2005jan18minutes
Auburn University Senate Meeting
Debra Cobia
Debra
2005-03-14 T14:44:00Z
Auburn University
January 18, 2005
University
Senate Meeting
Members Absent
Bob McGinnis, VP for Development; Dan Bennett, Dean, College of Architecture; Wes Williams, Associate Provost & VP for Student Affairs; Thomas Hanley, Provost; Sheri Downer, Acting Dean of Libraries; Bradford Boney, SGA President; Vic Walker, Staff Council Chair; Isabelle Thompson, Steering Committee; Robert Locy, Steering Committee; Mario Lightfoote, ACES; John J. Pittari, Jr., Architecture; Raymond Hamilton, Aviation Management and Logistics; Joe Cherry, Biological Sciences; Ted Tyson, Biosystems Engineering; Jeff Tickal, Building Sciences; James Guin, Chemical Engineering; Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry; Alvin Sek; See Lim, Computer Science and Software Engineering; Renee Middleton, Counseling and Counseling Psychology; Darrel Hankerson, Discrete and Statistical Science; Randy Beard, Economics; Jim Saunders,
Geology and Geography; Alice Buchanan, Health and Human Performance; Ken
Tilt, Horticulture; Darrel Hankerson, Mathematics; Richard Good, Music; John Rowe, Nursing; Marllin Simon, Physics; Anthony Gadzey, Political Science; Thomas W. White, ROTC Air Force; LTC Bill Shaw, ROTC Army; Howard Thomas,
Textile Engineering; Tracey Oleinick, Theatre.
Members Absent (Substitutes): Martha Taylor, A&P Assembly Chair; (Harriett Huggins); Charles Mitchell, Agronomy & Soils (David Bransby; Sadik Tuzun, Entomology
& Plant Pathology Gary Mullen); Hugh Guffey, Marketing (Herb Rotfeld); Charles Taylor, Pharmacy Practice (Bernie Olin); James Shelley, Philosophy (Richard Penaskovic); Paul D. Starr, Socio Soc. Work (Gary Kowalski).
Dr. Willie Larkin, Chair: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, the hour has arrived. And I call this meeting to order. First of all, I want to welcome you back to the University after a much-deserved holiday break. Hopefully all of your dreams came true and you didn’t spend a whole lot of money and you are ready to go now. I want to-I need to wait and make sure there’s a quorum-so let me just make some comments while we’re waiting for the President to arrive and for us to get enough individuals so that we can actually transact business
I want to make a comment about the SACS probation very quickly. I’ve prepared just a statement and I ‘d like to read that. It says: Over the past year, SACS probation had our university on lock-down, and as my father used to say, a strangle-hold. However, through the cooperation of many people, we were able to get off probation. And although we were not always on the same page, I feel that the collective efforts of a number of individuals, including the President, the Board of Trustees, and certainly the faculty, students, staff, Alumni, and even the media, set the stage for us to be able to reach this particular juncture Even the JAC Committee that raised issues about the University in the first place, certainly played a contribution in us becoming a better university. We never want to experience this kind of uncertainty again about the university and it’s going to require all parties to do some things. Having said all of that, we’re still not completely out of the woods. We must continue to demonstrate to SACS a commitment to the tenets laid out in their final report and then I encourage all of us to continue to be vigilant as we make a model institution of higher learning I think there’s some messages that goes out to everybody involved in this whole process
The other thing, earlier in the month, Conner Bailey and I recently attended a meeting of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, known as COIA This meeting took place at Vanderbilt University. University and faculty senates of over 40 NCAA Division 1 institutions comprised the membership of the COIA. There are 8 schools in the SEC that are currently represented in this coalition. Those which have yet to join include: Auburn University, LSU, and also Kentucky. Very quickly, the purpose of our January meeting was to review a document entitled ‘Academic Integrity in Intercollegiate Athletics’, ‘Principles, Rules and Best Practices.’ This document will be available later on the AU Senate webpage. I encourage you to review that document, because at our next Senate meeting, we are going to bring forward a resolution for the Senate to consider that our institution join this coalition.
In consultation with the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, Marcia Boosinger and University Senate Steering Committee, we expect to bring that resolution forward that we join. Recommendations developed by the COIA, such as those referenced in this document that will be placed online, are of two types. First of all, it is suggested policy changes directed at the NCAA and then there will be some recommendations, or let’s just say some best management practices which NCAA member institutions can adopt or follow if they choose to. Membership in the COIA will provide a voice in deliberations of this body. Membership involves no obligation other than attending meetings, participating in discussions, and no documents developed by this body will bind any member institution.
As Conner and I looked at this whole thing and read through and discussed it, we felt there were some recommendations being made by this group that will affect Auburn University but we were not at the table to make those recommendations, so I don’t know whether this is proper or not, but my recommendation is to seriously look at and approve this. But you will have a chance to look at it and then you can make that recommendation to us at our next Senate meeting.
At this time, as I’m looking around, I think we have a quorum. I want to approve the minutes of the November 9, 2004 meeting. You should have had a chance to read those. Are there any comments about those minutes as they were posted? All those in favor of approving those minutes of 11/09/04, please indicate...I’m sorry, yes.
Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy: I guess I’m a little surprised at the discussion on that resolution. That’s not part of the minutes. Is there any reason for that? It’s just a resolution was presented here, but not what the individual people said.
Dr. Larkin: The resolution in regards to the COIA or something else?
Dr. Penaskovic: I haven’t read the minutes since probably before Christmas, but wasn’t there a resolution, what was the resolution? I can’t remember…
Dr. Larkin: You’re gonna have to tell me what you’re speaking of.
Dr. Penaskovic: Does anybody remember? Yes, Debra....
Debra Cobia, Secretary: The 11/09/2004 minutes were not posted until about a week and a half ago. The transcript of that meeting, so maybe are you referring to the Faculty Meeting?
Ok, the November 9 minutes of the Senate meeting are what we’re approving now. Actually the September Faculty Meeting minutes are posted. The Special Called minutes are in the process of review and they should be up in another week or so. I do have those back from the transcriptionist.
Dr. Larkin: Thanks, Richard. Any other comments before we vote on those? All persons in favor of approving those minutes, referencing the 11/09/04, please indicate by saying Aye. Nay? Those minutes are passed.
I want to make a couple of other comments about different things. This past weekend has really been tumultuous in terms of activities I don’t want to beat a dead horse to death, but I would like to remind you that on last Friday, the organization 100 Black Men of Greater Auburn/Opelika, Inc was introduced to the community via a reception at the
Auburn University Alumni Center. Many of you probably got some communications from me. There were about 130 persons who attended that function. We had 31 successful African-American men of Auburn, Opelika, and Lee County who were introduced into the community and they were sworn in as the 103 Chapter of the 100 Black Men of America, Inc organization. Debbie Shaw, and I don’t know whether Debbie’s here, but I really, yeah, she’s back there. Debbie really has gone up a notch on my list. She worked tirelessly to make available that facility for us, allowed some of her staff people to work with us on press releases and I tell you, the reason I’m mentioning this is because a number of the members of that organization are members of the University community. But the most important thing is, as she publicized that and we did as well, she got back a number of emails and communications from board members and alumni, and I’m talking about in far away places, that heard about this. Messages were forwarded to other individuals. The Chairman of the Board of this organization in Miami, Florida, who’s an attorney, sent me a email and said “Willie, you’re getting more publicity from Auburn University that what you all have been able to generate!”
So Debbie played a significant role in that we had, and also Dr. Keenan Grenell co-sponsored this activity along with the Alumni Association. We had Dr. Richardson to come and make some comments and the reason he was on the program is because he’s had a great deal of experience with the 100 down in Mobile. The chapter in Mobile has a charter school and as the State Superintendent of Schools, he financed that organization for the better part of the past three years, so that was very Beneficial. We also got the Probate Judge, Bill English, to come and to swear the members in and he went through a swearing in ceremony that was really, really impressive and we got a lot of positive comments back from that. We have over 10,000 members throughout the U.S., England, the Caribbean, South Africa and there’s some other countries under way in terms of getting charters. The focus of 100 is primarily dealing with mentoring. If it doesn’t have anything to do with kids and advancing them, then it can’t be a part of 100. Education is another part; health and wellness, economic development.
In 2005, very quickly just to let you know what we’re going to be doing, we’re going to either sponsor or co-sponsor the following activities: The Henry Harris Basketball Classic that took place yesterday. We will- there were like 20 teams that played
10 games starting at 8 o’clock and went until 10 o’clock last night, so if you like basketball, that would have been a great place to be. We will provide scholarships for the like six high schools in the county, including Lee-Scott Academy. We will sponsor a Unity Family Picnic in June. We will have a Youth Leadership Lock-in on October 31 where we will have approximately 500 young people that will be locked in at 6 o’clock and they will be let out at 7 o’clock the next morning, and we will teach them a lot of different kinds of things, so you will need to listen for that. And also, the Annual 100 Scholarship Gala will take place on December 10th , which is the second weekend in December this year and I encourage you to continue to look for publicity about this organization.
Also I quickly want to mention the Martin Luther King Scholarship Breakfast on yesterday. The reason I want to mention that is this university stepped up big in supporting this initiative. Let me just quickly tell you that I invited various colleges and schools to participate. We had the College of Business to purchase a 10-seat table. The Harrison School of Pharmacy purchased the same amount. The School of Nursing, East
Alabama Medical Center-they’re good partners with us-the President’s Office purchased a table of 10; the Chamber of Commerce, College of Agriculture, the College of Human Sciences, College of Math and Sciences and then the Provost’s Office and then of course, the 100 Black Men purchased a table as well. There were a number of you that purchased individual tables. I just want to thank you for responding. Someone said the other day that I had some arm-twisting and that’s not true at all. I simply gave people an invitation to participate and they responded
Is our President here yet? There he is. So let me stop with my announcements and pronouncements and invite our President to come up and to make his comments from the President’s Office.
Dr. Ed Richardson, Interim President: Thank you, Dr. Larkin. Welcome back and Happy New Year to everyone. I wish to cover two broad points today with you. First, I’d like to give you a progress report in regard to selected University issues that hopefully will be of mutual interest. And then secondly, I’ve asked our Legislative Liaison, Sid McAnally to come today and to describe to you what our initiatives will be, some of our strategies and what we hope to accumulate during this Legislative session
In terms of issues, I’d like to talk a little bit about SACS. It seems to be something I started talking about on first arriving and probably when I leave, I guess we’ll still be talking about SACS in some respect. As you know, we’ve now received the letter from SACS and I would just offer two or three observations based on my conversations with Dr. Allen at SACS. First, there are three statements there-you’ve all seen those statements-one deals with the progress in terms of the search for the President, the second deals with the conflict of interest. I wanted to just elaborate on that. We had a review of, by outside sources, three to be exact, of business relationships among the Board of Trustees. Now because those instructions were given to us after SACS had established a deadline for the receipt of new information that could not be officially presented. So what we will do is package that and submit that officially to SACS and of course, those reports have been made available as well. So there won’t be any additional searches or reviews of Board business.
Periodic evaluation of the President-that’s something that certainly I support. I would anticipate that during our next Trustee meeting, which by the way, this one is always on the AUM campus, is on February the 4th. We will have a Trustee meeting and I suspect that the criteria will at least start to be discussed at that point and I anticipate that an evaluation will be conducted prior to the end of this semester and certainly by, hopefully by the April meeting and that could be finalized.
In dealing with SACS, a couple of other things. Number one is that the report has to be filed by September the 22 and so we will proceed with those three, obviously, one has been done and the other two in terms of concepts, have been agreed to so I don’t foresee any problems there at all with the report and Dr. Glaze and Dr. Heilman and others will work on those reports as they have in the past. I would also point out that I called back to SACS on two occasions, that there are no penalties or sanctions associated with the team, which will probably be two maybe three people that will visit after the September 22 deadline. Now they will schedule that time so I could not project as to when they would come, but they will look at those three items in terms of the progress toward completion.
So in regards to SACS, that pretty well covers it and we will, as I said, start to move very quickly in terms of, number one, the evaluation process and I would just point out in terms of the search; I know that’s an issue for you; but I would say that observation will be made. Of course, I don’t have anything to do with that. That’s strictly up to the Trustees, when they start and when they do it. And as I would say in dealing with SACS and also in response to SACS when we up to Atlanta in December, was that- of course, it is a suggestion, not a recommendation-but on the other hand, it is something I think, if handled correctly, the work that you’re doing could be constructive. I’m just saying that if we’re going to push the Board, then I think that’s not going to be as constructive. So I think that we ought to be looking forward to that and here’s some good criteria, hopefully you’ve developed those and they will be using the Association of Governing Board’s standards that have been previously established and those will also be put on the table hopefully during our meeting in Montgomery on February the 4.
Initiatives- I just wanted to talk a little bit about the purpose again, not to go over the details. As I have stated in my original plan, my first year’s objective was to deal with the SACS issue and I’m very pleased and hopefully you are too, that one is behind us at least in terms of probationary status. I would also say that in terms of that, it was complicated considerably because, I’ll have to admit to you, I had not anticipated spending about
25 percent of my time on athletic events during this past year, which is about the average that I ended up spending dealing with searches, budgets, and all the rest that go with that. So that was an education for me. I do believe that first year we accomplished a major objective.
The second was to establish a pattern of behavior and that’s the one I want to elaborate again on. I’ve said that at least three or four times here. I just want you to know the easy year was last year. The easy year was last year. The more difficult year will be to establish a pattern of behavior, a pattern of behavior that this is what Trustees do, this is what Presidents do, this is what Faculty does, all of the issues associated with that because there is some overlap, but I hope that during this year, and I would really say this year, pretty much the first half of this year, we’ll be able to effectively accomplish that objective. Now that’s going to be a difficult one, because it’s easy to pass guidelines and resolutions. It’s another thing to enforce it and that’s what I will be about this year and you’re going to see some other changes and you’re going to see some people that are upset as I try to make sure that the institutional control is in place.
And in the third step is that we will start a search for my replacement and I hope that number 2, step number 2, is done correctly, that person will have a good chance of success. Now again, I just wanted to repeat-the initiatives are on the table primarily to enable us to establish that pattern of behavior that confirms that there is a degree of institutional control here. I just, it might be of interest to you, I read the NCAA are pushing that very hard and that was one of the issues that it had for the whole organization, in terms of involvement of trustees in Athletics. And of course, they also, in many other institutions involved in others. I believe the trustees, I know, have done everything I’ve asked them to do and I’m confident that we will be successful this time. But again, there’s not been a pattern of behavior, this is as far as you go, then it’s hard to say how far each one should go. So I believe this is the primary purpose for these initiatives and I hopefully, when we meet on June the 17th, we can safely say that pattern has been established
Now I would point out that these initiatives have levels of difficulty. Some are easier to handle than others and hopefully some of them will start to spin off, which will help us to establish that pattern by not having them all come together in June. Because if they all came together in June, I really think that would create an overload and would work against us in that regard. So I want to indicate to you that we go forward on these initiatives and that it is my intention to make some substantial recommendations during the Trustee Meeting on June the 17th that will be here in Auburn, and I hope that the established Faculty Committees will certainly be closely attuned with the appropriate initiative. We’ll have active involvement, provide your input, because regardless of what some say, I do not have a personal agenda. I didn’t ask Trustees for these six initiatives nor anyone else. But what I’m trying to say is that if you have an active involvement, I don’t have a predetermined answer. I will just want to make sure that we establish the concept of institutional control here.
Now, the other thing that I would point out to you, there will be another topic- I’m now leaving the initiatives-we’ll have another trustee confirmation. As you know, those have been narrowed down to four. All four are strong candidates, this is an at-large position and so it can be in or out of the state. We anticipate that the Governor, I think the 28th or something like that, will have a second round of interviews for those four then will make his recommendation to the Legislature, which starts in the first day or two of February and I would anticipate early on in February and certainly confirmation by early March will be another new Trustee, which I would remind you, would constitute 7 new trustees out of 14 that have been appointed within the last two years or so. So I feel that’s also healthy for us as well.
Now, my position as I deal with establishing institutional control involves one other step. A lot of this you won’t see much of but I wanted to at least point it out to you. I think we now have a unique opportunity to heal the wounds of the past and to focus on positioning Auburn for the future. I think it’s in your best interests and the University’s best interests, and in the state’s best interests if we do that. And so this will be a major objective of mine this year and I hope you will actively participate in that effort. And as we move forward, if we just focus on what’s in the best interests of Auburn instead of “You offended me 5 years ago” I think we’ll have a chance at having success in that regard and I really believe that will be to everyone’s best interests.
I think one of the ways to focus on the future is state funding. And I wanted to make a few comments and then I want to introduce Sid, if he will, to come down. I just want to be, as I usually am, fairly direct. As State Superintendent who made major budget recommendations each of the last 8 or 9 years, it was always with some relief when I had higher education go before me, because it always made me look better than I was, And I want to say that Auburn has not faired well in the legislative process now for as long as I’ve been around, and that’s been a long time. And there are two primary reasons: everybody can point to a little project here, a little project there, a bond issue here, but when you add it all up in terms of what the total sum of that gain was, it’s minuscule. And here is, I think, is the issue that I would like to call to your attention. Auburn has not been effective, not because of any deliberate problem or incompetence or anything like that, but for two things. First, it had no specific agenda. And up until a month ago, I would have been hard-pressed to say to you “This is Auburn’s specific agenda.” We now have a specific agenda and I’ll ask Sid to elaborate on that in just a minute. We also have an agenda that has more buy-in from other institutions of higher ed. I would remind you that in Alabama we have four levels of higher education, which makes it more complex in terms of getting people to cooperate. You have community colleges, you have historically Black colleges; you have regional institutions; and the research institutions. So basically the other three distrusted the research institutions. When Auburn and Alabama talked, people got uneasy. I think one of the issues we have to keep in mind is this, as I’ve talked to the Chair of our SACS committee, Mr. Casteen and others, also the President of Virginia Tech when we were in New Orleans, is that I think we are just a few steps behind Virginia and some other states to where caps on tuition are going to be enforced legislatively, as they are there. The trustees can pass whatever tuition increase they would like, but the Legislature there in that state can override it. So what I guess we’re getting at is this: if we look at that as a problem, then we have to face up with that being the case and costs continue to increase, we’re now looking at problems associated with support of academic programs and a difficult time with having salary increases and so forth. So how do we avoid that dilemma? I really think that by having a focused effort in the Legislature, we can establish Auburn this year as a force that has to be dealt with and how do we best, how can we best accomplish that? One of the advantages, since I also served on the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, I had a relationship with them of trust and respect, and Alabama is now working with us well. And I believe that if Auburn and Alabama can stay shoulder to shoulder here, we are much more likely to experience success, because in the past, if you could get Auburn and Alabama fighting between themselves, then it weakened both and allowed weaker parties then to shift right in there and take over where perhaps it would have been better placed in one of the Auburn or Alabama programs.
Now, what I’m asking for you and what I would say that we must make sure
that we must be focused, and that’s why we must make sure that as I go forward as Interim President for this six-month period, that there is no doubt that we are all together, and that is why Auburn and Alabama, we meet, talk, email on a regular basis. So this is going to be very critical for us because right now, we are not a force. Right now, we do not have that clout, and so it’s going to be very difficult, but I’m optimistic that with what Alabama is bringing to the table and what Auburn is bringing to the table, we will be successful. Now I would like to introduce Sid McAnally. Sid and I have worked together on Amendment One. That’s probably not a recommendation, since we were unsuccessful in getting that one through, but nevertheless, he was very instrumental in that. Sid’s an Auburn graduate, practicing attorney, and what I’ve found him to be is very experienced in the State Capitol and the State House, which is where the Legislature meets, very influential with key legislators as well as the Governor and so what I’ve asked Sid to do today is outline our basic agenda or strategies and then after that, Dr. Larkin, we will be glad to respond to any questions.
Dr. Larkin: Sid, This is like old times for me, seeing Dr. Penaskovic go to the mic, reminded me of about 21 years ago or so when Yuroslav Pelican came to campus, a religion writer who held himself out as fluent in five ancient languages-and I was a Religion Minor then-and there was a lot of debate about whether anybody could be fluent in five ancient languages. So after his presentation he took questions and Dr. Penaskovic stood up and asked him a question in one of the foreign languages he claimed to speak and he answered it. So we knew that he knew one. The other thing is seeing Larry Gerber. I was a History Major and Dr. Gerber would put these extensive outlines on the blackboard. They were incredible, they were like a novella. And one day he had finished his outline, walked out, and Dr. Pickering from the Political Sciences department, who always carried a briefcase, walked into our History class, set his briefcase down, turned around, erased the entire board, turned back around, realized he was in the wrong class, picked up his briefcase and walked out. Then Gerber comes back in and he couldn’t... (laughter)
I’ve got a real challenge, which is to talk to you about the state budget picture in just a few minutes. When Dr. Richardson asked me to talk about the challenges the state faces, I generated about a 27-page outline and know that I’ve got about five minutes. So what I’d like to do is show you a few slides, talk to you about some of the challenges the state faces and then answer any questions you may have. Initially, I know that most of you are fairly sophisticated politically and I would remind you that Alabama is unique in the number of dollars that we earmark. The latest numbers that have come in shows that Alabama earmarked about 83% of all revenues that come into the state. I know you hear lots of numbers tossed around, but 83% is the last number based on actual collections and earmarking. 24% is the national average. The next highest state is Nevada, and they’re in the 60's. If the people of the state had their way with earmarking, it would be about 400%. The people in Alabama like earmarking. It’s just a character trait of our state and it’s just not going to go away anytime soon. The ETF-the Education Trust Fund-by statute, has all sales tax dollars, with very few exceptions, earmarked into ETF by constitutional amendment. All income tax dollars are earmarked into ETF. And so when you read about the structural imbalances in Alabama’s two funds-the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund-you need to know that all the growth taxes go into the ETF and no growth taxes go into the General Fund.
Although I know that ETF is really our focus, I thought it would be helpful to talk about the General Fund for just a few minutes, because that is what really will drive politics in the state this year to some degree. Can everyone hear me alright without a mic? I’m sure you can....it’s ok. Is everybody ok?
Dr. Larkin: We’re recording it so....
Sid McAnally: Oh, so that’s another reason not to put it on. You’ve read about the fact that the General Fund is in trouble and I just wanted to explain to you a little bit-these are numbers that come from the Legislative Fiscal Office, they’re very fresh numbers-you see that this is 100% of the monies that get paid into the General Fund. And the General Fund is sort of a mongrel. It’s picked up a lot of little dollars over the years from lots of places. So when you see the other percentage being 30%, that is hundreds of small taxes that get paid into the General Fund. The more significant are broken out individually and you know how small the other category is when Estate Tax that is at 1.9 percent, get broken out. But let’s talk a little bit about these. Some of these taxes are relatively steady. The insurance company taxes that come into the General Fund are fairly steady. Court costs have been increased by statute. The Alcoholic Beverage taxes are relatively steady. There is the seasonal play there, but on the whole, over the course of a year they are fairly steady. The troublesome things in this chart are the amount of Estate Tax that you see-I’ve already referenced it-1.9%. You may know that the Federal Government has chosen to phase out estate taxes and Alabama has received up to-in 2002, the state received about $80 million dollars in estate taxes. We had a lower collection year last year, but that line item will be completely gone from state revenue resources after this year. 2005 is the last year the Feds will allow states to collect estate taxes.
Oil and Gas Severance Tax-that number will probably grow if the oil and gas prices stay where they are, but it was a good number last year. You also see Interest Income-6.35%. Our Interest Income is down 60% from the 2001 number and that primarily is based on interest rates, which seem to be going up incrementally, so we’ll probably see a little bit more money there. But that is the General Fund Income picture for 2004. The other thing I wanted to mention to you is that if you look at one-time receipts of 9.78%, now that doesn’t seem like a very big number, but now imagine that almost 10% of our General Fund is one-time money that was generated last year either through transfers or one-time taxes and that money is not coming back. And that is very troublesome as you get into hyper inflated things like medical costs.
If we could look quickly at the-this is just the General Fund’s spreadsheet and again I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but you’ll see the beginning balance of $141 million dollars came in this fiscal year, is reduced to about $59 million dollars by FY 2006, the coming budget year. And many of us believe that it’s going to be completely zeroed out, that $59 million dollars won’t be there based on supplemental appropriations that have to be made. You also see the transfers into the General Fund for 2005 don’t exist in 2006 and one-time revenues-and let me just run down this quickly: Abandoned property-that’s people that don’t pick up dividend income, life insurance, things like that. Alabama Trust Fund’s unrealized gains is just a gain in stocks or bonds. Attorney General’s Settlement Fees is litigation the Attorney General pays into the General Fund. Again, all these
are just one time fees-$54 million dollars which will not be available for the General Fund this year. The regular session increases-this is one that people think “Well, we raised all this money last year; where did it go?” Well, the reality is, because of the strange nature of the way we collect taxes in Alabama, we will actually collect less in 2005 than we did in 2004. So the revenue collection drops from 140.4% to 139.9%. Then look at these differences. This is the difference in the availability of dollars as we go into the year with the General Fund. That becomes a serious problem if you were just going to level fund in the General Fund. But this is what the state faces
as it looks at the coming year. The amount needed just to keep up with the 2005-2006 is $66 million dollars. We’re short just to keep doing what we do now, if we kept everything level.
The cost of insurance has gone up $4.7 million dollars, that’s health insurance premium costs to the General Fund. 5.5 increase in the retirement rate and then you may remember during Amendment 1, we talked about a 27th pay period. There was an anomaly in the calendar that forced a pay period-it happens once a decade or so-there’s a 27th pay period, and it fell last year and by agreement, the legislature pushed it into this year and if they could, they’d push it into next year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, so that 21 is going to show up. Where we get into real trouble is with Medicaid. The way the Federal Government does the Medicaid formula, we are receiving less for every dollar we put in 2006 than we did in 2005. The reimbursement rate has dropped-I think it’s 13 cents per dollar. That generates a shortfall of $126 million dollars. We’ve got 75,000 children, low-income children, in the CHIPS plan; they don’t have health insurance otherwise. That increase is estimated to be 4.4-that gets us to 229. That completely ignores the federal court order that we’re under and DHR, the RC case, which is estimated to be $15 million, the Wyatt case and mental health, which is estimated to be around $40 million, and corrections, which will probably be in receivership by the end of the year, their budget asked is about $255 million dollars. So, when you hear people talk about the General Fund, that gives you just a glimpse inside the challenges that the
General Fund faces.
On the other hand, the Education Trust Fund, as you see, is a much simpler handler. As we mentioned already, that by statute, most of the sales taxes in Alabama flow into the General Fund. Sales taxes were up; collections were up about 7% last year. By constitutional amendment, income tax goes to pay public school teachers’ salaries, because the school systems went bankrupt in the 30's and that was the only way income tax could pass. That money all goes into the ETF and is dedicated to teachers’ salaries. So, the growth again, 7% there. So we’ve got this extraordinary imbalance in the system-we’ve got money in ETF, no money in General Fund. Already there’s a group of legislators who have proposed a transfer to take about $200 million dollars out of ETF and transfer it over to the General Fund. Paul Hubbard from AEA says he doesn’t think that’s going to happen and in the past, that’s generally meant that was not going to happen. But it will be interesting to see how the politics play out as we approach 2006.
The projected condition of ETF, which is what we’re here to talk about. Beginning balance of $181 million dollars is increased to $270 million dollars. Then you see the estimated revenues from LFO have been increased from 4.5 to 4.7. We have total revenues coming into ETF-$4.6 billion in FY 2005, estimated to be almost $4.9 billion in FY 2006. The magic number is here: the difference between the available dollars for FY 2006 and FY 2005 spending is $554 million dollars. Nobody’s ever seen that number or a number that looks like that before. That is a tremendous number in carry-over dollars and in new dollars into ETF. Now you also have heard lots of talk about a K-12 pay raise. And I want you to focus with me on the box. In the 2002 legislative session, the Legislature passed something called the National Teacher Pay Raise
Act. It was a piece of legislation that said: “If the Legislative Fiscal Office and the Executive Budget Office project increases of more that 3%-5%, then public school teachers (K-12 certificated) automatically get a pay raise, based on a formula inside that bill. The bill also contained language that said if the Legislature gives more than the formula allows, the bill is, has evaporated. It’s null and void. Nobody ever thought that would be a possibility. But look what’s happened this year. The growth estimate from LFO was 241.8. The maximum amount of annual growth available for teachers’ pay raise under the pay raise bill is 45%. (Stay with me, because this gets pretty good.) Maximum amount of growth available for the teacher pay raise and fringe increases is $158 million dollars
And here’s where the K-12 group got trapped: they didn’t think in 2000 that fringe benefits would skyrocket in costs, nor did they do anything to manage the increase in healthcare costs. So what’s happened is the skyrocketing healthcare costs that chewed up the available pay raise under the bill, which means that under the National
Teacher Pay Raise Act, only $42 million dollars is available for a K-12 raise and that is about 2%. So obviously, by focusing on the 7% raise, K-12 is saying “We’re through with the National Teacher Pay Raise Bill; we’re going to go after 7 percent. That’s relevant to us for a couple of reasons. One, if the legislature were to meet that pay raise, it would almost assure proration in coming years because it would demand it to keep up with a recurring cost, recurring growth, around 5%, 4.7% to 5% and there’s no historical support for that kind of growth for a straight line in the future.
As Dr. Richardson said, Auburn and Alabama have for years sort of passed each other in the hall. But there’s been no coordinated effort. And this year, Matt Patera, Chancellor of the University system, and Dr. Richardson on behalf of Auburn University, came together and agreed to a four-point legislative agenda to recapture PEEHIP dollars that since two fiscal years ago, higher education has to absorb. That wasn’t true in the past but it’s true now. To recapture retirement costs-both of those things now come out of the University’s General Fund.
To pursue a pay raise-and many of you may have seen a press account where the higher education and partnership talked about a 7% raise. I want you to know that compensation for instructors at institutions of higher education in Alabama is a critical action point because we all realize the economic engine that’s going to drive the state is the higher education system. It has to work for Alabama to work. But there is no history in the state of a link between K-12 pay raises and higher ed pay raises.
And so this year, we have said “So when you think about K-12, you’ve got to think about what’s happening to higher education salaries.” We’re also pursuing a bond issue to provide capital resources for the university. So that four-point plan has been agreed to, not only by Alabama and Auburn, but also by other institutions of higher education in the state. That may not sound like much, but it’s the first time it’s ever happened. And legislators are not used to all of higher ed coming with a unified agenda.
Now, will that be true for the next, for the rest of the legislative session? There are going to be defections-that is the nature of the game. But we have commitments from the major players and we have already been working with members of the Legislature, to explain to them why this is important, because if you look at the way higher education has been funded; in 1994, higher education took a cut under the James Administration that it has never recovered from. We’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of back filling to do, and that centers around telling our story effectively. And there is a great story to tell at
Alabama. There’s an even greater story to tell, I would argue, at Auburn. And so you’ll be hearing a lot from us in terms of keeping you informed, getting your ideas about what’s going on campus, a lot to ask you to be involved in the legislative process and look forward to answering any questions that you may have as we go forward. And I guess now it would be appropriate for Dr. Larkin to see if there are any questions.
Dr. Larkin:
Now let me remind everybody, that if you’re going to ask a question, go to the microphone, please identify yourself and your affiliation and also for those who care, we are videotaping this session. I was supposed to make that announcement at the beginning, so just be mindful that you are being taped, not that it will change anybody’s questions, I’m sure.
Sid McAnally:
Oh, so you tell us this after our presentation…
Dr. Larkin:
Oh, you search out the press. You said you were a master at that, ok?
Sid McAnally:
That was for Dr. Richardson.
I don’t search out the press.
Dr. Larkin: So if you have a question, ask it now.
Sid McAnally: Terrific!
Dr. Larkin:
This is good! Before Christmas, Richardson and I and Conner and other members of the leadership team, we met at his office and talked about the new year and one of the things that we agreed on is that neither one of us, certainly the two of us, would not do any name-calling or anything like that. You’ll remember, I made the statement about a “bonehead decision” or something like that. I think you probably took offense, but we made a decision that we would not call each other names on either side and this has gotten off to a really great start. Nobody has questions or anything, so maybe you’ll see it in the paper tomorrow, I don’t know. No questions? Thank you very much, I appreciate
it.
Yes? Surely you jest. Do you really have a question or not? Ok, he’ll stand to that microphone and you can go join him over there and since you’re close together, you all can settle it right over there.
Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy:
Presently, there’s no mechanism for removing a trustee from the board. And I remember reading in the papers before Christmas, Dr. Richardson, that you were going to work with the Legislature on this, and I wondering, has any progress been made on this?
Or is it too early to tell?
Is there any timetable to achieve this?
What are your thoughts about this?
Dr. Richardson: Thank you, Dr. Penaskovic. Let me just comment that it’s actually taken a slightly different direction. Currently, Auburn and Alabama are recognizing the constitution, therefore it takes a constitutional amendment, that is, you’d have to go out and have a vote for that. SACS has adopted new standards. We, in the last SACS study, were one of the last institutions to come under the old standards, so we will now go forward with new standards. The new standards, and I’ve talked with the University of Alabama people and they have a finding there, which the new standards stipulate that trustees must, I mean the board, must adopt a policy to address that very topic, the removal of trustees. So we’re waiting then for Alabama to come out with it.
The problem is this: let’s say we’re in general agreement that Trustee X should not be on the board. And let’s say that all the trustees agreed with that except for the one, obviously. Because there is no provision and it takes a constitutional amendment, the person could still sit there and participate, even if all the trustees....so eventually it’s going to take legislative action and then a constitutional amendment, but I do believe that the University of Alabama will come up with such a standard. We’re going to look at that and if that is approved, then certainly by SACS, then certainly I’m going to look at that.
We have not given up on that, but as I’ve talked with the Governor, the long tedious process of legislation, because we still have some serve on various boards of trustees, that we’re not sure we can get it through. But I think that eventually it will have to come out and I’m very pleased that SACS has set such a standard.
Dr. Larkin:
Any other questions?
Thanks, Richard. Thanks, guys. Let’s move forward. Debra, you are going to come and you are going to talk a little bit about the Rules Committee’s nominations and elections.
Debra Cobia, Secretary:
Thanks, Willie. I just wanted to remind you that in February, we will be calling for nominations for persons to serve on the Rules Committee with an election to follow in March, at the March Senate meeting. So if you have any interest in serving on the Rules Committee, you could contact me ahead of time and I’ll be more than happy to submit your name as a nomination. If you have no interest in serving but you know of colleagues who would be good Rules Committee members, please encourage them to allow you to nominate them. We’ll be electing three new Rules Committee members; those are two-year appointments. The Rules Committee is responsible for making recommendations to the President about who serves on university committees and for appointing members of senate committees. So it’s a very-those are among their tasks, there are others-but those are the major time consuming initiatives and it’s a very important committee and we need people who are really interested and willing and enthusiastic.
So I hope that you will all consider submitting yourselves or others as potential Rules Committee members.
Thanks.
Dr. Larkin: Thank you very much.
We got a little bit out of order, so I want to make one announcement in terms of the Senate Nomination Committee. I have asked Cindy Brunner to chair this committee along with members Samia Spencer, Judy Sheppard, Arlette Wilson, Gary Mullen and Jean Weiss. According to the online Faculty Handbook, the Nominating Committee shall present two names for each of the offices of Chair-elect and Secretary-elect. The names of the nominees shall be sent to the membership at least 21 calendar days prior to the
Spring Meeting. And my charge to this committee is to search for excellent candidates who give the faculty a broad range of differences to choose from, in terms of their philosophy about shared governance and other things. If any of you are interested in being considered for this very glamorous, very time consuming yet rewarding, where you make a lot of friends and few enemies, I would encourage you to contact Cindy Brunner or members of her committee.
If you have persons in mind that you think would make a good candidate for either of these positions, we ask that you recommend those to Cindy as well, even if you have not contacted them to ask them if they want to be considered. That committee will do that later on and then they will bring back two persons who hopefully will be balanced in their approach and will give you an opportunity to choose and look at those differences. Any questions about that appointment?
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I would like to reiterate what Dr. Larkin has said and encourage you to submit names to us. My goal is to start out with a large slate of nominees, be those affirmed or not, and we will do the contacting. My email address, which is by far the best way to get in touch with me, is brunncj@auburn.edu.
We will be meeting for the first time this Thursday afternoon, we’re getting started a little bit late, we were constituted later than planned, but I’ve got an ambitious goal. I would like to have our four candidates for the two offices identified for you by the February Senate meeting. That gives us about three weeks, so we’ve got a lot of arm-twisting to do and wish you hadn’t made it look like such a gloomy responsibility.
Actually, most of us on the committee have served in one or the other of the two capacities as officers and, I think, with few regrets, so we would like to encourage you to volunteer, if that’s appropriate and otherwise encourage you to nominate one another and your other qualified colleagues.
Dr. Larkin:
Although we have many among you, Cindy is one of the most thorough faculty persons we have at the university, so as we looked at everybody it was my pleasure to name her as Chair of this committee and I’m sure she will do a very good job.
Dr. Bransby, if you will come forward, I’d like for you to give the Administrative Evaluation report. And here again, after he speaks, you will have the liberty of asking questions.
Dr. David Bransby, Agronomy and Soils: I’m going to be very brief. The report of the Administrative Evaluation Committee has actually been posted on the Senate web site, so all I’m going to do really is give you some background and some conclusions. To start off with, just the committee consisted of me as chair, Dwayne Cox from the Library, Ann
Janer, Clinical Pharmacy, and Herb Rotfeld, Marketing, who is the new chair and Paul Starr. The staff position was, in fact, vacant.
Before I go into just summarizing what we found, I do want to emphasize what the charge of this committee is and in particular, that the committee shall oversee and conduct a periodic evaluation of university administrators involved in university teaching, research, and extension programs and provide a report of aggregate data to the Senate, which is what I’m doing now. The reason I wanted to emphasize this is that people who knew I was in this position often have asked me “Do the administrators use these results?” and I have to respond that is not part of our charge.
It’s not my business to find out if the administrators use them or not. I’d ask the administrators.
I’ve essentially five, uh, six points in the summary and conclusion. First, our response rate was 35, just over 35%-sounds low for those of us who know nothing about surveys, but in fact, it’s about the same as what we got when we ran a survey in
2002. Bruce Gladden was responsible for heading that up and it’s considerably higher than what is usually obtained at universities for this kind of survey.
Usually it’s somewhere between 20% and 30%, so our response rate was pretty good. The survey was effective in determining differences in faculty responses among administrators, colleges and survey questions. And so I think it provided useful information; what I mean there is that there was some distinct differences that came out among colleges, among the administrators within colleges, and so on. So we certainly got some clear-looking results.
General strengths-I looked at in general what were our strengths, what were our weaknesses. General strengths of both deans and department heads were in office management, which I think is a tribute to our administrative staff and also in projecting a good image of the colleges and departments, which is most important. The most distinct general weakness was failure of deans and heads/chairs to specifically make attempts to improve performance relative to the results of the last survey. I just want to emphasize that when Bruce Gladden sent out the results of the last survey, he specifically in his cover letter encouraged administrators to meet with their departments and their colleges and discuss the evaluations and request input. Also, in discussing the survey with deans and department heads before we sent it out, they emphasized that this must not be used for firing people. It must be used for improvement. So we asked these questions, which were different from last year, from the last survey, these last two questions we added in this time: Have these administrators improved and did they contact you as faculty and asked how they could improve? And the responses to those questions were the weakest.
The last two points: number 5-the faculty identified two deans and at least 7 department heads that were very weak and the way I catagorize, very weak, they were more than one standard deviation below the average score on the last question. And the deans and Provost were requested to look at these cases very seriously.
I must also point out that we surveyed all the department heads, including interims, and deans, including interims.
Finally, you’ll remember, we did this in hard copy-we mailed out and got everything back in hard copy. That was one heck of a lot of work. The reason we did that was that we had some specific requests from people who were concerned about the security of online types of surveys.
I don’t know whether it was worth it. It was one heck of a lot of work and I would suggest to the incoming committee to look very seriously at running an online survey, if that’s open to discussion. Dr. Larkin, that’s all I have to say and I would be happy to take questions, if there are any.
Dr. Larkin: If you have questions, you can go to the microphone, identify yourself and your affiliation and ask. Thank you, I appreciate that very much. I know that this is a pretty hard job. Let me reiterate that Herb Rotfeld is going to be the incoming-he is the chair now of this committee. I would suspect that the committee would be operated a little bit differently in terms of the approach and so at some point, I’m sure it won’t be me, perhaps Conner will work with Herb and allow Herb to come and present to you how he’s going to approach this and then we’ll go forward. But we appreciate your work on this and encourage the committee to work very closely together and move forward.
Who took my....come on, Bransby, you’re supposed to do better than that, sir. You took my agenda there. (Laughter) This shows you how much he cares about me.
Ok, I’m going to ask Larry Gerber to come forward. I’ve really enjoyed just getting reports from Larry. This may be the most important thing that I will do during the time that I’m chair and that is, having appointed this Ad Hoc committee to look at the Presidential Search process and I’d like for Larry to come and report and at the end of that report, we’re going to take action on this.
We’ve tried to get this on the agenda for the board meeting on February 4th it appears we may not get it on the agenda, but they’ve agreed to allow us to put the report in the board book so that they will have access to this and then we’ll make our recommendations to go forward as a result of this report.
Dr. Larry Gerber: Before I start, I want to recognize the members of the Ad
Hoc committee and I must say, it was really a pleasure working with this committee. We’ve worked quite harmoniously and I believe that we really reached a consensus about the substance of the report, which we presented to you. So I don’t think it’s necessary to read this very long list, but I really do appreciate the work all the committee members put into producing this final report.
I’m sure that most of you do remember at the November senate meeting, I presented a preliminary report, including the text of the draft of the report of our Ad Hoc committee and took some feedback and questions and I hope that you now have all had a chance to read the final draft of our report which was posted on the Senate web page a week ago and which I’m hopeful you will vote upon today. I’m not going to go over the entire report again, I did a reasonably thorough review of it last time.
What I want to do this time is just point out the modifications that have been made from the November initial draft report.
One modification, which was basically in response to some of the feedback, in fact, it was about the only feedback I got from the November meeting, had to do with the issue of whether there should be administrator representation on the Presidential Search Committee and the committee basically reconsidered its original position, about which we had ambivalent feelings and decided in response to the feedback we got, that there should be administrative representation on the search committee and so we added an administrator to the search committee. We did recommend that we thought the administrator should be at the Dean level or below. We still thought there were some legitimate concerns, we think, about having a Vice President on the search committee. We did think it appropriate to add an administrator. So we enlarged the committee from 17 to 18.
I did a fancy PowerPoint last time, saw no need to do that again. So, just as a reminder of the composition we’re recommending, the composition would include: three trustees, seven faculty-two coming from AUM, an administrator, three alumni, two students, a staff member and an A&P member, for a total of 18.
And we also made available the material that was put up on the Senate web page, some of the other recent Presidential Searches that our committee looked at in coming up with a recommendation, not only about the composition of the search committee but also about the procedures that the search committee should follow.
And I won’t go over those now, unless I’m asked, but you did have a chance to look at those if you wished. There was one element about past history that we did not include in the report; specifically, it does not appear as a link on the web page, and that is how this committee compares to the last time Auburn University conducted a search for a president, which was in 1991-92 and I do want to at least remind people what the composition of that search committee was and see how it compares to what we’re recommending now.
In 1991–92, there were 14 members of the presidential search committee. There actually was not, as my understanding, a trustee who actually directly participated. There was one trustee who helped coordinate the activities of the search committee. There were five faculty members from Auburn University main campus, and one from AUM. So there were six out of fourteen faculty members on that committee, three alums from main campus, one alum representing AUM, the student body presidents of AU and AUM, one staff person and one administrative person.
So, in some ways, I’d say the biggest difference in what we’re recommending now from what occurred in 1991–92, is actually there would be more trustee representation, proportionately, there’s actually slightly less faculty representation, although the absolute numbers have increased the size of the committee.
I think our sentiment on the Ad Hoc committee that, given our recent history, everything ought to be done possible to get everybody on the same page on the search. We still believe, and this is the premise of our report, that the faculty are the heart of the institution, and that there ought to be very substantial faculty representation on the board, on the presidential search committee and that ultimately, the main responsibility of the Board of Trustees is choosing the President out of finalists identified by the search committee, but we did recommend more board representation on the search committee itself to try to reach consensus before and throughout the entire process.
Other changes-there are really only two other changes to our report. Has to do with the criteria, the recommended criteria for a new president of Auburn
University. As I hope all of you realized, we conducted an online survey. We initially did it for the faculty, received somewhat over 200 responses online to a survey among the faculty. I received a request from the leadership of the Staff Council that they also wished to have the survey that we had prepared be available to staff members, so they made it available to staff and we received, I believe, 126 responses from staff. If you, as I hope you have, read the wording that appears in the report about presidential criteria, we made nothing absolute in our recommendation, but we, I think, our search committee was very much in agreement with one of the major results of our survey and this was true, both of the staff group as well as of the faculty, that whoever should be hired it’s highly desirable, if not required, that the person have administrative experience at a university and have had a record at a university in terms of scholarship as well as administrative experience and that the person should have an earned doctorate.
But the wording of our report also indicated that we could see exceptional circumstances when an individual who had academic experience but was not currently in academia might be a desirable candidate as president of the university.
The last-and this is where I’ll stop and take any-actually I hope Willie will entertain a motion once I’d finished-the last slight modification to the draft report we supplied had to do with the timing that we’re recommending for a presidential search. There’s no change in the timing itself. We’re recommending that the presidential search should begin as quickly as possible, with the goal of having a president in place actually by next January, but at the latest by July of 2006, which would, this is the one modification in the wording. We made reference to the fact that the special investigating team from SACS sent to
Auburn in September, this last fall, made a similar recommendation, saying that they thought it would be desirable to have a new president in place no later than July of 2006. And so we made reference to the SACS suggestion as well, but still think that it would be appropriate in line with what Dr. Richardson said at the time he was appointed
Interim President, when he indicated that he only wished to serve for two years at that time and also given the fact that by January of 2006, we will have gone five years without having conducted, without having a president in place who was selected through a national search process.
I don’t think there’s much need for me to make any preliminary remarks, so I would hope that someone would entertain a motion to adopt the report.
Dr. Larkin: Since you’re the chair of the committee, why don’t you offer a motion for adoption representing the committee.
Dr. Larry Gerber:
I move as chair of the committee, although not a member of the Senate, but chair of a Senate committee, I would move that the adoption of our report, the adoption and approval of our report.
Dr. Larkin:
Since this is coming from a committee, it does not require a second. If you have a question about this report before we proceed, please go to the microphone and identify yourself and your department or unit.
Conner Bailey, Chair-elect:
Larry, Dr. Richardson mentioned today an AGB set of guidelines, criteria, standards for presidential search and indicated that the board was likely to use that set of standards, if I understood him correctly. Can you tell us how that AGB set of standards may vary from this recommendation?
Dr. Larry Gerber:
I’m actually, I’m reasonably familiar with AGB and I’m not aware of a specific document from AGB that would spell out the composition of the search committee or that would certainly talk about the timing of the search, so what I thought that Dr. Richardson was actually referring to was the use that Auburn, the Board of Trustees made in 2001 when they retained Dr. William Weary, who at one time had a connection to AGB and has consulted in presidential searches, who made certain recommendations to the board back in 2001 of a general nature, they weren’t that specific, which he thought was consistent with AGB philosophy. But I am certainly not aware that there is any AGB statement which would spell out the composition of the search committee or that would deal with some of the other issues that our report deals with.
Conner Bailey: Thank you.
Dr. Larkin:
Other questions? Please....
Harriette Huggins, A&P Assembly Chair: It was our agreement...
Dr. Larry Gerber: Yes, it was and I apologize. As I spoke, I thought I was making a mistake. And I cut you off, if you want to go ahead....
Harriette Huggins: First of all, we appreciate the opportunity to contribute to, some of our preferences and adding to the survey. And we also appreciate the attempt at representation of a number of constituencies, but I want to call your attention to the fact that all constituent groups, campus groups, including representatives from AUM, except staff and A&P, I have been in contact with Chancellor Nance, and there is only one organization at AUM that includes staff and administrative and professional assembly employees and so I don’t want them to feel left out and I think it maybe sends the wrong message because every other group has specific recommendation for an AUM candidate and not these two groups. Thank you.
Dr. Larkin: Thanks very much. Are there other questions or comments?
Dr. Larry Gerber: Now I could ask a question and that is, if you, I take the suggestion as a friendly suggestion. I could tell you from the point of view of the Ad Hoc Committee, certainly our concern was how large the committee we were proposing was already getting. But I think that concern should be noted in any minutes and should be conveyed as one. I don’t think it should be considered as a hostile suggestion to the committee.
Dr. Larkin: Ok, there is a motion to adopt this report on the floor. If there are no other questions, in readiness, all of those in favor of adopting this proposal or recommendation, please indicate by saying Aye. Opposers, nay. Alright, we will move this report forward to the board. We know that this is just advice for them. It probably will not look the same and of course, that’s left up to them, but I think we have done due diligence to come up with a set of recommendations for them to look at and what I’m going to do is communicate with Mr. McWhorter to see if I can set up a meeting with myself, Conner, and also with Larry to talk about this process just a little bit. And then the other thing is, when the board does decide to bring this forward to discuss and do whatever they are going to do with it, we’re going to work with John Mouton as our faculty representative and Larry and myself to make sure that‑John is our representative but Larry worked through the report and so we want him to be involved as well-and the three of us will get together and we’ll negotiate that process. But I just want to express my appreciation to Larry and the rest of the committee members. Because you have completed your work and we have acted upon it, you are no longer needed, in an official capacity, so thank you very much.
Dr. Gerber: Thank you. Can I add just one thing?
Dr. Larkin: Please...
Dr. Gerber: Thank you for those kind words. One last comment I would make about the report, I do think that it’s important to consider the report in its entirety. It’s not just a bullet point, just look at the composition of the search committee, just look at the date. is a report that we spent some time working on and the entire rationale for our approach and a description of why we think the presidential search is so important and if handled properly could be a major step forward for Auburn University. So we hope that whenever you consider the report, you don’t just come back to what did we say about the composition of the search committee, that you look at the entire report.
Dr. Larkin: Alright, thank you. We are moving along quickly. Let me just ask, is there any unfinished business that should come before this assembly?
Let me take a moment of personal privilege. On last Saturday morning, Vivian and I took off and went to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, to watch our daughter compete in the Miss Purdue University Scholarship pageant. We got there and I videotaped that whole thing. We are going to have in the month of February a showing at our house of that video and we will be charging $5 per person, because it’s going to take that amount to pay for all of the gowns and shoes and swimsuits and all of that kind of stuff. She placed third-runner-up and she sang a soulful rendition of Etta James “WPA At Last,” And I’m videotaping and I’m listening to the song and I must admit, that I started to cry because I did not know she had such beautiful pipes. She can sing, and you should have been there. But I tell you guys it’s hard to watch your daughter grow up and walk across a stage with a swimsuit on and hear these people in the back screaming and yelling and the catcalls and everything.
And this one guy said “Wow!” and when I looked back I said “Excuse me, that’s my daughter” and he said “Well, wow, then.” At any rate, we’re very proud of her, just like I’m sure you are of your children.”
Let me ask if there’s any new business. We’ve had a good meeting. I appreciate it and I did look at you, Jack, and I wondered if you would return to the Senate meetings because you don’t have anything to write about. We got along so well today, it was like cousins, don’t you think? This meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much.