of our committee whose children have participated in it testify that the experience is anything but enriching and that the children go practically wild due to the lack of adequate supervision. In other words, what is available in town right now is far from fine. Finally, the EAMC seems to have the best established program, which has been running successfully for the last eleven years at little, almost no cost to that institution. We have decided that their conditions are very similar to ours.

OUR GOALS

2. We want the guidelines for this facility to be approximately what would be considered for accreditation, but accreditation is not a major consideration at this point.

We believe that a facility like this would help improve the faculty morale, and that it would be an excellent tool for faculty recruiting and retention. We want to see the " Auburn Spirit" expand over the whole "Auburn Family."

Constitutional Reform: Dr. Wayne Flynt

There have been efforts since 1915 to reform the Alabama constitution of 1901. To those who are newcomers to Alabama, this effort is of interest to you for several reasons. The Alabama Constitution is the longest constitution in the world; it is longer than Moby Dick.

He held up a visual example of the U.S. Constitution, which has been amended 26 times, versus the Alabama Constitution, which has been amended 661 times. One amendment is longer than the entire U.S. Constitution.

The importance of reform is not because the Alabama Constitution is a long document or a clumsy document. The reform is for far more important reasons than that. First, it is a racist document. It is the basis for the racial system of apartheid prevalent in Alabama throughout most of the 20^th century. That was the intent of the document as the proceedings in May of 1901 made crystal clear. Before the document was enacted, there were 181,000 African American male voters in Alabama. After the document was enacted, there were less than 5000. It still contains provisions preventing interracial schools in Alabama, preventing interracial marriage, as well as other embarrassing provisions. Most of those provisions have been found unconstitutional.

Second, the document prevents home rule. Municipalities and counties in Alabama do not have control over their own affairs. This has created a problem for the rapidly growing areas in the state. Seventy percent of the 661 amendments affect only one county or municipality. Eleven of the amendments deal with bingo games in one local county. Sixty deal with rural fire departments. Thirty-five deal with the locally paid officials within the court system in various counties. One provides that the Music Hall of Fame in Mussel Shoals will be given the power to purchase CD’s.

Third, the Alabama Constitution makes it very difficult to reform tax policy. That was the intent of the founding fathers: to make it as difficult as possible to levy taxes, especially property taxes. The result is a battle between K-12 and higher education for the past 100 years over the interest of the Educational Trust Fund.

On April 7^th in Tuscaloosa, there will be a grassroots effort to amend the constitution in the form of an old-fashioned political rally. This is sponsored by a wide array of different groups. The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and the Tuscaloosa Chamber of Commerce will sponsor the first meeting. The Republican Secretary of State and the Republican Representative in Elmore County are in support of it. This is one activity in which political partisanship will not be an issue. There will be Republicans and Democrats as well as many businessmen. He encouraged Auburn faculty to become involved in the effort. Dr. Flynt provided Dr. Heath with the information about the rally, and this information will be posted on the Senate web page. For more information about this rally: www.tuscaloosachamber.com/RALLY1.html

Farewell Address by the Outgoing Senate Chair: Dr. Jo Heath

It's been a good year.

Bruce Gladden, and I, my partner Marcia Boosinger, and Mary Boudreaux made a great team. We met with the Provost once a week, with the President once a month. We listened to them and they listened to us. We attended the Board meetings together and got mad together. It's been a very interesting year and I have enjoyed it.

Auburn University is a complicated place. But I have seen patterns during my tenure as chair and

chair-elect and I have a transparency that will reveal the mind of the university. (Editor's Note: The

transparency is a diagram of a human brain, with the various influences on university governance -- faculty, students, trustees, administration, etc. -- identified with different areas of the brain.)

As faculty, our big three responsibilities are, as you know, instruction, outreach and research. Our

professional integrity, our promotions, our tenure, our merit raises depend on them.

But what of the so-called "service" ?

University service differs significantly from community service. If you volunteer to be a scoutmaster it

may be because you want to spend time with your child, or maybe you want to make the community a better place in which to live.

Whatever your reasons, they are at least tinged with altruism. But university service is not based on altruism; it is all about control.

Control of academics and related issues: Faculty should control academics. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has wisely put faculty in a keystone position for academic issues. Why? Because we are the ones in the trenches. We are the ones with recent and maybe long-term experience. We have the knowledge and the expertise. Its that simple. SACS is right. Faculty should be responsible for academics.

The AAUP (American Association of University Professors), the campus chapter, worked hard on this theme in recent years: one reason the university senate chair is on the nominating committee (in the current bill to change the way we select trustees) is that the University Senate chair will represent the interests of academics.

Faculty should represent academics. Almost all of our committees, senate and university, have to do directly or indirectly with faculty taking control of academics.

Consider these powerful committees: Promotion and Tenure, Program Review , Academic Standards or the

Graduate Council.

It is essential that faculty control these processes. Without faculty willing to provide service on these committees and others, crucial academic decisions would have to be made by non-faculty.

An example: Last year the notorious "commission" composed of board members, administrators and two faculty members (Wayne Flynt and Glenn Howze) set out to "make the hard decisions", academic decisions. Namely, of the targeted programs, what to cut, what to merge, and what to save. After some weeks, after hundreds of letters, and after dozens of speeches by character witnesses, they began to understand the difficulty of this project.

Glenn resurrected the program review committee. The program review committee organized an evaluation process based on reason and academic values and after much work made their recommendations to the president.

President Muse accepted all but one of the recommendations (he disagreed with the committee on the aviation management program). The commission, by now looking for a way out of their quagmire, accepted all but one of the recommendations of the president (the infamous case of the Ph.D. in economics).

Do you realize how close we came to the commission making crucial program decisions based on anecdotal evidence? Character witnesses add texture to proceedings but the outcome should be based on real evidence and careful analysis. One very important result: the Program Review Committee was established as the correct mechanism for evaluating programs. This was a good thing to come out of the commission.

This was reinforced recently when Bobby Lowder wanted to use the department creating criteria to uncreate departments. At the last board meeting, Provost Walker convinced the board, at least as a first step, that the Program Review Committee should evaluate the departments that do not meet the creation criteria. Score one for sanity.

Does faculty control of academics go unchallenged? No. There are three major forces to help or to hinder:

1. Attitudes toward shared governance

2. Money considerations

3. Board of Trustees

Let's talk about these.

Force number 1: Attitudes toward shared governance. The faculty and its senate are only advisory to the upper administration. That's a given. We are fortunate at AU that our upper administration believes in shared governance and actively supports it: they trust the faculty and they respect faculty expertise in academic matters.

I have been impressed week in and week out with the strong pro-faculty stance of the upper administration. Not every university has this advantage. Troy State, for instance, forbids the formation of a faculty senate and it's no coincidence in my mind that Troy State has a reputation for low academic standards and integrity.

Force #2 : Money Considerations. This force is not a positive one, but is probably inevitable. The same upper administration that supports in theory the idea that the faculty should decide upon, and take the lead in, academic matters, seems to think we have only a finite amount of money to spend. This throws a wet blanket on our plans with regularity.

The faculty thinks long and hard about what is best for academics but thinks very little about how to pay for it. This force comes into play sometimes when the President overrules a recommendation made by the grievance committee or the P&T committee or some other committee. The faculty committee takes the high road and decides, as best it can, what is right. Nothing else is considered.

The President sometimes feels he cannot do this. For instance, if the P&T committee decides that Professor X should not get tenure based on his accomplishments and potential, they will recommend denial. But the President may have to also consider that some required procedures were not carried out with Professor X and that five years earlier (with another P&T committee) Professor Y in the same department with the weaker credentials did get tenure. It's not a matter of fairness so much as it is lawsuit avoidance.

Money considerations have real impact.

Force # 3: the Board of Trustees. Every outgoing chair talks about the board because the board really bugs us. The principle source of our frustration was summed up in a short simple sentence by Bill Barrow in his Feb 24 Plainsman editorial on academic forgiveness: "Regardless of legal authority, the board is not made up of academic experts."

That's it. If you take your car to a mechanic, do you describe the symptoms and let the mechanic find the solution, or do you just tell the mechanic what to do?

If you are sick and go to a doctor, do you describe your symptoms or do you just tell the doctor that you need an antibiotic?

If you are a board member who sees a problem, do you ask the university to examine the problem, or do you impose your own solution because you have the power to do so.

I sometimes enjoy a daydream in which there is a state mandated board with real legal power to control Colonial Bank -- consisting of, say, an artist, an historian, a plumber, a baseball player, and a surgeon. One common thread is that all of these Colonial Bank board members know nothing about banks outside the experience of their own personal checking accounts. No banking expertise. And yet these people decide the direction of the bank, changes in its policies, ignoring (whenever they want to) the recommendations of

the bank president. This bank would probably fail. If this happened , a few more people in the state of Alabama would appreciate the frustration that comes of power belonging to the inexpert.

To continue from Bill Barrow's column: "the underlying conclusion in this analysis is this: the trustees want to help students but they ignore the proper protocol of any institution of higher education. They ignore the advice of the faculty. They ignore the process by which any academic policy should be explored, approved and implemented: from the bottom up."

Of course I prefer not to think of the faculty and the students as being on the bottom; rather we are the ones in the trenches.

Thank you very much.

A. Presentation of the AAUP Academic Freedom Award: Conner Bailey

One of our faculty colleagues suggested that a member of the Board had more freedom over academics that the rest of us combined, and therefore, he should get the award. That was not taken seriously, but academic freedom is taken very seriously. Nomination forms were mailed out as well as available on the web. There were a large number of well-qualified nominees. Dr. Bailey was proud to announce that Dr. Barry Burkhart is the award recipient.

The criteria used to pick Br. Burkhart included a demonstration of ethical standards in his profession and significant contribution in advocating and protecting academic freedom. Academic freedom is something that we all hold very dear. It has to do with open, intellectually honest, and disciplined inquiry, and Barry Burkhart signifies all of those qualities.

There were faculty concerns with the way a past president was brought to Auburn and the way in which that president administered Auburn University. During that time, a committee was formed to discuss these concerns and make recommendations. Dr. Burkhart was a member of that committee.

There was also an issue involving former President Martin and his withdrawal of an offer to a professor for tenure. The University Senate formed a committee to investigate this matter. Professor Burkhart was a member of that committee as well.

Recently, there was a task force to study the efficiency of Auburn University, and Barry Burkhart chaired that effort. Br. Burkhart provided effective, fair, honest, open, and disciplined leadership. He provided crucial leadership for that committee.

He has also shown leadership in the formation and support of the AGLA on campus, serving as its mentor and faculty advisor. Dr. Bailey invited the faculty to welcome and congratulate Barry Burkhart for his receipt of this award.

Dr. Barry Burkhart: This is more meaningful than many things he has been awarded for in the past. When he was in the third grade, one of his teachers sent a note home to his mom saying that Barry was, "often contrary." He thinks that people still tend to describe him as often contrary. He suspects that this award is because of the fact that he is often contrary. He hopes what is recognized about him is his ability to work with the administration. We are all working collaboratively together for the good of Auburn University. It is not about personal glory, but working for this wonderful institution. Dr. Burkhart did not graduate from Auburn University, so he may not be a full member of the Auburn family. He hopes that this award recognizes the fact that you can be a part of the Auburn family while at the same time examining critically what the institution should be doing.

B. Announcement of Election Results: Dr. Jo Heath

The new Chair-elect is Jim Bradley and the new Secretary-elect is Isabelle Thompson. Dr. Heath handed the gavel over to the new chair, Bruce Gladden.

Bruce Gladden (Chair): He expressed his appreciation to Jo Heath and Marcia Boosinger for their hard work over the past year. He reminded the Senate to check out the Senate web page, volunteer for a committee, and encourage their colleagues to do so as well.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.