Minutes
Members Absent: John Mouton, Immediate Past-chair; Don Large, VP for Business/Finance; Lee Evans, Dean/School of Pharmacy; Richard Brinker, Dean/School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences; Dan Bennett, Dean/College of Agriculture; Sheri Downer, Interim Dean of Libraries; Bradford Boney, SGA President; John Varner, Staff Council Chair; William Gale, Steering Committee; David Cicci, Aerospace Engineering; Mario Lightfoote, ACES; Eleanor Josephson, Anatomy, Physiology & Pharmacology; Barry Fleming, Art; Raymond Hamilton, Aviation, Management & Logistics; Ted Tyson Biosystems Engineering; Scott Kramer, Building Sciences; James Guin, Chemical Engineering; Sridhar Krishnamurti, Communication Disorders; Randy Beard, Economics; Christoph Hinklemann, Finance; Jim Saunders, Geology & Geography; Thomas A. Smith, Human Development & Family Studies; Saeed Maghsoodloo, Industrial Engineering; Richard Good, Music; Jack DeRuiter, Pharmacal Sciences; Marllin L. Simon, Physics; Robert Norton, Poultry Science; Vivian Larkin, Rehabilitation & Special Education; Thomas W. White, ROTC Air Force; LTC John Salvetti, ROTC Army; Howard Thomas, Textile Engineering
Members Absent (Substitute): Melissa Brooks, GSC President (Michael Leslie); Martha Taylor, A&P Assembly Chair (Harriette Huggins); Jefferson P. Jones, Accountancy (Kim Key); David Bransby, Agronomy & Soils (Charles Mitchell); Charles Gross, Electrical & Computer Engineering (A. S. Hodel); Douglas White, Nutrition & Foods (Robin Fellers);
Call to Order: The meeting
was called to order at
Willie Larkin, Chair: May I have your attention please. I call the May 11th meeting of the Auburn University Senate to order. We had a technological glitch in terms of putting the minutes up. We thought the minutes were up but, instead, we had a list of committees. I apologize for any inconvenience that that has caused. As a result, we are not going to be able to approve the minutes from our April 6th meeting. We will have to do that at the June 8th meeting.
At this time I would like to invite our President, Ed Richardson, up to give a report on the President’s office.
Ed Richardson, Interim President:
I would like to say good afternoon to all of you and thank you for
coming. This is the first time I have
ever been in this room. I was one of
those in the first class of
Willie Larkin, Chair: Classes.
Ed Richardson, Interim President: I was afraid you would say that. Sorry I asked. You can strike that.
Let me just briefly go into the results of the Board Meeting on Friday which I think, if you were aware of the contents, that was really what most of us had been working towards for about the last two months. There are a number of people that have voted, probably the last three and a half weeks, to making sure that happens and I would like just briefly to describe (1) what those proposals consist of, (2) what needs to be done next and (3) somewhat of my schedule for the next few weeks.
First, in terms of the proposal, we obviously had to address the SACS issues and that’s what it was all about. Our proposal to SACS is scheduled to go in in the morning, or certainly before the end of the day tomorrow, and I believe that we will be able to completely respond to the concerns expressed by SACS. I forwarded to Dr. Allen, of SACS—and I realize (inaudible) but I prefer to use SACS, if you’ll allow me to use that—prior to submission to the Board of Trustees—and got a tentative approval. Now, obviously Dr. Allen was not the person to make that recommendation. When the team comes to visit us, which will be on September the 28th—they will be here a couple of days. But, nevertheless, the initial review by the headquarters at SACS indicated that those proposals should be sufficient.
I want to say a couple of things and then go straight into the four parts—but just to talk to you. Even though I’ve spent a good three weeks or so trying to pull that together—and I would commend our trustees, as well as Earlon McWhorter and many of the staff that are here today, for working on that. That really was the easy part. Preparing the Resolution, doing the leg-work in the sense of making the calls—making the visits—making the changes—going back over it again—that’s really the easy part. The more difficult part is to implement it so that we adhere to the provisions of those resolutions and that’s what I meant when I said earlier that we have to establish a pattern of behavior. That is a pattern of behavior where it becomes just operational—we know we are going to do that—and that will have to be determined over the next few months. But I wanted to, as I go into this and identify some, I want to identify as best I can a responsibility that I would expect of deans and provosts and vice presidents and faculty in that regard because we are all going to have to work within those resolutions to establish the pattern of behavior so that we don’t have to repeat the errors of the past.
Number one, I think, is to deal with a commitment to accreditation. There were really two resolutions but that was the big one and what that simply said was that Auburn University has demonstrated in a variety of ways—and I can describe those if you like—that it is committed to the accreditation process and, again, to abide by the decisions of SACS. That would be the proposal. So, in that regard, we’ve answered that. That removing the law suit, the Governor and I making a visit up there, all the things like that contributed to it. Within that same resolution, though, of commitment included several other pieces that I think are important. Number one would be what is now called the Code of Ethics for Trustees and that’s going to include the formation of an audit committee—and that seems to be of more interest to most so I’ll talk about that in just a minute. But, let’s just talk about the Code of Ethics. There are two—two-parted, bi-parted types of attempts there. Number one is to make sure that members of the university do not do business with the university for profit. That doesn’t mean you can’t make donations and put a sign up in the basketball gym as long as you are paying for it like everyone else could do, but in terms of participating in some construction project or something of that order would be inappropriate and there is a slight loophole in that and I’ll describe that when I get to the Audit Committee.
The second part deals with the
most difficult provision and that is whether or not we can confirm that one or
two trustees are unduly influenced—I mean the majority influenced by one or
two—I’ve just driven up from Mobile so I’m still somewhere in Evergreen mentally
so I’ll catch up with myself in a minute.
So, that was the most difficult one.
And the trustees have agreed to it, although I will have to tell you
that has created, perhaps, more problems than others and that’s why we came up
with the idea of the Audit Committee to, hopefully, relieve their fears and
I’ll tell you what, basically, their fears were and I think you would
understand. The Audit Committee has two
major functions in and of itself. The
first function is to deal with the audit of the various university programs—in
other words because of Enron and WorldCom and all those things that we’ve all
read about for the last couple of years—the stipulation is that the trustees or
Board of Directors or whatever organizational title that group may hold is that
they would be very intimately involved in reviewing the audit. They don’t do the audit but they make sure
that the audit accurately reflects the financial condition of a County
Extension Office in
I want to digress just a minute. One other thing—and I’m probably going to be
misunderstood—I meet with the coaches tomorrow so I’ll probably be
misunderstood there too, but at least I’m consistent. As I have been in this now for three or so
months, I really have had absolutely no problems with the trustees in adhering
to these standards—none. What I have had
are problems with our own people adhering to those standards by going around
presidents, athletic directors or others to try to influence trustees to
promote a personal agenda. That’s
happened to me three times in the athletic arena in the three months that I
have been here. I’ve corrected two of
the three—the third one will be corrected tomorrow. So I wanted to say to you that we’ve got to
participate in that. Now I will tell you
that the trustees gave me everything that I thought necessary to meet the SACS
requirements and to set up a condition for this university to operate in a
sound open way. They’ve done their
work. Now it is up to us to help do that
work. I assure you there will be times
when trustees will go across the line.
That’s up to me to stop that and I believe that that can be handled on
an individual basis. An example might be
that some trustee wants someone hired.
More likely now at this time of year, I’ve got a student that can’t get
into
The third area deals with athletics and I wanted to talk just a minute about that. That has been a surprise to me. I think you probably read in the paper where—that’s taken up far more of my time than I had anticipated and that’s why I’m a little pressed in a sense of meeting my objectives by early June. Now, it’s probably the end of June before I can complete what I need to do to finish this pattern of behavior. A lot of things are not quite as obvious as what happened in the first few weeks. But I wanted to talk about athletics. First of all, the resolution that you would see for Tigers Unlimited, and other funds for athletics, requires that the President approves all expenditures—all. So I believe then if you have a President in the future that says that’s not the right thing to do then it can be stopped. But, it’s like so many other things—it’s no more value than the courage of the person that’s serving as President at the time. The other thing in athletics is that the Athletic Committee has been abolished. Now that was a tough one because I had some people that really—even had a new trustee—that was the first thing that person asked for was to get on that committee. But I would say that the perception of the Athletic Committee was that three or four trustees were really running athletics and the Athletic Director and the President were somewhat secondary in those decisions. And I just saw no way that we could ever overcome that perception and I would say some truth to that—of the perception. How will we handle the information and I think in a very sound way would fully apprise not only the trustees but the faculty as well because you will have representatives on each of the committees. For instance: we will not have a Budget Committee but we’ll have a Finance Committee. We’ll eliminate the Advancement Committee, we’ll form an Audit Committee, we’ll eliminate an Athletic Committee—Academic Affairs and all of those will stay intact. But let’s say that we had a question about how well is athletics doing financially. Then that committee would request a report in the form of an audit or a monthly report that we compile to determine how by sports—how each sport—how it’s happening. So that means then the Finance Committee would have that information. Of course, all those that serve in that regard would too. If you want to know about how we are doing in terms of graduation ranks, or how do we accept athletes into the university then Academic Affairs obviously would go there. So I think you can see that the information will allow us then to keep athletics integrated into the university under the control of the President but also to apprise and to better inform the trustees in that regard. Now we haven’t done that before so I can’t tell you it’s a perfect design. All I can tell you is that will accomplish the problem that we had in terms of the Athletic Committee being perceived as having undue influence because we won’t have it. We are just going to have to go through a period of adjustment again of about a year, tighten it up and I believe then that you will see in time, certainly within a year, you’re going to see the bugs worked out. You just can’t anticipate all the questions that would come up—it’s been my experience in doing this for a long time.
I wanted to talk just a minute or
two about the procedures that we will follow from here and then if you have
some questions I will be glad to explain.
Number one: Our SACS report will
go in tomorrow. It will include the
resolutions that were passed, it will include the documentation of the steps
that were taken previously and hopefully then we will know. But, realistically, know fairly soon if there
are problems. But I would say, we really
won’t know for sure until the team comes in on September the 28th
through the 30th—they will be here for a couple of days—and then,
obviously, we won’t get the final word until the first week of December. So I can’t give you any assurance until then
but, based on my frequent conversations with Dr. Allen and others with SACS,
based on their review of our resolutions, I believe we will be in good shape. As I said, those resolutions and all that
took a lot of time. That’s really the
easy part. Making it work is the more
difficult part and we’ve all got to play a part in that role. And what I intend to do, as I said, is to be
a little possessive—both in terms of going around the normal channels to
influence trustees or trustees going around the normal channels to try to
influence administrators. But I think
that we will be able over the next several months to establish that pattern of
behavior because—and this is why I think it’s important for you not to forget—I
doubt on June the 11th (the election of the Pro-tem, the committee
structure, approving the audit committee and all of those things, that’s going
to be a little sticky but I’m confident that it will go through) I doubt if we’ll
spend too much time on looking to 2006, because that’s really where we need to
be at this point. I want to talk just
briefly about that. One, Dr. Larkin, to
remind you that we do have an orientation session for the five new trustees on
June the 10th and it should start somewhere around 10:00 a.m. for
the two recently appointed and then, at lunch, we will bring in the other three
plus the two so we will have five. And
I’m sure Mr. McWhorter will be there as well.
So what I want to try to get to is setting the stage for the
future. By focusing on 2006 we are going
to be looking at every aspect of
Willie Larkin, Chair: Does anybody have any questions? If members anticipate speaking, if you will raise your hand I will get a microphone to you.
Person and Question Inaudible: Rik Blumenthal: Dr. Richardson, have you considered
using any of the resources available on this campus to conduct these polls
rather than spending so much money on outsider polls?
Ed Richardson, Interim President:
The answer is, Yes. I’ll answer
your question up front. The polling is
based—you have to do more than one poll.
It generally runs based on how many questions you have. We’ve generally found that in a poll you can
keep people in that 15 to 22 minute range if the questions are of
interest. After that, you can forget
it. It costs you about $32,000 to do a
poll like that. That’s what it cost us
last year. So I would say, it would take
two or three of us, so we would be looking at somewhere around $100,000. The only thing that I would ask, certainly, I
would have no objection to it being done inside but I think we have to
understand that it may be interpreted as home cooking or prejudice toward
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology:
Dr. Richardson, in addition to polling the
Ed Richardson, Interim President: The priorities will be set over the next six to eight months. That will be on top of the Board discussions. I would certainly be open—in other words, it’s just going to be on top of the table. There are going to be discussions, you are gong to have committee representation, faculty representation on every committee and we are on a tight time line. That’s part of the problem—me trying to compress a lot into a very short period of time. That’s probably not a great answer but that’s the best one I’ve got. We are going to do it over the next six to eight months—each committee that’s going to be looking at those priorities will have faculty representation—we are going to try to provide sufficient time for there to be discussion—not that we’ve discussed it and let’s vote on it right now. I’m telling you up front—I’ve said this for the last two times that I have been here—we are going to do that and I’ve also mentioned that, based on the way it looks like, that June the 11th wont be a heavy discussion on 2006—that will be finishing up 2005. That’s what we hope to do for the budget for this coming year. So I would say, when we come back in August, September, October, right in there we are going to hit it real hard. Realistically it could be that we may not finish it in December—it may have to be January but that’s as late as I can go. So somewhere in that range. I would suggest that once we get started, then maybe if I come back, you can offer me some suggestions on how we can better involve the faculty in that regard. But I’m going to be interacting with trustees a lot, I’m going to be trying to influence them, I’m going to try to reflect the priorities that I think—this is just politics. It may sound dirty. I just want to try to make it work. That’s what I would like to do and I’m not going to compromise the integrity of this university—I’m not going to compromise my integrity. I’ve been down that road—I haven’t done it but I’ve been pushed to do that in terms of, if I do something for you will you do this for me. We are not going there either. We can make it happen. The discussions we are going to have over the next six or seven or eight months will determine those priorities and those will be in public sessions. If there is someway you wish to increase that involvement and I can do it I certainly will be receptive to it.
Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy: Dr. Richardson, you have said on several occasions that you want to serve paradigmatically as a strong leader for this university, especially visa vie your relationship with the Board of Trustees. How do you insure that your successor will be able to carry on the same way unless certain structural changes are made?
Ed Richardson, Interim President: Well, having the policies in place was the first step. Number two – that pattern of behavior to which I’ve referred is critical. What I mean by pattern of behavior—it just becomes normal operating procedure. When the bell rings, the class starts. We know these are not the things you are supposed to do with the trustees or a dean, or a vice president or somebody else. So, you’ve just got to work through it. Pretty much our trustees are in place now for a while. We do have the potential for one other after the first of the year. So I think with the orientations that we will have before each session, with me having individual conversations with trustees when I believe we’ve sort of lost the focus on the line, I believe my successor then will have a good chance, assuming that he or she is willing to take the risk to keep it going. I think the momentum will be there and I believe that you will see that standard of behavior there in about six or seven months and I believe then that that person will have a chance. Could I give you absolute certainty? No, I can’t do that. If things collapse in some ways—that is major controversy developed, then I would have to redirect my energies to make sure that those are dealt with by the administration so that the trustees don’t have to do it. If that happened after I left, that person that replaced me would have to be willing to do the same thing. You are going to take the risk of not being a long-term president but I believe if that president that replaces me will assume that role, that person will be able to serve a very long time.
I got his name right today. I see Larry’s mad and didn’t come today.
Speaker and Question Inaudible: A senator asked Dr Richardson if the results of these audits would be made public.
Ed Richardson Interim President: That’s in the resolution that has to be published.. Now, what the form will look like is still to be defined.
Conner Bailey: Dr. Richardson, thank you for being with
us today. I think it is very important for you, as the University President, to
attend as many meetings of the University Senate as possible so that we have
opportunity to interact. My question
relates to the Audit
Committee that you told us about. Can you tell us who will serve on this committee?
Ed Richardson, Interim President: That’s good points. I would say, keep in mind one thing—the trustees—the first thing they will do in my view will elect a Pro-tem. Now, Mr. McWhorter is eligible for re-election or any of the other Board members. Once that’s done then the Pro-tem assigns a committee. The president doesn’t participate. That’s a voted trustee committee. Now, obviously, I have conversations on a regular basis and I will certainly convey—I mean that just makes good sense and I certainly support that and will try to influence—because this is the one that not too many people are going to get upset about the Finance Committee. But people are going to watch the Audit Committee in my view. They are going to watch to see how that is structured and the reporting and so forth. I just wanted to say that I agree and I will use my influence but that’s not a call that ultimately I make.
Well, I do appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I would say I cannot promise that I will be able to attend each meeting because there are some things yet that have to be done organizationally within the university to assure that pattern of behavior—but I will certainly be available on call if there is a need and certainly if there are any significant developments within the trustees, I certainly would be glad to come back and respond to questions or give you a report on what it’s going to be. The issue on the Audit Committee—by the first week in June that draft to that committee should be there. The one on SACS—we will check with SACS. Certainly it is my intention for everyone to be able to see it. There are no secrets there. We will check with SACS tomorrow and say, here it comes or if there is any reason why it cannot be released. No reason as far as we are concerned and it’s going to be a public information.
Round of applause.
Willie Larkin, Chair: I’m just going to make a couple of quick comments. First of all I would like to commend Dr. Richardson and the Board of Trustees for moving in the direction that we’ve called upon them to do over the years. We just hope that they continue to move in that direction so that it will make my job easier.
In terms of administrative evaluations you should have received those. I want to remind you that Friday, May the 14th is the deadline for getting those back in. I encourage you to do that. We have met with the Provost and he has indicated that he’s very much interested in the results of these evaluations and so, if we have a very low response then that’s going to end one kind of message but if we have a lot of people responding then that will say something else altogether. The other thing is that a week or so ago myself and other leadership members of the senate met with A&P and the staff council leadership group and we found that meeting to be very refreshing. We discovered that we have a lot of things in common as a relation to the university and we are going to continue to meet on a quarterly basis—we are going to keep updated on what each other is doing and how we can work together to make some things happen positively. The Rules Committee is in the process of putting the committees together. I’m sure many of you will be contacted in the very near future. If you are asked to serve, please give serious consideration to saying, yes. In terms of some of the information items, I want to call Dr. David Wilson up first to make a very professional presentation. It’s the Faculty Award for Excellence in Outreach and if he will come up then we will ask the recipient to come up front as well.
David Wilson, Associate Provost & VP for Outreach: Thank you very much, Dr. Larkin. I’m indeed excited today to recognize
Professor P. K. Raju as the first recipient of
Round of Applause.
P. K. Raju, Mechanical Engineering:
Thank you Dr. Wilson, Dr. Richardson, Dr. Larkin and members of the
senate and distinguished guests. I’m
very honored and humble to receive this award and be commended by the
university for my outreach efforts and integrational research in teaching into
outreach. More importantly, I think this
award belongs to the Auburn Engineering Technical Assistance Program
portion. We have faculty, we have
students who truly personify the meaning of outreach. Auburn Engineering Technical Assistance
Program is comprised to provide enterprises with a means and foster effective
actions for high quality, technical assistance, low cost training and advanced
technology through the land-grant mission of
Round of applause.
I have two of my sons here who
are
Round of applause.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Thank you very much. Congratulations. The other thing that wasn’t mentioned is that he got a nice sized check that went along with that but we didn’t want to tell you that amount because you start going out, forgetting about your research and your teaching and start doing all outreach.
I’m going to ask Dr. Virginia O’Leary to come up. She is the Chair of the Diversity Commission and she is going to talk a little bit about the feasibility of proposing a position of an ombudsperson. So if she will come up and share—we are not going to take any action on this today but the possibility looms that we will take action at our next meeting.
Where is our technician?
Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: Okay. I apologize. I have a terrible summer cold so I will do the best I can. The Commission on Multicultural Diversity is charged with providing a permanent and visible form for deliberating and developing policies and initiative matters of diversity tolerance and inclusiveness. That’s a direct quote from the charge and we have been in existence now, in our present form, just for a bit over a year and we have a number of initiatives that we wish to bring forward and this is the first of several and we thought that we would begin with an—quote: “an easy one.” And what we are suggesting is that the university—and the recommendation will go directly to Interim President, Richardson—that the university establish for a trial period of two years the position of ombudsperson and the purpose of an ombudsperson is to assist individuals in the university community to solve problems and conflict. This person is someone who is not empowered to do anything specific. This person acts—and, by the way, many universities have ombudsperson and there is a National Association of Ombudsperson that has Code of Ethics, etc. and thanks to one of our faculty committee members, Robin Jaffey, who previously served at another institution where this position worked extremely effectively we gathered a lot of data and looked at a number of university models. So the individual is an advocate for fairness for all members of the university community but is not himself or herself in a position to resolve a conflict but rather serves in a consultative capacity so that an ombudsperson would be accessible to anyone within the community who felt that he or she had an issue about which they had concerns in terms of fair treatment whether it involved academics, or admissions, or judicial concerns, or discrimination or cultural conflicts or student/faculty misunderstanding, etc. There are many possibilities here. And, you would go to an ombudsperson should you feel that you had been mistreated but were hesitant to take any formal action. And I think that’s a situation in which people often find themselves. Not simply in terms of faculty but also students and staff. Interestingly, while we were working on this recommendation our SACS visitors mentioned in their Exit Interview with the president and other university administrators their sense of need for establishing an office of ombudsperson on the campus. So, kind of an external agency also saw some value to having an advocate for fairness who was not directly involved in administering policy but simply acts as an individual who might lay out alternative scenarios, who might set up meetings—I have actually been at other institutions where the ombudsperson accompanied an individual to their first formal meeting and that individual felt much better about having just someone there to also hear what was said so that afterwards they could process the discussion that occurred and would then help them decide as to whether or not they wanted to continue and take next steps or not. An ombudsperson is empowered to answer questions—I used to teach in this room but there’s new equipment and I’m delighted to see that but I’m not familiar with it—evaluate the situation, explain policies and procedures—very often people will be told just look in the handbook and they look in the handbook and say, well I don’t know how that applies to me—be like develop options for addressing concerns, assist in finding a solution just in terms of laying out a variety of scenarios, indicate to somebody—well this is a path that you should follow if you want to take some kind of formal action—arrange meetings and then, as a result of his or her experience in the position, might actually recommend policy changes to the institution based on accumulative experience. Say, well over the past year a number of issues have come to me suggesting that there is a lack of clarity in this particular area perhaps the appropriate unit in the institution might want to look at clarifying these issues. Just one other thing and that is in terms of the time frame. What we are suggesting is that the position would initially be filled for a two-year term on a trial basis and at the end of that two-year period the position would be evaluated according to effectiveness, utility and customer satisfaction, which seems pretty critical. I think very often, at least in my experience at another institution, lots of things never went beyond the ombudsperson stage. It was just useful to have some impartial ear to hear out the individual, lay out their options and say well, here are the courses you could follow—here are some of the potential consequences attached to each of these courses and just working through it in that way was sufficient for the individual to feel heard and then they felt, at a personal level, that the issue had been resolved. As Dr. Larkin said, we are not asking for any kind of action today. This really ought to be regarded as a first reading and this is going to go forward, hopefully, as a recommendation from the Multicultural Diversity Commission and so it will go to the President as a recommendation and it is my hope that when it moves forward it will have the endorsement of the senate and simultaneously we are approaching a variety of other campus groups for their support, including the SGA, the Diversity Leadership Council of the HELA, the Graduate Student Organization, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the AFT Staff Council, etc. So we would just like a show of support for this two-year try and if you have any questions I would be happy to try to answer them.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Okay. Where are my microphones? You keep that one. Just stand close to me and speak. I don’t have a cold or anything.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: A quick question and then a comment. The question is, just for my own curiosity, is the person holding a position like this typically at the staff level or is this an administrative appointment for a faculty member—how does that work?
Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: Well, typically, it is someone coming in at a staff level because it is very important that the person doesn’t tie to any particular unit and, as we discussed it—I think there are 15 of us—we thought that this ought to be under the aegis of the President because that’s where the position would cut the most power in terms of where it might be lodged.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I think your plate will be full—this person’s plate will be full and it will be interesting. To put this on record—I know that our senate minutes are meticulous so I want to say this so it gets in the minutes. One obvious issue that this person would probably be able to help with is the demolition of Carolyn Draughon Village and the elimination of that housing option for not just our international students but, most specifically, the special needs of the international student families and I regret that just in casual conversation it seems to me that some of our university administrators don’t comprehend the significance of that problem.
Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: And, by the way, everything that an ombudsperson would do would be strictly confidential so the kinds of summary report that would be released would have more to do with x number of individuals inquired about a particular issue—nothing that could potentially lead to any identification of an individual and that kind of trust has to be established for such a position to work.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Are there any other questions?
Sadik Tuzun : The ombsudsman postion was also recommend that by the Diversity Leadership Council in their last meeting someone would be hired, maybe, above the vice president level who would directly report to the President to serve in that capacity so there are some others also making this recommendation.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Any other questions, quickly? Okay, this is a University Committee so she is not really here asking for us to approve. She is going to send this request or recommendation forward but what she is trying to do is get various constituents and groups on campus to look at the recommendation and make suggestions to do whatever they need to do to it before it goes forward. What’s the pleasure of the group? What I’m suggesting is that perhaps we take this to the Steering Committee and then see if we can get it on the agenda for our June 8th meeting and then, basically, we can endorse it hopefully if the body chooses to do that. Does that sound reasonable? We don’t see any opposition to that so we will do that, okay? If you will trust me and the Steering Committee we will do what’s right.
John Mouton is ill so he is not going to be here to report. We will have him to make a report at the June 8th meeting. The other thing I want to announce very quickly is that the administration asks the senate to recommend a faculty person to serve on the Higher Education Partnership Board of Directors. The Rules Committee put forth a number of names, we discussed it and it was unanimously decided that Dr. Renée Middleton would represent us. This person will serve in this capacity through November, I believe, so it’s a very short time span and they rotate members on this group. We also have B. D. Dowdell in Communications and Marketing that will be on that board as well. So, we’ve got those two persons representing us. The Rules Committee also made a decision to reappoint all of the Board of Trustee faculty representatives to the Board’s committee and next year we will start to rotate, I think about a third of those persons, so that we can get a stagger of individuals. Those persons have been contacted and they have agreed to serve in that capacity through this next year.
There are a couple or three action items. I’m going to ask Alyson Whyte to come up and do a report on the calendar for 2004-2005.
Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching: The Calendar Committee brought three calendar formats to the March senate meeting for feedback and those were a 75-day fall and spring calendar, as we have now, a shortened summer and 73-day proposed fall and spring semester. Three of the Calendar Committee members attended—Dr. Martina Miranda made notes—and our interpretation was that there would not be support for a shortened summer but that there would likely be support for a 73-day fall and spring and that format came from concern from programs where faculty are teaching 12 months per year. You will notice that what this proposed is a 72-day rather than a 73-day calendar and the reason for that is the feedback from the Steering Committee—that’s the inset quotation on the cover page—and what the Steering Committee pointed out to us is that with 73 days we have a hundred minutes difference between Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday classes but with 72 days that falls to 25 minutes. This can be an action item today or, if there is a need for detailed feedback, the sub-committee which worked on the format and I can return in June.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I
suggest that consideration of the
proposed calendar be postponed until the June meeting. This new version of the
calendar differs significantly from what we saw in your presentation--the new
version shortens the academic year by at least one full week of class, and that
is not acceptable. We have not had
sufficient time to discuss this new version of the calendar within our
departments. I think a calendar with more equitable distribution of weekdays
could be devised if the deleted days are restored, although this will not
accommodate the desire to standardize the intervals between academic terms.
A question was asked that was inaudible)
Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching: I understood that it went to the Steering Committee as an action item and then we’ve responded to the request that we look at that problem but there are people here who know far more than I do about which it should be.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I move to postpone consideration of the calendar until the June meeting.
Someone said second.
.
Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching: And I do want to make clear that there is a sub-committee that’s worked with that level of (?) and so they are willing to come with me for discussion
Willie Larkin, Chair: Okay, here’s what I need to do. She just gave a report and I need to get her as chair of the committee to make a motion to accept it and then we’ll entertain the motion to postpone it. So can I get you to say those words—I move……….
Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching: I move for acceptance of the proposal that you considered.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Since she represents the committee we don’t need a second.
- Those in favor of this report being accepted let it be known by saying, Aye.
- Opposed is ----
There were several calls from the floor for discussion.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Well, first of all, let me do this—discussion. Thank you so much and you are such a precious person. Is there any discussion?
Ann Presley, Consumer Affairs: There are some other problems. One of which is the fact that you have a number of commencements scheduled for Monday which makes it impossible for many people to see their children, spouses, mother and father graduate and, in addition, it’s self-defeating because you are shortening the time between semesters so you are shooting yourself in the foot. Also, a third problem is we are all taking spring break a week later than we would have on the quarter system, the same month, after mid-semester and that’s caused some problems and I think it bears consideration by the Calendar Committee. So, in addition to Dr. Brunner’s comment I would appreciate—and also my faculty who came to me with these and many other concerns would appreciate your consideration.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Okay. Let me see if there are others. Anybody—there are some people in the back that we will come back to.
John Rowe, School of Nursing: I have had a lot of feedback from our faculty that 72 days or cutting of any kind of time from our calendar would be very difficult for us—we have a lot of material that we are required to put in by the State Board of Nursing and to get the students qualified for the licensing exam. We don’t have much time we can cut from class time and we don’t want to cut from clinical because we have our students very well respected throughout the state and the region and this will make it much more difficult for us.
Renée Middleton, Counseling &
Counseling Psychology: With respect
to the commencement day on Mondays ,I think that we need to be
cognizant that there are some of our faculty who, because of their religious
beliefs, cannot participate in graduations on Saturday and that’s why there
was-traditionally in the recent history we have been alternating graduation so
they haven’t all been conducted on Saturdays, that there have been some
alternating Mondays . So, I
understand a comment someone made with respect to Monday graduations, but I would hope that the committee
would continue to alternate where there are some days or some semesters where
graduations are on Saturday but
also another day, either Sunday or Monday graduations where they are not all
held only on Saturday.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Other questions or comments? Cindy Bruner up front, Debra.
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: -- We have a proposal to postpone this proposal until the June 8th Senate Meeting
Willie Larkin, Chair: We’ve got a motion and a second that we postpone this report.
- All of those in favor of postponing it please indicate by saying, Aye.
- Opposes, Nay.
- The motion carries.
We’ll postpone this. And this is not personal.
(?) : Is this report available on the website?
Willie Larkin, Chair: It’s not yet.
(?) : Could it be made available so we could get better ………
Willie Larkin, Chair: Yes. The first one was on the website but the corrected version here ....
(?) : This one. So that way we could disseminate it and get more reaction.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Great point. Thank you. We’ll make sure that that gets up. Let’s move quickly.
Okay. The next item we’ve mislabeled it—we put (b.) under action items as action but it’s supposed to be information. The Rules Committee also voted to ask Dr. Wayne Brewer to serve as Chair of the Faculty Salaries Committee. We wanted you to know that he has agreed to serve in that capacity.
Charlie Hendrix is not going to be reporting today, so the next item of business that we need to get to is—is there any unfinished business that we haven’t covered?
Okay. Under new business we are going to ask Dr. Malcolm Crocker to come forward, who is Chair of the Faculty Grievance Committee, and he will give a report.
Malcolm Crocker, Mechanical Engineering: I would like to thank you for giving me the
opportunity to give a report on the Grievance Committee. I’ve served on this committee now as chair
for almost three years and I guess my three-year term is nearly up and so I
think it’s appropriate to talk about some of the strengths and weaknesses of
the committee. I think anyone bringing a
grievance would like to think they have a fair and expeditious hearing from the
Grievance Committee and I think, far as I can see, we’ve certained of a fair
procedure but it’s not really expeditious.
And so, if you will bear with me, I would like to give you a brief
report on the committee—just review its activities for the last three years and
talk about the present procedure and compare the procedure at Auburn with some
other Grievance Committee procedures at other universities and then come up
with a few suggestions for the future.
How we might improve the committee activity. At presently the committee is comprised of 15
elected members, faculty members, including the chair, and one is elected from
each college on the campus. Secondly, if
it’s decided that—shall we call it a grievant, a person bringing a grievance to
the committee—if they have a case that should be considered further then a
Grievance Hearing Committee is appointed.
Originally, there were seven members—I’ll talk more about that in a
moment—and then three are eventually selected to actually hear the grievance. The grievant, if that’s what we want to call
the person, is expected to exhaust all remedies, first of all, through normal
channels and if that is not successful then the grievant sends a written
complaint to the Grievance Committee Chair.
There is a fair amount of activity then—fifteen copies have to be made
of, often, a voluminous report and provided to the fifteen committee members of
the full Grievance Committee. And this is the point I would like to bring to
attention—the rules say that a quorum is ten members out of the fifteen. Each of the colleges provides one member and
some of the colleges are quite small. I
believe the
Willie Larkin, Chair: Does anyone have any questions of Malcolm? Okay. This is new business so we can’t act on it today. What I am contemplating is referring this to the Faculty Handbook Review Committee so that they can look at it and then bring it back to the senate. And, I don’t know—is there any kind of time frame you are looking at for us to act on this?
Malcolm Crocker: As quickly as possible (paraphrase).
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Really, whatever we do with the proposals involves reconstituting the structure of the Grievance Committee or the Hearing Committees, which I think are outlined in the handbook. We might want to take care of that as soon as we can this summer because that will help the Rules Committee in constituting those Committees for the next academic year.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Point well taken.
(Question from the audience inaudible)
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Oh, no no—we can’t deal with it today. But I think at some point we should. Looking at the time line, we might want to look at something that would be useful for this next academic year.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Okay. Yes, Patricia.
Patricia Duffy, Secretary-Elect: I’m also a member of the Grievance Committee. Rules does not oversee this particular committee. Steering oversees this committee and the members are elected so Rules would not need to be making any appointments to this committee.
Willie Larkin, Chair: Thank you all. First of all I want to thank everyone who participated in the program today, particularly the chairs of those various committees because it does take an awful lot of work I apologize if you were inconvenienced with the lateness of the notice about moving to this building but we only got that information on Friday and so we scuffled around and tried to find a location and it was very difficult and so we wind up here.
This meeting stands adjourned until called.
Adjournment: Chair, Willie
Larkin, adjourned the meeting at approximately
Respectively submitted by:
Debra Cobia
Secretary
Digital transcription: jkh