Auburn University Senate Meeting

November 12, 2002

3:00 p.m.

Members Absent: Jim Bradley, Immediate Past Chair; David Bransby, Agronomy & Soils; Robert Norton, Poultry Science; Christoph Hinkelmann, Finance; James Kaminsky, Educational Leadership & Technology; David Pascoe, Health & Human Performance; Charles Gross, Electrical & Computer Engineering; Saeed Maghsoodloo, Industrial Engineering; Richard Good, Music; Paul Starr, Sociology/Anthropology/Social Work; Tracey Oleinick, Theater; John J. Pittari, Jr., Architecture; Mike Solomon, Consumer Affairs; Kem Krueger, Pharmacy Care Systems; James Bannon, Non-tenure Tract Faculty; Dean June Henton, College of Human Sciences; Interim Dean Rebekah Pindzola, College of Liberal Arts; Shari Downer, University Librarian; Heath Henderson, SGA President; Kathy Harmon, A&P Assembly Chair; Judy Sheppard, Steering Committee.

The meeting was called to order at 3:04 p.m. by the chair, Barbara Struempler.

Barbara Struempler, Chair, Senate: Most of you realize that there is a sign-in sheet in the back. Some of you asked us. If you are a member of the Senate, you do need to check that you are here and that way you are not counted absent.

The minutes of the October 8, 2002 Senate meeting have been posted on the web. Are there any corrections? Hearing none, they stand as approved. Thank you, Renée.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The next business of order will be the Announcements from the President’s Office given by the Acting Provost John Pritchett.

Announcements from the President’s Office---

John Pritchett, Acting Provost: Thanks so much. At the last General Faculty Meeting a question came up relative to the use of Social Security Numbers, an expression of Social Security Numbers. I think we’ve made some significant steps to get this rectified. I’d like to ask Steve McFarland to come forward and share those with you at this time.

Steve McFarland, Acting Dean, Graduate School: Our basic problem is that we are tied to a corporation that provides all the software on campus. Faculty are in one system; then there’s the Human Resources system; students are officially known as the OASIS or the Student Information system. We are in the process of converting all students to an eight-digit unique identifier; non-nine-digit social security number but an eight-digit student ID, that will hopefully prevent some of the possibilities of identity theft that have unfortunately been the experience of some of our students. The difficulty though, is that if we switch all the students, and truly give them protection with an eight-digit number, then all of you are all cut off from all you swipe card privileges. Meaning that you can’t go to the library and check out a book. Because your ID number has to be a social security number in that our Human Resources system is still stuck with nine-digits. So what we are going to do is in a phased approach, this coming spring we will get students converted. Dr. Large and Dr. Pritchett have asked all offices across campus to look at their records, to look at their process, to look at their forms and see if there isn’t some way we can eliminate the social security number for all students, faculty and staff, at least on paper. As far as the computer systems are concerned, starting in the Spring we’ll be slowly, gradually over a period of the semester eliminating the nine-digit social security number and replacing it with a eight-digit student ID number for students. And then as soon as the corporation that provides our software can get this done, we’ll also be converting faculty and staff in the same fashion. At that point where our Human Resources system is going to go to eight-digits along with the students’ eight-digit, we’ll then convert the entire campus. Hopefully, all it will mean for the faculty and staff of this University is that at some point in the future you will have to get a new ID card. That will be magnetic-strip coded with the eight-digit number rather than a nine-digit number. Hopefully that will be the only requirement. The problem is we will need time. So we’re going to eliminate the most difficult aspects of this right up front for the students and then we’ll trail along as soon as the corporation that produces our software is able to make the adjustments as well. This was sent out to all deans, department heads and directors — this plan — over the last couple of weeks. Does anyone have questions that I might be able to answer on this? Again, the greatest difficulty is that we don’t want to help one part of the campus and then shut the other part off. We have to go hand-in-hand on this; otherwise, you’ll find out that you won’t can’t get in the football games, you can’t check out library books and so on. Any questions? Yes sir.

William Gale, Steering Committee: I understand the centralized system and the game plan for moving forward and getting rid of the unnecessary use of the social security number. How realistic is it, do you think, to really get rid of all the cards. How much pressure is going to be put on the Deans to get rid of all the data that has all those numbers on it?

Steve McFarland: I think it’s actually very realistic. The reason is … the reason those numbers are requested on forms and legacy systems all across campus is because people need a unique identified for that person. The difficulty is the name as your parents gave it to you is usually not the name you actually use. We need a unique identifier to be able to identify you. If we need to go and look at the number ‘John Smiths’ on any of our computer systems or any of our file systems, you can imagine the numbers of those. We need a unique identifier. The first step is once we can provide an alternate unique identifier, then the encouragement would be to go ahead and eliminate the nine-digit social security number. Secondly, once those central computer systems convert, you have no choice but to convert because that nine-digit number you now have in your hand will be worthless to you except for the improper purposes.

If I could, let me read to you the ultimate goal here, our objective from the memo we sent out a couple of weeks ago: It’s to restrict the public use of nine-digit social security numbers as authenticators on the Auburn University campus. Social security numbers in the future will be protected as confidential information, to be released only with permission of the person to whom the social security number is assigned or as required by state and federal regulations. So I really think those legacy systems will start to disappear because that number will be of no value. You only need that number to be able to identify someone. When you have to look it up, you will not be able to look them up by social security number in the future. Any other questions?

John Pritchett: Thanks, Steve. I’ve just got a couple other items here. Dr. Walker asked me to remind you that the Board of Trustees meets this coming Friday. The Property and Facilities Committee will meet on Thursday afternoon followed by other committee meetings on Friday morning. The Board Meeting will be immediately after lunch.

Promotion and Tenure: The central Promotion and Tenure Committee has begun its deliberations. We have had three meeting to this point; there are four additional meetings scheduled. There are 71 candidates for promotion and/or tenure; 32 of those candidates have now been reviewed, and hopefully as long as we don’t run into any snags, we should be through by the end of the year.

Dr. Walker also asked me to update you on the status of Richard Bradley’s interviews. Mr. Bradley, of course, is the attorney that was jointly agreed to by SACS and Auburn University to look into the SACS complaint. Mr. Bradley has conducted more than 50 interviews on campus now and some off-campus, I might add. The interview process was completed last week with a lengthy interview with Dr. Walker. It is now up to Mr. Bradley to write his report and submit that report.

Dean Search. We are nearing the end at least of the first round for the search for the Dean of Libraries. Three candidates have been identified for interview in that process. This week we have Dale Williams from the University of Akron; next week, Pam Wilder from the University of Rochester; and then the first week of December we will be interviewing Shari Downer. This, of course, is for the ongoing Dean’s position of Libraries.

One other thing, Renée asked me to make sure that I mention this. Last year Judge Murphy, who is a federal judge who was overseeing the desegregation order as far as Auburn University and the other universities within the state, asked that each university in the state who is a party to that desegregation, create a special committee, which will look specifically at African American student recruitment and retention, faculty recruitment and retention, and administrator recruitment and retention. That committee has been put in place. I chair that committee. That committee has met three times. The overall charge of that committee is to look for creative ways to improve recruitment and retention of African American students, faculty and administrators. I might add that the actions of that committee are going to be closely coordinated with the Diversity Leadership Council who is also looking at that same thing.

Conner, in anticipating the question that you brought up, let me ask … let me answer a question before it is asked. President Bush’s visit on campus a few weeks back. Who pays for it? Of course, there was some advance work that was done by our Facilities Division to provide electrical power outlets and our Telecommunications Group as far as communications. Those efforts are being billed back to the Republican National Committee. The rest of the gala was paid for by the Republican National Committee. Of course, I guess some University resources in terms of John Hochtel’s time to really coordinate the University will be chalked up to University expense as well as distribution of tickets through some University offices. It was my understanding that 99.99% of the expense was Republican National Committee. Don, do you have any more you want to add?

Don Large, Vice Provost of Finance: No. That’s my understanding though. I don’t know the exact numbers but we should be getting a summary of total expenses.

John Pritchett: Barb, with that said I’ll be happy to answer any questions?

Barbara Struempler: We want to thank the administration for working on that social security issue so quickly. I think we had it in our September meeting. I know that it will be moved into your agenda rather quickly; we want to thank you for that.

The Steering Committee tried very hard to make this a short meeting today simply because the Franklin Lecture Series starts at 4:00 so we’re going to talk very fast today. The Franklin Lecture is always scheduled on Senate date for some reason. I have communicated with them to see if maybe since our agenda is set at least a year in advance and it’s been the same for the 20 years that I’ve been here, perhaps they could put it on the Tuesday that the Senate does not meet. So, we’ll see what happens the next time around.

There are many … several important items on today’s agenda. I’m going to be reading a statement or kind of paraphrasing a statement from Jim Bradley who’s Chair of the Joint Assessment Committee. Dr. Pritchett talked about this also but the Senate has a resolution in place that essentially requires us to bring closure to 10 items that were listed on the JAC Complaint. Seven of those 10 are being taken care of by Mr. Richard Bradley, the attorney, in his review. But there are three items that are not. So I asked Jim Bradley to pull that Committee together and examine those three items and make a decision about those. So I really commend Jim and the Committee because I think they’re being a little bit proactive for a change rather than reactive and we’d like to clean those up as we know what the situation is.

Another item that’s important on the agenda today will be the discussion by Vice President for Research, Dr. Moriarty, on the Salary Incentive Plan. In the Salary Incentive Plan, the faculty leadership were … we have been discussing this for about six-seven weeks, nearly two months at this point. And then last Friday, Dr. Pritchett and Trustees Bobby Lowder and Jimmy Sanford, John Mouton — the chair-elect of the Senate — and I met and we talked about this two-year pilot plan. The meeting went very well and based on the comments that we hear today from you people, we will take those comments also back to the Trustees so that we’re all kind of singing the same song and we’re all moving forward. I’d like to talk just briefly about the process of this, of the Plan that’s going through. I think it highlights the communication that’s trying to be taken by the faculty, by the administration, and by the Board members. Dr. Pritchett was very … he identified that this Plan had to be first presented to the faculty before it moved to the Board which is being done today; the Board meeting is on Friday so the faculty will hear it first. Secondly, the Trustees and the administration and the faculty are all meeting together to discuss it. So hopefully we can all be synchronized in making the same statements and to arrive at what faculty would like to do. So, there are a lot of communication efforts that are moving along. It is a two-way street in terms of communication. You don’t see it from your angle but I do see it from mine because I get to see both sides of it.

The last item that we’re having today is a talk … a forum on what makes good qualifications for a Provost. And I don’t think the Provost Search Committee has ever been published. There are 22 members, 15 of which were elected in some form or fashion by a College, School or the Library. Those are the individuals that were charged. We have 2 additional other faculty members. They are the SGA President and the Grad Student Organization President. And there are five administrators. So that is the Search Committee that’s going to be for the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. They have all been invited to this meeting today to hear what you think are good qualifications and I know that several are in the audience so thank you for coming. I also know that they have met and they have self-selected co-chairs. The two co-chairs are Chris Rogers from COSAM and Dr. Moriarty, VP for Research. So they are here and hopefully we can have a good discussion on that.

Dr. Moriarty: Barb

Barbara Struempler: Yes?

Moriarty: There’s an omission on here. Trustee Jack Miller is also a member of that Search Committee.

Barbara Streumpler: Oh. He wasn’t on my letter. Okay. Did you all hear that? Jack Miller, Trustee, is also a member of that Committee. Thank you. I did receive a letter — this concerns the election process of the Trustees. We talked about it at the last Senate meeting. I did receive a letter from Don Logan who is chair of the Trustee Selection Committee and the Committee is calling for nominees for the Trustees’ position for the three positions. The only requirement specified by law is that the person that you nominate has to be a resident of the district that they represent so this would be the Districts 4, 5 and 7. They must be at least 70 years of age when appointed. (Laughter from audience. They cannot be an employee of Auburn University and they cannot be a member of the Selection Committee. This letter from Don Logan is on various web sites so I’m sure most of you have seen it and if not, you can go to the Trustee web site — it is up there. But since it was sent to the Chair, I decided to notify you of that. You have to send any nominees that you have by November 21. So if you want additional information, you can go to the web site at Auburn University.

There’s about 80 or 90 committees that the Senate leadership team gets to work with. Some of these are active and we know about them. I just want to tell you some of the issues that are going on now of which we have concern. I’ve listed the first one, who’s in charge of them so you would need to get your concerns to that individual. There’s committees that are discussing electronic voting, textbook committees, classroom behavior, emeritus status, Christa Slaton is working with the Faculty Salaries Committee, Administrator’s Evaluation — I am chairing that presently, and the Rules Committee members are making recommendations on some of the changes that need to be made in the Handbook on the composition and what not, and we will be brining that to you hopefully in January or February for your approval. But those are some of the issues that are going on. So make sure if you concerns in those areas that you get a hold of one of those people. I do say that my announcements are usually out by Friday of the week of the Senate meeting so if you are not writing all this down, you should be able to get it on Friday. The Executive Committee met and believe it or not, we have a Nominating Committee for the Senate leadership. We’re trying to get it started a little bit earlier this year because there are some things that we would like to try which I’ll announce in January. But the Nominating Committee consists of Jim Bradley, Barry Burkhart, Kathryn Flynn, Nels Madsen, Renée Middleton, and Ed Morrison. We tried to find very good representation. They will be meeting in the next couple of weeks and I will give them their charge. They will self-select their chair and at this point, if you have any recommendations, I would contact the Senators names or Renée Middleton who is the Senate Secretary but she is also a member of the Nominating Committee.

I did contact — concerning the SACS update — I contacted Dr. Clothiaux who’s co-director on the SACS Reaccredidation (he spoke to us at the last Senate meeting) and asked him for a brief update on where that process is. He commented that the … he said that the comment period is over and they’re working on preparing the final document for print. And it should be ready to go by the SACS deadline. And he also indicated that he intended to write each person who provided comments and inform them of the disposition of the suggestions that they made. So, that’s kind of where we are with SACS.

Just one last item. The faculty did receive VIP … the faculty as a whole received a set of VIP tickets for President Bush’s visit. So, what we … how we distributed those tickets to faculty is that a VIP pass was offered to the Senate leadership team. We offered it to any member of the Rules Committee, the Steering Committee, the Board of Trustees faculty representatives, we offered it to the chairs of the AAUP, the ABC, Women’s Studies, and we also offered it to any faculty chair of a Senate or a University Committee. And we figured that would be a logical way to disburse the tickets to a diverse group of people. For those people that do provide service, if you wanted to go, it was a nice perk for those who do. We don’t get much recognition for the service. So that’s one of the ways we did it. Are there questions? Yes.

Christa Slaton, Political Science: Barb, several on the Rules Committee worked many hours during the Summer putting together the Senate Faculty Committees and making recommendations for the University committees. I’d like to know what the hold up is. It’s almost a whole semester and some faculty have not received official word of their appointment…By the time they get on Board, they may not have enough time to do an effective job this year. Some faculty have not received word regarding their roles.

Barbara Struempler: That’s a very good question, Christa. I’m going to have two people respond to that. One is Renée Middleton who’s Secretary of the Senate and I saw Dr. John Heilman here. He’s in charge of the University committees. I think the Senate committees are out, are they not Renée?

Renée Middleton, Secretary of the Senate: It’s probably more appropriate for Dr. Heilman to respond.

Barbara Struempler: He’s not here; he left. Here. It’s a long history.

Renée Middleton: It’s a long history. All of the Senate committees are completed. Everybody who’s been appointed to a Senate committee should have received a formal letter. All of those letters have gone out. So the Rules Committee as it relates to the Senate committees has completed its work. As it relates to the University committees, the Rules Committee has also completed its charge in that we have forwarded our recommendations to the President’s Office and the President then, as you know, makes the final selection in terms of the recommendations we’ve made. Some of the committees have received their charge — I think there are about 15 other committees where we’ve not … I image that they are in process and the President’s Office is doing what needs to be done. It’s just a delayed process, I image. I really can’t address why it’s not done yet. But all I can say is that the Faculty … we of the Rules Committee has completed its work. I know that they are working on it. We are in communication with them and as I understand it, really at this point it’s just a matter of getting the letters out with the exception of two committees. So, I would hope and I know that Dr. Heilman has been working very hard on it and part of it is looking at those areas where we need to make some recommendations in terms of change with the charge, but that’s as much as I can comment on it at this point.

Barbara Struempler: We were in a meeting … yes. No we were … excuse me. [question from audience — unable to hear question]. Renée, do you know the two committees that are not ready yet?

Renée Middleton: I still have some question about that… I don’t know, but I believe they are the Budget Advisory Committee and the Multicultural Diversity Commission. They may be complete; there are just some questions that I have and … I think that at this point, Fran is probably just working on getting the letters out. I’m pretty confident about the status involving all other committee’s and what we are doing except maybe those two committees. I don’t know where things are as it relates to that.

Barbara Struempler: I know that when we met with President Walker, I think it was last week, we talked about committees and he was surprised that the letters were not out. But Renée has processed those committees that the Nominations and Rules Committees as far as she can take them. Other questions? Are there other announcements?

The next business of order is an update from the Joint Assessment Commission. Copies of this report were put in the back of the room. I just want to quickly review it with you. Jim Bradley prepared the report and he’s at the Franklin Lecture Series and so he could not present it. So, I’ll just make some brief comments. This … I should say that we had a meeting. I called the meeting. The meeting was on September 25 and all the stakeholders of the Committee were there. So you had the faculty representatives, you had Alumni Association, you had A&P, the Staff Council, you had Board of Trustees representation, you had SGA. We are … 18 months ago or 20 months ago whenever it was that this was assembled, all the stakeholders were represented. And Jim Bradley was the chair and he still continues to be that chair.

I did ask at the meeting though, that the chair of the University Senate also be a member so I am now also a member and then when my period is up in March, John Mouton will rotate in. So we still have that continuous representation. But one thing that I felt very important about — and you’ll notice down here — we had three items to discuss with the membership and they were that Jim should still remain chair; we wanted to talk about the disposition of the original 10 items that were in the JAC Complaint; and we wanted to talk about the future of the JAC. I guess the most important bit of information that I saw in here comes into to this paragraph right here (LETTER IS POSTED TO THE OVERHEAD). As I said briefly in my announcements, of the 10 items of the JAC, 7 of them will be covered by the examination by Richard Bradley the attorney but 3 of them would not be sanctioned by the court order for investigation. One of them deals with the nominating process for new Trustees right here; number 2 is the meetings of the Board of Trustees, the illegal meetings; and the third one was the dismissal of former President Muse. Those three items were listed as concerns in our JAC Complaint that were not sanctioned by the SACS investigation. So that just leaves them hanging out there. What do you do with them? Okay. Well our goal, we have resolutions on the floor that says that we can’t move off dead center until all 10 things are looked at. So we decided that we would drop these three, the Committee recommended that these three issues be dropped from discussion from here on out. And if you’ll read here, right here, it says that “Committee members agree that the nomination process and the illegitimate meetings of the Board are being dealt with political and legal processes. The dismissal of President Muse is not directly related to exact criterion for accreditation.” So, based on this there was nothing to tie it back together. So as of this point, the JAC is recommending that those three items, they are a moot point. But the 7 other issues are still being examined.

The JAC Committee will stay formed through the whole process. They will monitor the proceeding that come in and out and will continue to give us updates on an as-needed basis. Are there questions that I can try to answer on that? This is important for the Senate because we have resolutions that say we need to resolve these issues or figure out how to do so. I think it was … this is a logical way to do it. Jim Bradley did also say that he would receive … he would respond to any emails. So if you have any other questions, you can get them to Jim. Okay. No questions. Good.

Dr. Moriarty would like to come and discuss this Two-Year Pilot Program on the Salary Incentive Plan.

Dr. Michael Moriarty, Vice Provost for Research: Thanks Barb. Can everybody hear me? I am sensitive to the clock. It’s 3:30. And probably at 4:00 they will start with the Franklin Lecturing. There is one other agenda item to follow me and then any necessary time to attend the Lecture Series, so I will be brief. I’d like to make a few comments to frame the remarks I’m going to make. The document that has been circulated leaves out the proposed Salary Incentive Plan. It was not but should be stamped “Draft” in big bold letters. This is a work in progress and we have discussed this with the deans, we’ve discussed this with, as Barb said, the Senate leadership, and we’re discussing it with the Senate today; it will go before the Board on Friday as a discussion item. I want to make sure that you understand that nothing has been set in concrete and we welcome your thoughts and suggestions on how to make this better. There are a lot of issues that I don’t have the opportunity to get into today because of the time constraints regarding the implementation of this. We’re working on that as we speak. But I want to make sure that everyone understands the concepts that we’re talking about before we get down as some point to level of the details.

Is this plan perfect? No. Is it better than what we have now for salary incentive? Yes. The philosophies that I have used in trying to develop this proposal is that I believe personally that we can’t let the “perfect” be the enemy of the “will.” If we wait, in my opinion, if we wait until we have something that every single faculty throughout this campus can benefit from, my fear is that will not move forward until many of us are retired. This is a first step; it is a way to move this concept ahead to be added to as opportunities are presented in the future. The basic issue is as follows: as contracts and grants, in research, in instruction, in outreach, in extension, wherever this ability may be, as those contracts and grants come into the university, if the faculty member has a percentage of his or her time budgeted on that grant, then that budgeted amount will be contracted out, if you will, then frees up the amount of state dollars that was there for that … presented to that person’s salary prior to receiving the grant. Those freed up state dollars then go into an incentive pool within the Schools and Colleges. That incentive pool then gives us the opportunity to be used in the way I want to talk about as a direct salary incentive for … that generated those contracts and grants and have had their salaries in part paid for out of these contracts.

One thing that I was … should have mentioned at the outset. The way that we typically deal with these contract dollars when they involve your salaries is in classical release time. If the faculty member in fact goes to the department head and says that I’ve got a contract that’s going to pay 20% of my salary, I want to buy myself out of some other obligations and therefore those monies go back to the department head to try to cover those other obligations. The faculty member, in a sense, “buys more time” to do the activities that he or she received in the contract. That decision will remain. People are going to have to make a decision up front: (a) Do I want more time to do this research and scholarship in which case my obligations to the department are going to be freed up, but I won’t have the opportunity to have the salary incentive, or (b) Do I want to have some salary incentive and receive some additional funds in my paycheck in which case I have to maintain all of the normal obligations I have in my department: instruction, service, etc., but there is a choice for it at the front end. Let me quickly go through … the document Barb that I think was sent out electronically so everyone should have it. It’s a five-page document. The first four pages sketch out the concept; the last page gives some examples. I think that might be useful.

Situation 1: a faculty member’s base salary is $30,000. He has a one-year grant committing 15% of his time during the academic year. Funds recovered from the grant at this time amount to $4,500 — 15% of $30,000. A salary of $4,500 is therefore freed up from these state funds that would typically be supporting that portion of his salary and goes into that acronym as research, scholarship, and incentive salary pool of the College. Under this concept, again the details can be changed. The concept has that the faculty member can receive a supplement to his or her salary of up to 20%. Hence the next line: it is possible for him to receive up to $6,000 — 20% of his base $30,000 salary, the incentive salary. Based on this grant, it has accrued an incentive contract of $3,375. The faculty member is guaranteed that they are going to receive 75% of their salary in some form. Part of it will be in compensation in their paycheck and part of it will be in funds that will be available for use for their scholarship purposes and not direct compensation. Based on the grant has accrued incentive contract for $3,375. 75% of the total money that you generated is available for his purpose. I’m using ‘his’ in a generic sense, I hope you will forgive me. I’m not trying to be gender biased. This money will be paid in three installments. With the incentive supplement, his total compensation would be $33,375.

In the concept also 75% of the salary that’s freed up goes to the faculty member, the other 25% has to go somewhere. It is proposed that the other 25% be divided between the dean and the department head so that they will have resources to reward other faculty from other activities within that School or College or within that department. That number we used was 15% going to the department and 10% going to the dean, hence those numbers in the third paragraph. The one-year grant was terminated at the end of the year. The incentive supplement is no longer available to the faculty member because there is no ongoing revenue coming in to ground it and so his compensation in the subsequent year will only be his University base salary for that year.

Another example. Situation 2. Another faculty member whose base salary is also $30,000 is involved in two funding contract. The first, similar to the one above, involves 15% of her time. The second involves 20% of her time. In this example, the freed up University funds from her base salary, close to $4,500 for the first contract plus another $6,000 from the second contract, or a total of $10,500. It is possible for that faculty member to receive up to 20% as salary incentive: $6,000. This is obviously $4,500 more than can go into this salary compensation so that remainder goes into an account that will be available for her use for the research scholarship. Her full compensation would $36,000; the remaining $1,875 will be … 75%. The department head and deans similarly get the percentages that were discussed previously in the model. It is a supplement. It is not affecting the individual’s base salary. If you lose the revenue from the contract or grant that drives the process, you lose the supplement.

That’s the broad sense of this policy. And again, in the interest of time what I’d like to do is to stop here and invite any questions or concerns or comments that you may have that will help us put together the most effective policy.

Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: Imagine that a person signs a grant on July 1 it has some dollars in it for salary. That comes into play during that year, let’s say the grant is for three-years?

Michael Moriarty: Connor, you’re asking a good question. Some of these I’m not going to be in a position to answer because we’re trying to put together all of these issues for further study. That’s why this is set up as a pilot program because there are a lot of things that are going to come up during this two-year pilot phase that I’ve got to examine to see whether we want to abort this thing or keep it and make it work better. In your case, what we’ll probably do is to make this, very frankly, make these awards come out twice a year. And from awards that hit between January and June, we would wait probably until somewhere in the end of September or 20 days after the close of that period to put together any transfers of funds and then make that award. So we would have to have the award in hand and then make the dispensation subsequent to having the money in the bank. But it’s going to require the faculty member to have an agreement, preferably a written agreement with the department head in terms of beginning at the front end of the fiscal year as to how they are going to be receiving these funds, whether they want to have more time or whether they want to have the salary incentive.

Marlon Simon, Sciences and Mathematics: I would like to have Joe Perez speak in my stead.

Joe Perez, Professor and Head of Physics: Faculty in Sciences and Math are opposed to this. We are surprised that any of the funding agencies, federal funding agencies, would approve this kind of incentive. I’d be really surprised if the National Science Foundation (NSF), NIH, Department of Defense; Department of Energy would take this as a legitimate activity. And I just have one other question. I know what happens to this money in terms of salary savings in our department. I wonder what happens to salary savings in other places elsewhere in the University. Those are my tow questions. There are a lot of other things I’d like to say if I had the time.

Michael Moriarty: There may be some funding agencies where this plan would not be provided for. However, with funds coming in from through the Department of Energy, other contracts, the faculty member has 25% of his or her time budgeted on the contract. What the University does with the state dollars that’s freed up, it would be argued, is the University’s decision. Just as when you get reimbursed when you travel to Chicago and you submit your travel reimbursement, what you do with the check that you receive is your business. You can pay off some of your American Express travel accounts or you can just take your wife out to a nice dinner; it’s your decision. And the same philosophy, the funds that are freed up within the University, we argue that the University’s decision somehow. I might also add that we polled about 44 other universities in the process. We heard back from 20. Seven had plans very similar to this. So, we are not blazing new ground. At another institution, I was the recipient of a program like this program.

Rod Jenkins, Aerospace Engineering: A couple of folks have asked how does soft money play into this? We have a lot of soft money.

Michael Moriarty: Well, I can’t answer that question. This is one of the issues that I want to get out on the table so we can make sure we think it all through. They would be eligible but how we’d do that is something that we’d work through. You understand the issue. There are some faculty who are supported at Auburn with soft money already on their salary.

Daowei Zhang, Forestry: I am in support of this, but have a question. We would like to know [UNABLE TO HEAR]….

Michael Moriarty: We’ll have to talk about that. But I’ve had many grants in my own life . . .

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology and Plan Pathology: I’m for something like this John, but I have a question. If you have one investigator/researcher who is making $100,000 and a second co-investigator who’s salary is $30, 000, that person who is at $30, 000 in your examples will get $6,000 or something like that for the same grant. This will create a gap for both investigators in salary. What’s your opinion with this kind of scenario?

Michael Moriarty: I’m not going to go back and adjust the faculty member’s base salary to bring them up to $30,000. You can make the argument that people are being rewarded for their efforts in achieving a success of the grants. That person can convince a sponsor that a third of his salary would be as much value and budget that in the grant, if they can do that, so much the better. I don’t have a problem with it.

Jesse LaPrade, Extension: Does this apply to research grants only or is Education/Outreach eligible to participate?

Michael Moriarty: The way that this model is developed at this point is that it would apply to any contract or grant that came into the University in any discipline at any of the functional areas of the University: instruction, research, outreach, etc.

Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: The one thing that concerns me is that it might have some unintended cost consequences in terms of traditional ways that departments currently award merit. I can see some real dangers there. People feeling, for example, that some people are already being rewarded or benefiting from their research, productivity, and grants, so why would or should they be rewarded via merit? And, of course the merit system is built into the base and this award system is not. And I know that … I am assuming that these two things are intended to be separate, but human beings being what they are, it is not at all clear to me that they would remain separate, and so I can see some real collisions at work.

Michael Moriarty: I appreciate those comments. I won’t take issue with your point. And again I’m going to fall back on the fact that the devil is in the details, and how we work this is going to be in part an ongoing lesson. That’s why we’re proposing to do it on a trial basis, see what needs to be changed, to improve it or abort it if it’s such a bad idea. Wes?

Wes Williams, Assistant Provost for Student Services: Question. Does it include just full-time faculty?

Michael Moriarty: That’s the way it is set up at this point. For full-time faculty. Barb.

Barbara Struempler: You said that if it’s not a good idea, you will not … you will discontinue it. How will you know if it’s a good idea? When and how are you going to evaluate it?

Michael Moriarty: Well, that’s one reason we’re going to have to draw upon the comments here. This will be comments from others and we engage it. We haven’t gotten to the end of the process and put together all the strategic plan on the assessment measures that we are going to use. We have some ideas of things that are going to be important. It could be abused. Someone just mentioned an issue where there may be a temptation for someone to reduce graduate student support so they can build up their own salary support. That’s a problem. It could be an issue where somebody in authority urges someone else, put them the grant and budget them on it so that they can benefit from it. There are a lot of ways that it could be abused. I think what we have to do is recognize them and try to deal with them. But if we simply say that there are problems therefore let’s not even consider it, then I think we lose an opportunity to perhaps move the University forward. Renée.

Renée Middleton: Following up on the chair’s question in terms of how will we know if we’ve met with success if it’s a two-year pilot and we’re determining whether or not we’re going to move forward. What are our measures of evaluation? As that gets put in place, will you be coming back to the faculty at least to give us some initial ideas of what we’re looking at in terms of evaluation measures and determining what outcomes we’re looking for?

Michael Moriarty: Well, at the very least the ongoing discussions that are held weekly with the Senate leadership will be a way for us to get reaction from you as representatives of all of us faculty here. Whether we’ll come back to all of the Senate, I’m open to it but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be the most productive way.

Renée Middleton: I think the faculty would be interested in knowing what evaluation measures you’re using to determine whether or not … whether this is a good idea or not. I know that there will be some things that we learn along the way that we didn’t intend to, but I would expect that there are at least some initial things that we would be looking for to determine whether or not this is a good idea and I just think that knowing what those are as you come up with them. I would think the faculty would be interested in that.

Joe Buckhalt, Counseling and Counseling Psychology: Michael you mentioned the sort of traditional models that use salary savings to save some bodies their time and the money might or might not be used to hire someone to teach a course. What happens under this system in terms of money available?

Michael Moriarty: If we take this system, the faculty member has made the decision that I’m going to keep all of my obligations that I have in that department. And I’m going to choose to get some incentive.

Joe Buckhalt: Okay. That’s an important … that’s important distinction.

Curtis Jolly, Ag Economics: For research professors, how will you determine their salary? Will they have the same incentive salary? Research professors may or may not be bringing in any money?

Michael Moriarty: That’s exactly the question that Ron asked before. In fact, I don’t think I answered the question then. For those faculty that either have a part of their salary off soft money now or pay the research professors who have to derive the bulk of their money if not all of their money, we have to deal with that. That’s a relatively small number compared to the total faculty on this campus. Bill.

Bill Gales, Steering Committee: [Unable to hear question]

Michael Moriarty: Make sure that he understands…the money in the payroll or RFPs that come out, the proposals that are submitted to the sponsor of that RFP requires a certain amount of cost-share that the University in effect pledges to assist in that project and the government provides some of the money. One of the ways we typically do this is for faculty put in-kind dollars there. A portion of their salary, whatever that dollar amount would be, is pledged as in-kind cost-sharing in lieu of doing it this way. There is going to have to be an examination on a lot of different fronts here.

Bill Gale: [unable to hear] Question regarding release time.

Michael Moriarty: That’s a critical point. You can’t do it both ways. You can’t take the money for release time and then also have your salary supplement.

Tom Smith, Human Development and Family Studies: In the decision of the faculty member has to make, does it have to be all or nothing? Is there any possibility that you can take part of the salary supplement and then another part would be used for release time or that kind of thing?

Michael Moriarty: Part of it is going to be an administrative nightmare to try to manage things to begin with. If we have more than chocolate and vanilla, if we have all different flavors in a two-year pilot program it’s going to be a challenge. That’s my initial reaction to your question.

Paul Schmidt, Mathematics: I am not sure I understood your remarks in the beginning that relate to the fact that in my department grants are exclusive to NSF and that most of our grants come from federal agencies. As I understand things correctly, NSF is not going to allow me to buy time during the academic year. It is only during the summers, so there is no way that I or anybody else in COSAM would profit from that.

Michael Moriarty: And they shouldn’t. But there’s a lot of other federal agencies out there who don’t restrict themselves to two nights and summer salaries as NSF does.

Paul Schmidt: That’s where most of our support comes from.

Curtis Jolley, Ag Econ: First, it is important ground that are used by the University as it relates to graduate students. Can you tell me about time allocations? How are you going to encourage faculty to not abuse the process?

Michael Moriarty: I get your point. Again, let’s go back to the point I made earlier, we’re trying to raise issues here that we can then consider as we try to put something together. We don’t have answers to every one of these.

Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: Having just delivered a grant that’s now in the hands of the Department of Education which falls into that category for the University, rather than on an individual level, it strikes me as we’ve talked around the assessment issue that now, regardless of the temporary of grants, most agencies are requiring the stipulation of assessment up front. I guess I would feel a lot comfortable . . . what is the timetable on this? You said your discussing it here and then take it before the Board on Friday. Is the plan to then implement it while it’s still in this stage?

Michael Moriarty: A lot of you are asking good questions, but I just don’t have some of these answers.

Virginia O’Leary: I was asking about the time because I guess my point is that it’s better to have a more clear-cut assessment plan so that we know what we’re going to look for down the road.

Michael Moriarty: Let me give you two issues that in personal experience includes a plan such as this and the experience from other institutions who have carried their experiences. Recruitment and retention of faculty were significantly advanced. For one, schools that have such an opportunity found that they had a real good advantage to getting some of the best faculty. And as you would expect, the flip side was faculty were more reluctant to leave because schools that they might be looking at did not have the same benefit.

Doweh Zhang: What about the schools [unable to understand]

Michael Moriarty: That is a benchmark but there a lot of variables that go into that in addition to this.

Dennis DeVries, Fisheries: I assume the cost of administering this are not going to be significant compared to . . .

Michael Moriarty: The cost are going to be, have to be born at the level. What we are talking about that this point is to put the responsibility at the Schools and Colleges, for them to tailor the programs along with the outlines that we’re putting together within their units. Engineering may do it differently from Ag in terms of having the disbursement and monitoring the administrative aspect of this. So I personally think … my purpose is not to be terribly prescriptive, but to establish boundary conditions on how each unity may have to do.

Ruth Crocker, History: You said that you had not heard from all the institutions you surveyed. Do you think that you have heard from enough of them to determine if this is a good idea?

Michael Moriarty: We contacted 44, we heard from 20, and of the responses of the 20, 7 had programs such as this. Now, I am going to be very honest, most of these are within the Health Sciences. There are some on the Flagship campuses. Most are within Health Sciences. In terms of the Board, it’s going before the Board as I suggested earlier as a discussion item to get their input.

Barbara Struempler, Chair of Senate: But as a follow up to that, let’s say that the Board says “Oh, this is okay.” Then what do you do with it? I think that’s what we’re asking. What do we do with it? Do you turn around and implement it January or February, or what do you do then? How do we dissolve some of these questions?

Michael Moriarty: If the Board gives the green light, if they say go ahead with this, then the next step in my mind would be we have an Administrative Team that’s been looking at some of the machinery that would have to be put in motion to accommodate this program. Using the results of the feedback that we have here, results from the Senate leadership, the results from deans we will put together a passport to begin putting a plan together that would implement it. I’d like to do this as fast as January 1 but we have two holidays between now and then that may preclude that. I think if I’m hearing your concerns is that I accept the point. This is an issue that involves the faculty and the faculty should be involved in the decision and strategy and the implementation of the plan. I don’t take issue to that.

Renée Middleton: And the assessment component.

Sadik Turzun: When I read this I have a question in my mind. Who developed this program? Was it an Ad hoc Committee, were faculty included? It should be a committee form the University and the Senate. This is a major proposal that you are bringing. The Board may bring issues that the Board only contracts. They may bring some legal issues. I don’t think this proposal is mature enough to go to the Board right now.

Paul Schmidt: I think we also need to consider the impact on faculty, instructional programs & other programs. This is an incentive for faculty to go out there, make money instead of focusing on what they are suppose to do. The faculty member is supposed to look for contracts work on getting contracts, is this what we want faculty to spend their time doing?

Sadik Tuzun: If I am not buying time. Is there something a faculty member could do? Are you telling us that this is not going to affect how faculty will do their job at Auburn University?

Michael Moriarty: What I am telling you is that this program has to be voluntary at the level of the department. It is the department head’s responsibility as in any other situation to make sure that all of the obligations of the department are being met. And the approval of individuals who participate in this plan would require the consent of the department head and the dean and also the Provost.

Paul Schmidt, Mathematics: Could you refuse this?

Michael Moriarty: Of course. I’m not taking issue with that. The question will require us to see if we can put some safeguards around them to address them.

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: What I’m going to say, I’m going to say briefly. I know that my dean and my department head support this plan. I have two copies of this plan. One is dated May 8, 2002; the other is dated as of the mailing that we received. They are identical. The proposal that we received as one of the possible test cases for the plan has not changed in six months even though some of the questions that are being raised today were raised back in May and it troubles me a little bit that there hasn’t been any attention to those obvious concerns, obvious questions in the six months that this draft has been out.

Michael Moriarty: Do you want a response to that?

Cindy Brunner: Yes.

Michel Moriarty: In the six months since that plan, most of the attention that we expended have been on issues entirely unrelated to this plan, and if it fell down, on the radar screen. So, it wasn’t anything malicious that we were trying to do but we were overtaken by events on other issues. Yes.

Don Large: Let me clarify something because a statement you made just a minute ago confused me. Normally if we take something to the Board for discussion, there is not the process of approval. It is a discussion of concept. They say the concept is either worth pursuing or not. If they say the concept is worthy of continuing, go now and develop a plan and respond to our concerns. The next time you bring it back would be at the February meeting at the earliest for their review of the details of the approved concept. We do not normally take something for discussion and be looking for an approval. It may be a choice of words. Do I have this correct?

Michael Moriarty: There is some confusion because as to whether this is a proposal that requires Board approval or whether this is an administrative activity within the University that the Board is being informed of so that they can be aware of, but not necessarily requiring their approval. There is that issue that has been raised.

Bill Gale, Steering Committee: I’d like just to make a counter-point. In disciplines I mentioned earlier in Bio Sciences, they may have no choice. If you want to have quality programming, you have to go out and generate the money. But, to be honest, at the moment, there is no incentive for doing this work.

John Mouton, Chair-elect of Senate: There’s been a lot of conversations back and forth but I think there is one commonality that’s been in our meetings with the Provost and I’ve heard here. That is, before it gets implemented, we’ve got to understand what the assessment tools are going to be; that could change during the process but we have to understand what the assessment tools are because if we push it down to department heads and make them responsible, they have to understand what the matrix that we’re asking them to use for assessment. The thing that I would like to get on the board is that regardless of all the other comments about the functioning of it, we’ve got to get the matrix in place for assessment. We can modify it as this goes on but up front there’s got to be a matrix for assessment.

Barbara Struempler: Just one other comment. One of the things that we discussed of and on too is that if someone does consulting … let’s say you go out and consult one day a week, should you then be able to tack on an additional 20%? So you’re gone one day and then you come back and work real hard on Saturday but then other things slide in the department and you don’t do anything that might be required as collegiality but you’re a full Professor so who cares. So you see some of that issue too.

Michael Moriarty: Is that a secret?

Barbara Struempler: I don’t know.

Michael Moriarty: The way the policy is currently drafted and the way that it has been drafted at other institutions is that this is separate and distinct from the consulting policy. They are two separate issues. Is that a good idea?

Barbara Struempler: How about if we do this? You know I sit as a faculty advisor on the Board of Trustees. So this issue will come up and I will meet to represent the faculty, your views. So in order for me to represent your views, if indeed they differ from mine, you need to let me know what they are. Don’t send me anything mean. I’m a messenger. Send me something very short that I can digest easily and put into the discussion at the Board meeting on Friday when this issue comes up. Let’s try that and see how it goes. Are there other comments on that?

DISCUSSION FORUM--- What makes a Good Provost: Qualifications & Needs?

Okay. We do have a forum. And I’m most interested in hearing … we started the Forum issue last … last … at the last Senate meeting. And it’s a way for us to hear what some of your thoughts are on important issues. People always ask the Senate leaders what does the faculty think and the Forums give us an opportunity to have you tell us what you think. That way, we don’t have to guess. Again, this is the Search Committee for the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. They’ve met; there’s co-chairs; there’s 23 members; and they were invited to this meeting today. The question is, “What makes a Good Provost: Qualifications and Needs.” I am going to ask that you identify yourself as you talk and I’m going to … Renée and I are going to pass the mike back and forth in the Forum. Do you have any thoughts? What’s going to make a good Provost, what does Auburn University need?

Joe Buckhalt, Counseling & Counseling Psychology: Mine is brief so I’ll begin. As a senator, I took the question to our faculty and the discussion was brief but spirited. Our faculty were passionate and there was a consensus that we wanted a person of color for Provost and/or a woman. And finally, although I admit, while it sounds a bit ghoulish, there was mention of the term and call for fresh blood.

Barbara Struempler: Other comments?

Sadik Tuzun, Plant Pathology: I’m reading the list of people you have up there who are members of the search committee. I would like to know what is the representation of minority? Have we been responsible where diversity is concerned?

Barbara Struempler: As you know, the Schools, Colleges and Library were each asked to submit a faculty … a list of faculty members who may agree to serve. Three names came to the Rules Committee and we forwarded to the Provost’s Office final selections. We noticed that the final … the two names that we forwarded were very lacking in the diversity area in terms of female — gender — and ethnicity. So what we did is the Rules Committee developed a list of nominees that would fit the bill and we forwarded that to the President’s Office and asked him to consider including additional members on the Committee and he did. There are two other faculty members listed on the bottom that were not elected from the Schools, Colleges, and the Library. So every effort was made to ensure that representation.

Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: Let me just state the obvious since no one else has, we need a new intellectual leader. I don’t mean to suggest that Dr. Pritchett has not provided stellar service. Whether we need fresh blood or someone from outside is a decision that the Search Committee itself may have to deal with. But the key criterion, to me, for a good Provost is someone who can provide intellectual leadership. We need someone who has an established record in scholarship whatever that is. Whether it is in the traditional research/teaching mode, whether it’s in extension/outreach or a similar combination, we need a serious scholar. Serious scholars need only apply.

Sadik Tuzun, Plant Pathology: I would like to elaborate on that. I think the research should be similar to a faculty member search or a department head. Also, it is important that we seek an administrator, but we should also look at the number of papers that person has published, the number of grants this person has brought in or authored, the number of scholarly activities, and books published. I think we want on this campus a Provost strongly and very much preemptive towards research, teaching and extension activities, rather than an administrator. This is a very important thing we should be looking at if we are going to be a research institution.

John Mouton, Chair-elect of University Senate: This is going to be singing to the choir but I know that in a previous Provost search there was a lot of concern amongst the faculty that with all of the work the Search Committee was discarded by the Board of Trustees and I hope that somebody will get a clear message to the Board of Trustees — at least we have one member over here — that after this Committee has done all of this work and gone forward with recommendations, that that is the best for the University and will not be usurped by some other process.

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: In order to keep our question on topic I guess I have to say I’d like us to bring in someone who will survive the term of the current president of Auburn University. Seriously, there have been some questions raised among senior faculty in my department about bringing in a Provost and then hot on the heals of that hire, we hire a new President. Are we running the risk of losing our Provost when we bring in a senior administrator who supervises that individual?

Fran Kochan, Interim Dean, College of Education: I agree that we need a scholar, but I also think we need to be looking at a person who understands the human side of things. A lot goes on in the provost Office where those skills are required. So, we need someone on board who has a fair attitude in dealing with every single College on this campus. I think that’s very, very important. In terms of inside/outside, I don’t think that should be an issue. I think we get the best person for the job.

Wes Williams, Vice President for Student Affairs: I’m going to make this short and sweet. I’m Wes Williams, the Vice President for Student Affairs, since the person in this position reports to the Provost, I certainly feel we need someone who understands the students, someone who believes that students are one of our main priorities here at the institution.

Unidentified Speaker: One of the things … I could go on about a lot of the concerns . . . One thing that is very important here as we go forward is someone who can articulate the values and vision of the academic side of the institution to the Board of Trustees and to the external constituencies and to the governor, to the senators, and to the legislators. I understand we’ve got a big bill to fill with all of these characteristics, but I think it’s very important. The President can’t do it all. Don Large and the other Vice Presidents can’t do it all. We need everybody possible who can communicate to the power sources of this environment on what the University should and could be.

Barbara Struempler: Is everyone satisfied? Any other new business? Hearing none the meeting is adjourned.

Meeting adjourned at 4:20 p.m.