Members
Absent: Barbara Struempler,
Immediate Past Chair; Ted Tyson, Biosystems
Engineering; Werner Bergen, Animal Sciences; Robert Norton, Poultry Science;
Richard Beil, Economics; Robert Ripley, Aviation
Management and Logistics; Joseph Buckhalt, Counseling
and Counseling Psychology; David Pascoe, Health and Human Performance; James Guin, Chemical Engineering; Roy Broughton, Textile
Engineering; Barry Fleming, Art; Sridhar Krishnamurti,
Communication Disorders; Robert Weigel, Foreign
Language and Literature; Darrel Hankerson, Discrete
and Statistical Science; Bill Hames, Geology and
Geography; Marllin L. Simon, Physics; Ralph
Henderson, Vet Clinical Science; Scott Fuller, Building Science; Thomas A.
Smith, Human Development and Family Studies; Jesse LaPrade,
Cooperative Extension Service; James Bannon, Agri Experiment Station; Thomas W. White, Air Force ROTC;
CPT Ted McMurtrie, Navy ROTC; Michael Moriarty, VP
for Research; Interim Dean Rebekah Pindzola, College of Liberal Arts; Dean Larry Benefield, Samuel Ginn College of
Engineering; Interim Dean John Jahera, College of
Business; Kathy Harmon, A&P Assembly Chair; Chris Rodger, Steering
Committee; Judy Sheppard, Steering Committee.
Members
Absent (Substitute): Ken Tilt (J. Raymond
Kessler), Horticulture; Nelson Ford (Dwight Norris), Management; James Kaminsky (Paris Strom), Leadership and Technology; Rhonald Jenkins (David Cicci),
Aerospace Engineering; Brian Bowman (Larry Crowley), Civil Engineering; John
Bolton (Bert Hitchcock), English; Paul Schmidt (Greg Harris), Mathematics; Wes
Williams (John Fletcher), VP for Student Affairs.
The meeting was called to order at
Call to Order
John Mouton, Chair of the Senate: I would like
to call the meeting to order. The first
order of business is to approve the minutes from the May 6th meeting
that are the web. Are there any
objections or corrections? The minutes
are approved.
Announcements
John Mouton: The first order of business on the agenda is
the President’s message and announcements from the President. Dr. Walker …
William Walker, President: I
am really very pleased today to state my feelings about what has been happening
in
This package that is coming
out, if it is successful – and that’s a big “if” by the way because there is
opposition – will generate about $1.2 billion dollars when fully implemented in
fiscal year 2009. However, we are
anticipating nothing changing the $700 million dollars in deficit in next
year’s budget, but this would generate $700 million next year to address that
deficit. As I said, there will be
opposition to this, exactly who all will be opposed is not yet fully
established. The commodity groups have already expressed their displeasure with
it. Some folks in the forestry area and
ALFA. It seems to me that all things
considered, if indeed education is what we are interested in and indeed we
believe that education is the long-term solution to the issues that are facing
the state of
I think that I should also
tell you that frankly there is very little in the package for higher education
but I am still very supportive of it because quite frankly I think K-12 is weakening
part to part of the entire education spectrum.
We have the ability in higher education to draw on other funds. We can draw on the private sector and we can
draw on tuition and, as you well know, avail ourselves of that
opportunity. The Governor does promise
that he will do something for higher education in the following year’s budget
and at this point, I am inclined to take him at his word and to work with him
to get this package passed. So I think
it is a bright day for the State on this particular issue.
Another matter I want to
mention to you is, as you probably know, that the Board of Trustees approved a
16% tuition increase for both in-state and out-of-state for the next academic
year. That follows a 12% increase for
the past academic year so that’s a 29-30% increase in tuition that our students
have undergone over the course of a 2-year period. I am very grateful to the Board for following
my recommendation and adopting that 16% increase. There was a great deal of discussion and a
lot of soul searching before they reached that decision. It should allow us to come very close, if not
to reach, our goals of attaining regional averages for salaries as well as
tuition. In anticipation of this
imposing some financial problems on some of our students, I have instructed Dr.
Large to place an additional $1 million dollars in the scholarship fund.
You need to also be aware
that these raises, if raises are approved by the Board and I suspect that they
will be, will impose some additional burdens on both the Alabama Cooperative
Extension System and the Agriculture Experiment Station. You may not be aware but we do not use
tuition dollars to support staff and faculty in those areas and so when we use
tuition dollars to give raises, then those faculty, if they get raises, have to
draw those funds from other sources, downsizing or whatever. This has been going on for some time and it’s
working more and more of a hardship on those two agencies and something is going
to have to give. One of the things that
we asked the Board for permission to do was to institute some early retirement
in each of those areas. We’ve have done
that before and we cannot continue that sort of activity. I intend to pursue aggressively on the months
ahead to try to secure some additional funding for each of those agencies from
the State.
Finally, there is another
concern that I have about increasing tuition and that’s the basic cause of
it. That is, the decline in state
support all across the country for higher education. I think that most people in this room would
agree that the system of higher education in the
Finally, on the issue of
The Southern Association, Mr. Bradley is apparently still working on his report
and I can only assume that he is writing a tome. I look forward to receiving it but I have
heard no word from him otherwise. I will
be happy to entertain your questions.
Conner?
Conner Bailey, Steering Committee: Could you tell us, please, the process that you
yourself have gone through in reviewing the names that went forward to you from
the Provost search committee and if any decisions have been made and if not,
what the time table might be?
William Walker, President: I
received three (3) names from the Provost Search Committee of folks they deemed
to be acceptable and along with the leadership of the Senate, I am in the
process of visiting the institutions from which those individual hail and
finding out more about them. We have
made one such visit and will be making another some time, the 23rd,
so hopefully shortly thereafter I will have some answers.
Conner Bailey: The 23rd of June?
William Walker, President: Yes. Yes sir?
Gary Mullen, Entomology and Plant Pathology and
Member of the Rules Committee: As a
follow-up on the question of the Provost search, at last month’s meeting of the
Senate this question was raised as part of the announcements and according to
the Senate meetings, it states that in response to questions regarding the
Provost search, Dr. Walker replied “that he had deliberately kept away from
these issues… Any concerns need to be addressed to co-chairs Chris Rodger and
Michael Moriarty.” Those concerns were
expressed and they were expressed, particularly with respect to guidelines for
Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity that the University claims
to follow, and the question was raised as to whether those were followed in
this particular search and that is, with regard to meeting with the EEO officer
by the committee prior to drawing up the job description and advertising the
position. When that question was raised
there was no answer at the time and it was referred to the committee.
The AAUP, our local
chapter, immediately in writing asked to address this issue inquiring whether
these guidelines were followed. The
co-chairs of the search committee opted not to respond directly to the AAUP’s letter of inquiry but rather released an “open
letter” that went to the media and was distributed to other members on
campus. That “open letter” failed to
even address the issue that was raised and that is, was or was not our policy
that we ascribe to with respect to EEO, followed in this particular case. The indications are that, in meeting with
Janet Saunders in the discussion forum that took place later that afternoon as
part of the Senate meeting specifically addressing the Provost position, those
questions were raised and I think you have seen the text of those remarks. Unfortunately, most of the members of the
Senate were not present at that discussion or had left and I would like, as a
matter of reading into the record of the Senate minutes, for you to comment
specifically what was said in that discussion.
Janet Saunders as our EEO
Officer and Executive Director said, “… I met with the Search Committee… after
they had already placed the ad and after they had already discussed the charge
to Korn-Ferry… I would agree that the training was
late, but… the chair assured me that he and the committee did not need training
in the procedure…”
“Normally in a search… my
office is involved in reviewing the job description, developing the criteria
for selection, and working with the Search Committee to make sure that there
are no barriers created… [in] reaching out to identify minorities or people of
color and women. So, that part of our
assistance was not given for the Provost search.”
A follow-up question by one
of our Senators was “If a department were to pursue a search without consulting
your office, what would happen to that search process?” and Saunders replied,
“The process would hopefully stop… I think things happened differently for this
particular search… it is different than how I’ve normally handled
executive-level searches.”
Now that is a matter of record. Unfortunately, there was no member of the
Search Committee or chairs present, or yourself, Dr. Walker, or any other
administrator. I believe that Dr. Heilman was present at that time. I guess my question is, if we go back to our
commitment that you personally have expressed, have we indeed met that? And, as a final remark, I would like to quote
directly from a statement that you made on
William Walker, President: Well, the answer to the second question is this: if
they followed the procedures then they adhered to the commitment. The first question is did they follow with
the procedure and I have heard no indication whatsoever from Janet Saunders,
who has a direct line of communication with me, with respect to any concerns
about the provost search. I have talked
to the Co-chairs of the committee and they have reviewed for me in considerable
detail exactly what procedures they went through and it seems to me that what
they have done is, indeed, made a very open and honest effort to secure
candidates from a very diverse group of places.
I asked for a report from the firm that they used and I am awaiting that
report. I assume that I will be getting
it to make sure that all of the proper procedures and policies were followed in
that situation. You know, diversity and
due process is just what it says and you know, I didn’t start this process
saying we need to have a black provost.
You can’t do that. You can’t say,
“I want a female provost” or “I want a Hispanic provost.” That’s illegal and all I want is a process
that is open and above board. I am
concerned about, since you mentioned, this complaint process that has been
suggested here. Let me tell you from my
point-of-view what I have seen. I have
seen a group of faculty members who have very seriously put their shoulders to
the task of trying to secure some names for a member of the
administration. They have done everything
that they knew how to do to get people nominated and to get people on the
list. Another group of people have
decided: they don’t meet my litmus test and therefore this committee, composed
of about 20 of our colleagues is all wrong, and therefore we are going to put a
stop to the process. Now that’s what
comes across to me but I may be wrong.
If so, I will await Janet Saunders to tell me that this process has been
flawed but I have not heard that. If
someone else would like to add something, they certainly may. By the way, I have heard commentary from a
lot of other people who felt that the process was fine.
Christa Slaton, Political Science: There was a
short article in today’s AU Report about publications coming from different
departments and organizations on campus and that we’re trying to figure out all
those publications and have those routed through the Provost’s office. Could you tell us a little bit more about
what those publications are?
William Walker, President: I would love to tell you about what they are. That’s part of the problem; I don’t know what
they are. And part of the problem is I
don’t know how much money we’re spending.
We, we being Don Large’s folks and us, cannot
tell how many dollars we’re spending on publications – whether it’s
publications from student affairs, publications from athletics, publications
from the various schools and colleges, and I understand even some departments
have publications. Therefore, we don’t
even know what messages are going out.
Now is there some way of coordinating this stuff? Is there frankly some way of reducing the
cost that the institution is spending on this?
Is there some way of combining messages so that your college or somebody
else’s college can save money on the way they do it? I have concerns, personally, about all of the
paper publications. I mean, here we are
supposed to be the center of high-tech stuff in the state of
Christa Slaton: So, the only issue is economics.
It won’t be a decision made about substance or content [inaudible]
William Walker, President: I’m
sorry, Christa.
John Mouton: Can you come to the microphone please?
Christa Slaton: It won’t affect the content of each one of these publications?
William Walker, President: I
have no intention of having to try to impact anything anybody says.
Christa Slaton: But it would have to go through the Provost’s office before it could go
out?
William Walker, President: It would affect content only in so far as, is this an
accurate representation of
John Mouton: Anybody else? I should have made this announcement before
Dr. Walker spoke. We try to transcribe
the proceedings of this meeting in a relatively rapid fashion to turn them
around and get them out. So one of the
things we do need, if we want as much comments and questions on the record is
that we need you at the microphone. We
are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get clarity. We have recording devices around and we’ve
got microphones so please if you would like to comment on the record, please go
to the microphone and state your name.
I’ve got a few announcements that I want to make. First of all, you will notice on your agenda
that the proposed Patent Policy has been rescheduled for our July 8
meeting. Dr. Moriarty could not be
present. The Steering Committee had
already planned that the vote on this measure would be held in September and
therefore we are not going to be delayed.
That discussion will be July 8.
The Steering Committee also decided to have the discussion and debate
topics according to, or following the New Business. In April we had moved the forum to after the
adjournment of the meeting and that was based on the advice of our parliamentary
consultant. Several faculty expressed
their preference to move the discussion to the regular agenda, so it will now
be part of the rest of the agenda. The
Steering Committee is meeting twice a month and we are going to meet tomorrow,
June 11th, that’s a long range planning meeting, and will set the
agenda on June 25th. Each
meeting I will announce when the agenda is going to be set for the people who
have issues that they would like to be on the agenda and get them to the
Steering Committee before that date. So,
our meeting will be on June 25th.
The Trustees Selection
Committee met on May 28th and it was a very brief meeting. A pool of candidates was put forward and
discussed in regard to the three trustee positions. It is unlikely, I think, that the Selection
Committee is going to put forward nominations to the Senate Confirmation
Committee until after the vote on the tax.
I think that’s going to have everybody’s attention, so I think that’s
going to be dormant for a while.
The Board of Trustees
following the University Senate’s [sic –University Faculty’s] resolution has
confirmed the faculty adviser position on the Board and the position will be
held by the immediate past Chair of the Faculty, which was consistent with the
resolution that was past. The past Chair
of the Faculty is also the past Chair of the Senate. I would like to thank all the people through
all the years that have worked on making that a reality and I think that’s
going to make the difference. One of the
things I’ve had some comments from some people, and there are a lot of things
that are unseen. I know specifically
there were some issues that came up and would have gone to the Board agenda but
were pulled because we had a representative on that Board. Sometimes the progress that we make is unseen
and silent but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
I have communicated with a
few faculty regarding the administrator evaluations that were not conducted
this year. The charge to the Committee
is that the committee will conduct periodic evaluations of University
administrators involved in the University’s teaching research and extension
programs and we had not had evaluations in quite some time. What I want for you to be aware of, and I
think at our March meeting there was some comments that were made by David Bransby, who was the Chairman of the Committee, and who is
here – is that early last year there was a discussion and review regarding
feedback to the faculty from the Committee in some kind of aggregate form. Another thing that came forward was about the
validity of the survey and the questions and was there an availability of some
kind of standardized surveys that we can use for comparison to other
universities, as well as from related factors.
The consultant was brought in at the end and we found that there was
really nothing more substantial than what Bruce Gladden and this committee has
used. I’m going to meet the week of June
23rd with David Bransby and his committee
and I am quite confident that we are going to have administrator evaluations in
the next year.
Dr. Walker mentioned about
the 16% tuition increase. For those of
you that were not at the meeting, I thought that there were some things that
were very significant. First of all, the
Board’s discussion revolved around the commitment to the 5-year plan of the
University and meeting that commitment to the 5-year plan at the University
specifically dealing with bringing faculty salaries in line with the regional
averages. I think that the other thing
that came forward to me is that last year we had some discussion because the
Board of Trustees took action on the allocation of the raises. This year there was a general acknowledgment
that raises were coming forward, but has been to the President as to how the
allocation will be done. What makes that
significant to me is that we, both as a Senate and as the Faculty Salaries
Committee, are advisory to the President, have had the opportunity to visit
with him about where the priorities are.
I had an inquiry regarding
the Supreme Court decision in regard to their interpretation of closed meetings
and I investigated it a little bit. I am
going to tell you that it is my understanding that in the beginning, both the
Alabama News Association and the Board saw the matter as important enough that
it warranted an appeal to the Supreme Court regardless of the outcome at the
lower court and that it should have some kind of Supreme Court review of
it. So anyway, in addition to that, the
leadership of the Board has indicated that it intends to provide access to its
meetings and so we will monitor that closely and hope that they will adhere to
it and we’ll try to make sure that they do.
Finally, Board member Earlon McWhorter has been elected President Pro Tempore of
the Board of Trustees. I think that
during his short tenure on the Board, Earlon has been
open and accessible as a Board member with an interest and a willingness to
listen to the faculty in their issues and I am looking forward to working with
him. My last comment is that in a few
minutes Paula is going to come up in regard to the Senate committees. I just have to thank, first of all, the Rules
Committee for all of their work but in particular Paula for leading the
operation that got this done in a much shorter period of time than we have ever
done. Not only that but in developing
some systems that will help to expedite this in the future. I’ll be glad to take any questions or
comments at this time.
Ruth Crocker, History: Thank you, John. You mentioned just a little while
ago that people would often make comments without the microphone and cannot be
heard and if they want to be on the record then they need to come to the
microphone. I am requesting that you
don’t put that into operation today, but that we do include the comments made
by my colleague, Gary Mullen, and other people who spoke today. In other words, surely this rule will not be
put into effect today.
John Mouton, Senate Chair: It’s
not a rule – the thing that happens is that the people who don’t come to the
microphone, a lot of time on the tape recorders what they say is
inaudible. We try to enhance the tapes
and read the tapes. So what the comment is, if we can pick it up on tape if
they are not at the microphone then we will be glad to do that. What we need to be aware of is that if you
speak with the microphone then it will certainly be on the record. If you chose not to speak with the microphone
then it may be listed in the record as being inaudible.
Ruth Crocker: Okay.
John Mouton: Thank you.
Daowei Zhang, Forestry and Wildlife Sciences:
What specifically about the Faculty
Salaries and grants. That is something
that was brought to this body two and a half years ago, I think. My faculty asks what is going on? Why do we hold it up for so long?
John Mouton: Correct me on this if I make a mistake, but it was
not a Senate Committee. There was a
committee formed and we ended up with a chairman that was the representative
and was a member of the Senate who made reports to us in progress. The committee finished their work, and it
went to Dr. Moriarty’s office. I had a
discussion with Dr. Moriarty a week or so ago, and he thought that the Senate
should take action on it and so we will have a Steering Committee meeting
tomorrow and we will have a discussion about that.
John Mouton: So, the September meeting. Thank you.
Bill Gale, Mechanical Engineering: I’m
here if you want me to talk.
Paula Sullenger: Oh, I’m
sorry.
John Mouton: Yes, but you have to go to the microphone if you want to talk. [Audience
Laughter]
Bill Gale, Steering Committee: I did chair
the committee that you mention. The situation is this — we were chartered by
the Provost, and so our report went to the Provost and has also gone to Mike
Moriarty. [http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/wfgale/incentive.htm
]
Now originally we were
chartered to have a vote in the Senate; however, the committee felt that it was
very important that we get input from as many people on the faculty as
possible, which is why it came before this body twice as a discussion
item. The current situation however, is
that it appears that we are being asked to gain a more formal endorsement for
the Senate, so I will request that it come back to a vote. My concerns are that with the issues, such as
this which involves many people who are away this summer and I would feel much
happier if we voted on this when everybody is back, so I suggest that we may
want to put this off until September. I
won’t be here next month, in any case and I really feel very strongly that in
fairness, that when we have a subject like this that might be contentious when
everybody who has opinions on it might have a chance to participate. That’s the source of the delay right now. The report was finished several months ago,
and it’s been in the system, submitted several months back and this additional
development of getting Senate endorsement that is relatively recent.. Is that a fair comment, John?
John Mouton: Anyone else?
Christa Slaton, Political Science: My
suggestion is that if the report is completed, couldn’t we have that
distributed so that the Faculty could start thinking about it and considering
it and reflecting on it, and then we can vote on it in the fall when everybody
is back.
Bill Gale: Sure, the draft’s been up on the web for some
time. All I need to do is post the final
one.
John Mouton, Senate Chair: Why
don’t we do this, we will put the link to the web site where the report is and
the minutes of this meeting and also we will list the agenda of the next
meeting and distribute it by AUProfs. We will make sure that everybody has access
to this report. Thank you, Christa.
Anybody else?
Action Items
John Mouton: We have one action item today that we need to take
action on. It has to do with the
approval of the Senate Committees and I will ask Paula to represent the Rules
Committee.
Paula Sullenger, Rules
Committee: I apologize for the typo on the Senate meeting date
on the agenda for July – that’s my fault – it is July 8th. As I reported last time, the Rules Committee
had finished most of its work. We had a
few committees left. We had three (3)
Senate Committees left and about eight (8) University Committees. We did complete all of those by the end of
May. We will have the Core Curriculum
Oversight, Faculty Salaries, and Steering Committee vote in just a moment.
https://auburn.edu/administration/governance/senate/sencmtes_jun03.htm
All University Committees
are complete, and Dr. Walker is making a final review of them and Dr. Heilman is also getting the staff and student names
forward. We expect the letters to those
three (3) to start going out next week.
A couple of other small things; during the course of this year’s
committee filling, we came across two (2) Instrumentation and Orientation, that
with the consent of the Chairs and the Administration, and any other VP,
involved that they weren’t needed anymore.
For Orientation, Camp War Eagle has pretty much taken over their
function and Instrumentation had never met very often.. The only other issue that we have is that
Academic Honesty will probably come forward in the next year. We will request to expand that Committee.
They have had a huge workload this year and they are really behind and in the
meantime, to help them out before they get their new committee members.... We always have had a few too many volunteers,
people that we can’t quite use, so we have contacted those people and asked
them if they would be willing to serve for a year as alternate members of the
Academic Honesty Committee and we have had about twelve (12) or fifteen (15)
people respond positively to that. I
really appreciate them being willing to step in and help. Right now, I’ll present the three remaining
(3) Senate Committees – Core Curriculum Oversight, Faculty Salaries, and
Steering. The membership went out with
the minutes and the new members were enrolled.
I move that we adopt these Committees.
John Mouton: All in favor signify by saying Aye.
Senators: Aye
John Mouton: Those opposed – Nay. [No
opposition.] Passed.
Information Items
John Mouton: We have two information items today. The first information item is dealing with
the fiscal year 2003 Faculty Salary Comparisons. John Pritchett, Interim Provost – please.
John Pritchett, Interim Provost: Thanks so
much John. What I have been requested
to do is to give you an update on the improvements in faculty salaries that we
have been able to make this year as opposed to last year. What I would first like to do is talk a
little bit about the process that we used last year, because we are using
essentially the same process for the coming year. I believe that it was early February of 2002
and what we did was contacted the Economic Research Service in
Last summer, salary
adjustments to the faculty came in three (3) different forms. There was a promotion increase for those
individuals who were promoted from assistants to associate, or associate to
full. There was an average 5% merit
component and then there was a merit driven market component. The merit driven market component was derived
from an Economic Research Service recommendation. The way that we worked the process last year
was simply this; from the Provost Office, the Deans were first required to
submit the merit increases. That is to
say that the recommendations for merit, based on the 5%, because we did not
want any mixing of the merit market piece and the pure merit piece. After the merit piece was approved and all
merit recommendations were locked in, it was only then that we sent out the
market data. Essentially, what we requested
is that the Deans and Department heads and Chairs develop a four (4)-year merit
rating for each of their faculty members.
If that four (4)-year merit rating was a perfect four (4) then the
faculty member would get 100% of the recommended market increase, at least to
the extent that we had the dollars to do so.
If a faculty member was rated as a three (3), then they would get 80% of
what was recommended, up to the dollar amount that we can afford. I might also say, that if we were able to
bring everybody to the recommended market rate, it would have cost this
University almost $11 million dollars. Of course we didn’t have $11 million
dollars for salary adjustments last year.
We had for faculty, the 5% merit, and then we had an additional pool of
about $3.8 million dollars and I might add that the Deans contributed to about
one-half million to that $3.8 million dollars.
That essentially is the how the process was run last year.
Let me go ahead and share
with you some of the results and I think that these results are dramatic. This is the 2001-02 year that we were talking
about. [Chart 1]
COMPARISON OF
AVERAGE FACULTY SALARIES
2001-02 AND
2002-03
AUB REG
AUB/REG AUB REG AUB/REG
PROFESSOR $76,493
$86,941 88% $84,611 $89,240 95%
ASSOC. PROF. $56,630
$62,389 91% $62,429 $63,950 98%
ASST. PROF. $47,319 $53,907 88% $51,940 $55,208 94%
You will notice that our
Full Professors were about 88% of the regional average; Associates about 91%;
and the Assistants were about 88%. For
the academic year that we are currently in, we moved the full professors
university wide from 88% to 95%, the associates from 91% to 98% and the assistant
professors from 88% to 94%. I think that
this is closest to the regional average that we have been in the past several
years.
What I have done is taken
you back here to 1996-1997. [Chart 2]
COMPARISON
OF AVERAGE FACULTY
SALARIES
1996-97 TO
2002-03
PROF. ASSOC. PROF ASST. PROF
1996-97 89% 92% 92%
1997-98 87% 90% 91%
1998-99 91% 93% 93%
1999-00 92% 94% 93%
2000-01 92% 93% 93%
2001-02 89% 91% 89%
2002-03 95% 98% 94%
You
will notice that our Professors were at 89%, Associates 92%, and Assistants at
92%. There has been some fluctuation,
but the numbers for the year that we are in now are the highest than the past
several years, so we have made a significant advance, as far as the regional
average is concerned.
The next breakdown that I
have, gives you information by college or school on campus, as far as where we
ranked last year and where we rank this year. [Chart 3]
FACULTY SALARIES:
BY
RANK AND DISCIPLINE
2003-03
SCHOOL/ PROFESSOR ASSOC. PROF ASST.
PROF.
COLLEGE 2002-03 2001-02 2002-03 2001-02
2002-03 2001-02
AGRIC
100.8 94.7
100.5 93.3 102.1 88.6
ARCH 99.3 90.5 92.4 83.6
103.9 91.3
BUS 94.5 85.9 90.6 84.9
89.6 86.4
EDUC 95.4 87.1 90.6 84.6
93.3 88.9
ENG 96.5 91.3 100.5 92.7
96.8 93.8
FORY/WL 103.1 99.6 99.9 96.1
94.8 91.6
HUM SCI
99.8 96.6 96.5 91.2 90.8 87.2
LIB
ARTS 94.1 86.9 92.4 87.3 93.5 88.3
NURS ---
92.7 96.2
93.4 96.2 92.4
PHARM 92.9
89.2 96.2
90.4 102.8 95.2
SCI & MATH 90.4
82.2 92.4
85.8 86.6 80.8
VET MED 97.9
90.0 100.0
92.9 110.6 99.1
We have an assistant
professor, and we are going to read this from right to left now. Assistant professors, for example in the
Continuing, if we examine
Human Sciences, we have gotten close, as far as Full Professors are
concerned. Still additional work is
needed for the other areas. Liberal Arts
– we still have a lot of work to do at that point. Pharmacy – we have gotten close, as far as
the Assistants but we still have additional work to do at the higher
ranks. If you look down at Veterinary
Medicine, we far exceed the regional average of the Assistants, we are there at
Associates and we are almost there, as far as Veterinary Medicine. Stew [Schneller], I
see you sitting there. We have still got
work to do as far as Science and Math is concerned. Liberal Arts, we still have work to do.
I think that we have made
tremendous progress. Hopefully with the
process that is in place for the coming year, we may be able, Don, to go ahead
and overtake those regional averages by rank within each of our collages and
schools. I would say that we have
changed the process and refined it a little bit this year from what we did last
year. We involved Christa and the
Faculty Salaries Committee a little bit more directly with Mary Baker and her
people back in March, when they were here.
Also, we found some glitches in the system last year. For example…Business Law was given the same
CIP code as Accounting. Of course, we
have to use separate CIP codes because they are quite different. There was a slight problem with Management
Information Systems being lumped in with Management. Of course, though one department houses them,
we should be using different indicators.
We have separated those things out, so I think that we have cleaned up
some of the process.
Now there is one other
thing that I want to go ahead and address at this point and time because I
realize there has been some discussion of it.
This discussion relates to the increases in salary adjustments that the
Deans received last year. Some
individuals felt that the Deans perhaps received some very liberal salary
adjustments. I am going to direct you to
what is on the board right here. First
of all, let’s look at the Full Professors as they were last year in Liberal
Arts, Full Professors in Pharmacy, Full Professors in Science and Math, and
Full Professors of Veterinary Medicine.
Of course this is going to be true of the other ones, but I want to show
you the concept. If we look at the Full
Professors in Liberal Arts last year, they were at 86.9% of the regional
average. If I look at the Dean of
Liberal Arts last year, that individual was 72% of the regional average for
Deans of Liberal Arts. So the Dean, on
regional average, was about 14 percentage points below what the Full Professors
in that unit were. Similarly, if we look
at Pharmacy, Full Professors in Pharmacy were at 89.2% of the regional average
and the Dean of Pharmacy was 77% of the regional average. If we look at the Full Professors in Science
and Mathematics, they were at 82% and the Dean was at 79%. If we look at Veterinary Medicine, the Full
Professor’s were at 90% and the Dean was 82%.
There were two components
to the Deans salary adjustments this past year.
There was a merit component similar to what faculty received, but there
was also a market component. What we did
was use as the benchmark, or at least a measure for the market, was the extent
that the Full Professors in that unit last year compared to the regional
average. So for example, in Liberal
Arts, if the Dean merited a merit adjustment of some level, they got it, but
also, they merited the same percentage of the market adjustment. But they were moved 86.9%, which is where the
full professors were last year. Then
remember what we did, is went ahead and gave out an approximate 11.22% to move
the faculty to where they are now. The
Deans are still out of sync. But that
specifically is how we addressed the Deans salaries last year, because I think
that is exceptionally important that if we are going to get the other people at
this University to regional averages, we have to worry about the people
providing leadership to our Colleges and Schools. Are there any questions? Yes, Sir.
John
Mouton: Could you go to the
microphone please?
Curtis Jolly, Agriculture Economics & Rural
Sociology: Listening to what Dr. Pritchett said and Dr. Walker
said, there seems to be some things that do not click. Dr. Walker said that over the years,
Agriculture has not been receiving money from tuition increases. I think that means we have been overusing
state money. Yet, still you are showing
that Agriculture has obtained above 100%, in terms of meeting the regional
average. It looks to me that your
aggregate figures, the number of outliers, which I suspect there may be. Two,
that Agriculture is valued at a very low position, the market value of people
in Agriculture, or there must be serious cannibalization in the process and the
whole structure in Agriculture, ACES and Extension, must be in serious
jeopardy. Can you comment on this?
John Pritchett: I can. The figures that I gave
you relate to faculty members in the
Christa Slaton:
John, could you also fill the
faculty in on our discussions that we have had at the meetings about the merit
component, because there are some changes that you are going to be making next
year in terms of the merit? We did
receive a lot of concern about how that was done this past year. Would you talk to them a little bit about
what the plan is for next year in terms of the merit increase?
John Pritchett: I don’t think that decision has
been made yet, Christa. I understand
that the Faculty Salaries Committee is going to meet with Dr. Walker about
faculty merit for the coming year?
Don Large, Executive Vice-President: Is that the question?
Christa Slaton:
The thing that we talked
extensively about in Faculty Salaries is that, if the merit is given out there should be an evaluation form that is
conducted at the department level, and that the Deans are to responsible for
collecting those evaluations and those evaluations ought to move forward with
the recommendations. So that is
something that we want the faculty to know that we have been addressing.
John Pritchett: That will happen. Any other questions? Thanks, John.
John Mouton: Well, I guess while we are on the subject of money,
we should get the money man up here. Don
Large is going to speak to us about a budget update and a variety of issues.
Don Large, Executive Vice President: Thank
you, John. A couple of thoughts before I
get into the [FY]04 budget – or our preparation for it. Let me speak to you just very briefly on the
[FY]03 budget – the one that we are in – the one that will end on September
30. The good news is that you saw the
changes and the positive changes that we were able to make in this current year
with the additional funds and the salary distributions. [Slides 1 and 2]
Progress Toward Salaries Goal
AU Salary Averages:
Rank FY99 FY00
FY01 FY02 FY03
Professor $69.5K 72.7K
76.6K 76.5K 84.6K
Assoc
Prof $51.2K 54.0K
56.4K 56.6K 62.4K
Assist
Prof $44.0K 45.8K
48.1K 47.3K
51.9K
AU Salary Averages as a Percent of the Peer Averages:
FY99 FY00
FY01 FY02 FY03
Professor 91.2% 91.9% 91.8%
88.0% 94.8%
Assoc
Prof 92.6% 93.7% 93.2%
90.8% 97.6%
Assist
Prof 92.8% 92.7% 92.8%
87.8% 94.1%
It looks like we will get
through this year without proration being declared,
thus our proration reserves that we have in the
current budget should be carried forward into the next year to further protect
us, as we really don’t know what we are facing in [FY]04. There is possibly good news as the President
indicated. The electorate may vote the
taxes, the tax enhancements down and we could see rather significant cuts. At least from that aspect, this is good news.
Now let me talk to you a
little bit about [FY]04. This is basically the presentation that we presented
to the Trustees a couple of weeks ago. [Slide 3]
OVERVIEW OF BUDGET PRESENTATION
•
Revisit 5 year
financial plan
•
Progress to date
•
FY04 budget priorities
•
FY04 available funds
In doing so, I wanted them
to be reminded – I felt like it was very important for them to be reminded of
the five-year financial plan. It was
further important, because the President clearly indicated to them that he felt
like we had, in effect, a contract that the University, faculty, and others had
done everything that we said that we would do and it was important that Board
step forward and do what they said that they would do. It was also important for the President that
our salary, that the good increases and you saw that our salaries did not go
backwards. At a minimum, we wanted to hold
where we were, but he particularly wanted to get to the regional average, which
is what we said we would do.
In the whole budget process
that we have at
AU MAIN CAMPUS
Budget Advisory Committee
20 member committee
•
Advisory to the President
•
Open and participatory
process
•
Executive VP (Chair) ▪ SGA President
•
Provost ▪ GSO President
•
6 Faculty ▪ Chair, Staff Advisory
•
3 Department Heads ▪ Chair A&P Assembly
•
3 Deans ▪ Chair, Faculty Salary
•
Library Committee
This committee is advisory
to the President, and we do have a lot of meetings – and we try and make it
very open and participatory process. It
is made up of this group that you see, and they generally serve a two (2)-year
term. This committee this year, it’s their first year. We started a little bit later than usual, but
ultimately we decided to go ahead and present budget guidelines in June. At one point, we were going to wait, because
we felt like the Legislature would have completed their work in June, but as
the Special Sessions began to occur, we decided, let’s assume that we will get
cuts of 6.34%, that the state said that we will get cut and let’s go forward
with budget preparations. So that is what we did. [Slide 5]
Role Commission Report – Main Campus
APPROVED BY THE BOARD ON
Major
Goals
•
Increase salaries
of faculty, A&P and staff to 100% of the average of their respective peer
groups by 2004
•
Increase funds for deferred
maintenance to $10M by 2004
•
Increase departmental operations
& maintenance budgets by 3% per year through 2004 to catch-up on
inflation
•
Allocate $1M in
continuing funding annually through 2004 to high priority academic areas
(Peaks)
•
Reallocate $13.25M in general fund monies to high
priority needs
•
Increase tuition
charges to regional average by 2004
The reminder to the Board
was that they passed by resolution in January of 1999 certain goals that we
reasonably committed to trying to accomplish and that were the increased
salaries. We talked about the faculty,
but the goals were for all of our employees.
It is just a lot easier to talk about the faculty because we can measure
it so much better. We have so much more
data and it is so much easier to benchmark – A&P and staff – we have 1500
different job titles, and they don’t always easily match up to peer
institutions or areas of staff. We are
going to work on that within this next year or two with implementation of an
upgraded or new HR System for a lot less positions and more focused attention
on the market. So we generally tried to
get Staff and A&P over the last number of years reasonably equivalent
raises to the faculty, assuming that those groups were somewhere in the same
ballpark as faculty, as to their peer average. [Slide 6]
Progress Toward Additional Goals
GOAL 5
Year Plan Actual to Date Projected FY04
Deferred
Maintenance $10.0 M $
9.0M $10.25M
O&M Budgets $
5.2M $ 2.85M $ 5.2M
High Priority
Academic Areas $
5.0M $ 4.0M $ 5.0M
We also wanted to increase
funds for deferred maintenance. We
started the decade of the 90’s was only about $700 thousand coming out of the
budget and going to deferred maintenance and the campus looking like we were
putting no monies there. Now by 2004, we
will be up to $10 million dollars a year, and we will hopefully we will
continue to increase that as we are adding a rather significant amount of
square footage over the next two or three years that will have to be maintained
as well. We wanted to increase the
departmental maintenance. We wanted to
allocate to [Inaudible]. The one thing
that I did want to remind the Board, and remind you as well, that we also,
while the plan was relatively simple, we are still after key areas. Lets take care of our faculty and other
employees and let’s take care of our buildings and let’s enhance certain
programs, and maintenance, and a few other limited areas and that is about all
of the money we will be able to allocate to achieve our goals. We have allocated additional funds, in what I
call, I guess, emerging priorities.
Things that we just didn’t plan for in 1998 when we were putting the
plan together and ultimately in 1999, so you have some other areas that have
additional funds allocated. [Slides 7 & 8]
Other Improvements in the
First Four Years (00-03)
Not Included in the Five Year Plan
[Slide
7]
Additional Academic
Needs
Cumulative Increase
(00-03): Plan Actual
$0.0M $8.05M
Architecture
Rural Studio $400,000
Business $250,000
Pharmacy $350,000
SACS Compliance $457,200
Biosystems $441,000
Enrollment Fluctuations $750,000
Instructional Technology Needs $486,000
Semester Transition $563,000
[Slide 8]
Additional Academic
Needs (continued)
Institutional Assessment
Office
$225,000
Undergraduate Research $127,500
GTA Tuition Waivers $2,500,000
Merit Scholarships $1,500,000
We have also spent monies
allocating the funds in one big area, but the members of the faculty on the
Budget Advisory Committee very strongly felt in the year that we did this the
GTA waivers was possibly more important than maintaining the goal of salaries –
if it got to choosing one over the other, as to what it would do for the
quality of the institution. The merit
scholarships-- as we have increased tuition, we’ve tended to,-- the Board and
the Student Leadership has asked that some of those monies be set aside to
address the impact that some of these increases are having on some of our
students. While they are often
need-based, there is a merit component as well.
Additionally we have added things that were not in the original budget
or original plan. [Slide 9]
Plan Actual
Additional
Compensation $0.0M
$ 4.667M
|
Tax Deferred Annuity |
|
$ 772,000 |
|
|
Health Ins:
Supplemental |
|
$ 987,000 |
|
|
Health Insurance: Inflation |
|
$2,847,000 |
|
|
Other Priorities Insurance, Building Mtnce,
Development |
0.0M |
$ 4.1M |
|
|
Proration Reserve - Continuing |
$0.0M |
$ 6.0M |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not as much as we would
like, but we have had a couple of increases to our Tax Deferred Annuity
Program. We addressed, I think it was the
year before, so this amount rose, but our initial allocation to the Health
Insurance, what we call Supplemental.
This was, our staff brought to us and the Budget Advisory, a request
that the 40% requirement of sharing in the Health Insurance costs with the 60%
that the Institution pays, simply was pricing some of the staff out of that
market and they asked if we could address that.
We basically picked up more institutional share and reduced the level of
requirement to our staff, and moved it to 30% and 20%, depending on where their
salary levels fell. One goal, in maybe
the next five-year plan, would be to find a way to move that down even further,
if we can.
Other priorities, we have
added buildings and utilities and things that are above and beyond what we had
thought. Proration
reserve, we will go into next year with a $6 million dollar continuing
allocations that will be set aside for a proration
reserve. So we go into next years
budget, I think, reasonably secure, unless the economy just falls apart. The budget that you start with is the budget
that you will finish with. There will be
no proration that you should have to worry about next
year. [Slide 10]
Progress Accomplished With
•
Tuition increases
–
FY00 -
4.9%
–
FY01 -
5.3%
–
FY02 - 6.9%
–
FY03 -
12.0%
•
Reallocation
–
Will complete goals of
Financial Plan in FY04
•
State Funding
–
Expected net increase
of 7.3% from FY99 to FY04
We have accomplished this
with, while the last two years have been substantial, the first few years of
tuition increase by at least a more current standard were relatively modest.
For this five-year plan, we expect State Funding to have increased a net of
only 7.3%. That is factoring in the
6.34% cut that we think that we will have next year. So, we have done this with tuition increases,
State Funding, the reallocation that we participated in, and a lot of the other
opportunity that occurred during this five-year period that we recognized when
we implemented, was the change in our out-of-state tuition policies requiring
that students that come from out-of-state continue to pay out-of-state for four
years and that has helped grow significantly in these numbers as well.
The kinds of things that we
will be addressing this next year are certain priorities that we would
categorize as mandatory and some that are plan related. The compensation
enhancement will take up approximately two-thirds of any of the new
funding. I will show you that in just a
minute. I spoke to that – here is the
makings, if you will, of how we would address those priorities.
[Slide 11]
AU MAIN CAMPUS
FY2004 Key Priorities
•
Mandatory
–
Teacher’s
retirement rate increase
–
Utilities/maintenance
on new facilities
–
Art
museum/hotel staffing
–
SACS/INS
•
Plan related
–
Compensation
enhancement-
–
Deferred maintenance
–
Operating
budgets
–
Peaks of Excellence
[Slide 12]
AU MAIN CAMPUS
FY04 Funds Available
|
State Appropriations - 6.34% decrease - TR allocation |
$(8,509,864) 3,807,591 |
|
Tuition & Fees |
16,800,000 |
|
Reallocation |
|
|
Internal Reallocation
(5th year) |
2,546,700 |
|
Additional
reallocation |
2,500,000 |
|
Increase in auxiliary
admin fees |
1,000,000 |
|
Reallocation of development
costs |
1,500,000 |
|
Reallocation of alumni
costs |
1,270,000 |
|
Previous year one-time allocation |
10,150,000 |
|
Total Funds Available |
$ 31,064,427 |
A couple of things: First of
all, the state appropriations. We go
into this next budget anticipating that we will be cut what the Governor has suggested. If the State did give us some additional
monies for teacher retirement-- the employer match. When you put in your 5% of your salary for
your teacher retirement, we have to put in a certain amount, which has been
about 6% and it is moving up to approximately 7.5%. The good news is, while it
is going up for [inaudible] million this next year, they gave us the funds to
fund that part, so that 8.5 still is a relatively accurate reflection of
decline.
Now, tuition and fees – that
is a huge part of us being able to accomplish what we think that we will
accomplish: Hit the regional averages in
salaries and let us hit on all of the other priorities that we set in
1999. That was an intense debate of the
Board at the last meeting, and it went back and forth and it was real hard to
judge where we would end up as it went forward. Two champions of the process,
to me, was your faculty leadership of both John [Mouton], but particularly Barb
[Struempler], who sits on the Board – spoke very
strongly that it was a commitment that all we were trying to do, yes it is a
large amount to go up 16%, but it simply gets us to the average of the region.
We can show them, and I did
not include it here, that we are challenging ourselves that the two key things
that allow us to provide the general operations that pay salaries and buildings
and basically an operating account, is the tuition and the State
Appropriations. When we looked at the
dollars on a per student basis, we look at how we are funded by our state per
student compared to the SREB average and we are about $2500 dollars less than
the average SREB institution – that is $2500 dollars less. Then we showed them
the tuition numbers and we were further challenging ourselves there by charging
$300 to $400 dollars less, and so with that data and Barb’s input, and the
President’s insistence that they stay with the goal, the goal was five-years,
regional average, we think that the 16% would get us there.
Now we thought that in the
year we are in – that we would make more ground when we suggested the 12%. This time last year, we told the Board to
allow us to go up 12% this year, we think that we can go up 12% next year and
meet the regional average. Where we
underestimated what the region would do in their tuition; they went up 10.5% in
this year, so we did not really gain much, with respect to how our peers were
charging. We’re again guessing that the
region will go up 9 or maybe 10%. If we
went up 16%, we would hit them if we’re around 92 or 93%. If the region goes up 15%, obviously one may
argue that we did not hit our goals still, but nevertheless it provides a major
infusion to address the goals and the quality of the institution.
Some other key things are –
the fifth year of the reallocation of that total that got us to the $13
million, additional reallocations that were requested of the various
units. This one I will call the Conner
Bailey, I guess, Amendment or Plan. This relates to rethinking how we charge our
auxiliaries, which would obviously include Athletics. We have never had a very scientific approach,
it is one we have somewhat inherited and just continued to ratchet it up by
dollar amount but without strong theory and Conner asked the Budget Advisory
Committee, it was last year, wouldn’t it make more sense to have better
theory? And why they pay all of the
direct costs – because they generate their revenues and pay all of the salaries
and pay the building costs and pay their debt service and pay the utilities – still,
shouldn’t they be considered comparable to the research areas relative to
departmental administration costs, which is a 6.4% of revenues? As we looked at that and Marcie Smith, our
Assistant Vice President for Business and Finance Controller, looked at this as
well and worked with the auxiliaries. We
have adopted that as our practice at this point. So, that is a pretty significant increase
that we will hit about a little over $700 thousand of that would be Athletics. We will challenge them and the other
auxiliaries in this first year. We have
met with them and expect them to step forward with this.
Further reallocations that
are significant – we are asking that the central funding for Development and
the central funding for Alumni costs be borne by the 501-C3 entities that exist
to provide their services to the University.
That does not say that there is not significant development costs,
constituency fundraising, alumni activities and costs being incurred at the
College level--and that would continue, but we are simply saying that centrally,
it would help our budget situation significantly if Auburn University
Foundation could step forward and pay all of the salaries attributable to
Central Development, and if the Alumni Association could step forward and pay
all of the salary costs associated with Central Alumni activities. Currently each group pays about half of those
salaries. The division gets very murky,
as to when a University employee is actually doing work for the Foundation, or
the University, or the Alumni Association, and the private entity of the Alumni
Affairs Office of the University. We are
asking them to do that. Lastly…in the
pool that we threw back in, the almost a little over $10 million dollars
continuing monies that were either allocated in this years budget for proration reserve of $6 million dollars, or other
allocations that tend to be in a one-time nature – to just rethink what are our
priorities for the this next year.
[Slide 13]
AU MAIN CAMPUS
FY2004 Key Priorities
•
Other emerging
priorities – will be prioritized and incorporated as funding allows
–
Proration reserve
–
Other continuing and
one-time commitments
So, put that in the pot and
basically we come out with those priorities that you saw earlier. Basically this is salaries, other five-year plan
priorities, and other commitments that we felt like we had to make. We had nine meetings of the Budget Advisory
Committee. We sent forward recommendations to the President, basically
concurring with this approach and the priorities that were shown. The exact
distribution of salaries for staff, salaries for A&P and salaries for
faculty has not been determined. The
President will be listening to Human Resources and Faculty Salary Committee in
the next few days. I’m very hopeful that
we will send out budget guidelines by the end of next week that will have that
matter finalized. This is a condensed
summary of what has been a long process.
I will be happy to answer questions.
Thank you.
New Business
John Mouton: The next business of order is New Business. Does anybody have any new business to bring
before the body?
Discussion and Debate Topic
We have a discussion and
debate topic today and in the Steering Committee, we thought, given some of the
discussion we’ve had today, with regard to Division III, which is the Alabama
Agricultural Experiment Station and Division IV the Alabama Cooperative
Extension Service [System]. Since the
funding was different, we thought that there was probably some interest in having
a discussion and since Conner sits on the Steering Committee, maybe he will
open the discussion please.
Conner Bailey, Steering Committee: Thank you. I
will use the microphone. There are approximately 250 faculty on this campus who
hold either Experiment Station appointments or Extension System
appointments. Maybe if you are here,
could you just raise your hand and we will get a sense of who is in this
room….A fairly significant number of our colleagues are here today. Across the campus, I think the awareness of
the importance of these two units, Divisions III and IV, as they are called in
the Budget Process, that the appreciation of importance of Division III and IV
is not really well recognized. I know I
work with colleagues in Liberal Arts and they, for the most part, don’t really
understand the nature of funding from these two divisions. Myself, I hold a 40% position within Division
I and a 60% position within Division III and that is a very common kind of
allocation within the
The statement at the bottom
of your agenda makes the basic point, and Dr. Walker made it earlier, and we
have alluded to it several times. I am
glad this topic has come up for general discussion. If we don’t understand the problem, we will
never deal with it. Over the years, as
tuitions have increased and have driven increases in faculty and staff
salaries, the Experiment Station and the Extension System have been squeezed –
the word cannibalized was used.
Positions have had to be given up and not filled and those monies used
to meet salary increases because it has been felt, I think appropriately, that
faculty and staff holding Division III and Division IV positions should not
suffer for the fact that we don’t generate the solution as a result. But, the money has got to come from
somewhere, so we have let technicians go, we have cut back on O&M and we
have let other things fall by the wayside.
We have gotten to the point where we are cutting into muscle and
cartilage and even bone in some cases, I think at this point. If I’m going to believe the numbers that I
get from my Dean and Directory of the Experiment Station, which I would tend to
believe.
So we are at a point now
where if we are going to increase salaries for Experiment Station and Extension
people in this coming salary increase, we will likely have to do so at the
expense, possibly of going on furloughs.
We will get salary increase and then take a furlough, or we stop funding
some graduates students that we have or we are unable to recruit new graduate
students and I am Graduate Program Officer and we are faced with that right
now. There is a long queue of very good
students and we have no money that we feel that we can allocate at this time.
So, we are faced with some very difficult problems that are somewhat different
from those of my colleagues, who have only Division I Appointments. If I had a solution, I would be much more
famous, but I don’t have a solution.
Except, that the problem that we have consistently faced over the years,
in Division III particularly, I believe, is a over commitment of time to our
teaching efforts in Division I at the expense of the research effort. I know while 40% of my funding comes from the
Division I, well more than 40% of the time I spend is involved in Division I
activities, in teaching, graduate advising, and the like. This is a problem that has been very familiar
to faculty, to the Deans and Directors in the various Collages and to people in
Sanford Hall as well. I am sure that
what I am saying is not new to Dr. Pritchett or Dr. Walker. We have effectively, for as long as I have
been here for 18-years, subsidized the Division I budget by using Experiment
Station funds to support our teaching effort – but the chickens have come home
to roost and actually… the roost is gone, the roof is gone, and chickens are
about to fly away. We are in a position
of very precarious funding and we have to think seriously whether or not the
issues of the separation of budgets into Divisions III and IV still make a lot
of sense.
John Mouton: Cindy.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Conner, I am glad you mentioned the support that is
coming from Division III that is actually used, as far as your percent effort,
toward Division I activities. Because I
think, that for those of you who are on traditional nine-month appointments
from Division I funded areas, you probably don’t realize, in my opinion, what
little impact the source that funding has on what a faculty member really does. When
I was hired at
So those of you who have
some idea of Experiment Station faculty doing really odd things with cooking
catfish for the general public or being out in the field showing people how to
plow a straight line. What a faculty
member does really doesn’t differ much and that is what poses the problem. Because faculty members that are on Division
III money do the exact same thing that you do, but there is no tuition
supplement for that part of their salary that can be used to provide these
salary increases. I know a number of
faculty, my husband is in part Division III and in fact he is eligible for this
retirement incentive that is being offered and as a 27-year veteran, he is
looking at it very seriously--but it is a crisis. Our Dean told us this morning that Division III
may go bankrupt if it continues handling its finances the way it is right now
with the high burden of salaries as a percentage of the total budget. I would appreciate it if others of you that
have a percentage of appointment similar to Conner’s, would just comment on how
that affects your faculty responsibilities and if in fact I am right in saying
that you really aren’t any different from anybody else, as far as your
contribution to
John Mouton: Thank you, Cindy.
David Bransby, Agronomy and
Soils: I would just like to point
out that the mission of this University involves teaching, research and
outreach. Those of us who are involved
heavily in research in the Experiment Station anyway, are carrying a large proportion
of the research component of the University.
In my opinion, and hopefully for most of us, research is just as
important as teaching and so is outreach.
So Division I is important, clearly, but Division III and IV, they are
the main components, as I see it, apart from some people in Division I are
doing research, indicating clearly that Division I is not only for, that’s the
other point that I want to make, it is not only for teaching. Division I is also supporting some research
certainly. I believe that it is a
mistake to say that these different Divisions are related to activities. They are obviously not. So perhaps the whole budget system should be
re-looked at and some system needs to be developed that prevents us from losing
faculty the way that we are out of Extension and Research, especially as it
relates to Agriculture.
John Mouton: Thank you, David. If that’s all the comments that we have, that is the
last topic.
Conner Bailey, Steering Committee: Could I ask someone who has much more experience here
in years, and I am going to look at John Pritchett in particular; who can maybe
explain historically why we have these separate divisions, and why the budgets
have been hermetically sealed between them and what rationale that there might
be for continuing in that way?
John Pritchett: We have been budgeting this way for a number of years, but what has
basically changed and this started changing, and Wayne you are going to have to
help me out a little bit. Until the
early 80’s, we had a lot federal appropriations coming in to help us work with
the tuition increases that we were going with to bring up the faculty
salaries. What started happening though
in about the mid 80’s, federal appropriations--Hatch funds, regional research
funds, and things of that nature-- then took a nosedive. In the face of decreasing federal
appropriations and the practice that we have of not using tuition money to
supplement salaries, we began that long spiral.
That is where we find ourselves today.
I think that the number of people, at least as far as the Experiment
Station – 216 faculty are affected by this.
We gave a report to the Board of Trustees back in February. They talked to Dr. Walker, who asked me to
Chair a Committee, a “fix-it committee” so to speak, which is dealing with both
the Cooperative Extension and the Experiment Station. The separation incentive that you see is only
a short-term piece of the overall plan to fix it. John Jensen, in particular, as far as the
Experiment Station, has come up with some very innovative approaches to fix the
problem once and for all. The next two
or three years are going to be real rough and we have just got to figure a way
to get through the next two or three years.
Does that answer your question?
Conner Bailey: No.
John Pritchett: The decline
in Federal funds was the biggest piece of that.
[Inaudible comment from audience].
Well no, this is from
Don Large: The state has
line-item appropriated historically for those areas. [Inaudible] The state saying, you’re a land
grant and here’s what we want you to do for us as a state institution. Those allocations have become the way of the state
[inaudible]
Conner Bailey: So it’s a
legal requirement?
Don Large: We have never really looked at the legalities
of whether we can actually start crossing those over, but historically you
asked how did we do this for 20, 30 or 40years, the State historically budgeted
line item, main campus, AUM, AES, CES; thus they were always separately
accounted for because that was what the state was allocating for and we had to
by way of State Examiners and other attorneys.
Conner Bailey: Yes, that is what I was looking
for. Was there a legal or some other
kind of rationale that made it impossible for us to change the way these
budgets were accounted for. That is what
I was looking for. I knew about the
Federal decline. I was looking for what was the rationale for the separation.
John Pritchett: Conner, let me follow up on that
too. It depends on which State that you
are in, as far as how it is handled. The
University of Georgia, all faculty are treated the same regardless of the
funding source, but of course the Board of regions in the State of Georgia,
allocate salary dollars. At the
Don Large: It may be a fair statement, it’s just an
internal way of allocating. Give us
$10,000 to $11,000 per student, like the State of
Cindy Brunner: That is the whole point
though. It is not all in the same
pot. It is in three different pots and
my question was a follow-up to Conner’s.
There has already been the implication that there is no Federal
requirement that we handle these dollars this way because other states don’t
handle them this way. Other states, it
is my understanding, put these monies into a single pot and all faculty are
treated the same, even if they do draw some salary from what is, in a budgetary
sense, Experiment Station dollars or Extension System dollars. So I guess my question is …do we have to
continue to do it this way? Where is the
requirement that we need to keep these budgets distinct and faculty will pull
the appointments and Divisions III and IV can’t draw from tuition?
John
Mouton: I don’t have an answer to
that question. Anyone else?
There being no other comments or questions, we will
adjourn the meeting.
[Adjournment at
Adjournment