Auburn University Senate Meeting

September 3, 2002

3:00 p.m.

 

 

Members Absent: Curtis Jolly, Ag. Economics & Rural Sociology; Ken Tilt, Horticulture; Nelson Ford, Management; Randy Pipes, Counseling & Counseling Psychology; Karen Rabren, Rehabilitation & Special Education; Rhonald Jenkins, Aerospace Engineering; James A. Guin, Chemical Engineering; Brian Bowman, Civil Engineering; Charles Gross, Electrical & Computer Engineering; Ruth Crocker, History; Richard Good, Music; Marllin L. Simon, Physics; Eleanor Josephson, Anatomy & Phys. Pharmacology; Ralph Henderson, Veterinary Clinical Science; Scott Fuller, Building Sciences; Tin-Man Lau, Industrial Design; Daowei Zhang, Forestry & Wildlife Sciences; Mike Solomon, Consumer Affairs; Thomas A. Smith, Human Development/Family Studies; Charlotte Skelton, Nursing; Mike Reinke, Clinical Pharmacy; Kem Krueger, Pharmacy Care Systems; Jesse LaPrade, Cooperative Extension Service; Ltc. John Salvetti, Army ROTC; Cpt. Ted McMurtrie, Navy ROTC; Don Large, VP for Business/Finance; Frances Kochan, Interim Dean, College of Education; Lee Evans, Dean, College of Pharmacy; John Jahera, Interim Dean, College of Business; Shari Downer, University Librarian; Heath Henderson, SGA President; John Asmuth, A&P Assembly Chair; Chris Rodger, Steering Committee.

 

Call to Order: The chair, Dr. Barbara Struempler, called the meeting to order.

 

(QUORUM NOT YET PRESENT)

 

Minutes: … I’m going to hold off, I’m going to rearrange the Agenda. We usually get a quorum; they’re usually 10 or 15 minutes late. So, if there’s no one who would object to that, I will ask the Interim Provost John Pritchett to come up and give his announcements on behalf of the President’s Office, and then I will make my announcements and we will then go from there. Is there any problem with that. Thank you. John.

 

Announcements:

 

President’s Office, John Pritchett, Interim Provost: Thank you so much Barbara. Dr. Walker wanted me to share several different announcements with you. The first item on the agenda has to do with the Fall Semester enrollments. I know a lot of you have been hearing a lot about this, perhaps in the background, but we are at an all-time record enrollment for this institution. The numbers for this Fall indicate that we have 23,263 students; this includes 4,153 new freshmen. It includes 1,321 transfer students. This gives us an undergraduate enrollment of 19,648 I believe. We have professional students — these are the Pharm Ds and DVMs — 742; and we have graduate enrollment this Fall of 2,884. I wanted to share a few things with you and a word of thanks to the faculty and all the people who work behind the scenes. Our projections and goals for new freshmen this year was 3,750 students. Of course, we were dealing this year with some variables that we did not have in the past. And one of those variables, Wes (Wes Williams, VP for Student Affairs), was the new deposits which students are required to post. The net result of all of this, I believe, was an unexpected surge as far as freshman enrollment was concerned. Now I guess to go ahead and address this a little bit further, it stands to reason that if we were projecting 3,750 and we received 4,153 new freshmen, that we were far beyond our capacity to take care of those students. So what we did was form an enrollment management crisis team — John Fletcher from Student Affairs was on there, Steve McFarland out of the Provost’s Office, Larry Witt and Greg Kowalski out of Liberal Arts. That team put together a plan to meet our freshman enrollment for this term. That plan calls for a number of faculty that we have to teach extra sections at extra compensation; that plans called for enlisting the help of Auburn University at Montgomery faculty to come to this campus and to teach courses on this campus for extra compensation.

 

Dr. Fletcher has provided me with a report as of Day 7 of classes and if we look at all of our students, the vast majority of our students have student loads ranging from 12 to 15 hours, which are full loads. The first thing that I’d like to say is thank you so much to the faculty for your efforts in stepping forward to help us meet this unexpected increase as far as the number of students are concerned. But that’s not where the story stops. We have essentially used all of the reserve capacity that this University has to handle students and our emergency enrollment group is now going to develop plans for paring back undergraduate enrollment to a level that we can effectively handle within this University. And we are going to implement this plan for next Fall so that this kind of thing does not creep up on us again. I guess there is good news and bad news. A lot of students would like to come here. I guess from the standpoint of tuition, it’s good news. But we’ve also got to be able to address the students’ needs when they get here. Also talking about enrollment, Summer enrollment this past year was also at an all-time record high. Most institutions when you go through a quarter to semester conversion, summer enrollment plummets. In our case, we have, with the summer that just passed, an all-time record of more than 10,500 students. The very good news about this is that I worked with Don Large two years ago on a special summer incentive program, which grows tuition dollars based on enrollments back into the Colleges and Schools. Now of course, one big incentive here was to supplement faculty salaries during the summer. Steve McFarland has given me the total figure that we put back into the Colleges and Schools for this summer; it was $3.8 million on top of the regular summer budget. And hopefully, that will be used in some significant ways within the Colleges and Schools.

 

I want to say just a word or two about salaries. I know everybody has been reading the newspapers about the percentage increases that we have been able to put out to the faculty and other parts of the University community. I think now is the time to start planning for the coming year. One important thing that has happened, Barb, is that the Budget Advisory Committee has been expanded by two faculty positions. The Chair of the University Senate will now sit on the Budget Advisory Committee as well as the Chair of the Faculty Salaries Committee. It is my intention in October to call our Faculty Salaries Committee together to work with that Committee as well as the Educational Research Service in Tallahassee to first of all determine how much ground we made up on the regional averages and then to start developing strategies for salary adjustments, especially from the standpoint of market for the coming year. So, Barb, we’ll get that kicked off in October.

 

On two other matters, I think that most of you know that four years ago if you were a Graduate Assistant on this campus you got no in-state tuition waiver. We started off with 300 in-state tuition waivers, and then we worked with the Administration and Board of Trustees such that all GTAs receive the in-state waivers. So what that meant was essentially 950 out of the approximate 1250–1300 Graduate Assistants got the in-state waiver. We were shy of about 350 Graduate Research Assistants. I would like to commend Steve McFarland because he’s worked with this program for the past year and we have identified an additional funding stream that will take care of another 150 Graduate Research Assistants. So at this point in time we are about 200 short of having all of our GTAs and all of our GRAs covered by in-state tuition. Of course, if they are GRAs and GTAs they have no out-of-state.

 

The last bit of data that I wanted to share has to do with our progress toward diversification of this campus, in terms of not only our faculty but our students. The numbers I am going to share with you I think are very good. First of all, as we look at our student enrollment, and we’ve looked at the ethnic backgrounds or ethnic categories. For African American students, we increased by 1.6% this year over last. For Asian students, and these are native Asian students, we increased by 8.2% over last year. For native Hispanic students, we’ve increased by 12.8% over last year. And for non-resident aliens, these are our international student’s, we increased by 9.7% over last year. Relative to our faculty, I think we made significant strides in this area. For the year just starting on August 16, we’ve hired 123 full-time faculty. These are new individuals. Of these, 76 are tenure-track, 47 non-tenure track. Of that number, 56 are female; this is 45.5%. And of that number, 39 or 32% are minorities, including 17 African Americans, 16 Asian American, and 6 Hispanic Americans. So, Barb, those are the announcements that Dr. Walker asked me to bring to you. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

 

Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: Dr. Pritchett, I’m not clear on the process of changing Committee compositions such as the Budget Advisory Committee. I’ve served on that and I know that we’ve had faculty on it, and I think that increasing the number in principal is a good idea, I think. But that Committee’s contribution is spelled out in the Handbook. Has this been changed in the Handbook, the Faculty Handbook, or what is the process for which you decide to change the composition of a University Committee?

 

John Pritchett: This deals specifically with the Budget Advisory Committee and I’m going to let Barb talk a little bit more about it in just a few minutes. But as we went through this whole process this past year, it became apparent to me that if we had more direct representation, you know, from the Senate leadership and also the Faculty Salaries Committee needed representation on that Committee. So one of the meetings that I had with the Senate leadership, I suggested to Barb that it would be good if we approached the President and Don Large to expand that by two individuals for those two specific positions for coordination purposes. Renée, I believe that, well Renée sent the request to Don Large and Bill Walker and they said yes, it was a good idea. So that’s how it happened. And it’s mainly from the standpoint of communication and coordination as we go through the budget process. I think we need to be a little more inclusive and have a little more communication coming in. And Barb, I think this will help.

 

Connor Bailey: If I may follow-up. I don’t have any problem with that rationale. My question was more to the general process of how we go about choosing the Committee. There’s a Faculty Handbook Committee for example for dealing with procedures, processes, changes etc.

 

John Pritchett: Well, basically it’s a University Committee. It’s funded by the President and the President simply indicated that he wanted a few more positions on there and specifically by virtue of what those positions were. Barb, you want to add anything?

 

Barbara Struempler, Chair: I guess, Connor, what you’re getting at is the process and it’s a good question. Probably what we need to do, although it’s a University Committee, is send the recommendations of the President to the Handbook Committee and they would incorporate them into the Handbook. And then we would bring it before the Senate and you guys can vote if you want to have this or not. We take the Handbook changes in many, many ways. Sometimes as we did with the Outreach document, we approved it first then we sent it back to the Handbook Committee and then it came back for approval at that end. But, I think your point is very valid and so what we will do is we will take the recommendation and give it to the Handbook Committee and we will bring it back, hopefully next month, so that we can get this going. Because it is so needed and we saw that last year. Other questions for Dr. Pritchett?

 

Bill Gale, Steering Committee:  I know we’re about to 200 short on tuition waivers; is there any hope in the next year or two of  closing that gap because I think all the things we can do to improve the reputation of this Institution, including our graduate student recruitment efforts would be … (unable to make out).

 

John Pritchett: You know you’re preaching to the choir. Four years ago we had 0. We’ve got about $5.5 million in this program right now. It’s going to take us about another $900,000 to get there. And I think this can be built into the budget for the coming year. I look up there and I see Jo Heath and she provided some leadership when we first did this, and Bruce Gladden did, and the people out of the Graduate School did, and it’s something that we made happen together. And we’re going to finish together. Other questions?

 

(QUORUM IN PLACE)

 

Barbara Struempler: Well, we finally have a quorum so I will re-call the meeting to order. I guess our first order of business is to approve the minutes from the last meeting. They’ve been posted on our home page. It was the Senate meeting from July 9. Are there any corrections? So, hearing none, they will stand approved as posted. I’d like to make two … if it’s … if the Senate body will allow, I’d like to make two agenda changes. One of them deals with the approval of the Rules Committee nominations for the Senate and University Committees. Today we will only be approving the Senate Committees. Those are the ones that are put through by the Steering Committee. The University Committees, the Rules Committee has … we’ve made our recommendations to President Walker’s office and they’re not finalized yet. So, we will only be looking at the Senate Committees today on the approval. That will be one change with the Senate’s approval. The other change, Christine Curtis who is going provide an update on football parking recommendations, her dad passed on this weekend so she will not be here today. So that’s a change too. Are there any … is there discussion with the two changes? All those in favor say “aye.” [RESPONSES]. Any opposed? [NO RESPONSES]. Okay. Let us begin with the approval of the Rules Committee nominations. They are posted on the web; the recommendations come from the Rules Committee. Is there any discussion on those faculty appointments for the Standing Senate Committees? There’s a lot of committees out there, a lot of work. So hearing none, all those in favor, say “aye.” [RESPONSES] All those opposed. [NO RESPONSES] Okay. Thank you.

 

I’ll make some brief announcements. Next week, same time and same place, is the Fall Faculty Meeting. Of course, it’s open to all people but I certainly hope that some of the 1100 faculty at Auburn University will plan on attending too. President Walker will present his State of the University address so if you have questions, make sure that you bring them. There’s usually quite a long question and answer period so this is a good point to bring some questions and get his comments on that. I would also like to say that the agenda for the Fall Faculty has … the agenda for the meeting has been posted. You’ll find two resolutions attached to the agenda. I want to just make a couple of comments about the two recommendations because I’ve heard opposition from both of them. So I guess maybe you need to know where at least the Senate leadership stands on this. One of the resolutions would like to show our appreciation to the Administration and to the Board of Trustees for simply supporting the faculty salary raises. The opposition I’ve heard is that it is their job to do this, so I guess you don’t need to thank them. While that indeed it true, I would like to make a couple of comments. The resolution is very straight forward; there is no hidden message or hidden agenda which I have heard. It simply says that we appreciate their support with our raises. I personally don’t feel that it is bad to tell someone that they’ve done something good. We all teach in many different ways. I do a lot of community education, not necessarily strict classroom teaching. But you know what, when I do a good job of teaching, although it’s my responsibility, it’s kind of nice to have someone say “That was a good talk,” or “interesting,” or something. So, that’s a form of positive reinforcement. I can remember one of the first grants I ever wrote. My Department Head never said ‘thank you’ and I thought he should have. Although it was my job to do that, I was kind of taken aback. So, I do think, you know, it’s a very simple resolution; it doesn’t hurt to maybe say ‘thanks for at least supporting the faculty raises.’ Given our history with our Board, if we always just criticize and jump to what we want them to do in other ways, I think sometimes our message may be lost. That’s just part of that resolution that was written, to give you some background history on it.

 

The second resolution deals with our appreciation of the Administration and the Trustees for supporting the Faculty Advisor position on the Board of Trustees. And I haven’t had a tremendous amount of resistance in this resolution. But I’ve heard that a lot of people want to amend the resolution and have it amended so that the person who is given that position will always be the Chair of the University Senate. We have in the past pushed for that very, very hard. They’re not buying that yet. So what we’re trying to do is John Mouton, Renée Middleton, Paula Sullenger, we’re going to be doing a survey of those campuses where they have mergers of this type, this type of relationship. We’re going to find out — it will be a telephone survey, I’ll keep you up to date on that — we’re going to ask them the same questions: Who sits on it? Is it working? How does it work?  What are some of your problems? Based on some of those responses, we might write another resolution to cover that. But at this point, I guess we just want to keep it as simple as we can and just say “thanks” and let it go at that. We do have a very good working relationship with some of the Board members such as Mr. McWhorter who is chairing this Committee and through talks and communication we might just be able to resolve it. So at this point, we just do not … I prefer not to do that. But that’s okay too.

 

The last item on the Fall Faculty Meeting will be a report by the Joint Assessment Committee which will be presented by Jim Bradley who is the Immediate Past Chair of the Committee and he is was also … he is the Chair of the JAC. So you need to come to that meeting to this room next Tuesday at 3:00.

 

Most of the rest of my remarks really deal with a lot of our housekeeping of the Senate. There’s about 96 lucky people who get to come here once a month. We let you off the hook in August and usually December, but other than that we have a monthly meeting of the Senate. It is the University Senate. There are 77 faculty here, there’s Staff, Administrative. We have about half of the faculty coming today are new Senators. So about 25 of you are new Senators and I’d like to greet you all. We have an exciting treat here. You only have about six more months of me. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about the Senate. It was originally established with the belief that people in the community who are involved in the day-to-day activities should set the agenda, especially where it comes to academic life in the policies. And so the Senate is the vehicle to which this come … which you can discuss this. We are an Advisory to the President and we usually deal with things that are of an academic policies. Anyone who wants to can submit a resolution to the Senate floor for consideration. We usually … turn in your resolution to the Secretary of the Senate. It’s important that each Senator keep your members informed of what’s going on. It’s pretty easy to do with email plus everything is always posted on the email. One of the most important things Senators can do though, is when you’re not here, you need to send a substitute. The Handbook clearly states that you need to send a substitute. This is for faculty, the student representative, the deans that are here, anyone who is on the Senate has voting privileges. And please, please, please send an appropriate person to be your substitute if you’re not here. This is especially important when you have resolutions such as today, we have the Calendar to approve. We cannot take on that item without a quorum. So we must have substitute.

 

The Handbook does say that it shall arrange to have a … the Senator needs to arrange to have one of it’s members substitute for them. We had some creative substitutions going on here this Summer. So try to get a member within your department or within your unit that appointed you. We do try to follow all parliamentary procedure; some of the general rules that we have is that all speakers should stand and state your name and affiliation. Non-members if you want to speak, state the same thing only you are a non-member of the Senate. When we have items for discussion, Senators have first privilege to speak and then guests have, if time is available, the remainder. When you speak, please address the Chair; don’t turn back and address Mr. or Professor Z in the back. Not Zee, Mr. Y; how about that. We do have a Professor Zee. Please limit your speaking to about three (3) minutes. They are very general rules but they allow us to move through somewhat quickly.

 

There’s a couple of Committee updates that I want to talk about. As Dr. Pritchett talked about, we now, or will have after it goes through the Handbook Committee, have representation … more representation, faculty representation on the Budget Advisory Committee. After last year, it was very evident that some ‘players’ were missing. The Chair of the University Senate and also the Chair of the Faculty Salaries Committee. They will have ex officio status, it think, is the way the letter read. But thank you Renée for helping to process that.

 

There’s also a couple of volunteers … I need volunteers for other Committees. There are four committees … I should say, you know, the service — I hope that department heads and deans and chairs, I hope that when faculty do commit to a service, that they’re … during their performance assessment period that there is not … they are commended for those efforts. We have a lot of Committees that we need people for; as faculty complain we want to have information and input into this. We need to be … when we hold up our hands to volunteer, we need to be commended for that. By those evaluate us. On the four committees, if you’d like to nominate yourself or a colleague, a faculty colleague, please send the names to Renée Middleton, the Secretary of the Senate, and she’ll bring it before the Rules Committee. But we will be trying to find faculty members who will serve on the Faculty Rights in The Learning Environment. This is a newly-created Ad Hoc Committee which will evaluate classroom behavior and recommend a policy on classroom behavior. We hope that the policy will be in the Faculty Handbook to provide faculty with direction in dealing with their problems and also in the Tiger Cub to help students have clear indication of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. So that’s one Committee. There’s also an Emeritus Status Committee. We would like to put together a Committee of faculty to examine some … what are the qualifications to get this type of status. At the present time the only criterion for this status is someone who is retiring, who is a Professor or Associate Professor — they’ve had to have been in service at the University for 12 years. There is no policy to talk about perks that they might get like an office or mailing or anything else, so there just needs to be a uniform standard that might be established across the University. There are two Board of Trustee committees that are new. The Senate Rules Committee will forward three faculty members … the names of three faculty members to the President and he will select one person to sit on both of the new committees of the Board of Trustees. One is the Student Affairs Committee and that deals with programs serving students needs. So if you have a deep interest in that, that’s a great way to participate. The other Board of Trustees committee is The Advancement Committee and that deals with fundraising. So we are looking for faculty representative to serve on those committees. I will put this out this week so if you’re not taking down the fine details on that, your faculty should get that.

 

The last committee I want to talk about is the Search for the Provost. President Walker was very sincere when he tried to have faculty have input into this process. You will notice that … and so what he did was he asked the deans to have an election to elect three faculty members and those names to be forwarded to the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee will forward two to him and he will pick one. Okay? And that was supposed to have been done by last Friday. The top list shows you we have received names from those Colleges, Schools. And the latter half shows you some of areas where we’re still lacking. The Rules Committee meets on Friday, this Friday, and we really need to have all the names. So if you are a Senator from one of those areas, you might want to go back and tell you department head to hurry it up or whatever you want to do. That will then be the Provost Search Committee. And again, Renée coordinates all those efforts. Are there any questions? Yes.

 

Paul Schmidt, Mathematics: With regard to the faculty seat on the Board of Trustees. If I understood correctly, the Board is not yet buying into the idea that this should always be the Chair of the Faculty Senate.

 

Barbara Struempler: That is correct.

 

Paul Schmidt: So, as it stands, what is the procedure for selecting the person.

 

Barbara Struempler: They don’t have one. Mr. McWhorter, when he asked whether I would serve said at the same time that they would be working on that policy. And I said, great. I look forward to working him on that policy. So at this point, they don’t have a policy. As I understand it, my term goes through August of next year. As the same with AUM, that person that they appointed.

 

Okay. Where are we? Yes. Connor

 

Connor Bailey, Steering Committee: Barb, do you have a view on this Committee?

 

Barbara Struempler: On the Advisor?

 

Connor Bailey: The faculty representative on the Board.

 

Barbara Struempler: Yes. You know, the … if you go back to the minutes, I guess it was July 9, the last minutes that we had, we had attached a letter in there that we had sent to Earlon McWhorter. It was the Executive Committee so that would have been Jim Bradley, John Mouton, Paula, Renée. And we highly endorsed the Chair of the University Senate. I was the person that felt most strongly about that. I think almost to do otherwise is unfair to the faculty perhaps. I get the opportunity to go to any meeting that I want to on campus. And so I really am up to date … I am informed. I don’t know if you take someone out of this position and put them in that position if they are going to have a good understanding of all the things that are going through the University at this particular time. So I was the one that really promoted it in the first place. I felt very strongly about that. And that’s a past … I think it was in the last minutes that we had because we wrote them a letter and we talked to them about it. So I think if we go back and we looked at how some of the other universities are doing that. If perhaps it’s not the Senate Chair, if it’s another person, what kind of problems did that set up. Are we doomed to failure if that’s the case from the get go. And we’re going to look at that and hopefully make some good recommendations in the next couple of months. Other comments?

 

Okay. Larry. I’m so glad to see you. We’re going to talk about the Calendar and Schedules Committee. So, Larry come on up. Larry Moult. He’s Chair of the Calendar Committee and it’s another one of those thankless tasks I think because faculty usually reach over your head, don’t they.

 

Larry Molt (Chair, Calendar and Schedules Committee): Everyone has been wonderful about calendars. It’s just that there’s a whole lot of different people that have different needs for when things need to take place. I’m going to just walk through this very, very quickly. You all were sent a copy of the recommendation from the Calendar and Schedules Committee for calendars for Academic Year 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 so you have suggested calendars from Fall 2003–Summer 2005. The big news is that there isn’t any big news. There aren’t any real changes. If you have liked what has taken place since Fall semester 2000 and on through 2001 and now 2002, you’re going to be really please with what you see for 2003–2004 and 2004–2005. We are pretty much into a template type of situation where we just about always begin it right at the same point and we end it at the same point. One of the things that really drives when we begin is the middle of the month when we could begin terms, at least Fall terms on the 16th or after that and that’s why we kind of take off from that point. Looking at Fall semester 2003, classes begin on a Wednesday, August 20th; classes end on Wednesday, December 10th. One reading day, four date or five dates for exams, ending on Wednesday the 17th and commencement on that Friday. There are 75 class days; there are 13 weeks in which we have Monday through Friday; there are only three interrupted weeks and I know that’s all been a major point with the Senate for all of the lab classes. We have a fairly good distribution of equal Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Barb, do you want me to go through this as one general piece and then open it up to questions? What would be your … okay.

 

Looking really quickly at Spring semester 2004, classes begin on Tuesday the 13th; classes run through Monday, May 3. There are two reading days in Spring semester; final exam period and commencement is on Friday, May 14. There are 74 class days here rather than the 75 which the Senate in the past has indicated that they preferred. The reason for that is the way things begin, adding one more class day does just give us more unequal days of the week situation; it doesn’t cure our problems. We have 14 Mondays, 15 Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Adding one more day to it doesn’t take care of the Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday–Thursday rotation. So there are 74 class days for Spring semester. Summer semester looks very, very similar to what we had this year. There are basically four terms and one ten-week term. There are two other terms that also begin on the same date as the 10-week term, that is the first half semester — the first five week period — and then also beginning on that same day which is Thursday, May 20th there is a six-week term — you may remember this was put in last year at the request of folks from Science and Math that it fit better with their schedules or it could have possibly been Engineering, we were asked to do one longer short-term and so that’s extend the term that see and then finally the second half term. So, overall, terms run from May 20th through August 3rd and commencement is August 5th.

 

Fall semester 2004 looks very similar to what we just saw for Fall semester 2003. One thing that I would point out, and there really isn’t anything that we can do about it right now. The Student Government representative still says that the students would like to have some type of a Fall break. As you may remember, the last two years we’ve brought you calendars with a Fall break in there and the Senate has voted it down both times mainly over the issue that that creates more incomplete weeks for lab classes. I know in the future hopefully there are plans to have more lab space and that this won’t become quite an issue. I would encourage the Senate that if that takes place, possibly the Fall of 2004, that they might want to revisit this calendar or at least for Fall 2005, think about a break because we go with a … especially for Fall 2003 that’s for this year, Labor Day comes very early, Thanksgiving comes very late. There are no breaks whatsoever between, next year, between September 1st and November 28. That’s kind of long for our students; a reading day or something in there would be very, very helpful. So I hope that you would think about that for future calendars. Other than that things look about the same: 75 class days, 13 complete weeks; once again, only 3 incomplete weeks. Pretty good in terms of equal Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. So everybody can pretty much get the same number of classes in. Spring semester, again, very much the same in terms of when it begins, when it ends.

 

Again, 74 class days, 13 complete weeks, 3 incomplete weeks; pretty good on Mondays through Fridays being equal number. The last thing I have to show you is Summer semester 2005 as proposed almost identical to what we did again this year and what we are proposing for Summer semester 2004 and that is four terms, one full 10-week term, two half five week terms and then that one longer 30 day 6-week term. I believe last year it was also left from Dr. Pritchett that if a department felt like they would like to do something longer than 6 weeks and shorter 10 weeks, if it was proposed and accepted by their dean then that could also be done for there is some flexibility in there. There’s a quick review …

 

Barbara Struempler: If you’ll just make a motion to accept it, then I’ll open it up to the floor.

 

Larry Moult: Can I make a motion as a non-member? Then, as Chair of the Calendars and Schedules Committee I move that the proposed Calendars for the 2003–2004 Academic Year and 2004–2005 Academic Year be accepted as presented.

 

Barbara Struempler: A second is not needed. And now if you’ll stay up here. Discussion please. This is easier than last year I see. We had a long discussion last year. Okay. All those in favor of accepting the Calendar as proposed, signify by saying “aye.” [RESPONSES] All those opposed, “no.” [NO RESPONSES] Great. Thank you so much. At this point, Drew Clark is going to come up and present assessment results for Degree Programs.

 

Drew Clark (Director of Assessment): Thank you Barb. You’ve got a very good American poet named Mary Ann Moore who some years ago said about poetry, I also dislike it. That’s what I say about PowerPoint presentations but all the same, you’re going to get one. I’m going to be talking to you today briefly about your work and your colleagues’ work in assessing student learning over the first complete cycle that we conducted there. I want to give credit up front to one of our Merriweather fellows for this year who is also my Graduate Assistant, Renaya Burke in the Department of Psychology is responsible for a lot of the day-to-day data-base design and management that makes some of our conclusions possible today. So I want to make sure that she gets credit. Eventually we’re going to get to some findings from the assessment report that all the Greek programs on campus filed back last October. The new one is coming this semester. But in good academic fashion, I’m going start with the background knowledge probe. Okay.

 

I’m going to give you some options. Here’s the data. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement in which we participated for the first time this past year, a third of our first year students reported that they read fewer than five books or textbooks in the 2001–2002. Same number of Seniors. When sked the question about how many other books not assigned — pleasure reading, or anything that they had read during the last year, 85% of our freshman said that they had read fewer than five during the year; 75% of our seniors had read fewer than five during the year. You should be asking yourself how does that compare to other universities. We’ll get to that later. I’m going to lead with some slides about things that you cannot know at the departmental level and what we have been most efficiently gathering from institutional level, but if this is all designed to say to you, here’s what assessment is?

 

Question 2. After three years of college at Auburn University, in which of the following areas have Auburn University students clearly made greater than expected gain? We now clarify the science on this in a second. Is it Mathematics? Is it Reading Comprehension? Is it Scientific Reasoning? It is Writing Skills, particularly Grammar and Rhetoric? Take a minute to think. Got it? Here’s the answer. I’m sorry I used a 100 point scale and that makes it small. But if we compare entering students’ ACT scores with their score on the follow-up instrument called the CAP which we used in an experimental form this last year, what we are able to view is to key their performance in some areas of the CAP to what they … how they scored on their way in the front door. It is ordinary for students to make expected gains; it is extraordinary or unusual for students to score below or above their anticipated scores. So, in the areas of Math, Reading and Writing Skills, our students — about 8% of those students we tested — scored above their anticipated level of progress. That’s great, that’s great because again the normal score would be at expected level. The big surprise to me in the data was that 26% of the students we tested scores above the anticipated progress in Science Reasoning. I think that’s interesting news and I have theories that try to explain it but I won’t.

 

Okay, Question 3. For the last five years, our students’ combined GRE Verbal, and Quantitative scores have averaged around what? These are Auburn University students taking the GRE hoping to apply to Graduate School. Is it 900? 1000? 1100? 1200? That’s Question 1. Question 2. This is about 50 scale points BLANK the national average for the GRE. Is it above or below? Anyone want to speak on this one? Here it is. 452 is the average Verbal score for Auburn University seniors taking the GRE. 554 on the Quantitative. That’s our people for the past five years. The national sample, a much larger group, 477 Verbal — close to ours — 581 Math. What about students who apply here? Maybe Auburn students may not be Auburn students, but what if they come to Graduate School here? What are their Verbal and Quantitative score like? Verbal, 471 and 621.

 

Assessment is not about personnel review, it’s not about program cut-backs. Assessment is about self-study. It is a formal device for gathering information about ourselves, about our students, about our work, about the money environment we create and what’s happening as a result of it. What I just shared with you is information that can only be gathered at the institutional level, but the most important news I have to tell you is that we are gathering a lot of good information at the department level where most of us live our lives and where we are the expert. So I want to quickly summarize for you this afternoon some of what we learned from the first year of assessment. It didn’t go perfectly, it went better than expected. First, some background. The Office of Assessment — and then it was called Quality Improvement — was established in 1994. It is not a recent thing, it was established right after our most recent SACS Reaffirmation Visit. The early efforts of the Office were devoted to things that I would call critical process improvement like how to get financial aid form turnaround faster now, or how to improve the process of Graduate School admissions, or some other target areas. That was the main focus of the Office when it first started. Recently, we’ve moved into a campus-wide effort for collecting information about student money outcome. This began in Fall of 2000; it is the core of the assessment movement nationally. It is what our accrediting agency wants us to be able to demonstrate this strength, and frankly, it’s where the most fun is for academics because learning is what we care about. Today, the assessment process occurs at the unit level each year. It became effective in Fall 2000; not all units began that year. For example, the Core Curriculum is so complicated that we waited a year to get started on it. All educational programs, support units, and administrative offices are participating or are expected. It uses focused questions, academic departments focus on assessing student learning in their disciplines. The Core Prototype Committee which functions as a quadratic department for the Core, focuses on assessing student learning in general education while all other units focus on assessing how effectively they are doing their main job. I’m going to focus this afternoon only on student learning in the disciplines.

 

We are the University Assessment Committee which is composed of about 20 individuals. They set general guidelines for the assessment process; they provide me guidance and they provide you with formative feedback on the assessment results. They periodically evaluate how well the assessment process itself it going, and the different ways and different places they need to look at it. My Office is new; my Graduate Assistant coordinates unit leave and assists with planning and evaluations and conducts studies of institutional effectiveness like some of those that I drew the slides from. We try to publicize good practices in assessment. The data I’m going to share with you came from the 2000–2001 cycle; that’s Year 1 for us. These are the reports that were submitted October 1 of last year; they comprise not only the reports from 2000–2001 but also a plan for what’s now last year. This October we’ll be getting reports from all units under assessment for 2001–2002 and also a plan for the year we’ve just begun.

 

And now I’m going to run quickly through some results. These acquired … I owe especially a debt of gratitude to Renaya for taking all those assessment reports that came in — there are several volumes in my office — and laying them into a wonderful Microsoft Access database that’s searchable and analyzing it. First of all, the best news is that nearly everybody participated. You’re looking at two slides on a number of the Greek programs that participated in this process; the Blue is the participating ones, the high-level Orange is the non-participating ones. In most cases we know why; it wasn’t that they were bad people, they were just hard people to find. We had some interdepartmental programs, and it’s not clear who runs them, and then there’s some other adventitious things, but this is very good news. However, we didn’t get everyone on board. We’re going to keep it an annual process for now. We may move to a point where we move to an every other year reporting process; this will particularly help smaller programs with low numbers of graduates. For now and certainly throughout Reaffirmation, we will do every department … every Greek program every year.

 

Learning outcomes chosen for study: Most departments need to find between three and five learning outcomes. Commonly, they have picked on things like mastery of the subject, ability to apply that subject to problems in the real world, research skills, communication skills, and there are of course a host of other outcomes; this is a big complicated place. How do they want to find out about these achievements in these areas. Well, you’re looking at a pie chart now that begins to tell you what methods they tried, and we’re all trying it … we’re all beginners in this, for the most part. The most common thing that … what you see here is a series of strikes beyond just undergraduate outcomes. The blue is graduate outcomes. You’ll see that satisfaction measures, that’s asking students or alumni or in some cases what I call ‘downstream’ people like employers or graduate programs, asking them how satisfied they are with the program. Fairly simply method to use and a lot of people tried it. A substantial number of people actually looked at samples of student work, perhaps submitted for class or sometimes in another context. A number of people tried to use placement results. And the full version of this presentation that you can find on the web, you’re going to see some slides here that I’m not using today but will use some caution flags about attempting these placement results.

 

How many were successful? That is, they planned to do an assessment, they weren’t actually … succeeded in carrying out that assessment. About 78% of all outcomes for undergraduates — about 57% for graduates — was successful. In most of the other cases, the middle group … we know what the problem was. In some cases, for example, there weren’t any students to assess in that degree program that year. In predominantly a large number of cases, they carry out the planned assessment and we don’t know why; they didn’t report it. We asked units to consider setting in advance, before they conducted the assessment, what they would like to see; what they would call success for this program at this time. An example: if programs function without the way you want it to, then let’s say 70% of portfolios we evaluate will be judged ‘good’ or ‘very good’ in design. Or another example: if you use an alumni rating, the average score would be at least 4.5 out of 5. These are two of hundreds of examples of what it means to define ‘standard’ and ‘advanced.’ But people do this. In many cases, yes. About half of the time a standard was set and met for the Greek program. I want to emphasize to you that my Office does nothing to set standards for the Greek program. That’s your business. We think the assessment will go better for you if you set one in advance, but my Office doesn’t set the standard. At about … the second group, 21% of undergraduate outcomes and a graduate, a standard was set but not met by the students. The third group was a smallish group; no standard was set until … I don’t know whether they succeeded or not. And then in a troubling large number of cases, no assessment was conducted. Again, mostly for benign reasons.

 

How do you use the results? The Key Steps. The meaningful assessment results must be studied and interpretively used and the jargon that is called “closing the loop” is the only point in doing assessments. The only reason to do it. So, what do we do? These are how people use the results. You won’t be surprised to know that the largest single use of the results was the decision that no change was needed. No change was needed, often because students met a predetermined standard; it seems to be working. That’s about a third of all results. But many programs, including those where students met the standard, took action after assessment to improve instruction that could be topic coverage, it could be curriculum tweaking, it could be other things, for example advisement. A number of programs felt that the most appropriate action was to improve their data stream, either by getting better data — better alignment with what they really meant to study — or by getting more out of it that they didn’t have in many cases. I’m going to say a word about that last group on the right called the “known use” which counted the 15% of undergraduates and 21% of graduates outcomes studied.

 

The good news. The 2000 and 2001 assessment reports that you all submitted showed that many degree programs use their results to make program improvements or to refine their assessment procedures did work and we have the evidence to show it to our SACS team when they come next month. The bad news. We know recent results; neither an action plan nor a substantiated decision, but no action is needed. That’s what I call a null use of results. It is the only way for assessment to pay. If you get bad news back and use it, you succeed. If you get bad news or good news back and you don’t use it, then you have succeeded and about 20% of our results from 2000–2001 were what I would call null results. That’s counting outcomes, not degree programs. If we see that number go down this coming year, I’ll take it as evidence that the departments are catching on.

 

Some conclusions: In just one year Auburn University’s academic degree programs have shown widespread and appropriate participation in assessing their students’ learning outcomes. Many departments have made or planned improvements after assessing student learning at the program level and many other departments have made or planned improvements in their assessment methods themselves. There are some challenges for the future. Nearly 20% of all outcomes … you an answer back, “couldn’t collect the data, couldn’t collect the data.” When a rationale for this is given, most of the time it was that no students were graduating. Assessment can yield information about intermediate outcomes and by intermediate I mean what’s happening in the student’s learning about midway through the project, through the process. You don’t have to wait until they’re graduating. So the advice here is to start collecting data as soon as you can. Another challenge: Sometimes people threw away data that they could have been using. Let’s say you had a program target of 80% of school distributing some defined achievement level, 80% is what you wanted. You get a result of 75%. Is that failure? It’s an opportunity for study, it’s not failure. But let’s say you get a result of 85%. Does that mean no action needed? No study required? Probably not. It shouldn’t automatically mean that the solution is no program changes are needed. Don’t throw away data that you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to collect them.

 

Final challenge for the future: the Greek programs are free to choose which aspects of student learning achievement they wish to assess. You know best what that is when you’re using it. Compliance matters. Compliance means sending in the forms. But, really taking action on the basis of good information that you yourself have developed about your question is the best and really the only reason to do an assessment. So, seek real answers to real questions. That’s for the future. If you want further information you can go to our website which the easiest way I can tell you to get there is to click on “Academics” from the home page, click on “Provost” page, and I’m a link off to the left of that. Barb, I apologize. I’m a couple of minutes over. Are there questions?

 

Barbara Struempler: Thanks, Drew. Our last presenter is Jim Bradley on the Faculty’s Response to the Weary Report.

 

Jim Bradley, Immediate Past Chair: First of all, I’d like to do a brief background into how Dr. Bill Weary got here on campus, what he was asked to do, what he ended up doing, and how the Senate Rules Committee paid to report on his report. So, starting mid-2001, William Weary was identified by Jack Miller’s person with ATB background, although he was not a member of that Association at the time. He was commissioned then by the Board of Trustees to come and aid the University in searching for a President. After Dr. Weary came and interviewed some people, though about what he had heard, he came to the July 23, 2001 Board meeting and suggested that the University was not ready to search for a President. Instead, he suggested that we perform a comprehensive assessment of what should be accomplished before we would be ready to search for a new President. So, then Dr. Weary was asked to actually do that comprehensive assessment, although I don’t believe there was a formal change made in his original commission which was to help us search for a President. But he came and did extensive interviews with many groups of people and many individuals and he reported to the Board. Then on November 16, 2001, he gave a preliminary oral report and in that report, he identified eight (8) tasks for the University to complete within the next three to five years in preparation for looking for a new President. Now that was not a written report, and it was not until January 7, 2002 that Dr. Weary submitted a written report to Dr. Walker. And then on January 22 of this year, Dr. Walker proposed to the Board that Dr. Weary’s report be adopted as a guideline for action to increase what Dr. Walker called other Auburn University’s Institutional Capacity. And then at the February 1 Board meeting, the Board did adopt Dr. Weary’s report as a guideline for support of increasing institutional capacity. Now since Dr. Weary’s agenda in his report, which was actually called Auburn University’s Agenda, since his agenda was so comprehensive, actually affecting virtually every level of the University from Public Relations to University Governance and everything in between. Since the faculty had not been formally invited to respond to the agenda, at that time I asked the Senate Rules Committee member to study the report — Dr. Weary’s Agenda — carefully and make comments and responses to that report to me and Isabelle Thompson with the idea that at least then the Senate Rules Committee would provide a response from the faculty to Dr. Weary’s Agenda. So, during March and April of this year, Isabelle and I collected these evaluations from Rules Committee members, we added our own to these and incorporated them all into a draft of the Senate Rules Committee Response to Dr. Weary’s Agenda. This draft was sent out to all the Rules Committee members and gave them an opportunity to respond of which did. In addition, Larry Gerber a nationally recognized  scholarl in the area of University Governance was solicited for his comments, particularly on those areas of the Agenda that dealt with University Governance. Okay, so we got all those comments from the draft back and Isabelle Thompson assembled that into a revised response and sent it out again to the reread by past Rules Committee members and the new  Committee members who had been elected in March — new Rules Committee members. We got responses back from about two-thirds of that group of people and all of them were supportive of this type of draft. So that’s what I’m reporting on today.

 

So with the exception of some minor non-substantive changes and getting us some clarity, I consider this to the final version but certainly any comments that people have today on the Report that has been available on the web for you to read certainly those can still be incorporated as additions into this. The intent is that soon after today’s report, the Senate — this is our response — the Rules Committee’s response will be sent to members of the University’s Taskforce on Auburn University’s Agenda. These groups have long names. The Taskforce on Auburn University’s Agenda consists of the following people, and Jack Miller is the chair of that Committee and the Taskforce has met once for an entire day. I mention a little bit at the end about the outcome of that meeting. So, my plan here then is in order to expedite delivery of this report to you, I will read certain portions of our response. I’ll refer to the Rules Committee Response as “the Response” to be responding to the Agenda, okay. So I will read selected portions of the Response to you and identify each of these eight tasks and the selected response that goes with those. Time won’t allow or at least I’m not choosing to take the time to present to you the discussions in Dr. Weary’s Report that we’re responding to. I encourage everybody here to take time and carefully read Dr. Weary’s Agenda and then also carefully read the Rules Committee Response to it because it’s very helpful to the University as I said far-reaching recommendations and changes that were suggested here. So, let’s begin.

 

Dr. Weary’s Report began with a introduction as does ours. So, here from our introduction, the Rules Committee members here say that from the outset we want to be clear about our overall support for Dr. Weary’s recommendations. In most instances, we believe that he correctly identified current problems at the University with his proposed solutions that are innovative and sound. However, in some instances we disagree with Dr. Weary’s recommendations. Therefore, this  written Response concentrates on those instances and suggests alternative views representing the viewpoints of what we perceive of faculty. This Response from the Rules Committee does not attempt to speak for students, alumni or staff. So, first of all , some comments on the summary portion of Dr. Weary’s Agenda. In a portion of the beginning of this Summary Report, Dr. Weary stated that Auburn is suffering from “erosion, deterioration and even failure of the commons.” He went on to say that he believes Auburn University’s commons is vitriol and that the University lacks a sense of community based on a shared culture. So he’s speaking of the commons as a shared culture that all of the University constituents hold dear with … together … as a shared culture. Now our response to that is that we believe Auburn already has a shared culture, that it’s not vitriol. And that the culture that we share is the culture of a comprehensive university. By definition, academic; this culture is based on a love of learning and teaching, discovery and scholarship, and an extension of that discovery and scholarship to students and to the citizens of Alabama. This culture is cosmopolitan and international. It takes pride in ethnic and cultural diversity. We believe the “commons” for Auburn University should be sought in our shared pride for contributing to and participating in activities and ambience that mark a vibrant, comprehensive university. Now we go into the eight tasks and what I’ll do is read the tasks that Dr. Weary stated for and then read a select portion of the Rules Committee members’ response, the discussion of that task that was given in the original Weary Report.

 

Task #1 reads as follows: Assess the quality of customer service to assure that it matches need.

 

Our Response: A business model was used to determine how well current practices at Auburn are meeting the needs of its various stakeholders. For faculty members who teach, students are primary stakeholders; however, we do not think of students as customers. Instead, we still think of them as learners, and sometimes as teachers, and scholars in college. A colleague mentioned to me just a few minutes ago that, if anything other than customers, students would have to be viewed as product. That’s not in our response at the present time. Dr. Weary has devised a list of assessment areas relating to student satisfaction. This is one of the few things that I would like to put up here for you to view. Here’s a list … there is a key or whatever it is. You see I’ve highlighted some of those … you can see those for yourself: guiding sports and athletics; health services; Greek life assessment. So we look at this list and we object, the Rules Committee objected to the exclusion of academics from this list. We suggested areas such as academics, quality of education received, preparation for responsible world citizenship, preparation for jobs and careers, and acquisition of critical thinking skills be added to this list.

 

Task #2: This task reads plan for necessary renovations of facilities and additions to them.

 

Our Response: We strongly agree with the need for a master plan to bring physical unity to this campus. The focus on a pedestrian-friendly campus along with the current concerns to improve landscaping is very good. However, we would like to suggest some additions to the Board’s current policies and procedures that prohibit Board members from bidding on facilities work at Auburn. This policy would eliminate any perception of conflicts of interest by Board members.

 

Task #3: Fund the University in a manner required to advance its excellence.

 

[A portion of] Our Response: Program review for the purpose of cutting budgets should proceed only after extensive study and discussion of faculty members as well as the Board and central Administration. One danger is that programs will be judged on the numbers of graduates and enrollees without any concern for the centrality of a program to mission of a comprehensive university. Indeed an argument can be made … can be advanced that struggling programs, essential for a Liberal Arts education should be subsidized by special monies. I think some of cases you are going to have to infer from the response what the discussion was in the Weary Report in this case obviously the discussion suggested that there should be broad program reviews for the purpose of discovering various ways to save on our budget. We could add to their response on that discussion.

 

Task #4: Focus and develop the University’s advancement functions.

 

Our Response: We disagree with the suggestion for a single “Auburn message.” This suggestion violates the individual’s right to freedom of expression. Freedom to express diverse ideas must be preserved without consideration of a single “Auburn message.” Further, the hiring of Rick Hartsell for Public Relations assistance, many of the pronouncements from University Relations, many of the e-mail communications from the President’s Office, and the Board’s Auburn Update publication are viewed by many faculty members as very expensive tools being used to attack and whitewash the unilateral and selfish actions of the Board of Trustees. We recommend postponing the further development of the “Auburn message” until the stakeholders of the University are better able to cooperate in deciding what that message should be. It would be a mistake to institute further “central majors of control to guide University publications” (Weary Report, 2001) at this time.

 

Task #5: Identify and begin implementation of a shared academic vision.

 

In this discussion, Dr. Weary talked about perhaps establishing a research trapezoid to rival North Carolina’s research triangle. A trapezoid can add corners as Auburn University, UAB, Huntsville and Athens, Georgia. So we have a dimension that we could use in our response, the mention of a research trapezoid. So the task, identify and begin implementation of a shared academic research vision.

 

Our Response: The creation of a research trapezoid composed of universities from Alabama and Georgia would be a grand collaboration. Even though the current statewide leak of leadership, jealous rivalries, and lack of funding probably preclude the possibility of such a grant collaboration, we encourage the Board and President Walker to pursue any available opportunities for cooperation with other universities.

 

We doubt the universities will receive large — this is on a different subject, a new paragraph but still this subject of academic vision — we doubt that the university will receive large benefits from the Peaks of Excellence, we are not against that the benefits from the Peaks programs will make up for the damage done to other programs by loss of funds. Moreover, many faculty members perceive that some proposals were elevated to Peaks on the basis of potential future contracts and donor money from industry rather than for the excellence of ideas generated.

 

Task #6 (and there are only eight of these): Create an administration capable of working with the Board and constituents to catch the University up to prepare for its advance.

 

Did you get that? Create an administration capable of working with the Board and constituents to catch the University up and to prepare for its advance.

 

Our Response: Because of the accusatory tone of the discussions about this recommendation, it is difficult to identify points of agreement. We suggest that the direction of this recommendation be revised to “create a Board of Trustees capable of working with University constituents and help to prepare the University for advancement.” Further response to this particular task brought the discussion of this recommendation Dr. Weary criticizes the faculty particularly with what he calls “end runs.” An example he gives of end runs, faculty members visiting the Governor, personal opinions being expressed in the media, and personal opinions being expressed in public forums, and the SACS complaint itself. Dr. Weary suggests that faculty members should observe “appropriate process.” Exactly what process Dr. Weary refers to is unclear and he is not examined the events and conditions that have made it necessary to resort to such end runs. As it’s currently stated, this recommendation, that is Dr. Weary’s recommendation, diverts attention away from the Board’s responsibilities in creating this current vitriolic [Dr. Weary’s word] vitriolic atmosphere. Dr. Weary also chastizes those who speak of “lack of trust.” Dr. Weary suggests that Board members are victims rather than perpetrators of mistrust. Dr. Weary has ignored what he heard from the Senate leadership and many other faculty members during his visit.

 

Task #7: Build a Board of Trustees and the entire governing structure appropriate to the needs of Auburn University in the 21st century.

 

Our Response (a portion of): Our recommendations to the Board such as assessment on performance, enhance the efficiency of its committees, develop new policies and procedures for current operation, avoiding administrative trivia, and limiting the role of antagonist members — these are all listed by Dr. Weary — will undoubtedly increase the effectiveness of the Board. So we agree with that part of Dr. Weary’s recommendation. Again, however, objective response to this recommendation is made difficulty because the discussion is overly negative about former President Muse and unbelievably praiseworthy for the Board. The negative statements about President Muse and the praiseworthy statements about the Board are so overblown that they undermine the credibility of the Weary Agenda. In addition, this recommendation contains some unexplained suggestions that the Board call for their “reworking of the university-wide governance documents,” including composition of the Senate, perhaps changing from a University Senate to a Faculty Senate. Any change in the composition of the University Senate should begin with the Senate itself, specifically with the Rules Committee. And in fact, any changes in University governance should be initiated by the members of the affected body.

 

Task #8: As a whole institution, prepare and adopt a strategic plan that advances a shared vision and implements Auburn’s mission.

 

Our Response: If all stakeholders work together, preparation of a strategic plan would be the impetus needed to move Auburn forward and to achieve some of the other recommendations from Dr. Weary’s Agenda. However, it is not clear how President Walker’s current directions group and the Taskforce to Study Dr. Weary’s Agenda are working efforts for the development of a strategic plan. In addition, it is important to think beyond Dr. Walker’s tenure as President because much of the work might better be done under a different administration.

 

Finally, we have a section at the end of our Response called the Rules Committee Recommendation; I won’t read all of that to you but here are a couple of selections. This is from the Rules Committee: Sponsor a series of workshops representing all stakeholders at Auburn to discuss implementation of Dr. Weary’s Agenda. To allow enough time for careful deliberation, begin those workshops, Fall semester 2002. These workshops would be sponsored some how by this Taskforce that I had up here a minute ago. Jack Miller’s Taskforce.

 

Okay, further listed are comments then the conclusion of the Report: When possible, chairs of relevant Senate Standing Committees should be involved in all phases of the workshops. Allowing eight workshops, that would be one for each of the tasks. There should be several meeting during which the conclusions and recommendations coming from the workshops that can be integrated into a coherent view of the University strengths witnessed as far as the aspirations and possible paths toward realizing these aspirations. An optimistic date for completion for workshops with two or three integrating meetings and reformulation of Dr. Weary’s Agenda would be mid-March 2003. After the Board has adopted an Agenda for the University, Dr. Weary recommends “a series of Board-led projects to open the way into the next strategic plan.” We disagree with this recommendation. The projects Dr. Weary recommends here fall under the category of ‘Policy Implementation’ rather than ‘Policy Setting,’ a distinction that is important in the SACS criteria for accreditation; the Board of Trustees should be involved in policy setting and not involved only in policy implementation. This criteria, 6.1.2, is sometimes referred to as micro-management. So we object to the recommendation that the Board sponsor a series of projects that leads to the strategic plan and its implementation. Finally, prior to implementation of a strategic plan for Auburn University, we recommend that consultants from the AAUP and from other organizations concerned with higher education be hired to represent faculty members’ interests in developing a new strategic plan.

 

So that’s a quick … relatively quick run through of the Rules Committee’s Response to Dr. Weary’s Agenda. This concludes my report. I’ll be happy to try to answer any questions. Certainly if you have … if you think about these things, and if you have thoughts through the rest of the week, certainly e-mail them to Barb or to Isabelle Thompson so that they have potential of being incorporated into the final recommendations. As I said, the Rules Committee is considering this very near to the final report that should be sent to Mr. Miller and the other Taskforce members.

 

Barbara Struempler: Thank you Jim. Okay, is there any new business? Oh, good. We’re out on time. Don’t forget the Fall Faculty Meeting next Tuesday. And the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

 

 

MEETING ADJOURNED @ 4:45 p.m.