Auburn University Senate Meeting

June 8, 2004

Minutes

 

 

Members Absent:  John Mouton, Immediate Past-chair;  Don Large, VP for Business/Finance;  David Wilson, Associate Provost & VP for Outreach;  Lee Evans, Dean/School of Pharmacy;  Richard Brinker, Dean/School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences;  Fran Kochan Interim Dean/College of Education;  John Jensen, Interim Dean/College of Agriculture;  Tom Hanley, Provost;  Sheri Downer, Interim Dean of Libraries;  Bradford Boney, SGA President;  John Varner, Staff Council Chair;  William Gale, Steering Committee;  Chris Rodger, Steering Committee;  Judy Sheppard, Steering Committee;  Mario Lightfoote, ACES;  Eleanor Josephson, Anatomy, Physiology & Pharmacology;  Raymond Hamilton, Aviation Management & Logistics;  Ted Tyson, Biosystems Engineering;  Scott Kramer, Building Sciences;  James Guin, Chemical Engineering;  Sridhar Krishnamurti, Communication Disorders;  Alvin Sek See Lim, Computer Science & Software Engineering;  Gary Martin, Curriculum & Teaching;  Darrel Hankerson, Discrete & Statistical Science;  Dennis DeVries, Fisheries & Allied Aquaculture;  Kathryn Flynn, Forestry & Wildlife Science;  Jim Saunders, Geology & Geography;  Ruth Crocker, History;  Ken Tilt, Horticulture;  Richard Good, Music;  Jack DeRuiter, Pharmacal Sciences;  Marllin Simon, Physics;  Christa Slaton, Political Science;  Robert Norton, Poultry Science;  Thomas W. White, ROTC Air Force;  LTC John Salvetti, ROTC Army;  Paul Starr, Socio/Anthro/Social Work;  Howard Thomas, Textile Engineering;  Saralyn Smith-Carr, Veterinary Clinical Sciences

 

Members Absent  (Substitute):  Melissa Brooks, GSC President (Mike Leslie);  Martha Taylor, A&P Assembly Chair (Kathryn Harmon);  Diane Hite, Agricultural Economics & Rural Sociology (Valentina Hartarska);  David Bransby, Agronomy & Soils (Charles Mitchell);  Joe Cherry, Biological Sciences (Bob Lacy);  Larry Crowley, Civil Engineering (Brian Bowman);  Charles Gross, Electrical & Computer Engineering (Scotte Hodel);  Tin-Man Lau, Industrial Design (Chris Arnold);  Hugh Guffey, Marketing (Herb Rotfeld);  Paul Schmidt, Mathematics (Georg Hetzer);  Joe Sumners, Outreach (Jeremy Arthur);      

 

Call to Order:  The meeting was called to order at 3:00 p.m. by the Chair, Willie Larkin.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  May I have your attention please?  With all of the construction going on I am not sure if a lot more people are going to come.  I was real proud of a student as we were coming across in the little cattle pen out there.  Several students were complaining and one student said, “It’s only a temporary inconvenience for something greater later on.”  I thought I would relay that to you all because even a student has a very positive outlook on what’s transpiring here at the University. 

 

I would like to call this meeting to order.  I would like to entertain a motion if you would to approve the minutes of the April 6th meeting.

-                     Yes—there is a motion by Jim Gravois.

-                     Do we have a second?

-                     Chair-Elect, Conner Bailey, seconds.

-                     Those persons in favor of this motion to approve the minutes of 4/6/04 please indicate it by saying, “Aye.”

-                     Opposes, “Nay.”

-                     The minutes are approved.

 

I don’t see the President right now.  Is there a representative here from the President’s office?  Hopefully, he will show up in a few minutes.  Let me proceed with several—I understand that he will not be here and he said, “Don’t take it personal, Willie.”

 

I want to make a couple of comments.  We are in the process of hiring a senate support staff person.  Debra and Patricia have interviewed a number of candidates—they have several good-looking candidates and, hopefully, an offer will be tendered before long.  So we will have a new person on board and we will introduce you to that individual at that particular time. 

 

I want to make a comment about meeting attendance.  I know that we are in the midst of summer and so our schedules have changed a bit but I want to encourage you if you are not going to be able to make a senate meeting that you contact your substitute and encourage that person to attend.

 

Tomorrow I am going to do an orientation with new board members of the Board of Trustees and I think this will be a great opportunity for me to share with them or relay to them the kind of work that the faculty does here at the University and how faculty operates in the various departments.  So I’ve got about a 15-minute spiel that I’m going to present to them representing the faculty.

 

I’m also going to be traveling to Griffin, Georgia later on this month to speak to the McIntosh Alumni Club and they wanted a faculty representative and they requested that I come.  I will be going to Cullman later on in the month as well to speak to that Alumni Club up there. 

 

I want to indicate to you that during the July meeting—and all of this has not been worked out yet but I do want to indicate that I will establish a five to seven person Ad Hoc Committee to study, develop and report to the senate recommendations for a comprehensive presidential search for next year.  After appropriate discussion, once they report back to the senate, the senate leadership will present a set of recommendations to the AU Board of Trustees, Interim President Richardson to be included, in a final search process.  If any of you have recommendations for individuals that you would like to see considered to serve on this committee, I would like for you to contact anyone on the senate leadership team as well as the Rules Committee.  The reason I want to initiate this committee in July is that we are not going to be meeting in August.  I want to name the committee in July, charge the committee thereafter through August and then, hopefully, let that committee start working in September and have at least four or five months of work so that they can come up with some really solid recommendations that the Board of Trustees hopefully will consider as we go forward in selecting a permanent president in the next year and a half or two.

 

A couple of other things and then we will move forward.

 

In terms of information items, I want to share with you that there is a change in the senate election to membership on the Faculty Dismissal Hearing and the Faculty Dismissal Inquiry Committees.  In an attempt to create greater consistency and continuity the senate leadership, the AU leadership and the administration have agreed to bring these two committees in line with the AAUP guidelines.  Therefore, members of these committees will be elected from the various colleges and schools plus the library from this point forward. 

 

At this time I would like to invite one of my favorite people, Dr. Christine Curtis, who is Special Assistant to the President.  She is going to give an update on some of the changes in University committees. 

 

Christine Curtis, Special Assistant to the President:  Good afternoon.  When Debra asked me to make this presentation, I tried to figure out a way to make it very interesting and I have failed.  (Laughter)  This is not interesting in and of itself.  The actual work that we do as faculty, as part of these university committees, is interesting and is basically the essence of shared governance.  I don’t know about you but I served on a number of them and as I think back over the years we do have an impact—both on the senate committees and the university committees.  I happened to be on the first committee that looked at faculty salaries and they were not even on a computer—we put them on a computer.  And so we’ve made an impact because that person now sits at the University Budget Advisory Committee.

 

So what I want to talk to you about today—first is about the process and then about the changes.  Now, these changes probably are not going to be universally interesting but there will be one or two of you for each committee that it’s going to have an impact.  So I wanted to go through that with you and also Debra has agreed to take this power point and put it as part of these minutes so that you can access it so if you have particular questions and want to look it up you can.  I also have a notebook here that describes four things:  What’s on the University website, what’s in the Faculty Handbook, what we have as committees in terms of people this year and what’s proposed for next year.  As you can imagine, every one of those columns is different.  So we are in an attempt to bring the web and the Faculty Handbook up to date from fall of 2004 and then each subsequent year we will make every attempt to keep it up to date.

 

I want to refer you to the Faculty Handbook.  This is Section Two of Chapter Two, Section Four—faculty participation in senate and university committees.  These are direct quotes.  I chose the ones that are most applicable to this particular process.  As you can see, the university committees are advisory to the president and, as such, the president is in charge of those committees.  Now, the president—as it shows in the Faculty Handbook—has the right to designate a university official to be in charge of a committee and presidents in the past have done that and President Richardson has chosen to continue that practice.  So the president designates—like Dr. Williams, the Vice President for Student Affairs, in charge of the committees that deal with student affairs; Dr. Moriarty as Vice President for Research for those committees involved in research, etc.

 

Now, how do we get membership?  I’ll give you a full-blown description in just a few minutes but, basically, for the faculty involved the Rules Committee provides a list of members, of nominees, one more than is needed if there are—I believe it’s three or fewer that are needed—and two more if there are more members than three that are needed for a particular committee.  Now, in case the President—once he looks at this list of nominees—is not able to staff the committee from the nominees he can go back to the Rules Committee and ask the Rules Committee for additional names or he can make suggestions.  So that is the process the Rules Committee is undergoing this summer.  Debra got it started early and, hopefully, we will be ready before or at the very beginning of fall semester to come out with the names of those people who are going to be serving on the university committees and the senate will do the same for the senate committees.  What was the process where we started to try to evaluate the university committees?  When Dr. Heilman became Sr. Advisor to the President, to President Walker, he sat down and started working with the university committees.  They had not had much attention for a while and so it took a fair amount of time and effort to just even figure out what committees were and which ones were active, etc.  This past year he invited in all the chairs of the university committees to lunch and a discussion—and there were several different meetings—and asked them for their input.  Some committee chairs had none; others had voluminous input—in fact involved the committees in the input.  That input was documented and when I came into the President’s office in February I was given the university committees to keep on working on it and I decided that I should then take the input from the chairs and talk to the university officers.  Each of them went over every committee with me and looked at it—sometimes went back and discussed it with their staff and came back with recommendations.  Most of the time the input of a chair was fully followed.  Occasionally, there was some slight modification.

 

Let me tell you what the changes are.  Over the last several years there have been several committees that have been disbanded, basically because of either another committee taking its place or no longer having a need for the committee and there is no need to waste our time—so these are the committees.  The Campus Planning Committee will be disbanded as of the end of this summer and a new committee will be put in its place and I’ll describe that in more detail later.  In fact, I just came from a Campus Planning Committee so it’s still working this summer.  The Orientation Committee I believe was disbanded probably about the time when Camp War Eagle really took hold.  Space Allocations Committee has been dormant for a very long time.  Student Financial Aid Committee and the Student Scholarship Committee is now combined into the University Scholarship Committee and the University Instrumentation Committee served its purpose and was disbanded—probably a decade or so ago.  So you can see that the Faculty Handbook has not been updated for a while.  At this point, the committees that are still waiting input are the Multicultural Diversity Commission—I’ve asked for input from the Multicultural Diversity Commission, from the Diversity Leadership Counsel and from any of you who would like to give me input which I will pass on, of course, to the President as to what you think the future of a Diversity Committee should be on our campus.  The other committee that we are awaiting some input is Patents and Inventions.  I received some yesterday but we are still looking at the charge.  Now on many of these university committees there are faculty, there is an administrative professional, staff and students.  In almost all the committees there are continuing/ex-officio members.  In this particular case there are just people who have to stay on a committee year after year after year.  By virtue of their position, they are critical to the workings of that committee.  They can vote. 

 

For faculty, typically it’s a three-year staggered term—occasionally it’s a two-year—and the Senate Rules Committee provides the nomination, as I described a few minutes ago.  The administrative professionals are typically continuing members but there are a few that just made administrative professionals and those individuals are nominated by the A&P Assembly.  Staff Counsel also has a few members on some of the university committees and they are nominated by the Staff Counsel.  The graduate students are nominated by the Graduate Student Counsel and the undergraduates are nominated by the Student Government Association, the SGA.  The students are typically a one-year term.  Now often the SGA President, the GSC—Graduate Student Counsel—president, the Staff Counsel Chair, the A&P Assembly Chair are named as continuing members on committees so whoever happens to be in office that year serves and it effectively becomes a one-year term because they rotate through their presidency of those organizations once a year. 

 

Some of these committees are governance committees.  Notably, the Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research, the IACAY—Institutional Animal Care and Youth Committee—are governance committees and they have their own special reporting department.  For instance, IACAY has to report to the Federal Government and it has to be the faculty chair that reports.  It cannot be anyone in an administrative position.  So some of these committees have very specific things.  A number of the student committees also have Tiger Cub—I guess is basically part of the by-laws of the SGA that govern some of those committees and they have to report through them.  So there are specific reporting requirements for specific committees.  Campus Planning sends minutes directly to the President after every meeting.  Traffic and Parking does the same and so on and so forth.  So every committee has its own special rules.  Reports are required as specified.  A new thing that we are going to institute, following the lead of the senate, is to require a report from every committee at least once a year; so, if there is no specific reporting requirement, we are going to ask for one at the end of the spring semester to be turned in to the President’s office.  That will be at their Chair’s responsibility to make sure that that happens and, of course, we will remind.

 

Getting down to the nuts and bolts—what I’m assigned to do was to go over those committees, only those committees that have changes—and that’s most of them—and then I’m going to narrow it down slightly more to those committees that faculty particularly have an interest in.  You will see several committees on each slide usually and some I just won’t even mention and those are ones where there are—like Admissions Appeals—they are administrative professionals—people who are in administrative positions that will be involved in that committee.  Now on some of these you will say, “But, it’s no different than it is right now because they are already on the committee.”  And that’s true but they are not in the Faculty Handbook.  What we are trying to do is update the Faculty Handbook so that, if you went to the Faculty Handbook come fall you’ll know exactly what it is.

 

For Academic Honesty, what we are adding is four additional faculty members so that there will be enough people to deal with the Academic Honesty cases—so that the students don’t wait too long—so that there is a critical mass of faculty and it makes a total of eight with three alternates for Academic Honesty.  So that is a substantial change—it’s a substantial commitment by the faculty.  That was at the request of the former Interim Provost, Pritchett, who ran that aspect of it for a long time.

 

On the next slide, in the Advisory Committee for a Drug-Free Campus and Work Place, the main change there is that we are changing the responsible officer.  It’s going to move from the Vice President for Research to the Vice President for Student Affairs and the reason for that is that Student Affairs has a very active program in dealing with alcohol issues and drug issues and they were willing to take it and it seems like a place where it will have a lot more attention.  And you will also see that there has been a recommendation by the current committee that we include a person from the City of Auburn Police Department on that committee. So that’s an outside person coming in.

 

The next one is one that Willie alluded to—the Faculty Dismissal and the Faculty Dismissal Inquiry Committee.  Now the Inquiry Committee comes first.  Where there has been an issue, it goes to the President, the President asks the Faculty Dismissal Inquiry Committee to review it.  They go through their investigation and then they make a recommendation to the President as to whether or not the Faculty Dismissal Hearing Committee should be called.  Then the Faculty Hearing Committee hears the issue and makes a recommendation to the President as to whether the faculty member should be dismissed or not.  As Willie said, the AAUP recommends that the Dismissal Hearing Committee be elected.  We chose to have both elected and what we are asking is that each college and school and the library elect two people—one for the Faculty Dismissal Hearing Committee and one for the Faculty Dismissal Inquiry Committee.  Then we are asking the Rules Committee to choose nine people from their Faculty Dismissal Hearing Committee and have, of course, one from each college and school and library.  And then when we come to the Faculty Inquiry Committee we ask that the rest of the colleges and schools or library are included on that committee and then there will be two additional who are duplicate—there is a total of fifteen people on the two committees—nine on the Hearing Committee and six on the Inquiry Committee.  What that does is that it gives everyone a chance for representation.  So if there is some, as we all claim, there’s something special about our discipline—there’s something special that people need to know in this process—that can be brought forward.  So every college and school will be represented at least once on these two committees and two colleges, schools,  library will be represented twice.  They will have three-year staggered terms so, as we do at the first election, we will draw five out of the hat—who gets to have a one-year term, who gets two and who gets three.  Are there any questions on that—on how we plan to proceed?  So it will be your responsibility, the Rules Committee and you senators, to set up the process for the election and to encourage your colleagues to vote so that you can get true representation.  These inquiries do happen.  There is one ongoing right now so we need to make sure that we have a good elected body that will be fair to all.

 

The next one—the Concessions Board deals with giving out money—receives proposals and gives out money to be placed for student-oriented or faculty-oriented projects.  Foy Union Board and Fraternities and Sororities are student-based committees but we do have faculty on there but there are no changes in terms of the faculty.

 

The Graduation Committee—the Chair strongly recommended that the membership be rotated among the colleges and schools so that all the colleges and schools have a voice in a reasonable period of time.

 

The Inter-collegiate Athletic Committee is changing and in that case there are two additional faculty members being requested.  Marcia Boosinger, the Chair of that committee, felt very strongly that she needed additional membership.  She told me there are jobs to be assigned to these people and so she asked for two additional faculty members.  She also requested that their terms be limited to three-year terms rather than four-year terms for several reasons.  First, that gives more people an opportunity to serve and there are some advantages to serving on that committee but, secondly, it also gives the faculty an opportunity to understand what some of the issues are in athletics and even though that is not in our purview it is part of our campus and so it is important that we do understand their issues.

 

The Institutional Review Board for use of Human Subjects in Research is a very hard-working committee.  I know many of you are involved in human research and you have to submit proposals.  The chair of that committee recommended very strongly that there be a new committees charge and the old charge was very simple, “The Board shall review all research activities involving human subjects for compliance with federal guidelines and shall approve or reject proposals accordingly.”  The rationale that the chair gave was the following:  The new description provides a more comprehensive overview of IRB authority as outlined in 45CFR46.108, which is the federal regulation.  The new description includes the primary purpose of the IRB, “To protect the rights and welfare of a human research participant” and states that this committee considers ethical principles along with federal guidelines in the review of human subject research protocol.  So that will be the new charge that will be going into the Faculty Handbook which is listed on the screen and you can see that it states: “For compliance with federal guidelines and ethical research principles.”  And it goes on to state that the IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications and in presences to secure approval and disapprove research proposals as it abstains or terminates research that is not conducted in accordance with the IRB’s requirements or that has been associated with unexpected serious harm to subjects.”

 

Now, in order to institute the de-charge, the chair of the committee has asked—and the committee, the committee has worked on this as well—for two additional faculty members, making eleven faculty in total.  This is a very important committee and it’s important to have a broad representation in those areas where human subject’s research is conducted.  There has been a difficulty in the past in getting community representatives—there are proposals to read, there are serious questions to consider and it takes a substantial amount of time.  The community representatives were there for six-year terms and it has been recommended that the terms be lowered to three-year terms and that there only be one required community member rather than two.  The federal guidelines call for one.  They also asked to have two community alternates so that the community members, if they can’t make it, will have backup for someone to come to the committee.  There are some faculty who are very interested in the human subjects’ research and want to serve a second three-year term on the committee and we are putting into the Faculty Handbook—something that has actually been in practice on occasion—that faculty members may secede themselves if they request it and also if the OVPR approves.  The reason why that last statement is in there is, on all committees, a few times people don’t do what they need to be doing for a committee and, if that is the case—and a person requests it—then, of course the Vice President for Research Office needs very active members on this committee, that’s why that approval is there.

 

In the next two:  the first one is International Students—you can see the changes there—some of them are just changes in name like the Dean of Students is new and you will note that he is on a number of these.  If it were just a title change, I didn’t include it.  There were a number of title changes over ten-year’s period here.

 

Persons with Disabilities—it was recommended that the students at least receive recommendations from the Office of Students with Disabilities and to think about including them on the committee.

 

And the next one is Patents and Inventions.  This committee had gotten kind of into a routine of always having continuing membership.  So, after some serious discussion with the Vice President for Research and the Director of Technology Transfer, they determined that it would be far better to get a lot more input.  What they are asking for is nine faculty members in total—they have six who will stay on—three rotating off in 2005, three rotating off in 2006—and they are asking for three new faculty members who will then rotate off in 2007 and we will constantly have three new faculty members.  The charge for this committee is still being developed and the current chair is working very closely with the Director of Technology Transfer.  The only continuing member on it at this point will be the Director of Technology Transfer.

 

Radiological Safety has changed slightly in that we no longer give the radiation safety short course so we no longer require it but you will require being qualified with training and experience.  And that, of course, will be determined by the committee—whether a person qualifies or needs additional training.

 

On the last one—the Student Communications Board—with a change in the department, what will be is the Head or Chair of Communications and Journalism will be on the committee and a faculty member from Journalism and a faculty member from Communications.  So there will be a strong representation from the faculty on the Student Communications Board.

 

The last big change is the Space Planning and Management Committee.  A number of the new board members, in particular, have been asking questions—which Dr. Richardson also asked the first day he walked in, is—“What is our space plan?  We have a comprehensive master plan—we have an image and character of Auburn University—but what plans do we have?  How do we determine priorities?  How do we know who gets new space, who obtains the vacated space, etc?  And we, at this point, did not have instituted a plan for space or a management system for space.  If you look at the university, we have three primary aspects:  We have the people (the faculty, the students, and the staff); we have the space (the buildings, the facilities and the grounds) and the fiscal assets, particularly the endowment.  Those are our three assets.  So we manage our endowment and our fiscal assets; the faculty, through shared governance, manages or governs itself, along with the administration, but where do we have a true space management plan?  So the President has asked that we develop a University Committee to take the place of the Campus Planning Committee that will be more far-ranging than Campus Planning in the sense that if the Space Planning and Management Committee will provide support and advice on space planning, priorities management and allocation to the President.  So as some of these spaces and buildings come open, as people move into the newly constructed facility, this committee will be working to provide recommendations to the President on what entity should be inhabiting those buildings—or even whether those buildings should still stand.  In some cases, perhaps they should not—in other cases, they are in good shape.  So that’s what this committee is to do.  Now the idea of the composition of the committee is to have three-year terms—set it up very much like the University Budget Advisory Committee—where there will be seven faculty for the colleges, schools and library—three department heads and chairs and three deans—each college, school and library will be represented once.  There will be one vice president, which would also be rotating, and then we have the list of continuing ex-officio members and you will note that these are positions that represent space on our campus.  The President’s office, at least at Auburn, is really the only office that doesn’t have a vested interest in any space at this point.  Now that may change over time, but that’s where it is.  So the President’s office has the chairship of this committee.  Then we have the Vice President for Research, Assistant Vice President for Facilities, Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs—Mundy just got a new job—Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management, Associate Director of the Experiment Station, Assistant Vice President for Auxiliary Services, Athletic Director—if there is a need—and two students, undergraduate and graduate.  Then there will be resource people who will be at the beck and call of the committee and they will be non-voting members.  If anyone sees in any of this someone I’ve left out and a group that needs to be included, if you would let me know I would appreciate it.  I tried to find all those special needs as well as the things that the committee would need to know:  Risk Management and Safety, University Architect, University Planning, Planning and Analysis—the source of all data—Telecommunications, Operations and Maintenance, Students with Disabilities and the representative from ADA.  These people will serve as resource people, they will serve as experts and, of course, we can always go to the faculty who are expert in the field as well should we need additional expertise.  It will be quite a task and remember it’s one of our three primary assets so being on the committee will be quite a responsibility for those who are involved.

 

We have two more changes:  One, the Student Health—there is a new charge that the committee asks be included and the two key things are to serve in an advisory capacity to AU Medical Clinic and to work with the Medical Clinic and Lifetime Wellness to provide comprehensive assistance to specific Health & Wellness Programs, improving all our health and wellness.

 

The next one includes Traffic and Parking where we have a new Director of Parking and Transit and he would be included on that committee.

 

And the last one that I think is of concern would be the University Budget Advisory Committee.  That particular committee at one time, as you remember, had seven faculty, three deans, three department heads and chairs and, at one time, had one vice president that rotated.  And they rotate every two years.  Somewhere along the line the vice president got left out so Dr. Large asked that the vice president be put back in a rotating arena.  Now, this year, things got all out of whack so I asked Debra, “Let’s just start afresh.”  I think we had one department head chair on the committee.  We had retirements mid-year and so we just really didn’t—we don’t have any base to start from so it started afresh and we just set it up for specific deans, colleges that have three deans, three department heads of specific colleges and the other colleges, schools and the library would have the faculty and then we’ll start the process from here.  We may have to make an adjustment sometimes because we have a couple of schools where we have deans and faculty and no department head, so you can see how it gets out of whack.  We are starting afresh and the Budget Advisory Committee will start next January and provide advice to the President on all fiscal matters.

 

That’s the end of what I have to tell you today.  I wondered if you have any questions.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  If you do have questions, I’m going to ask that you go to the microphone.  Some of the conversation was inaudible the last time and Debra has chastised me not to let anyone speak unless they were at the microphone.

 

One thing about Dr. Curtis, you can always be assured that she will do a really great job and we appreciate that.  It was very timely. 

 

Yes, Renée.

 

Renée Middleton, Counseling & Counseling Psychology:  Dr. Larkin, you didn’t give us an opportunity to ask the chair questions so at what point in the agenda will we be able to do that?  My question has to do, I think, with Planning & Analysis.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Okay, you can ask your question now.

 

Renée Middleton, Counseling & Counseling Psychology:  Okay.  I really wanted to direct it to the President but neither he nor the Provost is here. I applaud our campus for the construction that we are engaging in but I think it’s important that construction be done with planning and it just seems to me that—this is not my expertise but I don’t think we did a very good job of that.  It’s very difficult to get around on campus. Particularly those of us that live and work in Haley Center and there are times where—I’m trying to wonder what would happen if there were a fire in Haley or we had to get of campus quickly because many times there’s only one way in and one way out of this campus.  I don’t know if it’s too late to address it now and I don’t know if Christine will take this as a complement or not, Dr. Curtis, but when the chaos appeared I said to myself there’s no way Christine Curtis was coordinating this.  (Laughter)  I mean, that’s the truth.  There’s no way—I could not believe that she had that responsibility and after some investigating, because I wanted to see if I was right, indeed I was correct.  Now I’m not saying the job needs to be given back to her but I am saying that there has to be something that is done to deal with this chaotic process.  And the construction work is good—the construction is good but there needs to be some planning and the pits—that whole parking lot there—it just seems crazy that we would conduct construction cutting off a whole parking lot from access and we are telling faculty that on your sixth ticket you are going to get a boot put on your car but we have no means for us to park as faculty.  I mean, we are now driving around campus for 20, 25, 30 minutes just to find an illegal parking place if you haven’t gotten six tickets yet where you’re not worried about your car getting booted.  I guess my question is:  Is there any way that somebody could be given the task to kind of look at the construction, as it exists now, and whatever construction there is in the future to alleviate the problem that we have today?

(Applause)

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Is there anyone here from the administration that would like to respond to that statement.  If not, I’m going to let the minutes reflect her statement and I will ask Dr. Richardson to review that and respond if he so wishes.  I think your point is well taken, though.

 

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology:  There is not very much I can add to what the previous speaker said except that I don’t work on main campus so I had no idea what was happening around Haley Center and Foy Union.  When I drove over here I had the bright idea that I would park in that big Haley Center parking lot while it still exists and I discovered that you can’t get there from here.  I can’t tell you the number of dead-end, suspicious looking alleys I took.  I felt like a cow in a stockyard.  It was clear that somebody had intended that we take a certain route but they weren’t telling us what we would end up with when we got to the end.  I would appreciate it if someone would provide some visual guidance as to routes that we can take if we’re following common paths—like going from Haley Center to Foy Union or if we need to get to the mail room or to this building for instance.  I walked into a classroom in a building right next door to here—came in a doorway and found there was no way out.  The fire doors were locked so the doors that I should have been able to use to get back into the center of that building and, hopefully, find my way here—the doors were locked.  Now apparently they are not using that classroom any more because, heaven forbid that there would be students in there and the fire doors would be locked.  What’s the name of the building?  It’s right between here and Haley Center.  Thatch—no, Tichenor.  It’s the one right on the corner, right across the street from the Pharmacy building.  There’s a classroom in there.  There are two doors accessible from outside but the internal doors are locked from the inside of that room.  Now I don’t know what you can do about that—it’s not really an issue—but I would like some signage.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Thank you.  Your questions of concern will be recorded.

 

Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy:  I agree with both Renée and our last speaker, Cindy, and would like to add this.  I think Dr. Richardson should try to come to Haley Center any morning of the week between 7:45 and 8:15 and see how long, when he gets on campus, 0it takes him to get to Haley Center and to see the extent of the problem.  The other thing is the situation is exacerbated by the fact that they have Camp War Eagle so we have hundreds of parents coming here to Haley Center with their cars, looking also for parking space, taking our parking space so we have no place to go and it’s really a pitiful situation.  I’m wondering if Camp War Eagle could move maybe to Memorial Coliseum or some other place on campus—I don’t know why they don’t do that but it’s really a pain in the butt.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Dr. Curtis.

 

Christine Curtis, Special Assistant to the President:  Last year at Camp War Eagle—this is my understanding and what I’ve been told today, is that—they took the luggage of the students out to Max Morris or Biggio—I don’t remember which—parking lot and this year, for whatever reason, Camp War Eagle decided to have the parents come into Haley and pick up the students from the Quad.  Well the first time it happened it was a mess—well the Director of Transit and Parking objected loudly—let’s put it that way—but wasn’t heard.  But today it was such a problem, as all of you have described, that they did finally get the attention of Camp War Eagle and things will be changed by next week.  Because 350 extra cars in that very short period of time just causes a bottleneck when all of the other construction is ongoing.  Hopefully, the—I understand the pain of the roads being torn up but this is the only time that infrastructure can be put in.  We cannot put it in when there are 23,000 students on campus.  But I do think that your suggestion of a visual map is an excellent one and I’ll—John aren’t you here?  John Hachtel?  Okay, we can work on that and get that information out.  I think that’s excellent and we should have thought of it ourselves.  We didn’t.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  That’s why you’ve got these great faculty members here to help you.  Thank you.  I appreciate it.  Any other questions—yes Virginia.

 

Virginia O’Leary, Psychology:  Well, while we are on a roll, I would like to ask if there might be an appropriate body or individual to take a look at the lack of coordination of the technical equipment on campus.  I don’t know if any of the rest of you have encountered the difficulties that a number of us have had teaching in Haley Center just in the last few weeks.  But, I guess those of us who have had to move from Thatch, and had gotten comfortable because we controlled a large classroom in Thatch so we knew how to use the equipment and we knew how to troubleshoot that equipment, have suddenly been confronted with multiple rooms with multiple technical settings on multiple different configurations of technical equipment and from my cursory investigations there seems to be no over-arching supervision of this so that different segments of the institution have control of different rooms and faculty members, of course, are assigned to teach in those rooms and it can take several weeks to even figure out who to go to to request assistance with certain kinds of problems of malfunctioning equipment or settings that are different and therefore can’t accommodate one’s power point, etc.  So, it’s just a plea actually for somebody to take a look at this so that the right-left hands and feet can be coordinated in unison.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Thank you.  We’ll communicate that to the appropriate persons.  Alyson, if you’ll come down quickly before somebody else succeeds you—Alyson Whyte is the chair of the Calendar Committee and so this has been lingering for a while and we asked her to come back and hopefully make a final pitch to you to get this approved.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  Thank you Dr. Larkin.  It’s not a final pitch but it is brief.  Based on discussions at the March 9th and May 11th senate meetings there was of the fall, 2005 through summer, 2007 University calendar to have a 75-day fall and spring semester or 72-day.  The Calendar Committee voted May the 17th to present both a 75-day and a 72-day fall and spring semester calendar for the senate to discuss and take action upon.  To review the information I presented in March and May, the committee discussed this past year that the original foundation for the university 75-day calendar was a quarter to semester transition and hence were at 75 days.  Also at many of our partner institutions the semester is about 72 days.  Now, at Auburn we have lived for about five years with the quarter to semester transition—the committee gathered information over various departments and then voted to consult the senate in March for feedback on the impact of adjusting the fall and spring semesters from 75 to 73 days before our planned proposal of the calendar to the senate.  One senator said at the March senate meeting, she had investigated several other universities in our conference and found the average was 72 to 73 days—that is, 75 days was not the norm.  That senator suggested it may be time to revisit the issue that 75 compared to a 72 or 73-day fall and spring semester.  Since that March meeting various concerns have been raised by programs and departments—including,  engineering, nursing and veterinary medicine—in support of a 75-day term.  Individuals have further communicated during senate meetings and directly to Calendar Committee members regarding the conditioning of spring break, the length of Thanksgiving break and a proposal to institute, quote: “Academic Mondays, Tuesdays, etc.”, unquote, to achieve exactly the same number of Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etc. during a term.  The committee is presently engaged in revision of these 72 and 75-day calendars and also of a rationale which includes a grid which was presented to us earlier this year for our consideration of FEC term lengths so that a proposed 72 and 75-day calendar rationale can be posted with ample time for university-wide review and discussion before action by the senate.  I move that discussion of the University calendar be postponed until the July 13th senate meeting.  It’s important to have one of these two calendars accepted so, at the July meeting, I will be asking your support in first discussing the 72 to 75-day decision and then from the floor raising issues about—for example, moving spring break earlier in the semester.  And thank you for considering this motion.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  If you will go to the microphone if you are going to speak.  Yes.  Okay, as a committee chair she moved that we accept this—

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  That we postpone the discussion of those two 72-day and 75-day documents which are under revision presently of the committee.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Since she represents a committee, we don’t need a second.  Is there any discussion?

-                     All those persons who are in favor of postponing a decision on these two calendar

 

(Interruption from the floor)

Please—excuse me.  Hello!  You said, anybody here—like you said, come to the microphone—I’m here—dealing with the calendar going forward.

 

Herb Rotfeld, Substituting from Marketing Department:  I don’t want it just to go forward as a postponement with you restating a terminological inexactitude.  The 75-day calendar was not put forth by the senate as a forced thinking about things for transition to semesters.  The complaint was raised at the time of the calendar for the people in the senate, at that time, with a concern of our ever-shrinking calendar and as the calendar shrinks day by day it shrinks more in successive times.  We were down to a nine-week quarter, or less, in successive times and some people would have even less times depending on when the days of the week their classes fell.  There was also a concern that as we went to semesters, which is where it came up, we had by board directive a requirement that none of our programs exceed a certain number of hours for fear that some students might, God forbid, take more than four years to graduate and as we now have some of the lightest credit load majors in some areas of any place of any of the comparable schools we just thought we should at least have as much as possible in the classes and a full time for semesters.  When this was passed by the senate a number of people on campus were rather upset.  They said, “You mean you want me to work for a full 15 weeks, plus finals?” and I think a number of students would like the shorter terms too.  But the idea was not saying that we are trying to be comparable or doing things for transition.  The desire was felt by many people, given the constrictions on course requirements for programs—and other things—that a 75-week calendar was needed to both balance things out and give full academic time for all the programs.  So this was not a transition oriented type statement.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  And what we are receiving—thank you for the information—is comments like that and conflicting comments as well and we promised at the last senate meeting that we would provide ample time for university-wide department and program level discussion and review so what I’m asking is your support in providing that process.

 

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology:  I’ll concur with what the previous speaker said because I was on the senate at the time and I was one of the advocates of holding fast to this 75-day academic term for the reasons that he has stated.  It did coincide with implementation of the semester calendar but it was not driven by the semester calendar.  It was driven by a desire to maintain strong academic integrity for the very reasons Herb has expressed.  On the other hand, I would like to thank you for your proposal that we postpone consideration of your pending plans until July being as how I was the advocate for postponing consideration to this meeting and I think if you can post your new proposals in enough time we can discuss them and move on.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  And I expect you’ll have them no later than 4th of July.

 

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry:  I was just going to ask that very thing.  What’s going to be the time table here?  I mean I need to—when it finally shows up—we’ve been threatening to have a calendar posted I could show to my faculty and ask them if they have any objections and we’ve been threatening to do this now for—I don’t know—two and a half months or so that I was going to have a calendar to show to them—I didn’t have one.  When are we going to see it?  There’s going to be many of these calendars—if we are going to suggest moving spring break—we are going to have 75-day calendars—72-day calendars—multiple spring breaks.  This is a lot for me to get to my faculty and get their opinion and see if anybody has any problems with these.  We need to have these—I don’t think a week before the meeting is going to be sufficient for me to get all my faculty doing it.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  Let me address those two issues separately—in terms of when you can look for a proposal, I don’t want to promise more than I can deliver and at this time of the year I teach Monday through Thursday 8:00 till 3:30 and Fridays, office hours from 9:00 till 4:00.  We’ve been working on line but I’m still getting good feedback from the committee.  For example:  the working drafts starts on a Thursday.  Someone recently corresponded with me and said we have to start on a Wednesday or Friday, otherwise we end up with the wrong configuration of hours so, it wasn’t roadworthy for today.  The commitment I will make to you is that, if I don’t get the feedback from people, that we can meet week after next at the latest.  I’ll find times mornings and evenings to confer with each committee member and no later than 4th of July, I hope earlier, but because I don’t have attractive meeting times to offer at this time of year, that’s the best I can promise.

 

Rik Blumenthal:  We have the same problem—trying to review it and getting it to the faculty.  We’re so busy—can’t just spot it, look at it, analyze it, think about it, digest it and then come back with an answer in a day.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  So it would be helpful if you could definitely look, right after the 4th of July holiday, and keep your eyes open earlier and we will make every effort to exceed that deadline.  Issues that I anticipate may come from the floor regarding the second part of the question are:  should we move spring break earlier because Auburn City Schools—the precedent has been—we’ve checked with Auburn City Schools and they have already chosen the spring break so I anticipate someone may raise—we may entertain a motion to move spring break earlier and I’ll check and find out the Auburn City Schools information and update it if it has changed.  Another motion that may come from the floor in July is whether we should shorten Thanksgiving.  That’s been raised to us individually.  Yet another motion that may come from the floor is whether we should institute academic Mondays when it’s actually another day of the week so that there is exactly the same number of , quote: Mondays per term.  Those are things that if you are talking with colleagues you my want to check in with people about.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Is there anyone who has not spoken and wishes to speak?

 

Herb Rotfeld, Marketing:  Procedural issue that I refer to your parliamentarian—we had a senate motion and approval stating that the Calendar Committee was directed to have 75-day calendars and I do recommend that you go back to the minutes from those times and then, a couple of years ago, this was changed and said the Calendar Committee should attempt to always try and get a 75-day calendar in recognition that sometimes constraints force them to have 74-days and to my knowledge there has not been any such motion before the senate rescinding those earlier directives to the Calendar Committee.  And so, I think, like I said, you are getting information on people’s views, I think you should go back and consider the past motions of the senate and you’re asking the senate to reconsider and change a past decision.

 

(Thank you from Alyson Whyte)

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Are there any other comments.  Yes, please go to the mike.

 

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology & Plant Pathology:  I was chairing the Calendars Committee at that time and we went through hell.  (Laughter)  I’m serious.  We came up with 78 days and then down to 76 and 75 was the minimum this (?)  I was in the Transition Committee too that Christine chairing.  This calendar had nothing to do with transition.  The decision which was made by the senate and approved by the senate to have 75 days was minimum that we could come up with and I don’t think you can place 73 days from the senate because 76 days—75 days, it took me hell to pass.

 

Alyson Whyte, Curriculum & Teaching:  My response would be that I think we’ll be happy to see a 75 or a 72-day calendar pass—quite happy.  And I appreciate all the comments and I’m hoping that the consensus will be clear.  I appreciate the direction to consult with the parliamentarian and the previous minutes and find out what the precedent—the former precedent is.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Okay—we’ve got a motion on the floor and it’s been seconded that we postpone a decision on the calendar.

-     All those persons in favor let it be known by saying, “Aye.”

-     Opposes, “Nay.”

-     Thank you.

 

Thanks very much for all of those questions that will help us get it right

 

At this time I am going to ask Patricia Duffy to come forward.  She’s going to discuss a resolution to amend the Faculty Grievance Committee procedures.

 

Patricia Duffy, Secretary-Elect:  As Dr. Larkin mentioned, I’m here to discuss the resolution to change some Faculty Grievance Committee procedures.  You all should have received by email both the Resolution and a report of an Ad Hoc Committee to examine Faculty Grievance procedures.

 

Debra do you have extras if someone does not--?   They are on the back table if you have not received it.

A little history:  Dr. Malcolm Crocker, who is the current Chair of the Faculty Grievance Committee, asked the Steering Committee to appoint an Ad Hoc Committee to review the procedures of the Faculty Grievance Committee.  In particular, Dr. Crocker was asking us to look at (I’m on the Steering Committee) the rules for a quorum and absentee voting and that these be changed to allow a majority as a quorum rather than the two-thirds, which is now the quorum, and also to allow absentee voting to allay the concerns that, if we had a simple majority rather than a two-thirds majority for the quorum, important cases would be decided by too small a group.  On May 12th the Steering Committee responded affirmatively to this request and appointed Bob Drakeford, Jim Gravois and me to review procedures.  Bob Drakeford and Jim Gravois are former chairs of the Faculty Grievance Committee.  I am a current member of the Steering Committee and the Faculty Grievance Committee.  I have referenced Article 6-Section 9 of the University Senate Constitution on the formation of Ad Hoc Review Committees for Faculty Grievance procedures.  If you are interested in the handbook of language that gave the Steering Committee that authority that’s Article 6-Section 3, which is also quoted in the report with the language in question bolded concerning a quorum of the committee.  After reviewing the current rules and the request from Dr. Crocker, the Ad Hoc Committee brought the following recommendations back to the Steering Committee on May 26th.  We had three recommendations—only two are in the resolution, the third is a suggestion, and we thought that it would be best to separate it and just put it in the report.  If you look at your Resolution, two of these are pretty close.  The first one is the quorum for the Grievance Committee shall consist of a majority of the elected membership rather than the current super majority of two-thirds—first recommendation in the Resolution—the committee members who cannot attend a meeting to review the case are allowed to cast absentee votes on whether or not a hearing is merited after examination of the material since in the Grievance Committee concerning the case we also included in the Resolution that the absentee votes do not count towards the quorum.  Another suggestion made by the committee and included in the report but not in the Resolution is that we unanimously recommended that the university pursue the establishment of an office of ombudsman to assist faculty, staff and students in dealing with various problems and complaints that may arise in a university environment.   I believe this seconds a general recommendation from the Diversity Commission that we heard at our last month’s senate meeting and I would like to recommend to move, as the chair of this Ad Hoc Committee that we adopt the resolution to change the quorum size and voting rules for the Faculty Grievance Committee.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Since this is a committee, it does not need a second.  Is there any discussion on or are there questions that you would like to propose for Patricia.

 

Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy:  Patricia, I agree with this resolution but I just have a question.  What’s your rationale for saying that absentee votes will not count toward the quorum?

 

Patricia Duffy, Secretary-Elect:  We were reducing the quorum from current 10 to 8 and we think that it’s good to have a discussion so we wanted to have at least 8 people together in the room to discuss the merits of the case.  We didn’t want to see three, four or five people get together and have a discussion and have that count as the discussion—it didn’t seem like it was sufficient.

 

Richard Penascovic, Philosophy:  Okay, thank you.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Are there other questions?  Okay, at this point we will vote on the resolution.

-                     All of those persons in favor of passing this resolution please indicate it by saying, “Aye”.

-                     Opposes “Nay”.

-                     The motion is of the resolution passes.

 

At this point I just want to give you a comment about the Student Grievance revision that we did several meetings ago.  It’s kind of complicated in following all of those 1.2.5, and all of  that, but we passed that with the understanding that the Americans with Disabilities Act statement needed to be in the Tiger Cub.  I have subsequently talked with Kelly Haynes and she has indicated that that is not a legal requirement.  She says it’s nice but not absolutely required and she also thinks that it’s just good practice on the part of Auburn University to have a person to attend meetings of a grievance nature for students when they have disabilities or disability issues are in question.  Now we passed that the last time with the understanding that that had to be in there and I’m not really sure, parliamentary-wise, if we need to go back and revisit that.

 

Patricia Duffy, Secretary-Elect:  I’m a former chair of the Student Academic Grievance Committee and I believe it is a good idea to have that representation however I’m concerned that the motion was passed by the senate under the idea that it was a requirement and, therefore, I would like the senate to revisit it and allow people to vote on it on the idea of its merits rather than on they believe it’s a requirement.

 

Willie Larkin, Chair:  Okay—other comments or questions?  Here’s what I propose—that we go back at our next meeting and revisit this particular motion and I don’t know whether we need to rescind that motion and then present a new one but at any point we will come back with the changed wording and then we will give the senate an opportunity to vote on that, if that’s okay.

 

Is there any unfinished business that we need to discuss?  Let me just suggest that at the July meeting we will entertain a motion to propose to the administration that they consider creating an ombudsperson position.  Before that meeting, we will have a resolution up on the senate page for you to review and that will be up before one week.  You will have a long time to look at it.  Also, if you are contacted about serving on a senate committees please consider doing that.  We are working feverishly to try and put those committees together and we want to be able to announce those at the end of July and so when the members of the Rules Committee contact you and ask you about serving, I hope that you will give a strong consideration.

 

Is there any new business?  The next regular scheduled meeting will be July the 13th.  There will not be a meeting in August.  This meeting is adjourned.  Thank you all very much

 

Adjournment:  The meeting was adjourned at 4:15 p.m.

 

Respectively submitted by:

 

Debra Cobia

Senate Secretary

 

Digital transcription:  jkh