Auburn
University Senate Minutes
October
17, 2000
Absent: D. Himelrick, S. Bilgili, R. Ripley, D.
Pascoe, R. Eaves, C. Gross, A. Illies, M. El-Halwagi, R. Paxton, B. Brawner, R.
Kenworthy, C. Skelton, J. DeRuiter, C. Hageman, C. Buchanan.
Absent
(Substitute): L. Frobish (Keith Cummins), Murray Jardine (Robert W.
Widell), Marty Olliff (P. Sullenger).
The
meeting was called to order at 3:00 p.m.
The
minutes for the previous meeting were approved as posted. They can be found on the Senate web page at https://auburn.edu/administration/governance/senate/schedule.html
Announcements:
A. Provost William Walker
Dr.
Muse extends his apologies for being unable to attend today. He is in
Birmingham launching the year’s first area meeting of members of the
legislature and some of Auburn’s supporters.
He holds the sessions about five times a year to serve as an avenue for
Auburn University to express to the legislature what it is the University is
trying to accomplish.
This
legislative session is expected to be a rather difficult one. It will be so because the Teacher Pay Raise
Bill passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor will take
two-thirds of the growth in the Education Trust Fund. This fund is the source
of state funding for Auburn University. If raises are extended to all K-12
employees and not just teachers, then as much as 80% of the growth in the
Education Trust Fund may be taken.
Plainly this legislative session poses great challenges to us; we’ve
spent considerable time developing strategies to proceed.
In
the upcoming election there are two amendments to the State constitution on the
ballot that affect Auburn University.
Amendment One will provide for much-needed funds for agriculture,
veterinary medicine, and forestry, and some building projects. We certainly
support passing these amendments.
Amendment Five, referred to as the Auburn Trustee Bill, provides for a
new procedure for the appointment of trustees.
Provost
Walker introduced Rich Burnett as the newly appointed interim executive
director of Information Technology, as Jim Stone has retired. He challenged Rich with the job of developing
a customer focus for that entire operation.
Steve
McFarland was going to discuss the situation with email at the meeting
scheduled for last week; as he was not here Dr. Walker shared some of his notes
for last week. His first comment is
that Auburn email is the equivalent of the Tower of Babel; we have a great need
for work on our email system, and it is a most important system. We have about 3.3 million email messages
coming in and out of this University everyday. There are about 3 million telephone
calls and about 525,000 letters from faculty.
Dr. Walker stated that as he read these statistics it occurred to him
that about half of those phone calls were probably people like himself calling
to find out another person’s email address.
Therein lies the problem: we
have a number of email systems on campus; however, we are not going to close
any of them. We are going to create a
complete directory of all the Auburn users on all systems, so that everyone can
easily access these directories and quickly communicate across campus. This is the extent of the changes right
now. Rich and his people are going to
try to increase your confidence in their ability to manage these IT
systems. Those who need more powerful
systems will be able to incorporate them into their local area networks.
Provost Walker does not view this as anything drastic; it ought to save
everyone a good bit of time, and over time we can move forward to a single
email system.
On
Thursday morning, Linda Glaze and Joyce Rothschild, the chair of the
application committee for the Phi Beta Kappa petition that has been submitted
for this university, will be leaving to attend the Tri-Annual Council for Phi
Beta Kappa in Philadelphia. At that
council, the vote will be taken whether or not to admit Auburn University to
the ranks of that distinguished society.
It is our hope and desire that the vote will be positive.
We
have appointed co-directors for the SACS reaffirmation visit. Linda Glaze will co-direct with Dr. Gene
Clothiaux. This is a commitment of
about three years on Dr. Clothiaux’s part to consummate all the details
involved in the re-affirmation visit. The two of them have already put together
a budget for this enterprise; we’ve forwarded this to Mr. Large for funding. The budget is around $600,000 for the entire
re-affirmation visit; this includes a 25 person team coming to the University.
Within
the next few days we will be appointing a Director of Assessment. This will be an ongoing process, not just a
three-year process. All indications are
that this is something that could reduce the amount of work the institution is
required to do in the future to prepare for SACS reaffirmation visits. As you
know, we have hired some consultants to help us with the assessment aspects of
the SACS assessment; they are Jim and Karen Nichols. They will be back on
campus November 9th or 10th. If you need more information about this issue contact Linda
Glaze.
During
a SACS reaffirmation visit, in my experience, the faculty usually divides itself
into two categories with respect to SACS.
One is the group that says it is a waste of time; the other is the group
that says it is about self-study and self-improvement and sees it as a learning
experience. All of you are in positions
of influence within your departments. I
would very much encourage you to take the perspective that this is something
that can help our university. I hope
you will be very pleased with the results of this study.
The
semester transition committee will meet this week to develop a proposed policy
for summer salaries for faculty on the semester system. This proposed policy
will be brought before the Senate at a later date.
Questions:
Conner Bailey (not a voting member of the Senate): A
couple of months ago I saw a copy of the Dean’s Council minutes that referred
to a number 12 with reference to contact hours representing a full academic
teaching load. Last Friday in my College of Agriculture we had a meeting of
faculty and this number was used again.
Has this number 12 been brought
before the Senate or any Senate or University committees? If so, which
committee; if not, why not?
Dr. Walker: There was a lot of discussion when we were
talking about the workload policy that had been generated, in fact, that number
twelve came up then. I do not know if
it came up as an ultimate in workload. But the workload policy itself was
distributed to the Schools and Colleges and they were asked to use it and
provide input back on what they were going to do with it. The response was fairly
negative. Right now, the definition of a full workload rests with the Dean and
faculty of each School or College. The
problem is that it is most likely not consistent across campus. Absent external pressures to do anything
differently, I do not feel badly about that. If you remember, the reason that
came up was because of pressure from the State legislature. If you folks would like to go forward, we’d
be happy to listen.
Curtis Jolly,
Dept of Ag Economics: You talked about
salaries for summer. Are you talking about people on nine months or people on
twelve months, or are you all-inclusive?
Dr. Walker: For people on twelve months there should be
no question. The summer school is going to be two five-week sessions and one
ten-week session. How we pay the
faculty over that ten-week period does merit some discussion.
Steve
Knowlton, Physics: This is in regard
to the email system that you talked about earlier. Did you say that the existing email systems would not be shut
down?
Dr. Walker: It won’t be shut down by us. If COSAM people want to change their email
system, it is their business. We are not going to mandate that any email system
go away; we are simply putting in place
a directory so that we can conveniently communicate with one another. The
advantage of the email system used by the central operations is that it has
some very powerful packages associated with it, like calendaring. Over time that might be something you would
want to take a look at and see if you would be comfortable with.
Andy Redman,
SGA Senate Liaison: Can you give us an
update on the search for a new Vice President of Student Affairs?
Dr. Walker: Dr. Muse said that I would be asked that
question. Yes, we are in the process of
setting up meetings with one of the candidates and the Board of Trustees.
Mr. Redman:
What about the latest on candidates dropping out of the search?
Dr. Walker: One has dropped out.
Renee
Middleton, Counseling Psychology:
For clarification, did you say “a candidate” or “candidates?”
Dr. Walker: A candidate. This is the candidate that I recommended to Dr. Muse and Dr. Muse
recommended to the Board.
An
AAUP Open Forum will be held Thursday, November 2, in Tichenor 206. The topic is effective teaching. Barry Burkhart is the moderator along with
a panel: Paula Backscheider (English), Jeffrey Fergus (Mechanical
Engineering), Philip Lewis (Psychology), and Philip Shevlin (Chemistry). More information can be found at the AAUP
website: https://auburn.edu/~aaup.
There
has been some question raised about books being discarded by the library. We
have spoken with Dean Bentley and she reported that this is part of a normal
process that the library goes through.
At our request she has agreed to put books to be discarded on a table on
the third floor of the library. They will remain there for two weeks if you
wish to pick up any of them. There is
only one request of the library staff to those who pick up books: Do not bring them back.
Hopefully
you will all be receiving an email letter tomorrow or the next day concerning
the calendar for Fall 2001. The Calendar and Schedules committee has been
working on the calendar and has found it nearly impossible to satisfy all of
the constraints that were placed upon it.
This letter will ask you as Senators some specific questions about the
calendar process to get feedback to discern the most important priorities in
establishing the calendar. Once we send
it to you we request that you return information within a week so we can
compile the information. As you know,
there is already an approved Fall 2001 calendar that begins August 16. We found out that August 16 is the beginning
of the pay period, so this means that many people would have to show up to
prepare for classes many days before they would be getting paid. This has been found by many to be an
unworkable schedule. The Calendar and Schedules
committee is trying to respond to this concern, and should be getting back with
the Senate with possible solutions by the November Senate meeting.
Committee
Reports:
The
Senate Chair-Elect is usually the chair of this committee; however, with the
committee’s permission I have remained as chair of this committee rather than
Jim Bradley. As it has been found in
past years, the Chair-Elect is not the best person to chair this committee for
many reasons.
The
members of the Administrator Evaluator committee are:
Waynon
Abner, Staff Representative
Jim
Bradley, Chair-Elect of the University Senate, Biological Sciences
David
Bransby, Agronomy and Soils
Wayne
Brewer, Entomology and Plant Pathology
Ann
Janer, Clinical Pharmacy
Jean
Weese, Nutrition and Food Science
Bruce
Gladden, Chair of University Senate, Health and Human Performance (member by
permission of the Committee)
A
special thanks to Joe Molnar, Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, for
his counsel concerning the questionnaire.
First,
I would like to give a history of this evaluation and bring you up to date to
where we are today with this process. After searching the minutes of past
meetings, I found back on April 11, 1995 a note in the minutes that Kent Fields
(chair of the committee) would mail administrator evaluation forms to
tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty by the end of the next week. June 13, 1995 Kent announced that the
evaluations were being processed, the reports to go out in about three weeks. A
year later, May 14, 1996, John Grover (Senate chair at that time) announced
that there was a standing committee that evaluates administrators working on a
questionnaire similar to last year’s. He said that at that time the committee
was dealing with a lot of cynicism about the utility of the reports. He said at
that time Senators would be asked to encourage departmental participation in
the evaluation. I found nothing else
about evaluations until another year later, March 11, 1997, when Gary Swanson
(chair of the committee) stated that the general consensus of the committee was
that the evaluation process was a broken process. One problem was the low response rate, usually about 20%; in some
departments only one person would participate. Swanson proposed some options
including discontinuing the evaluation
process. There was a long discussion; Kent Fields moved that the committee skip
1997’s evaluations but remain in session, study the questionnaire and construct
a new, valid instrument to be used the next year. That motion was seconded and
passed. Another year later, March 10,
1998, Glenn Howze, gave an interim report which included some suggestions for
dealing with the evaluation problems. I
do not have that report because I failed to get it from Glenn. However, in the Senate he did report that
Provost Parks had agreed to ask the Council of Deans to select one or two deans
to meet with the committee as well as some department heads. The committee
would then review the evaluation process for that group, get their input, and
bring the results back to the Senate in April or May. That’s the end of the
story until last year when the committee began again to revise the evaluation
process. The probable reason for this lapse of time is that the Commission on
the Role of the University in the 21st century was formed in April
1998. Also, the Faculty Handbook says the Administrator Evaluation committee
will conduct a periodic evaluation of administrators; thus the evaluation is
periodic and not every year. There has
been a gap, probably because the process was not going very well and then the
Commission was formed, taking up a lot of effort and energy from everyone
involved.
For
a little over a year we have been working on a plan for evaluating
administrators. The following is an overhead illustrating the plan proposed by
the Administrator Evaluation committee:
Our Plan
1. Short, convenient evaluation form.
2. Put the evaluation form on the Web.
3. Assign each member of the Administrator
Evaluation Committee a group of Senators.
4. Each Committee member checks with
his/her Senators to ensure that Senators actively encourage all faculty on an
individual basis to complete the evaluation form.
5. In March, 1998, a minimum goal of 60%
response rate was suggested. We are
still discussing a minimum cut-off response rate for each administrator’s
evaluations.
6. The results would be summarized and
reported to the administrator who is being evaluated and to that
administrator’s supervisor.
Other
items the Administrator Evaluation committee are working on (overhead displayed
at meeting):
1. Web administration of the evaluation
form. So far it appears that anonymity
is not possible but a high degree of confidentiality is. Each faculty member would be given a unique
identifier with which to log on to the evaluation form. The response to the form would be as
confidential as any e-mail in the system.
2. A yearly evaluation of Department
Heads/Chairs and Deans seems feasible.
3. Should Associate Deans be evaluated?
4. Who should be evaluated above the level
of the Deans? By whom should they be
evaluated? How often should they be
evaluated?
We will need feedback on this. We could
certainly keep the option open for anyone who wanted a paper questionnaire to
be provided with one.
Feel free to contact anyone on the
committee with your concerns.
I will not go over the department
head/dean questionnaires now. These
questionnaires reflect what our committee has come up with so far. The links for these questionnaires can be
found below. Please read them and
provide feedback.
Department
Head/Chair Questionnaire
We have looked at the old
questionnaires and some other questionnaires.
We have lumped some questions together to keep the number down around
ten, so that respondents will not be discouraged from responding because of the
length of the questionnaire.
Mostly we have tried to be
gender-neutral in the language of the questionnaire.
After reviewing these questionnaires
please let us know if we’ve left out something.
I’d be happy to hear any general
comments on the construction of this questionnaire:
Curtis
Jolly, Ag Economics: In reformulating
the evaluation sheet, will there be a new job description for the head of the
department, reminding them that they are expected to fulfill the items on the
questionnaire?
Dr.
Gladden: That is a good point, one we have discussed.
They ought to know they should be doing these things; they also should be told
that they should be doing these things.
Renee
Middleton, Counseling Psychology:
I certainly support the higher rate of return, but I think that as we
try to diversify our faculty, I have concerns as the only female in my
department or the only person of color that I may have challenges or concerns
that my other colleagues may not have.
If my colleagues are all well and happy, they may not return it. If I am the only one who returns mine, I
would hate for my voice to be cut off simply because I’m the only one in my
department who returned their survey.
Dr.
Gladden: That is exactly why it [the survey] hasn’t
been done. The feeling among those who have any authority to do anything about
it was that they were getting responses that were interesting to read but were
not very helpful, because they were mainly from people who were unhappy and
extremely unhappy. If there is only one
of those and that’s all you have from that Department, it’s hard to know what
to do with it. I welcome you to provide
us with any ideas on how you think we should handle this problem.
Dr. Middleton: I hope you understand what I am saying: if I
am the only one in my department facing challenges that others are not, I do
not want my voice discounted.
Dr.
Gladden: Right.
Jim
Bradley, Biological Sciences: I know some people in my department
would have some questions about the anonomity issue. If you distributed a paper ballot, would an identifier be
necessary on a paper ballot to prevent inappropriate responses.
Dr.
Gladden: If you are afraid of someone stuffing the
ballot or knowing who you are, it is hard to satisfy both of those at the same
time. If you can in any way identify the questionnaire when it goes away, then
theoretically someone can figure out who responded. If you don’t do that, you
will end up with more people responding than are in your department.
Dr.
Bradley: So what are the advantages of a paper
ballot?
Dr.
Gladden: Some are more comfortable with that idea. I am
not sure if it is an advantage, if you put that identifier with it. However, I would appreciate any ideas on how
to make everyone more comfortable in responding to the questionnaire.
Conner
Bailey, Ag Economics and Rural Sociology (non-voting member): We should discuss for a moment to what ends
the evaluation are to purpose, Dr. Walker, for what purpose will you use
it? How will you use the results?
Dr.
Walker: This depends on a number of things. One to consider is whether or not this is a dean
at the end of his/her first year. You would look at the results differently if
the dean had served for five years.
Dr.
Bailey: Or if you had a series of evaluations over a
number of years with the same outcome?
Dr.
Walker: It seems to me that what you look for are
steps for improvement.
Dr.
Bailey: For example, it seems that in some years,
deans have been given more or less the same percent raises. Would you be able to use these evaluations
for salary adjustments?
Dr.
Gladden: That’s a good question Conner, and one of
the things we are discussing with the Provost.
We are trying to get something that we like and that the Provost and
Deans would use. Hopefully there are
some administrators out there doing a good job, so these evaluations would
reflect that as well.
Herb
Rotfeld, Steering Committee:
With respect to Dr. Littleton’s concerns I hope the Provost’s office
would have mechanisms to obtain direct information of these problems, not
necessarily requiring a survey. If your concern with your survey is a response
rate, you should be looking at the information on what maximizes people being
able to give anonymous responses. My
colleague who teaches Marketing Research methods is here and he can correct me
if I’m wrong, but as soon as you put it on the Internet, you are killing
anonymity. As soon as you put things on
the Internet, you are either killing response rates or opening yourself up to
SPAM. If you want a survey with high
response rates, keep it off the Internet.
Dr.
Gladden: This is the kind of feedback we need to
hear, although I’m not sure we will be able to keep a check on who is returning
the surveys.
Dr.
Rotfield: With all due respect, I do not see that your
committee is filled with experts on survey research methods.
Dr.
Gladden: Joe Molnar is helping us.
Dr.
Rotfield: I said “filled with.”
Dr.
Gladden: We would appreciate all the help you can
give us, Herb.
Resolution:
This resolution can be found as part of
the agenda for today’s meeting and at the following link: RESOLUTION
Jo
Heath, Immediate Past-Chair of the Senate:
I move that we support this resolution.
Greg
Pettit, Human Development and Family Studies:
I second that motion.
Dr.
Gladden: The resolution has been moved and
seconded. Is there any discussion?
The resolution was passed without
dissent.
With regard to this resolution and the
reason for this resolution, hopefully by now all of you have received an
invitation to a reception congratulating President Muse on this prestigious
award. The reception will be at the AU
Hotel and Conference Center this Monday, October 23, 2000 at 4:00 p.m. This event is opposite a Franklin lecture;
however, it will last long enough for you to attend the lecture and walk across
the hall to the reception. Please do
not miss one event because of the other.
Also, everyone in the University is invited to this reception,
regardless of who got an invitation.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:15 p.m.