Auburn
University Senate Meeting
March 4, 2003
3:00 p.m.
Members Absent: Jim Bradley, Immediate Past Chair; Ted W. Tyson, Bio Engineering; Dennis DeVries, Fishieries and Allied Aquaculture; Jefferson P. Jones, Accountancy; John Saye, Curriculum and Teaching; David Pascoe, Health and Human Performance; James A. Guin, Chemical Engineering; Barry Fleming, Art; John Bolton, English; Richard Good, Music; Joe Cherry, Biological Sciences; Andreas Illies, Chemistry; Paul G. Schmidt, Mathematics; Marllin L. Simon, Physics; John J. Pittari, Jr., Architecture; Tin-Man Lau, Industrial Design; John Rowe, Nursing; Mike Reinke, Clinical Pharmacy; Jack DeRuiter, Pharmacal Sciences; James Bannon, Non-Tenure Track Faculty; Jesse LaPrade, Cooperative Extension Service; Ltc. John Salvetti, Army ROTC; Dean June Henton, College of Human Sciences; Interim Dean Rebekah Pindzola, College of Liberal Arts; ; Interim Dean John Jahera, College of Business; Shari Downer, University Librarian; Heath Henderson, SGA President; Nancy Joseph, GSC President; Kathy Harmon, A&P Assembly Chair; Chris Rodger, Steering Committee.
The meeting was called to order at 3:05 p.m. by the chair, Barbara Struempler.
Barbara Struempler, Chair, Faculty Senate: We have a very full agenda today. Before we approve the minutes, I should tell you about one change in the agenda. Dr. Pritchett was going to present an update on regional faculty and administrative salaries and that data is not available yet and we thought it would be. So John will be a speaker at one of the next meetings with that information. So that’s one change. And the minutes to the last University Senate meeting of February 11 are posted to the web. Are there any corrections to the minutes? The minutes then are approved as posted. Thank you Renée.
Our message today from the President’s Office comes from the Acting Provost, John Pritchett.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
John F. Pritchett, Acting Provost: Thanks so much Barb. Dr. Walker is up in Huntsville this afternoon; he should be back tonight. There are a couple of things that Dr. Walker wanted me to address with you. The first deals with the ending funding cuts for the coming year. Dr. Large is supposed to be here; he has given us the preliminary figures. Maybe he can go ahead and add to this after he gets here. Let me remind you the Governor is speaking tonight on state-wide television; it starts at 6:30. I think you can pick it up on channel 12. It is my understanding that the Governor is going to outline his proposed budget package for the coming year. It is also my understanding that he is going to propose somewhere between a 6 and 8% cut in state funding for higher education. This cut alone, as far as Auburn University is concerned, if indeed it goes through, equates to some $13 million for all divisions at Auburn University. Division I. Division II which is AUM as well as the Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension. This $13 million of course does not include the additional retirement costs that are going to be incurred by this institution or the additional health insurance costs that are going to be incurred by this institution. So even if we are talking about a substantial tuition increase, we may be hard pressed to offset some of the budget costs and the additional costs that are going to be incurred during the coming budget year. Now with that said, the President would also like me to share with you that there is a very viable coalition in place that involves K–12 under Dr. Hubbert’s leadership, the two-year college system, the regional universities as well as the major universities within the state. This group has been working very diligently over the past several months to put together a progressive funding plan for all education in this state. This funding plan does include elements of tax reform; but it also contains elements of accountability and duplication of programs within the state. Dr. Walker asked me to assure you that he is doing everything he can to provide leadership to this coalition along with Dr. Patera of the University of Alabama system. So I guess, Don, I’ve already given them the numbers and see if you want to add anything to that. Basically, I talked about between a 6 and 8% cut in the state budget which is approximately $13 million. They are requesting additional ongoing expenses that we’re going to have to come up with. Do you wan to add anything to that?
Don Large, Vice Provost & VP for Finance: I don’t think I have anything to add but the latest figures are 6 to 6.5. The Trust Fund … we’re going to be asked to pay $3 million more into the retirement system. That’s the latest.
Werner Bergen, Animal & Dairy Science: Do we have a notion on potential buyouts and other amenities?
John Pritchett: That has not been discussed at this point in time. Dr. Walker has asked Dr. Large and the Budget Advisory Committee to essentially plan for the worst at this point in time. The Budget Advisory Committee has been appointed and those appointments were mailed out I want to say about two weeks ago. And Don, I guess the Budget Advisory Committee will be meeting shortly to start addressing these issues.
Don Large: I will set up the initial meeting. We are running later than usual but because of the elections ??? won’t be until March, so we do have some time. We normally set budget guidelines to the Board in June, but we probably won’t take anything to them. But right now we will just have to because it may not fit into the proposed budget.
John Pritchett: Barb has also asked me to give you a brief update as far as enrollment for this coming year. I’ll give you a little bit of background. I think it was about six years ago that we have been admitting about 3,200 new freshmen each year. Six years ago that number jumped to about 3,600 and has remained steady at about 3,600 until the fall of 2000 when we went through the semester conversion. The decision was made at that point in time, because most institutions that go through a semester conversion had a drop in enrollment, that we admit a few more students so we went up to 3,850 for the fall of 2000. We then dropped back to about 3,700 as an enrollment goal for this past fall, Wes, I believe was 3,750. Most of you know that we were victims of our own success because we admitted more than 4,300 new freshmen. What we have done when we did that last summer when the problem became apparent we put into place an Enrollment Management Oversight group which consists of Wes and John Fletcher; also representatives of deans and representatives of the Provost’s Office. We set a goal for this coming year of 3,700 new freshmen. The idea is to not let the air out of the balloon all at once. Let me reassure people that we are not setting high goals simply to rake in additional tuition dollars and put this on the backs of our faculty. That has never a plan. My understanding is that we’re having another meeting of our group at 5:00 this afternoon is essentially we have reached our enrollment goal based on all predictors of 3,700. I will share this though: in the past two weeks we have received a rash of applications from young men and young women who are presenting 1200s on the SAT, who are presenting 28s, 29s, and 30s on the ACT, and who are presenting high school grade averages of 3.5, 3.6, 3.7. I met with the President about this and the information is to not hold firm at the 3,700 but perhaps to let this float within reason so that we can accommodate these additional outstanding students. I don’t think we need to be in the position of turning away students with that kind of academic record. The bottom recommendations will come out of our group this afternoon at the 5:00 meeting. So that’s where we stand at this point in time. Barb, are there any questions that I can answer? Yes.
John Bolton, English: I am supposed to express concern about the new directive from President Walker about the annual review of non-tenured faculty. It’s partly about the rationale for this. We are concerned about first-year faculty, who makes the assessments about their progress?
John Pritchett: This has really come from several different directions. Dr. Walker has long held that as far as non-tenured faculty members are concerned, that it is just good practice to be able to inform them each and every year of where they stand as far as tenure is concerned. I know many years ago when I was a department head, we wrote departmental guidelines that actually called for review of all non-tenured faculty members each year. I think it was exceptionally effective because our department never lost a recommendation to the central T&P Committee because of this. This is recently in part grown out of the Title 6 Committee which has to do with recruitment and retention of African American faculty and administrators. It is a recommendation that came out of that group. It is also been part and parcel of some other personnel actions of late. That we have lost people because they were not counseled in a timely fashion. At the current time, we have a mandated third-year review which or course we will continue with that. But for all other non-tenured faculty members we have simply asked that the departments to develop guidelines to incorporate the annual review process to add another dimension of getting our non-tenured faculty traditional reviews as far as how they are progressing toward tenured status. I think it’s an excellent mechanism as far as retention of these outstanding young faculty.
John Bolton: Well this is my second question. Shouldn’t faculty be advised also? As of now the President requires non-tenured faculty to go through an interview before ???
John Pritchett: It was our interpretation, you know, that this was simply an administrative guideline we are asking our department heads to follow. I don’t see necessarily that it involves the same as an interview. Renée.
Renée A. Middleton, Secretary, Faculty Senate: Just for clarification, does the directive from Dr. Walker require that a vote be taken every year? Or just that senior faculty review it and give the department head its feedback? Does that require a vote?
John Pritchett: That they review it. That the department establish a mechanism to poll the non-tenured faculty to receive input to give back.
Renée A. Middleton: So it doesn’t require a vote. The vote doesn’t have to take place until the third year as it typically does?
John Pritchett: Right. Anything else? Hey Connor.
Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: I’m sorry that Dr. Walker is not here because I wanted him. I understand that he is rethinking the Budget Advisory Committee; maybe that was one of the reasons that it took a long time for the Committee to get established. I served on that roughly ten years ago; I find it one of the more important opportunities I’ve had on this campus, to learn how things actually work. While I was on that Committee I believe before that and I know after that, the number of faculty representatives on that Committee strongly urge a change such that representation of faculty and the terms of faculty on that Committee be for two years. That would give faculty representatives enough background and knowledge to be effective members of that Committee so that ??? the learning curve. Can you tell me if a change to the term of office of someone who serves on that Committee could be considered or what other possible changes are being considered with regard to the functioning of the University Budget Advisory Committee.
John Pritchett: Is John Heilman here? Let me tell you Connor what I do know about that. The … John Heilman on behalf of the President received the recommendations from the Rules Committee as far as membership. I know Dr. Heilman worked through the fall and for the past couple of months on this. John we’re going to have to … John has just received his copy of this by the way. I received mine about 2-1/2 weeks ago. But as I understand it, they are not satisfied with the way this is currently been thought through so all members for this coming year — Don correct me if I’m wrong here — have one year terms and then he will continue to work on altering this to get it into a stable state in coming years. Don we just had that discussion with John Heilman 30 minutes ago, didn’t we? Don and I just had this discussion with John Heilman and asked for some clarification 30 minutes ago. We hope that we can … as I understand it, the Committee as currently structured is on one-year appointments for the President’s Office. John is going to continue to work and try to get this structured the way it should be.
Connor Bailey: I would like to express a very strong opinion as a person who served on that Committee that the recommendation of multiple years of people who have served as I have was to be on a multiple year basis and that strong consideration be given to extend that philosophy.
John Pritchett: I’ll pass that along, Connor. Cindy.
Cindy Bruner, Pathobiology: Just so I understand, neither Dr. Walker or Dr. Heilman or both have determined that multi-year appointments are not appropriate and they … who’s decided to issue single-year appointments?
John Pritchett: Cindy, I think what I said is as I understand the situation, the structuring of the Committee is still in flux; they still want to work on it. So what they have done is leave …
Cindy Brunner: Who wants to leave it?
John Pritchett: Dr. Walker and Dr. Heilman is my understanding. Rich.
Richard Penaskovic, Religion: Maybe this question was asked concerning ??? but I notice that ???
John Pritchett: Herb.
Herb Rotfeld, Marketing: I’m not a Senator. I didn’t want to say anything about the Budget Advisory Committee but I wan to add a note. I received my letter this past week that I’m receiving a one-year appointment effective immediately that ends in August. So as they say, a one-year appointment is good for six months. But my question to you …
John Pritchett: Mine said the same thing, Herb.
Herb Rotfeld: One of my concerns here basically deals with a different matter. When some of us were asked by the Senate Chair about the appointment or the upcoming appointment, exactly what the President was wanting that appointment for? And true to that situation, last August or I should say the very first meeting of the Senate, has the President — Dr. Walker — said he’s done searches for all deans except for the Graduate School? Six months later I still haven’t seen any final announcements of the members of the search committees. That’s pretty slow starting.
John Pritchett: Let me respond to that Herb. Dr. Walker told me that it was his desire to initiate the Provost Search first and to make the Deans search a little bit out of sync so that when you have identified the ongoing individual as far as Provost and you start short listing deans candidates then the short list of deans candidates know specifically who they are going to be reporting to. We pulled the trigger on the deans searches, at least the process; we’re setting up those committees just before Christmas. We have asked all of the involved units to conduct elections within those units and meeting with the Senate leadership it was determined that those names should be sent to the Rules Committee of the Senate. Our target date for having the faculty identified for that was around the 28th of January. Due to logistics or whatever reason, I have not yet received any names from the Rules Committee. Barb, we met this morning and indicated that those would be forthcoming by this coming Thursday. As soon as I have those names, I am ready to move expeditiously to round out the Committee membership, to bring the Committees together, to give those Committees their charges, and to ??? Anything else? Cindy.
Cindy Brunner: Dr. Pritchett, I’d like to go back to an earlier item and that is the letter from Dr. Walker requesting that the department of non-tenured faculty give one-year reviews of pre-tenure colleagues. It was my interpretation of that memo and that of my department head that it wasn’t a matter of the faculty simply coming up with a strategy. It actually required an annual review by the tenured faculty and I’m afraid I disagree with you that that simply an administrative edict. It sounds to me that if the tenured faculty in the department are being required to review the progress of each of their non-tenured pre-tenured colleagues, that definitely upsets the day-to-day activities of faculty members and that is under the jurisdiction of the Faculty Handbook and the Faculty policy.
John Pritchett: I think the specific memo specifies three things: it asks each department to develop guidelines which (a) would provide for dissemination of a non-tenured faculty member’s materials to tenured faculty, (b) would provide for input back from the tenured faculty to the department head, and (c) provide for the department head sharing the sense of that interval. So I believe that’s what the memo said. And that each unit was to provide its own guidelines as far as how specifically it wanted to do that. It was very non-descriptive. Only the idea was it was felt very important that each non-tenured faculty member was owed this kind of input each and every year. Renée.
Renée A. Middleton: Dr. Pritchett, when you foresee the Center for Race and Cultural Relations …
John Pritchett: The Center for Diversity and Race Relations.
Renée Middleton: When do you foresee … expect that we’ll be conducting a search for the person that’s going to be the director of that Center?
John Pritchett: Probably in the coming year. We’re establishing the budget for that now; we’ll be taking the proposed budget into the Budget Advisory Committee on this budget cycle and hopefully on October 1st, go through if we have a continuing budget for that.
Renée Middleton: This is a follow-up. With respect to Johnny Green’s position being an Assistant to the Provost …
John Pritchett: It’s a temporary position. Johnny was involved in many things with the community, many of the diversity issues that we’ve had both on and off campus. I brought Johnny to bring us additional help. This of course was before Keenan was appointed. Keenan and Johnny are working very well together but we’ve got to let them transition out of that position.
Renée Middleton: So you do foresee the role that he’s currently filling would deal with the Assistant to the Provost that you’ll either keep that position or if you keep it, you’ll open it up for a search because it wasn’t a search done in that instance, correct?
John Pritchett: That is correct. Other questions? Thank you Barb.
Barbara Struempler, Chair, Senate: Connor, when the Senate leaders have met with President Walker this past year, we’ve talked at length about the Budget Advisory Committee makeup. And we certainly have expressed the notion that a one-year term is not sufficient. With any Committee for that matter. So, and I’m sure that the incoming Senate leaders would continue with that … that recommendation.
Let’s see, concerning the search committees for the deans, the Rules Committee met a week ago Monday and they reviewed the names that had been submitted to them. We have not submitted the names yet to Dr. Pritchett because we’ve just got one more set of names. So we’re going to submit those on Thursday; so we’re getting close on those. I should also say that there’s been a lot of faculty debate on who is chairing those Committees. As you know, deans have been slotted to chair those committees. We’ve met with Dr. Pritchett and we’ve talked to him about this concern because it is a very hot debate. And as most recently as this morning we’ve talked about co-chairs perhaps or a chair self-selected from the Committee. So the administration is aware of this concern and it’s working through some of those problems.
Another item on the Search Committee for the Dean of the College of Education, there was … initially we expanded that Committee and then the Committee was expanded again. So there is an additional faculty from Educational Foundations, Leadership and Technology. So and when I put out my minutes I’ll put out that the composition of the list as far as I know it to be current.
I would like to say that one of today’s topics, Dave is going to present some information about the administrator evaluations and I thought maybe I’d take a minute just to remind you about faculty evaluations. As Chair of the University Senate I was amazed to find out that all faculty don’t have an annual performance appraisal. And I’ve heard this repeatedly. I’ve been here 19 years and I’ve had 19 evaluations. And that’s in accordance with the Faculty Handbook. So if you feel like you need one for any particular reason, it is in the Faculty Handbook and you should have one if nothing else to protect yourself. And the guidelines are also listed in the Faculty Handbook. So I encourage you to take a look at those.
As we’ve heard, we do have some Parking and Traffic crises going on at the University. Dr. Christine Curtis, she’s the Assistant Provost of the Facilities Division, she does a very thorough update at the Administrative Council. So Christine spends an enormous amount of time on the Traffic and Parking crisis on campus. Last week though the Senate leaders and members of the Rules and Steering Committees met with Mr. Morty Wells who is President of Wells and Associates, and they’re developing a traffic and master parking plan for the University. And you do know that the University is going to become a pedestrian campus and that’s the way that this is moving. There are many campuses that are pedestrian campuses; I came from Iowa State and 23 years ago we instituted a pedestrian campus. And it was okay. You know, the bus was there on time, it was reliable, it was affordable, it went throughout the whole community. So I feel that if Auburn can emulate something like we had perhaps at Iowa State, that it will be a very worth-while system.
We did today have the Legacy Program planned as the debate item but we had a lot of last minute issues that came in and so if you have any special concerns or comments about the Legacy Program, Dr. Wes Williams is here; he’s VP of Student Affairs and he’ll receive your emails so just send your messages on to Dr. Williams.
First thing, are there any other announcements? Paula.
Paula Sullenger, Secretary-Elect, Senate: Finally we have a Committee Volunteer Form ready. As I explained last month, the old process of voting no longer functions and with the help of some people working for Dr. McFarland in the Graduate School, we have a new process. The announcement just went out today so some of you probably haven’t read it yet. It’s still a work in progress but the part where people can go online and fill out what Committees they would like to volunteer for is working. And I just wanted to give a quick overview.
The web address is in message that went out to AUCross. And it does require a login. And those of you who use the campus voting on the priority issues last month or the month before, this will look familiar. There are two versions of logins depending on what kind of operating system you use. You have to use your user name and a password. And you also have to give what domain you’re in. So for Windows 2000, you would have to type in Auburn on the second line under; if it’s XP it has to be part of your name. There are examples and if you have any problems, you can click here for help or call the OIT Helpline. There is someone at this number who is ready to take your calls. If you have a problem logging in you can click here for a more detailed explanation and if all else fails, there is a PF1 so you can just fill that out and mail it in. But I prefer not to spend all of my spring break typing these in. If you can, try to use this login. It really is very easy. These bottom page won’t show up too you but just confirm that this really is you. If anything is wrong, you’ll need to contact Human Resources. Then all you have is a pull-down list of the various committees. Select one and you’ll have a committee description and who’s on it. Then you can apply for the Committee yourself or nominate someone else if you want to apply for something. And then if you have more than one, you can change which is your first priority. If you decide you really want Campus Planning more than anything else, just move that up. If you decide that you can’t do all of that , you can delete everything. So it really is easy to use; the hardest part might be the login but there are plenty of backups available if anyone has any problems. I really urge the Senators to get your colleagues and ask them to volunteer. We have over 100 vacancies. It’s much easier on Rules if we have volunteers and not have to go out and try to find them.
Barbara Struempler: Are there any questions? Cindy.
Cindy Brunner: Just a comment. I always thought I was really good at reading instructions. I did the login of course like was told to notice that I was on XP so I have to do Auburn/ and I kept getting denials and I finally sent an email to the Help email address. They called me back in like five minutes to tell me what I was doing wrong and in the meantime I figured out what I was doing wrong. The people in my department don’t like problems associated with logins so they’ll quit doing it if they get a denial. Urge your colleagues to not quit; it’s really easy to get over that little hurdle and the people at the Help Desk are apparently sitting there waiting for your phone call. So they will help you through this.
Barbara Struempler: The next business of order is the election for members for the Rules Committee. The Secretary will distribute the ballots and you need to vote for three. How about if I introduce everyone and have them stand up maybe for a minute? Virginia O’Leary. I saw you. There you are. Jim Kaminsky. He had to send a substitute today. The substitute doesn’t need to stand up. Gary Mullen, are you here? Christa Slaton. Here. Brian Bowman. Substitute. Bob are you here? No. Paul Starr. Paul. And any write in candidates. The top three will be elected as the new members and we have ballots if there needs to be a run-off. So I’ll give you a minute to vote your candidates.
Only Senators can vote. Trust me. Don’t take one if you’re not a Senator. Oh, substitutes can vote. Substitutes and Senators.
While we’re waiting don’t forget that the Spring Faculty Meeting is next Tuesday in this room beginning at 3:00. The President gives his address. There’s an award from AAUP. We’re having just brief updates provided by Wes Williams, VP of Student Affairs; David Wilson, who’s VP of Outreach; and Mike Moriarty, VP of Research. Cindy Brunner will be leading the discussion on Electronic Voting. And we also have election of the new … the officers for the Chair-elect and the Secretary-elect. Yes?
???: At the General Faculty Meeting will it be possible for John Pritchett to make the report that he’s unable to make today?
John Pritchett: Don, that’s going to depend on when we get that original data. And if the original data is not here, I can’t.
Barbara Struempler: We knew that it was a long shot. He was kind of expecting it at the end of March but we thought that it would complement David’s talk today; that’s why it was on the agenda. So if it is, we’ll see what happens on that. It is a pretty full agenda next week. But if not, we’ll … I’ll make … we’ll do it.
The next business of order is the Textbook Policy Committee. This is an ad hoc committee that was established last Spring and it deals with textbook publishing and course packets at the University. I don’t think that there has been a more hotly debated committee on this campus than this Textbook Committee. The Committee was convened because of a report that was sent to John Pritchett by Internal Auditing. Internal Auditing said that we need to have a policy. Instead of having the administration develop a policy, they asked the faculty to develop their own policy in view of shared governance. So that’s the background for the Committee. The Committee was charged to develop a policy on course book publishing and packet publishing. The Committee was not to decide if there needed to be a policy because we were being told that we needed one by Internal Auditing. So that gives you a little bit of the background for this Committee. Jim has just done a tremendous job with chairing this committee. He has stuck with it, he’s been very thorough; he’s been a good diplomat. As he answers your questions, remember he is the messenger. And I also have invited three other people to help us with maybe some of the legal problems that we have. Lee Armstrong, General Counsel at the University. We also have Kevin Robinson who’s here. Kevin is the Executive Director of Internal Auditing. And Amy Douglas who’s the Senior Internal Auditor of the Auditing System at the University. So, Jim if you’ll come up and present the motion and then after it’s been presented we’ll open it up for discussion.
Jim Gundlach, Chair, Textbook Policy Committee: I am the second chair of this Committee, the first chair burned out. I would like to move for the adoption of the following proposal. I, as a real solid rule, don’t read things to students that they access to in written form. But since I know that Auburn University doesn’t provide insurance to cover eyeglasses I’ll assume that some of you need it. This is the proposal that the Committee finally came up with.
PROPOSED TEXTBOOK POLICY
The selection and production of instructional materials by faculty is essential to providing quality instruction. The freedom to choose instructional materials is central to the principle of academic freedom. Auburn University encourages faculty to publish instructional materials through reputable publishers that are marketed and used nationally. If such materials produced by faculty members are appropriate for use in a faculty members classes and if the sale of such materials produces financial gain for the faculty member or his/her immediate family, faculty may: (a) assign the material and choose not to accept financial gain that might result in royalties or other income generated by the sale of such materials by students enrolled in the faculty member’s classes, or (b) turn the decision for selecting materials over to an alternate responsible entity for example a department chair or departmental committee qualified to determine if the materials are appropriate. The production of instructional materials such as workbooks, answer sheets or custom text intended for use either exclusively or primarily at Auburn University shall be considered part of the faculty member’s assigned duties. It is expected that such shall be provided to the student at departmental or university expense or at most, the cost of reproduction through a commercial reproducer.
Barbara Struempler: You’re making a motion. I would like to open it up for discussion and I’m going to ask Jim to give a brief history and overview of the Committee’s work and then we’ll have discussion.
Jim Gundlach: As noted, this Committee was the Committee with controversy and debate, that is consensus didn’t come together early on. It never did in fact. The … and I’d like do I guess sort of two things: try to summarize some of the Committee members feelings and thoughts about problems with this from two different [END OF SIDE 1]
We really, I don’t think — at least I didn’t’ — understand the underlying rationale, the need for it to exist. We first approved, in effect, no policy — it’s a senseless thing that the faculty should have the right to decide material. In doing some more digging and other such things, some of us came to the conclusion that the Alabama Ethics Law underlies the need for the policy; that Auburn needs a policy that’s consistent with the State Ethics Law. And the … a draft of a policy that acknowledged that route emerged but only two members really supported that policy which included reference to the Ethics Law in it. There were other discussions about how difficult and complex it is to try to implement some of these policies like keeping up with money to give back and that kind of stuff. And the notion that in some cases where you have faculty who are so specialized that there is nobody else around to decide the appropriateness of the materials makes that policy not acceptable to some members of the Committee also. In general, I feel that that the Committee really didn’t have a full set of information available about what we were trying to do when we started out. And what got me focused on looking at the Ethics Law was when I read the University of Alabama Faculty Handbook and looked at their policy, kept underneath the issue of ??? legal questions, legal issues; if you can’t afford your own attorney, ??? you can have a bunch of them like they have in the Law School there and that sort of provided a starting point for that. The … I guess that’s kind of the background. Essentially, I guess, a majority of the Committee feels that this statement is something that if followed would result in behavior that should be following the Ethics Law to the best of our understanding and without raising unnecessary flags by referring to it specifically in the text of it.
Barbara Struempler: I’d like to ask that Senators have the first privilege to speak and limit your comments, if you can, to three minutes. And then once Senators have at least one go around, we’ll welcome any comments by guests of the Senate. All comments, we’ll try to hear all comments. Yes?
Kem Krueger, Pharmacy Care Systems: Actually I have two questions. The first is you stated your case which you made very understandable. But if I write a textbook and I require it for my students then it’s okay to use that as long as I don’t accept royalties on that textbook from my students’ purchases? Or I can have my department head say “yes, that’s an appropriate book” then keep the royalties?
Jim Gundlach: Right.
Kem Krueger: Okay. And is that okay with our Internal Auditors?
Jim Gundlach: The part about having a Committee that makes the decision aside is in accordance with a ruling that the Ethics Commission made and decided as the primary way of doing things with the plagerized University of Alabama policy. The other approach, just giving up the money, is something that’s done at a lot of places around where they have as an Ethics Policy. Most of those places are outside of Alabama but those fall under the particular kind of Ethics Law. I guess one thing that I should know is that the Alabama legislature placed faculty in states for the institutions under the Ethics Law back in 1986. For the past 17 years, we’ve been running along without a policy that’s consistent with that. That has the potential, I think, of creating some real problems. Does that answer both questions?
Doug White, Nutrition & Food Sciences: I was wondering about your (a) part here about if not accepting financial gain; do you know if that is a workable thing to do, to have a book that sells nationally but here at Auburn University itself, you don’t accept royalty? You have part of scientists from other institutions borrowing from your class and that will separate the two ???
Jim Gundlach: You would just have to do it in such a way that you could document to the Ethics Commission that you gave up as much money as you made such that your net increase would be 0.
Doug White: But that was just Auburn University, so …you take all the books and subtract 10 from students that bought them at Auburn University. Does that work out through publishers? Do you figure it out that way or … I just don’t see how it’s going to work. Maybe I should.…
Kevin Robinson: The publisher gives you a price.
Barbara Struempler: Did everyone hear that response? The publisher gives you a breakdown of royalties. Yes?
???: I was wondering how stock is ???
Jim Gundlach: Insofar as I’ve looked at what the Ethics Commission does, they’ve created software just like they do textbooks. We did not address software except insofar as it’s instructional materials, I would assume it falls under the same policies and guidelines.
Bob Abercrombie, ???: The part where you say here about receiving personal gain, ???
Thomas A. Smith, Human Development/Family Studies: I’m still unclear from your first question. So I guess this is really for Amy or Kevin. Are you all part of the Committee or is it your opinion that this statement meets the criteria that it needs to incur?
Kevin Robinson: No, I’m not a part of the Committee. Jim and I had some time today to confer. This is the first time I’ve actually read that. But it does appear to address the problem. The bottom line here is the publisher agrees to address textbooks for the client. ??? require that sales {UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND]
The other point I would like to address is textbook publishing, records, etc. Please understand that this is a personal venue between you and the Ethics Commission so you need to be paying attention to this. If you are not going to seek financial gain, it’s going to be up to you if the Ethics Commission has a problem with the other documents. So I would be very careful in that regard.
[TALKING AMONG EACH OTHER. LAUGHTER]
???: I mean if you had seen this policy when you did the audit, would you have bought it to somebody’s attention or said, “okay. Auburn’s doing alright?
Kevin Robinson: I would have bought it Bill Shipman.
Barbara Struempler: You need to identify yourself, please, for the minutes.
Curtis Jolly, Ag Economics & Rural Sociology: When you said, ??? are you saying that the individual should return the money to the publishers or to the university? Or to the students?
Jim Gundlach: Some of the examples that I’ve seen where people do this kind of thing is one example is where the faculty member knows that they get so much per book when the student presents them with a receipt that they’ve bought this new book that they give them the money.
Curtis Jolly: They only get a percentage of the book.
Kevin Robinson: Yes. You know sort of how much you get per book. And another example is faculty donated the amount to something that would benefit students at the institution in general like the library book acquisition fund. When it … as far as being safe literally, it’s being able to show that you don’t have a net balance gain from the decision you made to … if an ethics complaint was filed against you. I … that’s sort of the criteria that they work from. Just something to think about in terms of … under the Ethics Law, the dividing line between minor and serious — that is felony — is $250. If the amount is less than $250 under the last revision of the Ethics Law, if a complaint is filed and the sum involved is less than $250 the Ethics Commission has instituted a policy where they work out some sort of mechanism of restitution to the body injured or whatever and then they charge a $1,000 administrative fee for processing the complaint. If it’s $250 or more, it’s a Class B felony. It’s forwarded to the Attorney General for prosecution.
Charles ???: ??? I was wondering. It seems to be the crux of the matter is that we don’t benefit financially from something that we have control over. Yet if you opt for Option B, why does that make it okay to keep the money? I’m not sure I understand that.
Jim Gundlach: The decision is formally in the hands of somebody besides you. You are not benefiting from the decision you made but rather you’re benefiting from the decision … you’re turning the decision making process over to either your department head or the Committee. And so, you didn’t make the decision.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR. UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND.
Jim Gundlach: What I’m relying on here is that form generally follows the model that’s adopted both … by the University of Alabama citing the ruling by the Ethics Commission and what I’m referring to there is all the legal expertise they have through the Law School to … you know, I figure if it’s going to work for them in the absence of any other kind of things, it seems to be one way that it could be done.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR. UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND
Joe Buckhalt, Counseling & Counseling Psychology: When I discussed this with my faculty, we talked about ??? to SACS and make a report that the royalties are distributed ??? It seems to me that would further the department being able to position a conflict of interest in terms of making ???
TALKING AMONG EACH OTHER. LAUGHTER
Jim Gundlach: It would be safer to do it with somewhat more distance.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: In my College we normally don’t publish books, but if we’re doing note packets you will see the Auburn University Veterinary Supply Store which does it at cost and maybe just a little mark-up for narrow administrative … they’re a non-profit agency. So would that kind of publishing or publishing through the University Bookstores comply with this ruling.
Kevin Robinson: The procedures through … that talk about it through the University Bookstore clearly no royalties would go back to the professor. So that part would be already in compliance. If you decide to go off-campus and have them charge you $5 in addition to the cost plus whatever the off-campus unit would charge for their cost of doing it, that you get into where you’re making from it and that’s the problem.
Peter Swartz, Textile Engineering: I am representing Dean Larry Benefield but the comments are my own. It’s basically a hypocrisy check and that’s on part of the department head. My star faculty member proposed a textbook that his class works from. It’s left up to me the responsibility to choose a book. Okay. What book am I going to choose? Let’s be realistic about this. This body argued long and hard about seeing a window of competitive bids by the Trustees and seeing the report of the Trustees. Part B is exactly the same thing. To be honest, I’m not going to take a book that’s written by someone else, my star faculty member comes in and says this is my book for my class, you make the choice.
Barbara Struempler: One more Senator and then we’ll open it up.
Curtis Jolly, Ag Economic & Rural Sociology: I would tend to believe that instead of using the department chair, there should be another Committee because the reason that I leave with you [UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND] Because I could say that I’m not going to use the book for my class and use it as an outside reading book but yet and still I use it for all material from the book and the students still buy it. I’m still receiving money from it. I can think it should be more sort scheduled than previously stated.
Jim Gundlach: This is the result of the Committee. It’s barely able to get a majority to get it out. That’s the best we could do.
Christa Slaton, Political Science: I’m going back to the comment that Curtis said. He said that the administration [UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND]
Kevin Robinson: There was … well … at least when I first looked through this stuff, it was simply stated to the effect that the audit was in response to two Ethics complaints that were filed with the Attorney General and since they were filed with the Attorney General instead of the Ethics Commission, the Attorney General sent it to the University and had them look at it. Auditing looked at it, looked at the policy, and said we have a problem here. It’s just when the Committee got started the specific kinds of instructions that came to the Committee at first released — this is speaking largely from my earlier understanding — really didn’t tie into an Ethics Commission issue until dug into.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR. UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY
Kevin Robinson: I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.
???: There seems to be a lot of hands in the policy and how it was produced. The Committee [UNABLE TO HEAR], but they do not give you a breakdown of where those royalties go. The other question I had is if you get the royalties, let’s say they pay for using your book and you get some royalties. After you defer those royalties, you’re still getting that … paying that income, right? The publisher who’s holding that money, do they keep it? Or do you have to pay taxes on that money and then give it back? How does work?
Kevin Robinson: I think it’s impossible to put together a policy that would describe those details will handle absolutely every individual relationship between individuals, their book situations, the way their publisher handles some of such things, but in general, what a faculty member can do is figure out a way to document that they’ve given up as much money as they can make, they’re made from their decisions in assigning it to their students, or get somebody to set up another decision making entity to make the decision for them.
STATEMENT FROM FLOOR
Kevin Robinson: I’m not going to do one bit more after I get down from here.
Barbara Struempler: We need to hear from those who have not been heard from yet. Judy.
Judy Sheppard, Steering Committee: I’m also a member of the Committee. The Committee studied those documents in depth. My question is kind of … and again, I am a member of this Committee but I’m still unclear here. If you’ll scroll down a little bit so we can see what that bullet is, this is what was bothering me all along. We’ve been told if we don’t do this, they will. And if we don’t like it, then they do it to us, then too bad. We have shared governance. So that is not my idea of shared governance. You better do it or shut up. And it’s been put to me by several different people that if you read that seriously, it will tell us there. The last one. The responsibility if you don’t propose it will be assigned elsewhere. I hope ??? We were not ever told that we could describe this as voluntary I am fully in favor of something said that ethically correct; this is the way you should act and you all know it. And by the way, here’s the actual law and you pay attention to it and it’s up to you to deal with it. For us go get this, believe me it’s the best we could come up with. And with much pain and agony, at the point of ??? our leadership will see that this is not truly a shared governance thing. This is being told do it or be penalized. That’s my main problem with the whole thing. [UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND] We’re giving you a chance. We believe in the spirit of shared governance. Perhaps that is even ???
Richard Penascovic, Religion: I have two problems with this particular policy. One, it says the decision to select each of your materials should be turned over to ??? responsible for it or the department chair or a departmental committee. I’m in a department with 18 faculty [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY] the department chair make a decision and never feel pressured and perhaps that can be true of the whole department. And the second thing I have a problem with is acting ??? I had a contact yesterday from Houghton Press for a book that I used as this semester’s textbook. They require from me an investment of $2,400. It will take me over 10 or 20 years it’s going to take me to recoup that money from textbook sales made to students. So, is this policy cover losses?
Kevin Robinson: Losing money is not against the law.
Herb Rotfeld, Marketing: Not a Senator but a member of this fun-filled group. I do not disagree with anything that you have said but I’d like to add a couple of elements. Our legal of just about there was that even with knowing about the various concerns, we felt no policy really … we were told about the Ethics ??? and one member of the Committee told me he feels that way. The second paragraph has received absolutely no discussion here. [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY] and it’s in reference to one faculty member on campus who makes thousands of dollars a year by ??? by what he can prove to be every semester two copies of a high cost, self-published book and is used for ??? grades. We discussed the money, and he said that this ??? On the other hand, why are still looking. This guy has been known as a chair, UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND] If we must have a policy, that second paragraph is all we really need. Non-acceptance of royalties and ??? being pragmatic and difficult, but not accepting the royalties especially with esoteric, low sales of non-textbooks because they are non-academic readers. This is pragmatically difficult especially when non-student sales at the campus bookstore exceed student sales all published and ??? I would add myself to someone who hasn’t [UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND] One Committee member noted that as chair, you can tell a faculty member that this book for event for lack of ??? And again, finally, based on what Judy said, most faculty sign ??? specialized courses in which we ??? for classes.
Barbara Struempler: Other comments? Yes.
Kem Krueger, Pharmacy Care Systems: In light of previous discussions, I feel like it’s important, I think I will vote in favor of this policy just because it sounds like the Committee has done most of the job of doing what research they could and getting this process completed. I’m wondering — I’m not ??? — but, a department that keeps using a departmental chair or a textbook committee, what if that group convened a Course Material Selection Committee? That way it doesn’t have to be in the department. If you want a committee of your peers from other institutions to serve on the committee because they would know if the book or text was an appropriate text in your field then they would assign it to you.
Barbara Struempler: Is that university-wide or departmental?
Kem Krueger: I don’t think it matters. It could be university-wide or it could be just departmental.
John Mouton, Chair-elect of the Senate: I don’t see that the problem that this policy excludes that. The statement in the policy is that it could be turned over to an alternate responsible entity. We could give examples from here to kingdom come. I think what it’s saying is that ??? that there is a responsible group that makes the selection. However they come to responsible entity, it should be a responsible group.
Barbara Struempler: Okay. Connor.
Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: I’m wondering if we are having a much ado about nothing. I’m not sure of how many cases we’re talking about at this university. Most importantly, I think that the elephant in the room would know that acknowledging is Lee Armstrong here. What is our legal liability here? That’s what is in fact motivating this. Is it University policy, an expression of concern about us individual faculty or is it in fact a concern that Auburn University is going to be legally liable to represent us individual faculty members who may get crosswise with the Ethics Commission? I understand that the legal services of the University are available, a not widely known fact perhaps, to faculty members who in the course of our professions obligations might have legal actions taken against us. So, you may and the people that you hire may be brought to our defense. Is this one of the issues? Are we talking really about the legal exposure of Auburn University that we’re concerned about? Barb?
Barbara Struempler: I’m going to have the elephant. Yes.
Lee Armstrong, University Legal Counsel: I’d also like to pass that up. But no, you ??? The primary liability rests with individual faculty members. That is applied to the individual, it doesn’t apply to the University. We have debated this question [UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND]
Barbara Struempler: Judy.
Judy Sheppard: Dr. Pritchett, didn’t you tell us that Auditors found the University was vulnerable? Because we did not have such a policy in place? I actually recall that. And if so, I mean if not, why is there policy needed at all?
John Pritchett: I think what I shared in the early going, when I met with the Senate leadership …
???: UNABLE TO HEAR OR UNDERSTAND QUESTION/COMMENT
John Pritchett: That is correct. But I’m talking about a year ago when this thing got started was that we had a report from Internal Auditing that we really needed to have a policy. And I foresee generating several policies and that’s how it got started.
Judy Sheppard: Who’s “we”? The University or the faculty?
John Pritchett: When Internal Auditing made a report to me, I meet regularly with the Senate leadership and I simply brought this to their attention. That here is a recommendation from Internal Auditing. It would be wise to have a University policy because we had none. Is that correct, Barb?
Barbara Struempler: Yes. And the Committee members had a copy of everything that you gave me.
Kevin Robinson: If I could just add an extra note that when I started trying to look into the issue except the fact of the Ethics Laws, I had to go in to … I looked and looked and couldn’t find it and I had to figure out how to use West law in order to be able to pull up a copy and it took me three or four days of spare time before I finally did that. I finally contacted the Alabama Ethics Commission and asked them why they wouldn’t put a copy of the Ethics Law on their web page and they said, “We never thought of that.” Well good, two days later it’s now available and if you have … I’m one of the people who thought that it should have made reference to the Ethics Law simply because people who have these more detailed questions would know where to get more detailed questions worked out. Because of that surviving document. It’s available now, it wasn’t earlier. And I certainly didn’t know about any of this stuff before I got into it.
Tom Sigliare, ???: Would it be in order to call the question?
Barbara Struempler: Yes. If you’re ready to call the question. Thank you Jim. All those in favor of accepting this as prepared by the Committee, signify by saying “aye”. [RESPONSES] All those opposed, “no.” [FEW RESPONSES] The “ayes” have it so it has passed. We will submit it to the administration.
The next business of order is the Revised Emeritus Status Policy and Procedure by Steve McFarland. We’re moving very quickly.
Steven McFarland, Acting Dean, Graduate School: Yes you are. I came to you back in January at the Senate meeting to consider a policy on Emeritus status. It was approved unanimously without opposition but the President — President Walker — has requested a minor change which has significance. And I would like to propose therefore that this policy be modified by the addition of the sentence that is bolded in the middle. Dr. Walker said he would like to have a faculty vote that would accompany any recommendation for emeritus status.
Hence this information and recommendation shall include the results of a vote on the awarding of emeritus status taken from the departmental faculty holding rank equal to or above that of the retiring faculty member.
Barbara Struempler: There’s a motion. Is there a second. Okay. Discussion? Yes. Cindy.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Why did he think that was necessary? This is sort of a token status for retirees. Why is it important to have a vote?
Steven McFarland: You would have to ask someone else to respond about why he. But as far as “token” I think one of the major changes we made in this is that it is no longer a token. It carries substantial privileges that are itemized very carefully in the policy. Now why, I would have to ask someone else.
John Pritchett: Dr. Walker simply said that he would like a sample of the faculty from the department as to whether or not they would support him.
Steve McFarland: To me he said that he would rather not make a decision like that himself without a recommendation that had a sense of the faculty.
Thomas Smith, Family Development: If indeed that’s what Dr. Walker said that this is from the department, this is not a sense of the department but only of faculty of equal or higher rank. I was wondering … holding rank equal to or above that of the retiring faculty member. So if this person is a full professor, only the full professors would give their view on that. It doesn’t appear to me to meet the spirit of the commonness. So I was wondering about that part of it.
Steven McFarland: I added that simply because the procedures spelled out in the University Faculty Handbook that in all decisions of tenure and promotion, that’s the language that’s used. And to put it on that same level as I included it. There was no other motive. It was simply following the guidelines of the Handbook.
Thomas Smith: For tenure and promotion.
Steven McFarland: Yes.
Thomas Smith: Which this neither.
Steven McFarland: Well, actually that’s not true. It is a promotion to emeritus status.
Ralph Henderson, Clinical Sciences: I think everybody probably would support this. But we had an institution in which a faculty member retired after 45 years of service with plenty of longevity left in their career and simply went in and informed the department head that they expected emeritus status. And the department head would rather than put on the block, rather than making an ugly scene it was kind of passed on. So I think that this gives the department head if not the President some additional weight in the decision making. So I think it’s a good thing.
Barbara Struempler: Other discussion? Yes.
Sadik Tuzun, Entomology & Plant Pathology: ??? Would there be any appeals process to that? If the department doesn’t want to assign that status?
Steven McFarland: All I would point out to you, no there is no appeals process here. But what I do point out is that this is not a binding vote. This is a sense of the faculty. So, I can’t really offer … I didn’t even go that far, I didn’t feel it was necessary. But this is not a binding vote where a negative vote means that’s it, it’s over. It is simply the President wanting to hear the sense of the faculty on a decision like that.
Nelson Ford, Management: I agree with the sense of the faculty support but I also agree that the sense of those of lower rank than him should have a right to be included. If the faculty has worked with him for the last several years, they deserve that right.
Barbara Struempler: Are you making an amendment to the motion?
Nelson Ford: I’ll do that.
Barbara Struempler: Okay. So you have amended the motion to state that you want all departmental faculty … tenured faculty or all?
Nelson Ford: Tenure-track.
Barbara Struempler: Tenure-track faculty, all tenure-track faculty to be involved in the voting process. Okay. It’s been moved and seconded. Now we’re to discuss the amendment. That’s what you are discussing now. Whether we should include all tenure-track faculty. Dr. Moriarty.
Michael Moriarty, Vice Provost and VP for Research: The point is we’ve established the policy here at the University that it should include research-track faculty and clinical-track faculty because they are faculty with the exception of awarding tenure or sabbaticals. But in all other areas they are treated like tenure-track faculty member. [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY]
Barbara Struempler: So you are against the amendment and you think it should say departmental faculty is what he said if you couldn’t hear it. Because of the clinical and research faculty. So he spoke against the amendment. So if it would not pass you would go back and just put departmental faculty. But we are still speaking to the amendment. All tenure-track faculty. Other discussion? [SEVERAL TALKING AT ONCE] Well we’ll take a friendly amendment since we’re in a friendly mood. If you would agree to that. And Connor has seconded. We’re now saying that it would be from all departmental faculty. [END OF TAPE 1] Ruth.
Ruth Crocker, History: I just have heard any reason that we’re waiting to vote for it since [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY]
Barbara Struempler: Would someone like to speak for the … let’s see, we’re on the amendment. It’s what we’re talking about. Yes because we’ve never voted on the amendment. So we’re still back on the amendment. Do you want to call the question on the amendment? Okay. So the amendment says that if you vote “yes” that would include all departmental faculty. All those in favor say “aye”. [RESPONSES] Opposed, “no”. [MINIMAL RESPONSE]. Okay. So that has passed. Now we’re going back to the motion and — with the amendment. Any further discussion? Ready for the question? Okay. All those in favor of this motion with the amendment that passed, signify by saying “aye”. [RESPONSES] Those opposed, “no”. [MINIMAL RESPONSE] Okay. So the “ayes” have it and it has been carried. Thank you Steven.
Okay, the next business of order is a report on the Administrator Evaluator Committee by David Bransby.
David Bransby, Agronomy & Soils: Thanks Barb. I’m going to try to be quick here; we’re running out of time. First I want to draw your attention to the fact that we … I think there is a little bit of our structure turning to this last Senate meeting with regard to this Committee. The old rule was that the Chair-elect was the Chair of this Committee. The problem there was the Chair-elect changed every year and that was one of the reasons why we didn’t have any evaluations for many years because there just wasn’t enough time for the Chair-elect to do very much. So once that I guess administrative change was made, the Rules Committee very quickly appointed me as the new Chair for a little while. So our Committee is myself and J. DeRuiter from Pharmacy, Paul Starr and of course Bruce Gladden ??? I do want to emphasize that this is a Senate Committee and remind you that Senate Committees are actually responsible directly to the Senate; University Committees are responsible to the administration. And this is very important because I’m coming from a country like South Africa where democracy didn’t exist until just a few years ago. I am very, very committed to the democratic process and I’m going to be looking to the Senate for some guidance. Even though we are a Committee, we are a small Committee and I hate to make all these decisions on my own. Or on our own. The charge of the Committee is now that the Administrator Evaluation Committee shall consist of five faculty and one staff member nominated by the Staff Advisory Council. The Committee shall conduct periodic evaluations of the University administrators involved in the University’s teaching, research and outreach programs. I do want to emphasize that they periodically don’t have to be every year. What I want to do today is first the objectives of my report are just updates and report on the evaluation of 2002, updates on plans for this coming year, and seek some guidance like I indicated. And perhaps we start off with … I just want to emphasize what are the purposes of these evaluations of administrators. Clearly, the points aren’t as … really the main purpose should be self-improvement of that administrator. The administration, the Provost in particular, said that they were in fact … the results were used in salary adjustments. And this issue was discussed at length. Let me just tell you, I was on the previous Committee before I went off and was appointed Chair of the new one and so I have a lot of background in the history of the process. The previous Committee debated this issue at length and felt like it had to be used for salary adjustments; otherwise, really the evaluation itself has no sensor for anybody to change their behavior. It has to be linked to something like salary adjustment. So we feel very strongly about this.
The last issue or possible purpose is the removal of very poor administrators. That’s a controversial one as you can image, and I’ll talk about that a little bit more when we get on to some of the results. Just an update on the 2002 evaluations. First, here’s some background. There were many years where we ran with no evaluations. What were the reasons for that? There were several. First, the returns were horrible. 2% returns on some of the last ones that were done. Secondly, faculty felt like they didn’t know whether these were being used at all. They were just being passed. Thirdly, they were too long. The questionnaires were too long. So those are the main reasons why eventually the evaluations were dropped and weren’t done at all. Bruce Gladden picked this job up and took it upon himself to get an incredible amount of work. After his formal appointment as Chair of the Committee, Chair-elect, he carried on Chairing that Committee for two more years and took it upon himself to get the current situation in place and I helped on that.
Just by way of background, how did we develop the questionnaire? We spent many Committee meeting doing it traditionally. Then after Committee input. And then we actually sent this out to all administrators, to departments heads and all deans and invited them to make comments and we tried to incorporate all those comments into the questionnaire before we sent it out. We then sent the questionnaire out; did the best we could to protect the anonymity of those and in fact I think it’s very sound. We also asked … we tried to keep the questionnaires short. We also asked the Senators to try to promote responses from a department. In the end, what we got … what did we get in the way of results? I think we got an excellent result. We got almost 40% returns which is better than most universities get. Given the fact that we’ve got non-tenured faculty and their people are concerned about doing this kind of stuff, we heard in fact that it’s slightly better than the average. And I think it was because of these three things: we put together a short questionnaire, we had our Senators trying to get the responses, and in fact because we’re also trying to convince faculty and the administration agreed that they were going to use these results this time.
What I want do is I’ll show you some of the results. And here I want to point out that Dr. Pritchett has been very helpful all the way through this whole process. We had difficulty getting results to him on time for salary adjustments and so on last year and they came in at the very last minute so they were used as much as possible I believe. He’s also been willing to actually pay for someone to help us. And I’m going to say I prefer not to use the I guess the bad word of consultants, but let’s put it this way, he’s been willing to pay for Amanda to help us do some analysis and further process the results and help in this whole evaluation process. Again, this has just started and so we haven’t got very far. But the vender has given us some analysis, prepared in a hurry obviously, we left the labels for the ??? out but I’ll put them in. And I’m a little concerned about the problem that we have here with department heads which of course is a discrete variable on the horizontal axis where the points adjourn. Be that as it may, what this graph shows is the scatter of the scores across 45 department heads approximately. And there is a fairly large scatter. The standard deviations are the scores within the department for each department head. I think I’ll finish my presentation before I take questions if you don’t mind.
This is just some more detailed representation of that information showing responses to each question for each department head. And again, it’s useful for the department heads individually. And then lastly this analysis shows questions on the horizontal axis and mean scores for all the department heads and of course this kind of analysis helps with identifying areas where all the department heads need some help. Perhaps the administration could run a workshop on certain particular topics related to these particular questions. So certainly I think that we are making progress towards getting evaluations that are going to be helpful not only to those who are being evaluated but also to the administration and to the University as a whole.
What I want to do now is just finish up with … I’m really trying to reach those last two objectives and say that we still haven’t decided definitely whether we’re going to carry on with the use of a vendor. It costs money; I’m not sure that we need one; we may do. I think that the Committee is going to have to sit down and talk about this. I haven’t had time to actually call a Committee meeting so this is all going to be new. Dr. Pritchett said in order to use the information this year, he needs it by the end of April. We’re going to do the best we can. I was under the impression that we weren’t going to get any raises, but apparently that’s not necessarily true. There’s still a chance that we may get raises and so it’s important to get this … if we’re going to do it again, it’s important for us to do it by April 30, to get the results to the administration by April 30 which doesn’t leave us very much time.
The question here that’s come under question and in particular our vendor advisor has suggested several things. The first he feels like it’s not comprehensive enough which kind of concerned me. He said that 30 questions — 31 we had on the department heads and ??? for various reasons — he said that 31 questions wasn’t enough and he’s given us an example with 80 questions on it. Well, what worries me is that the return to me is more important that how many questions you’ve got. You’ve got to have a high proportion of returns and that’s going to push your return rate down big time if you go to 80 questions from 30. And then we have had some feedback on the questionnaire despite the fact that we tried to get this before we sent it out. But there were considerable objections to the last question. And I’d also invite comments on this. The last question was concerning the overall effectiveness of my department head, chair or the dean. He or she should be continued in his or her present leadership position. And I can see that that can be offensive to anyone being evaluated if in fact the instrument is intended only for improvement. But our concern, and we debated this in the Committee substantially before we actually finalized it, but we decided in the end that at this point there is no acronysm that we know of to deal with this problem. And that’s why that question is there. The administration has indicated to us that there are alternative mechanism to do it but we’ve still got to know what they are and how we are to use them. So what I’m going to ask the administration to do is to tell us what is the procedure for initiating a procedure to get rid of an administrator that is a real problem. That we feel as faculty should not retain their position. And once that procedure has been explained to us, then I’m happy to remove this. But until it has, I think that that question should stay there. Those are my personal opinions. Barb that’s all I have to say. I’d like to open it up for discussion and I’m open to advice, suggestions, and help.
Barbara Struempler: Comments?
Curtis Jolly, Ag Economics & Rural Sociology: We the faculty members have been evaluated by the students. And I think if they’re going to ask the students if they should remove me from the class, then I would not be happy so I do not see why we are expected to do what these students are also doing to faculty members. Used to be faculty members. I do not see the need for this question. If the evaluation score overall then the decision has ultimately been decided. [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY]
Tim Boosinger, College of Veterinary Medicine: I would encourage you to pursue a dependable route. I think if you look at the numbers it might be more cost effective that [UNABLE TO HEAR CLEARLY]
David Bransby: Dr. Boosinger, I can see some of that, doing what you say and certainly we will discuss it at length in the Committee. The ??? I don’t know. And we will look at that as well. We got some very, very qualified people. One of the advantages of an independent vendor is of course the impartiality from both points of view. And that’s very important. We understand that. But remember, remember this is a Senate Committee, it’s not an administrative University Committee and I want to do what the faculty wants to do although I do recognize this is not a Faculty Senate, it’s a University Senate too.
Barbara Struempler: Well, we will be back to you with on this Committee. It certainly isn’t a done deal, David. Thank you so much. Bill. Bill Gale is going to present an update on the Research and Scholarship Incentive Plan. This is it’s third time. You were here in November and I think also in January. And back in March. So Bill Gale.
Bill Gale, Steering Committee: Thank you Barb. Can you folks hear me in the back? Well, since it’s kind of late I’ll go through this as quickly as I can. What I’m going to do is to present to you, having discussed the process the last time I was standing up here, our initial thoughts on how to go with this. I must stress it’s very much a work in progress. There is ample opportunity to still change things and this is after your input at this time. And I will carry your opinions back to the Committee meeting. You can of course make changes in response to those opinions. There is still time to do that.
So what is the status of this draft report? I would like mention a number of caveats. First, this is an advisory report. Prepared at the request of the Interim Provost, this is an advisory for him. It is not an official policy. The mysterious people on the hill may or may not of course agree with everything or anything that’s in here. This doesn’t bind them to anything. Individual members’ views may vary; however, the Committee did not, I think, have great pains in reaching a consensus report. Had we been this comfortable with everything, but this is a report which I think that all of the members of the Committee who communicated with me felt that they can live with.
Okay. What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to achieve? Well, the first thing we’re trying to do is to revise the policy that Dr. Moriarty presented back in November. We’re trying to do things. First, we need to address the comments which were made by the faculty at that Senate meeting and if possible request performance. I made four more approaches the Committee made. And we’re trying to balance a number of concerns which are each of them perfectly legitimate but often in conflict. So this is very much a compromise. Now we did not feel that we should address every issue which was brought to our attention. However, we felt it was very important that we capture the issue which are not addressed and there is a section in our draft report which deals with that. We hope during that we can place the report in context and to provide bases for people who wanted to pick to work on this ??? as a hole beyond this policy. And we wanted to enable a pilot plan. That was part of our brief from Dr. Pritchett was to look at the facts, look at making this thing work, to look at how to assess it, to look at methods to assess the pilot plan. Because if this policy is implemented it would be as a pilot not as something which is set in stone. And certainly something we felt we had to do was to try to explain the policy. One of the things that came out very clearly from our discussions is that this is a complex issue and people were not in a position because really there had not been an opportunity to explain this as to how this policy would work, what the good things are, what we think the problems are. However, today I’m obviously going to concentrate on the policy itself.
Well, these are some of some of the concerns which were brought to our attention during the consulting exercises. A number of the faculty were concerned about whether agencies would accept this form and certainly whether this is something that is acceptable to funding agencies. Many people were concerned about the limitations of eligibility for a policy based on salary savings. A number of people were concerned that in their college or department there is not a culture which supports research and consequently the opportunities for them to conduct external funded research are limited. Fortunately, I think that was a minority, not a majority comment. There were a number of comments, some of them very detailed, on how to finance this. Some people felt this was a new form of taxation. There were lots of comments relating how to put the policy together. And there were also some people just opposed on ground principle. They feel that this kind of thing isn’t paying off. There were concerns about rewarding things which are good scholarship which ??? and there were some concerns about financial damage; you take money away from people who ???
So you can divide these into concerns related to practicality, concerns related to methodology of the incentive plan, and concerns related to whether this is a desirable policy itself. Well, we have been able to address, I think, some of these issues. These are the issues shown in blue. The issues shown in red are things that we thought we could not address. For example, we have no basis to address the extent which individual Colleges or departments do if there are not supported by external funded research. Differences in whether this is a matter which is enlightening or ??? on principle, those are matters of individual judgment and conscience and not something we could address. And clearly the whole basis for all this is based on externally generated funds so this did not directly provide a means of rewarding scholarship which does not generate funding, although departments do have opportunities to do that. And the Committee as a whole felt that this should be part of a much larger picture of the Senators. However, we will be the first to acknowledge that we have no idea in this stressful time of how to pay for anything other than this initiative. It’s not really that we don’t think other things are desirable, it’s that we have not method that we can think of to pay for it.
Well one of the concerns which was expressed is this legal? A number of people felt that this was going to get us into legal problems. I think this concern can be addressed quite directly. It’s important to understand how this is going to be paid for. We start off with non-state funds which is off those that come from contract research, externally-funded instruction, externally-funded outreach. Then one can use the non-state funds to pay baseline nine-month salaries. If you a nine-month employee or calendar year salary for four month employee. Now if you free up state funds as a result, you’ll get a funding incentive. However, the incentive is not funded with sponsor dollars. There is a very well defined firewall between these two. And so the funding agencies in the state have no concern as to what happens on this side of the wall. Their concern is what happens on their side. We must stick to the sponsor’s rules on this side of the wall and the state and universities on this side of the wall. There is a well-defined separation so I think the legality issue is really not … a non-issue.
Now one thing that exercised the Committee for some length really can be ??? was how to fund this. There were two possible choices. One is to fund this with returned overhead and the other one is to fund this released funds in the manner I just showed you. And we spent a lot of time debating this. This was very much a burning issue. But why? Why is this such a burning issue? The reason is there is a direct issue with balancing ability to participate in this program versus likely impact on departmental finances. Let me see if I can explain that. Let’s say we use salary savings. There are number of people who just do not get to play in this game. Firstly, anybody who’s a research faculty member is on 100% soft money cannot generate state salary savings. Consequently they are excluded unless their department chooses to do something for them. Likewise if you are a nine-month salary faculty member and you are excluded by your contract by the agency who’s funding your work who’s charging nine-month salary then you do not get to play directly. Okay. So the question then would ??? whose wallet gets raided? Now a number of people who are consultants have exercised strong ??? A lot of our … we generate returned overhead on almost ??? In any case where you generate full indirect costs these are split up between general funds, a little bit goes to the VPR’s office, a little bit goes to the College, and a chunk winds up in your hands in the departmental unit or equivalent. What would happen if we raided these different funds? If we take it out of the general fund, what we now have is make a shortfall for this University ??? And I don’t think any of us could defend funding a salary incentive at a time like this with a ??? for students. If we take this out of Mike’s pocket or the Associate Deans at the College level’s pocket I think you could kiss good-bye to cost-sharing on future proposals. That money goes in and it goes out again. There really isn’t that much of it and I just don’t think that’s a practical option. Which means the only way of funding a program funded with returned ??? funds, the equivalent of returned overhead funds, is that at the departmental level. And we thought if we had a management policy for it, a uniform policy, there are some units which rely very heavily on either ??? So although it’s somewhat less than balanced in terms of participation, we felt that the default had to be based on salary savings. However, recognizing the desire to bring balance, some semblance bring balance to the fort, we felt that one possibility to reduce flexibility to the scheme and allowing individual units to modify the default policy because they are the ones who are going have to take financial needs and then return overhead. And to think, within reason as I will explain to you in a moment, about having their own variance on the policy.
Well one of the questions, whose got that thing that’s in your change clause? I’m not sure I really agree with that. Right now, if you generate salary savings, you get back around 0 against 100% to ??? your departmental fees. Under what we propose in the default plan, we kept the 75% for the individual which Dr. Moriarty proposed and since then they’re getting ??? I don’t buy that as being taxed. We felt 25% to the department was reasonable in default in giving the departments some of this money. Some departments depend very heavily on salary savings. But we felt that most of the impact, particularly in our change policy, would be at the department level so we don’t budget for the dean’s funds so the deans would have to accrue any departmental modified policy. Now I must caution you that if we just take existing ??? and go into a department and give them complete ???, that does mean that this is exhausted. The hope, however, is this would provide sufficient motivation to ??? external funds and consequently the pool of research money grows. If it doesn’t, then I don’t think we’ve achieved the objectives of this whole activity. So this is a change from what Dr. Moriarty proposed.
Lots of people asked about eligibility criteria. Well, under the default policy — according to some — if you have no state funds allocated to your salary, you’re not eligible by default. Units can choose to change this, however, under our proposal. Likewise, if you’re sponsor will not let you charge baseline salary, again you’re not eligible unless your unit chooses otherwise. And we did provide information to allow you to drop out if this was going to cause major financial problems. So let’s have a look then at how to the pie will be split. By default the department will get 25% but we do have this provision to change this. The individual will get 75%. You’re going to want to ask now do I want to take a salary supplement? We felt that should be a matter for the individual whether they want to take the salary supplement or use the money for other legitimate purposes. If they do want to take the salary supplement, we retain the 20% cap. But we did feel that this split should be flexible.
So how can the department vote to change the policy? What did we propose? Initially we thought of letting the departments vote on any policy. However, we realized that, with time, that this was just ??? and impractical given the complexities of our system. And what we felt we should do is have a finite number of possibilities. A reasonable number of choices but a finite number of possibilities so that this is manageable. We did not feel that today is the time to choose this list. We felt that we should try this for a little while and then with a widespread consultative exercise to let departments, individuals, administration, anybody that will be affected have their input on what should appear as options. I just think it’s impossible example. None of you may come to life. The possibility might be the department decides to what counts entirely; the department decides to change the split between the department and the individual; the department can use some of their returned overhead; or the department can require that minimal soft money contribution. My unit, for example, cannot function unless we provide some soft money to the unit; we cannot meet our salary bill. If a unit did decide to vote, any individual who’s potentially eligible now ??? to vote, there are restrictions based on practicality about how often you can vote. If you don’t have a simple majority, keep the default. If you do have a simple majority, you can select a new policy from those on the list. But I must emphasize that this is not a pork barrel project. It has to be self-financing and anything which units come up with, they have to find a way to pay for it. That’s why we wanted to provide positive positions. If a unit said this is not something we can do, the unit can choose to opt out.
So what’s our timeline? The Committee felt that ultimately it will take not one or two years, but they felt that four or five years was necessary to find out if this really worked. But in doing this, we initially had rather grandiose plans, the institutional reality being when we discovered that we are merely pasting over the cracks in the university’s personnel management system, not to mention all of those poor pitiful bookkeepers, particularly at the departmental level which would be a very considerable burden. Since this plan is fairly complex enough to please Wall Street and we need to be able to work with this, what we thought of doing instead was building a bridge. Starting off for a year on the default plan, seeing how this goes, using the feedback to modify this, using the feedback to specify what options we should allow departments — remember I said we really have to have a finite list — for the second year onward. We felt that was reasonable as it gives some time to get the bugs out of the program and there are bound to be things that the Committee’s not thought of. We are definitely seeking your comments. You can comment at any time, but it would most effective if you could please let us know by the 8th of March. That way we can continue our work. I will collect the comments, I will make them anonymous unless people tell me not to, and will pass the summary on to the Committee.
So how do we get in touch? Various options. Try a web page built for this Committee; there’s a lot of other stuff there. These offer a link to Dr. Moriarty’s original presentation, linked to my previous presentation, other good things. You can get in touch by e-mail; you can talk to any member of the Committee. The only presentation included on this has the Drop Report. The Drop Report is there for you to download. You can try emailing me. I would, before I close, be most remiss if I didn’t thank everybody who’s helped with this. We’ve have people from across the University on the Committee; they’ve put a lot of work into it. I am most eternally gratefully to them. I am very grateful to everybody who commented. We could not have done this without our input. And various external contacts who were kind enough to help. So it’s really getting to be time for me to shut up. In summary, this is very much a draft. We do want your input. We can still change this. We will still change this. We are trying to provide flexibility but we do have to recognize there are federal and state laws that we do have to comply with, not the least of which are some people in the cost-accounting standards. We have a time in which to ??? salary savings. We will for the sake of department ??? but we are restricted by what’s practical. And I do not think this is a universal solution to our money woes. I invite you to take pot shots and me. And in closing, let me just remark. You know what happened the last time someone ended the movie by saying “I have a plan.” It was Dr. Strangelove and you know what happened next. Thank you.
Barbara Struempler: I’m going to defer the questioning following period. You can get ahold of Bill on his web site. And Bill, you know you do such a wonderful presentation; we really do thank you so much. I am going to ask Steven Burnell to come up here for about … you want to postpone? You’re sure? Okay. Let me quickly announce the election countdown. Gary Mullen, Christa Slaton, and Bob from Aviation Management. They’ll be the new members on the Rules Committee.
Is there any other new business? So, the meeting is adjourned.