Auburn University Senate Meeting

November 9, 2004

 

 

Members Absent: Don Large, VP for Business/Finance; Larry Benefield, Dean-Samuel Ginn College of Engineering;  Isabelle Thompson, Steering Committee; Robert Locy, Steering Committee; Jefferson Jones, Accountancy; Mario Lightfoote, ACES; Werner Bergen, Animal Sciences; Jeff Tickal, Building Sciences; Darrel Hankerson, Discrete & Statistical Science; Robert Weigel, Foreign Language Literatures; Jim Saunders, Geology and Geography; Hugh Guffey, Marketing; Richard Good, Music; Charles Taylor, Pharmacy Practice; Vivian Larkin, Rehabilitation and Special Education; Thomas W. White, ROTC Air Force; LTC Bill Shaw, ROTC Army.

 

Members Absent (Substitute): Sheri Downer, Acting Dean of Libraries (Harmon Straiton); Vic Walker, Staff Council Chair (John Varner); Martha Taylor, A & P Assembly Chair (Harriette Huggins); Debra Worthington, Communication & Journalism (Judy Sheppard); Ann Beth Presley, Consumer Affairs (Pam Ulrich); Thomas A. Smith, Human Development & Family Studies (Jamie Anderson); James Shelley, Philosophy (Richard Penaskovic); Paul D. Starr, Socio/Anthro/Soc Work (Jim Gundlach).

 

Dr. Willie Larkin, Chair: This meeting will now come to order.  While everyone is getting situated, let me remind you, if you choose to speak today, we have microphone here and we have a free-standing mic here.  We ask that you go to the microphone, that you will give your name, and if you=re a Senator, indicate which department you are representing for the record.  And we ask that you speak into the mic.  Also those Senators are reminded to please sign in.  Yes...ok.  There are some individuals who are not Senators, but your name is on the list and you need to make sure that you sign in.

 

The first order of business is to approve the minutes of the 10/12/04 meeting.  Those minutes were posted on the Senate webpage.  You should have had an opportunity to read those.  All of those Senators in favor of approving those minutes as posted, please indicate by saying Aye.  Opposers, nay.  Those minutes are approved.

 

I don=t see the President yet.  Ok, hopefully he will get back in time to make some comments.

 

Last week, we had one of our faculty persons to succumb to a heart attack and I don=t know what the protocol is, but as Chair of the Senate, I thought it would be quite appropriate to pay tribute to William Barber Bancroft.  So I call George Crandell, Department Head in English, and ask him to come and make some statements about this individual=s contribution to the University.  I hope you will indulge me on that and if Dr. Crandell will come forward, we will proceed with that.

Dr. George Crandell, English Department Head: Thank you, Dr. Larkin, and I wish that I wasn=t here on this occasion.  As many of you know, Dr. Bancroft, a teacher in the English department, passed away suddenly on Friday morning doing what he loved to do and that is teach World Literature.  I=m not sure he was crazy about doing it at 8 o=clock in the morning.  On behalf of Barber=s family, his wife Fletcher, his son Webb, as well as his colleagues in the English Department, I would like to thank you for all of you who have sent expressions of sympathy.  They were very well received. 

 

For those of you who did not know Barber, he earned his Master=s Degree here at Auburn and then went on to earn his Ph.D. in English and Critical Theory at the University of California at Irvine, where he had the opportunity to study with renowned French philosopher Jacques Derrida.  Barber brought with him to Auburn a passion for language and literature that he readily shared with students and colleagues alike.  He loved to talk about teaching and writing.  He was also a creative writer and novelist.  He often honed his writing skills at the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences in the nearby mountains of Georgia.  In the classroom, he led lively discussions and always challenged his students to stretch their abilities.  Off the record, that means he was a tough grader.  He was the rare kind of teacher who could stimulate students to think, even in a required core course, such as Freshman Composition or World Literature.  He was the rare kind of teacher whose students wrote about years afterwards to tell someone about the influence he had in their lives.  He was the rare kind of teacher that others of us aspire to be, one who seeks the truth, one who loves with all his heart and inspires in others the desire to be better than we are.  I can think of nothing more fitting as a tribute to Barber than to read a poem by one of his favorite poets, John  Donne called a Valediction Forbidding Mourning:

 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

The breath goes now, and some say, No;

 

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods or sigh-tempests move,

>Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

 

Moving of th= earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant,

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

 

Dull sublunary lovers= love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

 

But we by a love so much refined

That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to aery thinness beat.

 

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th= other do.

 

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th= other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

 

 

Thank you.

 

Dr. Larkin: Thank you very much.  We=ve lost a colleague, but I=m sure his desire would be that we would carry on in the same vein that he did when he was here.  Please keep his family in your prayers in your own individual ways.

 

I have decided to name an Ad Hoc Committee on a mentoring program for Junior Faculty.  I=ve asked Dr. James Groccia to chair this committee.  The members will be Dr. Fran Kochan, Dr. Arthur Appel, Carol Johnson, Vivian Larkin.  There will be three persons named later.  The Rules Committee will meet on Monday and I will present those additional three names and then those will be posted.  I=d like to share with you very quickly the charge I=m giving this committee:

 

The purpose of the Junior Faculty Mentoring Program is to enhance Auburn=s ability to retain all talented young tenure track faculty.  Once developed and approved by the administration, the initiative will be open to all Junior Faculty, with special emphasis on women, African Americans and other people of color.  This Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Dr. James Groccia, will be asked to study the best faculty mentoring programs in the country and presently at Auburn University and design a model that is conducive, broad and comprehensive for Auburn University.

 

The Committee will be prepared to make its first report to the Senate at the January 18, 2005 meeting.  A second report will be presented and discussed at the February 8, 2005 Senate meeting.  The Senate will be asked to approve a final version at the March 8, 2005 Senate meeting, with a recommendation forwarded to the Provost on March 9, 2005.

 

I will meet with Dr. Groccia and we will further define the charge that I=ve given him and then the two of us will collaborate to add those additional three individuals.

 

The search for the Director of Athletics will convene on tomorrow.  We will have three individuals coming in.  The searches will take place on the days of the 10^th, 16, and the 18^th.  We have been invited by Marsha Boosinger, who is the Chair of the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, along with Hal Baird, for the Senate leadership to participate.  So I made a recommendation that the entire five Senate officers be allowed to participate in this meeting.  So we will be involved in that.

 

I want to make a comment about the SACS draft letter.  I will be going to the President=s office tomorrow and to read that letter.  Conner and I emailed Jack Allen from SACS to inquire about the conditions under which they communicated to the administration and Mr. Allen, Dr. Allen rather, emailed us back and indicated that he and SACS would prefer that Auburn University administration not release the draft letters until all of the errors or misinformation was corrected and then he encouraged-well, it=s left up to the administration after that point.  A lot of us have wondered about the conditions of the letter and I=ve gotten a lot of calls and I just wanted to clear that up.  I do have the email from Dr. Allen and indeed, he did encourage the administration not to release that information until it was completely corrected.

 

At this point, our President has come.  I don=t know how long he=s going to have to stay, but I=m going to invite Dr. Richardson to come up and to speak to the body and then you=ll have an opportunity to ask him questions.

 

Dr. Ed Richardson, Interim President: Thank you, Dr. Larkin.  I apologize for being late, I=ve been in Montgomery all day and hopefully that will pay some dividends on one of the objectives we have.  I would like to just briefly deal with two or three issues.  I heard Dr. Larkin mention one, one amendment that just occurred today, that he was aware of it, concerning the AD (athletic director).  I=ll talk to you a little bit about the SACS situation and what I would anticipate.

 

First, in dealing with the AD, we do have some finalists that will be coming in and that we will also visit.  I think tomorrow is the first one.  There will be, obviously there will be for a number of groups here on the campus, and then we will have a second one on the 15^th, Dr. Larkin, one confirmed, at least for me this morning, on the 15^th, 16^th and then 17^th, I believe.  Is that the dates you had or was there an 18^th?  It was probably the 18th-15th, 16^th, and the 18^th then.  We hope that will complete our second review and unless you want me to go into some detail about that search, I=ll leave it at that.  When I say second review, obviously when you get down to this level, you have some that are not as interested as they thought or we may not be as interested as we thought and there may be other issues that come up.  So ultimately, when the home institution finds that there is some interest, oftentimes they do their own negotiations and then that person is no longer a candidate.  We=ve found that to be the case in basketball particularly so.  We hope that this second round will produce us a candidate.  Then again, I=ve made two fearless predictions as to when that would be done and I=ve been wrong both times, so I would be reluctant to say that we=ll be finished by the end of November, but that is certainly what we hope to accomplish.

 

In dealing with SACS, which is probably of more interest to you, we did receive last Friday-late Friday-the report that did reflect two or three factual errors.  That sounds like a very heavy item, those are not heavy items, but they were factual errors dealing with referencing the Board of Trustees by-laws and the numbers that were cited, which were incorrect, things like this.  There were two or three citations, one in which it was just an incorrect reference to action taken by the Board.  So again, the factual errors were relatively minor and have been corrected.  It is my intention on Friday, now I hope that this will all pan out, to have my response to the recommendations that have been included in this special committee report and then release it at that point, that is my intention and therefore, not only will the special committee report be available but my response, which will be submitted.  Again, in case you=ve forgotten, the deadline for the response is Monday, the 15^th.  So we have to have that in, as it was explained to me by Dr. Allen, who was our contact person with SACS.  They then make copies for the members of the committee and then they start meeting within about 10 days so there is a real panic, if you will, if we don=t get it in by the 15^th.  In fact, we=ve been informed that if we didn=t have it in by the 15^th, they would not accept it.  We=re going to take some action during the Board Meeting on the 12^th and then finally would, as I said, also let them know what my response would be and then hopefully that report will be available at that time.

 

I believe that just in a general way, it would be good to remember, I=m sure you=re more familiar than I, with this process.  I=m certainly not trying to imply otherwise, that we had our 10-year reaffirmation study done.  It was a very clean report, a very good report.  And I again commend Dr. Glaze and Dr. Clothiaux and many of you that worked very hard on that report.  So we feel good about that.  That committee did not address the five issues that led to Auburn=s probation.  And I would say that the Special Committee consisting of three people were appointed by SACS and Dr. Allen was present during all of that time, then was brought in to interview various groups.  I=m sure some of you, some trustees, I was interviewed, and I=m sure a number, I think some students were interviewed as well.  A variety of people were interviewed in terms of those specific problems. 

 

Just as a reference, I will give you as much information as I can.  The first item was, if you remember, was the Board committed to accreditation.  And I think that was primarily precipitated by the suit that was filed against SACS, and I think as you know, that has been removed.  And I have agreed to join with SACS to vacate the order, which was at SACS= request.  And that was received very favorably.  And besides receiving the committee and responding, I think we=ve done everything we could in that regard.  So I anticipate a very limited response in that regard because we have met that. 

 

The second area dealt with Athletics.  Unless there=s something changed, the committee felt that all of the requirements for solving really whether or not the President is in charge of Athletics, and including expenditures, there will be no reference at all as they believe that has been fully met. 

 

So we=re really down to the one dealing with trustee relations, and I believe they were very favorably impressed with the issue dealing with the Code of Ethics and the steps that we=ve taken and that will be the one issue, I think, that we will address Friday.  The only other thing I would say about the Trustee meeting, and this is all and I=ll respond to any questions that you have, the Trustee meeting will consist of several things, as you can imagine, dealing with various construction projects and so forth.  We=ll recognize two of our outstanding professors who have been so designated, and we look forward to that.  But I also will ask John Mouton to give a brief report on our reorganization of the Facilities Department, which is now been almost completed and we feel good about the direction there.  And then, thirdly, I will ask the leaders of my six initiatives. 

 

I just want to respond to a point that I received, or a question that I received just a few days ago, and that is dealing with the initiatives.  I do not portend, pretend, to say that these are six initiatives that will rock the very foundation of higher education.  They=re not intended for that.  They=re not rocket science, if you will.  But what they are offered for is one particular reason, and that is to make sure that the institution is responsible for making whatever adjustments and corrections would be necessary and that the Trustees understand  it=s more of a Presidential, and then with all of the other factors that go into making a great university such as Auburn, would be the force that would really drive it forward and then come forward with policy recommendations next spring.  So the primary reason I=m offering that again, is to more clearly define the role that Presidents play and the Trustees play.  So I just wanted you to understand the motives there. 

 

There was a little bit of a concern about, in fact, I understood there was going to be-I don=t know if you passed it before I got here-a resolution asking me to slow down.  I really took that with some humor as I really have not started yet.  And it=s awful hard to slow down before you start. 

 

Nevertheless, I would say in being candid about it, the issue of academic review, which I think should be done, it=s been about six years now, and I think an institution should establish specific standards that should be met by we within the institution.  And I think that whatever period of review that we think appropriate should come out of that.  So I anticipate that some of those questions will be answered.  I think it=s a little optimistic to anticipate that it would, all of the review, would be complete by next June.  That=s probably too ambitious.  But we=re going to narrow it down sometime in February as to here are the three or four things we think we can complete by June and then we will identify those that we think will take a little longer.  So I believe you will see those. 

 

One final thing I will add on that, those six initiatives, is that each of the leaders that I=ve assigned to that will be responsible for identifying the process by which the initiative will be addressed.  If there is any background data, we=ll put that on the table at that time and of course, that will be available to everyone and certainly encourage the appropriate faculty committees to receive those data and to consider that.  So I wanted to say that the issues for these leaders on Monday, on Friday, would be to establish procedures.  Oh, I see you=re standing up-is that about it?

 

Dr. Larkin: I guess so.  If you have questions, if you will go to the microphone please.

 

Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy: Two questions, Dr. Richardson.  Why is there a need for program review at this time?  My first question-second question: Did you consult with faculty ahead of time in coming up with these six initiatives or is this something that you did on your own?

 

Dr. Richardson: I did on my own primarily.  The issue dealing with program review, I think, is again consistent with what I=m trying to accomplish prior to a new president being selected.  I believe that there are several issues that need to be resolved before that occurs.  About six years ago, if you=ll remember, I was Co-Chair, along with Dr. Walker, of the Role Commission, of which that was done in a rather abrupt and aggressive way, and I say that because I was co-chair.  I=m not blaming anyone else and I believe it came about for one reason-that the academy, as I hear the term being used, the people within the institution, had refused to do such a review.  It has now been six years and I believe it is time for us to demonstrate that we can handle our own affairs within the institution and we can provide appropriate information to the Trustees that it has been done and finally, there won=t be a necessity to come back after my predecessor is on board for a year or two and say >It=s been eight or nine years now, let=s do this thing.=  So I believe it=s consistent with what I=m trying to accomplish in addressing a few problematic areas and I believe it will convey the right message to the Trustees and I believe it will help to ensure that my successor will have a long tenure.

 

Richard Penaskovic: In regard to the review that happened in 1997 when you were co-chair with Dr. Walker of the committee, that particular initiative actually came from Mr. Lowder.  He came to President Muse one day and said >I want to do this program review.  Will you please step aside?=  And Dr. Muse said at the time >I can=t do that, Mr. Lowder.=  And so they worked out a compromise whereby Dr. Muse put on six, a number of people on the committee and Mr. Lowder chose the other members of the committee.  So that=s one reason why faculty are very nervous and anxious about this program review because we always feel there is a political agenda.  And then some programs at that time were cut, based not on academic reason, but for political reasons, like the Ph.D. program in Economics.

 

Dr. Richardson: That=s for the most part correct, Dr. Penaskovic, but it is not totally correct.  I had served on the Board since >95.  And in that regard, there had been at least three requests of the administration, because we kept getting the numbers from the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, that there a number of non-viable programs.  That=s a simplistic standard and I don=t think it=s certainly sufficient.  But at the time, if you=ll remember, there were over 60 such programs here.  There was a request by the Board, and I was present on at least two of those->Would you please review programs in that context?=  No review was conducted and so I do think then there was a stronger push to get it done.  That again, I think, blurs the lines between trustees and the administration and faculty.  I think that if we assume that responsibility, it establishes we will come up with the standards, we will decide on what needs to be done.  There is no trustee involvement, there was no trustee involvement in the six initiatives.  And so I would say to you that I anticipate that it will be a very clear review.  One final thing, and the trustees, if you will remember my comment: >Stay out of this discussion.=  That=s what I said when I put these on the table and that=s what I mean for it to occur.  I would just say one other thing, that during that time in >96->97 when we started, I=ve seen a report that->96, >97, whenever it started-that there were very serious financial problems associated with the University.  So as a result, that=s when you had to, each dean was faced with >Which one of your children are you going to give up?= type of thing-a very difficult decision.  And that the one you identified, of course, was the one recommend by the dean at time in the College of Business.  So, what you said is basically correct but I do not anticipate any trustee involvement.  I anticipate an active discussion.  I hope that will come from this group as representing the faculty.  And I think we will come up with reasonable standards for review.  I think we will come up with reasonable standards for how often it should be done and I think we=ll clearly communicate that the institution is capable of doing that.  And I think anything less than that sets the stage for some point in the future for trustees again to say >You haven=t done your homework; we don=t believe you=re responsible enough to do what you=re going to do and maybe we need to assume more responsibility= and that would be very detrimental to my successor.  Conner?

 

Conner Bailey, Chair-Elect: Dr. Richardson, could I ask you to clarify on the letter from SACS.  You said it was last Friday that the draft arrived.  Have we yet received the final version?

 

Dr. Richardson: Yes.  Let me clarify that.  The final version arrived late Friday.  Yes we do have it.  That is what I intend to put my response to.  I have already started that and hopefully that, my response, and the original-the final report-will be released in public.

 

Sridhar Krishnamurti, Communication Disorders: One major controversy that has been generated has been the changes in the Alumni Office, with some administrators being taken out and how is that going to affect us in the SACS review?  Can you give us some insights on if that is going to be an issue at all?

 

Dr. Richardson: It will not be an issue at all.  I would say again, initially I did make the decision concerning the Vice President for Alumni Affairs.  Dr. Shaw was here, in fact, she=s right behind you.  She had made whatever decision she felt appropriate and tried to get it together.  We=ve had good elections, good in the sense that someone has been elected.  There were three good candidates running for the President.  I=ve met with the person that has been elected and I anticipate a very positive review in terms of positive in relationships.  I=m very confident-it will not have anything to do with SACS.  It does-really there=s a broader picture to me than even SACS, although that is my number one priority and I certainly remain optimistic that we will get off of probation.  Until that is called on December 7^th, I won=t know.  But I would say that the Alumni Affairs had a broader impact beyond SACS in terms of people that supported Auburn, either financially or just in verbal support or in sending their children to this school, and it was creating some problems in that regard and I=m sure Bob McGinnis would tell you that during the heat of that, it made it very difficult for him in terms of campaigning and so forth.  So, I believe that we=re on the right track there and I feel very positive about it.  But again, to repeat, I do not anticipate that it will have anything to do with SACS.

Sandra Clark-Lewis, Communication Disorders: This does not have to do with the SACS review, but it has to do with a concern and a change that has come about this year.  Last year, the Office of Outreach had grants that were available to all faculty to compete for the monies for Outreach grants.  This year, the grant monies had become available again, but this year clinical faculty have been excluded from the opportunity to apply for those grants and I wondered if you could give some rationale for that decision.

 

Dr. Richardson:  No.  I was unaware of that, just to be candid with you and I don=t know if Dr. Wilson, I have not seen him in the room....

 

Dr. Larkin: He=s at the top.

 

Dr. Richardson: Oh in the very back row.  Excuse me, David.  Did you understand the question, Dr. Wilson?  Maybe you can come to the mic and answer that.  He would be best qualified.  I was just unaware of that.

 

Dr. David Wilson, Associate Provost & Vice President, University Outreach: Very briefly, on last year, we started a competitive grant process within the university where we made available $200,000 and faculty members were asked to compete for that $200,000 and in the end we ended up funding about 11 proposals at about $11,000 each.  This year, because Outreach was asked to contribute back to the general fund in a way that we had not been asked before, we had to cut in half the amount of money we had available to send out to faculty for competitive grants.  And so it was not $200,000 this year, but $100,000 and as a result of that, we made a conscious decision to limit that to tenured and tenure-track faculty.  Certainly, we hope that if next year we=re able to realize additional revenue from our Outreach Program office and send that number back to $200,000 and that we can once again incorporate the clinical faculty back into that process.

 

Dr. Richardson: I think, Dr. Wilson, there may be a followup.  Is there a followup?

 

Sandra Clark-Lewis: I guess my question is: How do you choose a part of the faculty to exclude from that opportunity?  And I know we talked about this on the phone.  I just don=t understand how you come to that decision to say >This portion of the faculty is not going to have this opportunity.=  Why not just let it be competitive for everyone?

 

Dr. Wilson: It really goes back to the decade-long process we=ve been in engaged here at Auburn to make Outreach Scholarship a significant part of the tenure and tenure-track faculty workload.  That process started around 1996.  Professor Wayne Flynt played a critical role in pushing that forward.  Professor John Heilman played a critical role in pushing it forward and so what we were trying to do this time around with limited resources, was get back to the primary reason why we were making the funds available.  And the primary reason was to make funds available to tenured and tenure-track faculty, to enable them to use their research and scholarship in a way that would push Auburn University closer toward the national model of an integrated mission, if you will.  It had less to do with excluding the clinical faculty this time around but more to do with simply limited resources and the way we started this process 10 years ago to get more tenured and tenure-track faculty to embrace Outreach Scholarships in a different sort of way.

 

Dr. Richardson: Thank you, Dr. Wilson.  That may not fully answer your question, but I appreciate his discretion.  One of the first initiatives that I pushed forward was to review the operational costs of Samford Hall and we did a squeeze there and evidently as I squeezed Outreach, that was the end result.  So, in terms of why did it come down that he had to make some cuts, it was specific as to where they should be, but he did have to make some and I would be the blame for that.  If you have some thoughts on that, I would be glad to receive those and consider those.  But then again, in fairness to David, I was the one that asked those within Samford Hall to make the cuts and so the result is because of my request.

 

Dr. Larkin: Richard, hold on for a second.  Are there other senators who want to ask a question?  Other senators?  If you are a senator and you want to ask a question, please go to the microphone.  If not, I=m going to let Rik come back and then at the end of Rik=s question, that will be the last of the comments.

 

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: I=m just wondering, what=s all the secrecy with SACS?  Are we going to be releasing whatever the problem was?  You went into that meeting with the final exit interview and prior to that you had spoken to us and you said >I am extremely confident that we are going to come through this with flying colors.  We=ve done more than enough.=  The immediate comment afterwards is reported in the paper was >It looks like we=re going to have to do some more.=  Can=t you even at this point clarify for us what area Amore@ is in and what Amore@ you=re planning to do?  Why does everything that happens at this university not be a secret that you hold from us and you tell the trustees and then you do it?  And we the faculty, a significant portion of this university, a significant asset and resource, never hear about it, never get any say or ability to have an input.  All we ever see, in your entire tenure, all I have ever seen is things that we hear nothing about, secrecy, >I can=t tell you about this=, it goes in front of the trustees, they do whatever you wanted them to do, and it=s done.  And we have no input, say or anything else.

 

Dr. Richardson: Ok, fair question.  First, I have been here nine months-I agree.  I would say that in the exit interview, I invited the faculty to be present for that, to hear the same thing.  They told us during the exit interview that they could not say that would be the final report.  That was simply based on their initial reaction and so they went back and wrote this preliminary draft.  The preliminary draft had the two or three factual errors.  The procedure that they said for us is that >You may call the Chair=, which I did, Dr. Lick, and said AThere are two or three errors here=, and he said >Fine, you may email those to us and then we=ll consider those and then send them back to you.=  So the final report, the one that I intend to release, was received late Friday.  That=s it-late Friday afternoon.  So what I intended to do-there are three recommendations, and I think I already identified three for you-would say to you that I will give you my response.  That will be the response we will submit to SACS on Monday, and all of that will be public this Friday.  So within a five-day period, not only will you get the document, the document as they submitted it, but also my response that will be submitted to SACS, to meet the additional recommendations.  Now going in, I still believe that we have done more than is required.  As one that has served on nine University Board of Trustees, I can tell you, none of the others come close to doing this and so I do think that I am optimistic.  But as I exited from that, it was apparent to me that some additional work needed to be done.

 

Rik Blumenthal: I guess my comment is really about again, the procedure that is being used here.  You=re going to release it as soon as you send it in.  So there is no opportunity for the faculty, the Auburn community, the Auburn family, to say >Hey, President, maybe instead of recommending this as the remedy to their problem, their cited complaint with us, maybe you could try this.=  Apparently you don=t want to hear that from the faculty.  You don=t want our input because you=re going to wait until the day it=s due and then turn the report in.  And then you=ll tell us what you reported.  Why not tell us now and maybe we can give you a good suggestion?  I don=t think we=re all brain-dead out here.  I don=t think we=re completely void of ideas and we certainly want to get accreditation, at least as much as you do.

 

Dr. Richardson: I would not doubt that at all.  I would say two things here: number one, when you get this on late Friday afternoon, and you have other commitments during the weekend, then I have to prepare my response.  Now I worked some over the weekend; the response is not complete.  So I=m not ready for my response yet.  In regard to why not involve some of the faculty, I think if you=ll just go back and review the first report, the faculty or academic programs are not at play here, at all.  This is basically institutional control on every one of those, whether the President is in charge of day-to-day operation of the university and the trustees understand the policy.  Those are the only issues and so what we=re doing is simply documenting in my report, the steps that have already been taken that are public and you know about.  And so there will be no Asecret@ information that we will add.  All I=m doing is listing those steps that we have taken, whether it=s the Code of Ethics, eliminating the Athletic Committee and all that other....

 

Rik Blumenthal: There are actually no additional things that you=re going to be doing...

Dr. Richardson: No sir.  All I=m doing is documenting the steps that have been taken.  That=s all.

 

Dr. Larkin: Thank you, Rik.  If nobody else is going to ask a question... Rich, are you still...ok, this will be the last question.  Thank you.

 

Richard Penaskovic, Philosophy: Dr. Richardson, if I heard you correctly, where you said that Auburn University was not in very good financial shape under President Muse in 1996-1997.....

 

Dr. Richardson: I did not identify the president at the time, but I did say the financial condition was not good, coming right after Fob James made several cuts in higher education.

 

Richard Penaskovic: Right.  Well I think the university was in much worse shape when Dr. Muse assumed the office of the President in 1990.  In fact, he was kind of blind-sided by it and he really set the ship aright.  I mean....it was in very bad shape.

 

Dr. Richardson: I=m not being critical of Dr. Muse.

 

Richard Penaskovic: But you have that as one of the reasons for the program review in 1996-1997.  But I=ve never seen any hard data suggesting that the university saved any money in this whole business of program review.  What it did, it made faculty, myself, radical, because our programs were cut and it didn=t make any sense.  I mean, the program in Religious Studies, it could=ve, it was doing just as good as the program in Philosophy.  The students today get the equivalent of a Bachelor=s in Religious Studies, but now they can only get a Bachelor=s in Philosophy.  It doesn=t make any sense.  The university didn=t save any money in my situation and in several others.  So I=ve never seen any hard data in this regard.

 

Dr. Richardson: I could not offer any such data that would confirm how much money was saved.   You have to believe in those cuts that some would be.  But let me again, offer two things: this was in no way, and I did not use any president=s name, I=m not in any way being critical of Dr. Muse-I assumed the State Superintendency in 1995, the same year that Fob James assumed the Governorship, and he made three very successive and Draconian-type cuts in our education.  So all university presidents were faced with very significant problems.  Again, my motive here is this: the reason that occurred primarily was not the money.  The reason it occurred was that there had been three consecutive years in which the trustees asked for such a study to be conducted, and it was not done.  Then it got pushed forward and then in the process of that, is when we also got some financial problems and we got 61 programs or whatever the number was, that are non-viable, then we start making cuts.  This is not based on financial situation.  This is not based on cuts needing to be made-I said that publicly when we started.  This is primarily trying to demonstrate that the faculty and administration can set the standards, can decide on what frequency this should be done, and that it will not be necessary for the trustees to do it.  Again, I think it will save my successor major problems.  And that=s the primary reason.

 

Dr. Larkin: Thank you.

 

Dr. Richardson: Thank you so much for inviting me.

 

Dr. Larkin: Appreciate it.  There is clear evidence that hate groups have targeted and infiltrated Auburn University.  We don=t want to make this a major topic of discussion, but I do want to ask ChiChi Lovett to come forward, because there have been a number of groups, both from the community and the university, who have gotten together and talked about this and I just want her to make a comment or two about some of the things that have taken place and then we=re going to move forward with Dr. Gerber coming forward and presenting the Ad Hoc Committee=s report on the Presidential Search.

 

ChiChi Lovett, Art/Steering Committee: I=m just here to inform you that the National Alliance has targeted Auburn University for recruitment, in essence.  Fliers have been appearing in town and also recently a flier was left on the porch of one of our graduate students, who is a foreign student who is of interracial background.  It=s very disturbing.  It=s something that, unfortunately, every time I bring it up with someone, they can cite an incident that has happened to them or one of their students.  Also in the community the mosque was covered with horrible hate information, I=m sure they felt was information, but really hateful words was spray painted and at this point, we don=t have a central place to report these types of incidents, but they=re very important.  The university and members from the university as well as members from the community have begun to come together to see if there is some way that we can educate our students and educate the community and make some type of positive stand and statement against this, to let the people, the National Alliance people know that they=re not welcome here and that this is not the fertile ground that they think it is.  So I would ask you that if you are aware of anything, if you can document anything, if you would please just hold onto it until we can find some type of proper venue to collect the information.  If you=re interested in participating in some way in this conversation, you should speak with Dr. Johnny Greene in his office.  And again, if you would just be aware of it, most of us, a lot of us, if we don=t have children, we were children, and you can imagine how horrific it is to be in a foreign country and have something like this appear on your porch.  This is hardly the way the Auburn Family does things and this is hardly the image that we want to encourage.  Thank you.

 

Dr. Larkin: This issue is at its infancy stage right now, but if it=s left unaddressed, it could quickly grow out of, grow into a negative situation, so please take that advice.

 

Dr. Hanley, are you ready?  Dr. Hanley is going to come and talk about the Academic Program Review process.  We=ve gotten a lot of questions and inquiries about how it=s going to unfold and who=s going to be involved, so hopefully he will be able to shed some light on that process.

 

Dr. Thomas Hanley, Provost: Thank you, Dr. Larkin.  I think Dr. Richardson pretty much upstaged me on this.  We haven=t gotten that far in exactly what the academic review will actually be.  We=re in the process of putting that together.  What I can talk to you about today and then I=d like to field questions if you have them, we are in the process of creating data, some tools, that could be used.  Most of you are aware of them as I=ve talked about them two or three times: capacity study, minimum teaching requirement, the performance assessments and then finally, the individual department reviews.  Those are the things I=m trying to put into place now and have those done on a regular basis and those would be cyclic, we would do those every year.  What I would then think would be a logical fallout from that is that data and other data would be used in a continuing review of programs on campus.  That is, I think, the direction Dr. Richardson is going in.  He wants to see us have an ongoing review of programs so that when the trustees ask >What are you doing?=, we can show them the data that shows that we are doing this on a regular basis; that we are comfortable with where we are.

 

 As I=ve explained to the deans-there was one comment that I saw that wasn=t exactly right-we have been working directly with the deans and the departments in gathering the data for the MTRs.  As a matter of fact, Drew-is Drew here?  Drew=s here-Drew, I charged-I asked Drew to form a contact with at least one person in each college so that we would have a go-between on the data and in many instances this go-between has taken us down to a department level, and so we have been using that method to try to gain data and then try to analyze it.  We have now, I think we=ve met with everybody-we=ve met again with all the deans after the initial review to go over the data and we will likely finalize the MTR for 2003-2004 year within the next month.  We will then in the spring start generating the >04->05 numbers for the same thing, so that we=ll have multiple years to look at.  We are just now starting in the process of generating the data for the assessment and there will be two phases to that.  The first is that we have to find out from each department how faculty are assigned.  We can=t do an assessment until we know how the faculty are assigned.  We=ll be looking at getting that data over the next two months.  The other thing that we=re going to be looking for is the count.  In other words, if we=re doing a performance assessment, what things are required for performance.  What do you count?  And more than likely on those issues, we are going to have to go to departments.  I=ve already had a discussion with Joe Self about the fact that his home department of Art doesn=t necessarily perform in the same way that other academic programs perform on campus and that we=re going to have to adjust our assessment tools for the department of Art.  I think that it will likely that there will be adjustments for several programs on campus as we try to find out again, to assess what people are doing.  I don=t think that we have a pre-drawn conclusion on what those assessments are going to be although I could probably come up with a list of things that are more likely to be on the list of things that we=ll look at, and that would include things like FTS, student credit hours generated, number of degrees granted-Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate degrees-the number of referee publications we generate, the number of presentations we make at meetings, the research dollars that we bring in to the university.  Those are some of the things that more than likely are going to be on the list of things we look for in a performance assessment. 

 

The last issue that I=m going to try to initiate, which I think will take a little bit longer and I guess the reason it=s fresh on my mind is that I just sat through Engineering=s exit interview.  They had the accrediting board for Engineering and Technology here today that just gave the exit interview for all of our Engineering programs and our programs in Computer Science.  If you=ll look at what=s happening now, by AVEC standards, each of those programs that are accredited have to go through effectively a yearly process that has been set up by the faculty and the various constituency groups of that faculty and that process occurs on a yearly basis as the faculty moves for self-improvement of the program.  And so that will be the fourth issue that we will try to set up.

 

 We do have a workshop on Thursday with the Academic Affairs group and the trustees, and that workshop is a continuation of workshops that were requested by Mr. Miller and what I=ll be doing at that meeting, I will be explaining, I guess, four things.  They wanted to talk about the core curriculum.  I will explain how the core curriculum came about, what AGSC is, what our current core curriculum is and what kind of flexibility we have in dealing with the core if we stay inside of AGSC, I think it is.  We=re going to present what the minimum teaching requirement is.  We will not at this particular meeting give any results from this year and one of the reasons for that, and this is Dr. Richardson, who talked to me about this, one of the reasons is that you really can=t take part of the results without looking at all the results.  We don=t have the performance assessments ready and we need to take the MTRs along with the performance assessments to get an analysis.  So we won=t be sending any results to the trustees.  Mainly this session will be information as to what the analysis is trying to do and what they should look for when the results come.  We may get into performance assessment, but it may only be slightly, I have about an hour and a half to get through this and it=s going to take some time to get through the MTR-type analysis with them to get them acquainted with what we=re doing. 

 

As far as the academic program review, I would anticipate that the tools that we=re putting together would be useful in that academic program review, but Dr. Richardson and I have not come to grips with exactly what the program review would be.  I would certainly hope that it is not a review based on the single issue of, say, viability of programs, number of graduates, and that=s one of the reasons we=re putting these various assessment tools together so that we can look at all aspects of the program instead of just one.  With that I=d be happy to answer any questions that you have or listen to any comments you have to make.

 

Dr. Larkin: If you have questions, if you would go to the microphone.  I might also add that the Provost also has assured us that the Academic Program Review of the Senate will be actively involved in this process.  No one has any questions?  Thank you.

 

I=m going to ask Dr. Larry Gerber to come forward.  He is chairing the Ad Hoc Committee on the Presidential Search.  Dr. Gerber, at the end of your presentation, if you will indicate to this body how they can add input because there=s going to be a survey and you can kind of explain that a little bit.

 

Dr. Larry Gerber, History/Chair, Ad Hoc Committee on Presidential Search: I actually have a PowerPoint.  I=m Larry Gerber from the History Department and as serving as Chair of this Ad Hoc Committee, I have up here a list of the other committee members, some of whom are in the room today and I must say that it was a pleasure working together with this group.  A couple of the committee members were unable to attend the meetings, but did communicate with me and other members as a whole via email.  And I hope that all of you, especially all of you senators, have had a chance to read the report which was available with the agenda online and what I=m going to do today is go through it in sort of an outline form, try not to take too long in presenting the basics of the report, but I really encourage you, if you haven=t read the whole report, I think the report is much fuller than what I can do in a brief outline.  And then according to the charge of the committee, our intention is to receive comments, suggestions, there=s also going to be a special aspect of the report that will involve an online survey and that our charge then will be to come back to the Senate January meeting with any revisions that may be in response to the discussion that will have occurred and then, I hope, to have a vote on this report by the Senate in January.

 

First of all, I think the entire committee agreed about the importance of the whole process of searching for a President, that given a lot of the issues that have arisen in Auburn in recent years, that a search for a President is a unique opportunity for Auburn University to establish to a new starting point for the future, to bring various constituencies of the University together, to build a foundation of agreement on which we can all move forward and that the whole process by which we choose a new President, we agreed, will be absolutely critical.  It=s actually a very positive opportunity, in our view, to build toward the future. 

We also recognize, and I think this was recognized in the charge that Dr. Larkin gave to the committee, that the selection of a University President is the prerogative of the Board of Trustees, the governing board and that in fact, it is probably the most important thing a governing board does, that is, to choose a president of the university.  But having said that, we also, after looking at the experiences of a number of other universities in terms of search processes in recent years, we=ve seen that there=s no single model that all universities follow in terms of selecting a new president.  But again, I think it=s the premise of our report that the way in which the Board ends up making its choice, the input it gets from the constituencies of the university, and I would say especially from the faculty, will be very important in determining whether the new president will be successful.

 

This is again, an outline form.  There is a discussion of principles contained in the report.  But we went, first off, to looking at the construction of a potential Presidential Search Committee and after discussion, we came up with a suggested composition for what a search committee might look like.  And I would like to point out that for those of you who read today=s Opelika-Auburn News= front page story about our report, there is a factual inaccuracy in the very first sentence of that news story.  When you look at this suggested composition, the Ad Hoc committee did not recommend that the majority of the search committee be faculty members.  Seven out of seventeen is a substantial grouping in the search committee, but we did not recommend that faculty hold the majority on the search committee.  We also thought that the search committee in terms of composition, that we did agree that Board participation in the search committee, even before the Board would have the authority to make a selection for finalists, would be an important way to try to bridge what have been differences between the Board and other constituencies related to the University.  So we did call for substantial Board representation on the search committee.  We were trying to be sensitive to the need to have representation from AUM, as well as from our own campus.  But we did argue within our report that we thought that faculty, because of our central role in carrying out the central mission of the university in terms of research, teaching, and outreach, that it made sense to have faculty more substantially represented on a search committee than any other group.

 

Again, our recommendation or suggestion is that, again, is to foster the building of agreement within the consensus.  We suggested that the committee have a co-chair system of a trustee and a faculty member to be selected by the committee itself.

 

Also, and this was a critical principle that we strongly agreed upon, that the groups being represented on the search committee should be able to designate their own representatives.  We think this will enhance the legitimacy of those people actually serving on the committee, although we do add language in the report that do indicate that we recognize that once people are on the search committee, they are not to be just purely representatives of their interest groups.  They should view themselves as members of a university-wide committee with a university-wide obligation.  We still think that the committee would function best and have the greatest legitimacy on campus if the groups have the authority to choose their own representatives. 

 

Search Committee responsibilities-as I said, I=ll go through this pretty fast so that there will be opportunity for you to make comments or ask questions.  We do believe that the search committee itself should have the primary responsibility for the search process.  We did assume as a committee that it would be useful to have a search consultant.  I think we recognize that Auburn University is in a situation where there will be a challenge in attracting the best possible pool of candidates.  And so we assumed that a search consultant would probably be helpful in trying to broaden the pool, and we also thought it would be most appropriate for the search committee itself to be involved in the selection of any consultant that would actually be used.  We also thought that it would be appropriate for the search committee to develop the wording for an advertisement, including the ultimate determination of what criteria the search committee would use in looking for candidates to recommend to the Board of Trustees for final selection.  And we also thought it would be very important if all candidates would be considered by the Board of Trustees as possible candidates, that they would go through a screening process by the committee itself, that there would not be people who would enter into the search after the search committee had already done its work.

 

Now while we put a lot of emphasis on the critical importance of the search committee itself, we certainly recognize that it would be the obligation of the search committee to present to the Board of Trustees, which has the final responsibility for choosing the President, a list of more than one candidate, that the Board has an active role in the final choice.  Now we did discuss the issue as to whether the search committee should be required to recommend a search number, whether 5 or 4 or 3, and the search committee thought that it would be preferable to leave the language more indefinite, saying Amultiple names@ rather than trying to predetermine how many really highly qualified candidates there actually might be in the pool.  Now we assume that you said the search committee had to present five names to the board, it is conceivable that there may not be five highly qualified people applying, we didn=t want to box the search committee into a fixed number, but again recognizing that we thought it would be inappropriate for the search committee to present only one name, as if the Board only had a veto power on the selection.

 

Again, in terms of recruitment procedures, the committee assumed that we are not in the best of positions right at the moment in terms of recruiting a new president, and then we thought it would be quite important for Auburn, in the period before a search would actually begin, to take concrete actions in a variety of areas that would demonstrate Auburn University=s commitment to principles of shared governance, diversity, to academic excellence, that we basically do need to be taking steps that would help make Auburn seem as attractive a place to come as possible.  We also thought in terms of attracting the widest possible pool that it would be quite helpful for Interim President Richardson, who indicated at the time of his appointment in January, that his intention-this is what he addressed to the University faculty meeting early in this year-but his intention was only to serve for two years and that he did not intend to be a candidate for permanent Presidency, we thought it would be quite helpful in terms of attracting the best possible pool for the Interim President to reaffirm that commitment, because it would be our belief that outside candidates are less likely to apply if they have some question as to whether the sitting  Interim President may be a candidate in the pool.  We think it would he helpful for the Interim President to reaffirm what he has actually already said.

 

Also, in terms of the selection of the search firm, assuming that does take place, we thought it was very important that the search committee in considering a search firm, consider that search firm=s record of recruitment in higher education.  We thought it would be absolutely essential that any search firm retained would have a proven record of being able to recruit minorities and women to positions of the level of the Presidency and high quality institutions.   We also thought, from recent experience, that it would be very important that any search firm make a commitment that if the individual of that search firm were assigned to a search, have such a record, not just the search firm itself, more generally, but that the person would be assigned to Auburn.

 

On the issue of confidentiality or secrecy, the Ad Hoc committee recognized that it would be most likely that we would be more able to recruit a good pool of candidates if confidentiality was retained at least until the point at which finalists were identified.  The wording within our document does say to the extent possible according to the Sunshine Laws, and there are some issues about what the Sunshine Laws in Alabama would or would not permit, but the committee was generally sympathetic to the notion of confidentiality, until the point of the finalists being identified.  But at that point, the search committee thought that in terms of building legitimacy, building support for whoever would become President, that open meetings on campus with various constituency groups with the finalists, would be an important part of building the kind of conditions that would make it possible for a new President to be successful.

 

One issue which we were also asked to address, was the criteria that a search committee might consider in looking for a new President.  On this matter, the search committee thought that rather than our presenting conclusions at this point, at this point, in our preliminary discussion of our report, that we would like to seek in a formal way, input from the entire faculty.  In fact, I believe within the next 24 hours, there should be an email going out to the entire faculty email list, non-tenure track as well as tenure track faculty, a notice about an online survey that will become available, that actually is available as of today and will be available until December 1^st, by which faculty could rank the priority of a number of characteristics by which the search committee, which the Ad Hoc search committee or Ad Hoc committee on Presidential search, has identified as possible characteristics for a president, and I=m not going to go through these, I=m not going to read them, I=ll just bring them up.  These were possible characteristics that our Ad Hoc committee came up with.  The web address up at the top will be the address that any faculty member will go to and be able to indicate their priorities among these characteristics.  The system that is going to be used is the same online system that was used in the election of Senate officers this year, which means that a faculty member will have to log in and will be able to vote once and only once, and then we=ll be able to tabulate results after the survey closes December 1^st to take into consideration when we bring back the final report in January. 

 

And I think this is the last point with regard to timing.  The committee was unanimous, actually the committee as a whole supported the recommendations as terms of this draft report.  I especially want to make note that there was unanimous agreement on the committee that it would be important to begin a presidential search expeditiously with the goal of having a new president starting as early as January 2006, which would be the end of the two-year period Interim President Richardson thought he would be serving when he accepted the position at the beginning of this year.  We think that by that time Auburn University will have had an Interim President for a period of five years without any national search and we think that the whole process of moving forward, that this would be important to have this done as expeditiously as possible.

 

Now I=d be glad to hear comments, take questions....

 

Bradford Boney, SGA: I just want to talk about the committee composition real quick.  When I read all three trustees, seven faculty, three alumni, two students, one A&P, one staff, I had an initial feeling that seven faculty, which could override two other full constituencies in a vote of maybe even three trustees or alumni, is seven not a little too much or being too selfish on the end of having more faculty on the committee?  And I guess my other question on the committee composition would be is where does administrators, such as Dr. Wes Williams, Vice President of Student Affairs and others fall within the search committee for a new President?

 

Dr. Larry Gerber: I=ll start with the last point first about the role of administrators.  The committee did discuss that issue as to representation of administrators and in fact, one of the initial drafts did have a place for an administrator on the committee.  The committee then had a discussion of some of the potential issues of administrators who are currently, even if they were hired before the current interim president took his position, that administrators, unlike students or unlike faculty or unlike alumni, unlike A&P, are in some sense part of a current administration and so the committee did decide in terms of its recommendation or suggestion, not to have administrative representation on the committee, although the text of the report also indicates that it was our full expectation and full support that when it got to the point of finalists coming to campus, that they would of course want to be meeting with administrators and the administrators as a group on campus would want to have input into responding to finalists who would come to campus.  We did go back and forth on that, I won=t say that it was, when we agreed with the recommendation that we put forward, but we did see arguments on both sides on that particular issue.  With regard to the amount or the number of faculty in comparison to say, alumni or to students or to A&P, it was the belief of the committee, which, is true, was a faculty committee, it was our belief that the faculty is the central constituency of the university, that is to say, if one of the tasks of the university is teaching, there=s no teaching without the faculty.  If one of the main missions of the university is the production of knowledge and research, it=s the faculty who are responsible for that.  If Outreach, the faculty has primary, not exclusive, primary responsibility for that as well.  So we thought in terms of what the mission of the university is, that the faculty should be better represented than students or alumni or these other groups.  As I said at the outset, we didn=t have the faculty represented in overwhelming numbers, and in terms of having more faculty than members of the Board of Trustees, the assumption was that this was a committee to identify finalists, ultimately the Board of Trustees is the body that makes the choice as to who will be President.  So this search committee is to identify finalists, not to make the final decision.  In the final decision, it=s really only the Board=s votes that ultimately count.

 

Dr. Larkin: Great.  Thank you, Larry.  Let me...oh.....

 

Dan Bennett, Dean, College of Agriculture: Larry, I just wonder if you=ll exclude faculty who have been hired in the last five years as you=re assuming to exclude administrators.  I think you=re creating an adversarial situation that doesn=t need to exist.  You=re assuming that the deans, the department heads, the vice presidents here would agree with everything that=s happened in the last five years.  That couldn=t be further from the truth and I think it=s shortsighted in setting up that kind of adversarial, contentious relationship to start with.  Thank you.

 

Dr. Gerber: I appreciate that, Dan.  Thank you.  I would say in terms of soliciting input, I don=t see people flocking to the microphones here, but in addition to the presidential criteria, which I do hope all of you with faculty status, will take the opportunity not only yourselves, to go online about the presidential criteria, to voice your ideas on that, but to encourage your colleagues in your departments.  With regards to this issue of the composition of the search committee or anything else, I would hope that people would contact, I guess the easiest thing, people can contact me.  My email, I=m sorry I didn=t write it down, it=s-you know the way Auburn=s email works-my initials are lg, so it=s gerbelg@auburn.edu.  So there is depending on if we got strong sentiment from people on campus, the report is still in draft form.  That was our preference, but we=re certainly here to get input.  Our intention was not to disparage the current administrators on campus.  Certainly our goal is to seek a process which will build consensus, not to create adversarial atmospheres.  Some institutions, many institutions that have done searches do have administrators on them, there are a number of presidential searches that do not include administrators, so it=s done both ways.

 

Tom Sanders, Library: Along those lines, too, I was interested that in areas such as students, you specified that there would be one person from AUM, but when you got to A&P and staff, there was no provision for AUM.  And I wondered what the rationale for that was.  I know you can=t work with a 45-member committee.  I realize that right off.

 

Dr. Gerber: I do think the rationale was, we got to a larger committee in some ways, we were sort of edging toward the upper limit, and I think that was one of the main considerations about not having an A&P person from AUM and also a staff person specifically designated from AUM.

 

Dr. Larkin: Thank you, I appreciate it very much.  I was attending another committee meeting yesterday.  We were charged with resolving some issues and the question was =What process are we going to use?= and then someone responded >We=re going to use the Larry Gerber process= so apparently his committee did a great job in coming up with the process.  Conner, if you=ll come forward, we=re going to present a resolution on program evaluation.  Dr. Richardson made a tongue-in-cheek comment about us putting forth a resolution on something that he had not started.  We just want to make sure that we=re out there in front of it before it gets started.  So we=re going to do the resolution and then we=ll proceed from there.

 

Conner Bailey, Chair-elect: Thank you, Dr. Larkin.  If you will permit, I will not read the resolution in the interest of time since we have this and one other important matter to cover today and if we can get back onto that screen that Larry=s going to help with.  As background of this resolution that=s before you, or will be in a moment, was inspired by a couple of developments.  One was a news article in the Decatur Daily newspaper which had data from, the preliminary data, from the MTR, data indicating that a particular unit on campus had twice the number of faculty that were necessary and there was concern, in fact, in an earlier draft of the Board Book, there were actually some of these preliminary data going to be distributed to the Board of Trustees.  That is not the case any longer as you=ve heard today.  It=s also true that since this resolution was drafted, the Academic Program Review Committee of the Senate has been contacted and is going to be involved in review.  So we have made some progress.  Nonetheless, I want to bring forward this resolution and Dr. Larkin, if you=ll permit, I will not read this in the interest of time.  I will note that I made some small changes-one very small change-I actually wrote down minimum teaching requirement or MTR instead of just MTR which was in the draft on the web.  That was a small editorial problem that was with the original draft.

 

Dr. Larkin: I don=t think it will take you too long to read it.  Why don=t you redo it so we can get it before...

 

Conner Bailey: WHEREAS Interim President Ed Richardson has identified Academic Program reviews as one of his six priorities; and

 

WHEREAS Provost Tom Hanley is in the process of developing a three pronged approach to study capacity, productivity, and quality; and

 

WHEREAS the measures used to establish capacity (MTR-Minimum Teaching Requirement) have generated preliminary data which have not been made available for review by the university faculty, nor have they been validated or refined to reflect important variability between academic programs; and

 

WHEREAS President Richardson used preliminary MTR data to publicly state that a certain college had twice the number of faculty needed; and

 

WHEREAS the Provost plans to present to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees information on these new evaluation measures and preliminary data derived from the MTR assessment measures on November 11^th,

 

THEREFORE, the University Senate wishes to commend Provost Hanley for his efforts in implementing new evaluation procedures, and ask him to work closely with the Academic Program Review Committee of the Senate in further developing such procedures, and

 

THEREFORE, the University Senate wished to express concern that preliminary MTR data may not accurately reflect capacity and should not be used in isolation or before further refinements are made to draw inferences or make decisions about programs and resources.  Further, all members of the University community are cautioned in the use or presentation of these preliminary raw data to communicate to the public, the capacity of academic units at Auburn University, and

 

THEREFORE, the University Senate requests that Provost Hanley not present preliminary MTR data to the Board of Trustees prior to review by the Academic Program Review Committee.

Dr. Larkin: This is important and we did not put it up to tease you.  After thinking about it, it=s going to take a long time to go through the discussion and the debate. So because of that, if you will agree, I=m going to ask Conner as representative from the Steering Committee to offer a motion to table this and won=t need a second because it=s coming from a committee and then we will....because some of the things have changed with the Provost=s office as well as the President, that makes this a little bit premature.  So I=m going to do is ask Conner to make that motion, if you will.

 

Conner Bailey: Before I accede to Dr. Larkin=s request, let me make very clear that nobody on the Steering Committee, myself certainly included, is against Academic Program Review.  We were concerned at a particular point that events were moving forward at a pace that might have gotten out of control.  Having made that point, I will accede to Dr. Larkin=s request and move to table this resolution.

 

Dr. Larkin: We have a motion to table this resolution.  Is there any discussion?  All those persons in favor of tabling this resolution, please indicate by saying Aye.  Opposers, nay.  This will come back, but we need to wait on some things.  I appreciate it very much.  Thanks Conner.  I appreciate Harmon, you being very patient.  If you will just come on down.  We=re going to try and complete the electronic policy piece that was presented the last time.  Lots of information has been channeled to Harmon Straiton, the Chair of the Academic Computing Committee and so he=s going to present that and so we=re going to move forward to take action on it.

 

Harmon Straiton, Academic Computing Committee: Thank you, Dr. Larkin.  Good Afternoon.  As a preface to my remarks, I would like to say that we, the members of the Academic Computing Committee, greatly appreciate all of the input that you provided us, the comments and suggestions at the last Senate meeting, as well as those that you sent to us as individuals directly by email or in one-on-one conversations and I think because of your participation in that process, we now have a much-better electronic privacy policy to present to you. 

 

However, before I go into the policy, I would like to mention a few incorrect assumptions or perceptions with regard to the need for this particular policy.  You should be reminded that this is an electronic privacy policy.  It is not an email policy.  It encompasses much more than simply electronic email.  It is much broader and it does not really involve monitoring.  We were using that term incorrectly the last time I made a presentation to you because it is not possible with Auburn=s current email system to actually monitor email.  That is, it=s not like wire-tapping or eavesdropping where you=re an active participant while the process is going on.  The policy as presented includes any electronic media that mounted on University equipment.  So it=s much beyond the email policy that has concerned a number of you.  What the policy does allow, since we can=t monitor, is review after the fact.  We can=t do before the fact obviously, but after the fact, we can review data files, we can review a archive of electronic email, not easily because of the encryption process that the University, that GroupWise primarily utilizes in transmitting email, and it takes the Office of Information Technology a considerable amount of time to unencrpyt those particular messages.  So it=s not something that is easily done. 

 

One concern that some have had is that there, the reason for the policy at this particular time, is that the central university administration mandated the implementation of a policy, and that is simply not correct.  The original request for an electronic privacy policy was initiated by the Senate leadership who discovered, much to their chagrin, that the university had absolutely no policy, and they felt that a policy should be put into place because it would give us better guidelines as to how we will actually handle electronic privacy.  Originally the leadership asked Rich Burnettt as the Executive Director of the Office of Information Technology, to begin formulation of a policy.  Rich informed the Provost and the Provost wanted assurances that all of the constituencies involved with the university would have input into the drafting of a policy.  With that in mind, Rich then turned to a number of groups, and I won=t begin to list them all but I certainly will tell you a few, the Staff Advisory Council, the Administrative and Professional Assembly, members of the staff of the Office of Information Technology, the Distributive Information Technology Managers= Council, and a number of others and then after a rough draft of a policy was formulated, it was brought to the Academic Computing Committee.  And we as members, reviewed the policy and made a number of significant changes prior to its presentation here at the last Senate meeting and then with the advice and consent of you as Senators, we then went back and attempted to incorporate all of the comments and suggestions that we thought were very positive and put them into that particular document.  And you were provided access to that prior to the Senate meeting and if you did not have an opportunity to review it, there are print copies in the back of the room and I will very briefly go through it because of the time constraints that we have. 

 

In actuality, the policy itself is a mere five sentences.  Everything else that is a part of the agenda that was presented on the website is actually documentation, either in terms of the purpose of such a policy or the procedure to implement such a policy.  I=ll very briefly read the policy, those five sentences for you and then we can begin the discussion.

 

One of the points that was made at the last Senate meeting was that we needed to affirm as a committee and as the Senate that we are committed to the concept of privacy and to the greatest extent possible in a public institution, Auburn University strives to protect the privacy of electronic material, communications of AU employees and the academic freedom of AU faculty.  However, individuals who are using Auburn University Information Technology resources should not have an expectation of absolute privacy in the use of these resources and should be aware that 1-there are two reasons we would attempt review of a data file or a series of email messages one of which is purposeful, that there are circumstances under which the content of such resources may be reviewed and accidental-that there are employees who may in the proper course of their work see information that was not originally intended for them. 

 

Actions to view the contents of accounts and/or files initiated by Auburn University will be limited to those actions necessary to preserve the financial integrity of the university, the security of people and property, the functionality of IT resources and systems, or to protect the university from liability.  Such reviews may not be used to curtail open debate on substantive issues in the university nor used in a punitive way against individuals with different points of view.

 

Individual employees having concerns about the confidentiality of their personal private communications should consider using non-Auburn University ISP facilities and/or storing personal sensitive on personally purchased off-line media.

 

With that, we can begin a discussion.  The second half, of course, there was some concern about who would initiate these requests.  We=ve slightly revised the forms to initiate the request.  Ultimately that responsibility will lie in the office of the President and it is that office that will maintain the appropriate files regarding such communications.

 

Dr. Larkin: If you have a question, please go to the microphone.  Any questions?  So as the Chair of this committee, can I get you to put forth a motion to adopt this policy to move it forward to Administration?

 

Harmon Straiton: As Chair of the Academic Computing Committee, I so move.

 

Dr. Larkin: Since this is a committee motion, it=s not necessary for a second.  Is there any discussion on this motion?

 

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry: When I read this information before the last Senate meeting, and I came to this Senate meeting, I was set in deciding in favor of if we=re going to have a policy, at least this one requires that we be informed if we=re being monitored.  Immediately after the Senate meeting, the next day we had a faculty meeting and I brought this up for my faculty to discuss at the end of the faculty meeting and I=ve responses directly on the issue from about six faculty members who every last one of those six faculty members have said we are much better off without a policy.  Vote against any policy.  They felt very strongly that what we=re doing are handing the administration a starting point from which the monitoring will expand and grow and policies will change and then there will be circumstances by which they don=t need to notify us.  I think if we need a policy, our policy should be very plain and simple-Auburn University will do everything it can to protect the privacy of the faculty and other users of the-authorized users of its equipment, that is it.  And if a court order comes down, then we do what we=re told.  We follow the law.  We do not need to codify everything we want to see.  A lot of people run around making rules, codifying everything they think should be and in my opinion now, and the opinion of my faculty in my department, you=re taking a gun, you=re aiming it at your foot and you=re pulling the trigger.

 

Dr. Larkin: Thanks, Rik.  Other comments?  Other comments?  All of those in favor of approving this motion, please indicate by saying aye.  Opposers, nay.  The motion carries.  Thank you very much.  We have a couple of other things-unfinished business, is there any?  New business?  Please be reminded that the Senate will not meet next month and our next meeting will be January 18^th.  Please have a safe evening.  This meeting is adjourned.