Fall Faculty Meeting

October 18, 2005

            3:00 p.m.

Broun Hall Auditorium

Transcript

 

Dr. Conner Bailey, Chair: I’d like to call this Fall Meeting of the University Faculty to order please.  Thank you very much for being here.  I’d like to ask for a motion to approve the minutes of the March 15th meeting of the university faculty, which have been posted on the web.  Rik Blumenthal moves, second?  Second by Larry (Gerber).  All in favor signify by saying aye.  Opposed nay.  The ayes have it.

 

Dr. Richardson is out of town today and Dr. Heilman will be with us momentarily I presume to make some remarks on behalf of the President’s Office.  Dr. Richardson is at a meeting, I believe, in Montgomery dealing with matters that are important in the Office of the President, that is the legislative session and matters of budget, which is important to all of us, of course.

 

So let me go ahead while we’re waiting for Dr. Heilman to arrive to start off with some comments from the Chair.  First I’d like to welcome my counterpart from Auburn University Montgomery Furman Smith sitting here in the exact middle of the room, or at least on this side of the room.  Dr. Furman is president of the faculty senate at AUM and he’s accompanied today by Judd Katz.  Dr. Katz is Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, a position-is that correct?-a position that he moved into approximately two and a half weeks ago and so Roger Ritro had been promoted back to the faculty and so I congratulate Roger for that move.  John Aho is another faculty leader from AUM who has been on this campus often-I don’t believe he is with us today-Dr. Aho has been actively involved in the Senate Steering Committee over the past approximately four months-we meet every two weeks roughly and he’s been involved on discussions on Post Tenure Review, a subject that will occupy us shortly.  And if there’s one thing that I would say positive out of this discussion of post tenure review, it’s that we’ve opened a channel of communication between the faculty leadership of these two institutions that has never previously been there and I think that’s taking a very positive step.

 

In seven months and a couple of days-but who’s counting?-since our last university faculty meeting.  There’s been as you know a lot happening on this campus, there’s been a large number of initiatives brought forward by the administration and I want to make a few comments about those before we move on to the agenda proper, before Dr. Heilman comes.  And I’ll try to answer at the end of my remarks here any questions that you may have. 

 

Among the initiatives Dr. Richardson has established are those on academic program review and post tenure review, two topics for this meeting today and in addition, there are efforts to rethink academic programs that relate to Agriculture, Forestry & Wildlife Sciences, the natural resources domain generally and also the Cooperative Extension System and the Experiment Station, and I’m hopeful that these initiatives will remain firmly centered on campus. 

 

There’s also been movement on a presidential search.  I understand that Dr. John Kuhnle of Korn/Ferry International has been retained by the university to assist in developing a search.  He’ll be on campus on the 28th of October, which is a special called meeting of the Board and one of the central issues that will come up at that time will be the presidential search.  So that will be an important time for us at this university. 

 

We’ve also addressed-the faculty leadership and the Senate leadership-has also addressed a number of concerns.  There’s a very active committee, the Non-tenured Track Instructors Committee has been working very hard on topics relating to the interests associated with non-tenured track faculty, including clinical, non-tenured track faculty and non-tenured track faculty in the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. 

 

There’s been some long-standing concerns from different parts of campus over a period of years related to patents, inventions and technology transfer and as I indicated at the senate meeting two weeks ago, the senate leadership is going to form an ad hoc committee to look into that.  The Rules Committee met on this subject last Friday and identified a number of people and I’ll be making some phone calls this week to try to get that committee up and running.

 

On another level there’s been some concerns expressed by faculty regarding textbooks and the adequate availability of textbooks at the beginning of a semester, some faculty being concerned that several weeks into a semester, some of their students still do not have textbooks.  The Provost’s Office has been actively involved.  Sharon Gaber has been assisting, has met with Rusty Weldon.  Rusty is here today if anybody in this room has questions related to textbooks, once I have completed my remarks, if you have questions on textbooks, address them to me and perhaps if I can’t answer them-more likely that I can’t-Rusty might be able to help.  So let’s take advantage of that if we can. 

 

Over the last seven months or so the faculty leadership has maintained very close working relationships with the Alumni Association.  I’ve attended two meetings of the Alumni Board and correspond frequently with Alumni Association leaders and we’ve been discussing issues related to the Attorney General’s recent opinion regarding terms of individual trustees.  My understanding is there is a group of people meeting today on a conference call to discuss what steps might next be taken.

 

Let me conclude my remarks to speak generally to the state of shared governance on this campus and I’ll paraphrase Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’  The best of times, I’d like to point out that the faculty leadership has worked very closely and I think effectively with the Provost’s Office, Dr. Heilman, Sharon Gaber, Linda Glaze, and others in that office, including Margaret Manley, Dr. Heilman’s secretary, who is always a joy to work with.  Dr. Heilman is committed to shared governance and openness on all things relating to matters affecting the faculty and shows this in his actions everyday.  He’s been very supportive in opening up processes as they relate to the Initiative for Alabama, which used to be called the Ag Initiative.  He was in support of opening up the initiative on the Strategic Plan and in other efforts that we’ve had on campus.  Others in the Provost’s Office, Drew Clark and others have been very helpful and responsive in providing information to the faculty leadership or committees looking for data, for example.  So I appreciate the Provost’s Office.  The spirit of shared governance I think is alive at this campus at that level.  It’s not surprising since all the people in that office come out of academia, they are all faculty and retain the sensibilities of faculty, so I want to acknowledge and express my appreciation.

 

I’m not going to dwell here on the worst of times which also exist, other than to say that in the last year and a half, it’s really underscored in my mind the importance of having as a university president a person with an academic background and a clear understanding based on personal experience of what it means to be a faculty member.

 

That concludes my remarks.  If there are any questions at this time for me, I’d be glad to answer them.  Seeing none, Dr. Heilman may I invite you to come forward and share remarks from the President’s Office.

 

Dr. John Heilman, Provost: I’m glad had these remarks in this pocket, because if I didn’t, I would have been reading the menu from Provino’s Italian Restaurant to you.  You might conclude after my remarks that might have been better.  I’d like to begin by thanking Conner for those kind words and to say that it is a fact that those of us who have the privilege of serving in the Provost’s Office have before that time, and I guess in a sense still, have the privilege of serving as members of the faculty.  I know before I went into Administration, I served as a full time faculty member for 19 years and I think that shapes one.  It shaped me and I have found it highly rewarding to work with both Senate leadership and to engage in shared governance as you described, so thank you for your kind words.

 

To the general faculty, Dr. Richardson has asked me to express to you his sincere regret that he is not at this meeting.  He was scheduled to be here to address the general faculty, in fact this morning he was at a meeting of the Alabama Council of Presidents, but at that time a matter arose unexpectedly that requires his presence, continued presence out of town.  As I indicated, he has asked me to extend to you his sincere regrets to you as the general faculty.  Conner Bailey has kindly invited me to present comments; I am happy to do that.  They will, understandably, be brief and they will speak from the perspective of the Provost.

 

That is, I would like to comment on several activities and review processes that are under way and that relate directly to the academic work of the university.  Perhaps I should say academic work and academic staff of the university.  Professor Art Chappelka and the Academic Program Review Committee have been hard at work developing background and proposals for Academic Program Review.  I appreciate their work and look forward to their presentation scheduled this afternoon.  I would note that perhaps 15-20 years ago, we had an active system of Academic Program Review and instances that I was personally involved with as a faculty member seemed very productive and worthwhile.  Similarly, the Senate Steering Committee has been hard at work on proposals for Post Tenure Review and I look forward to the presentation on this subject also scheduled for this afternoon.  With respect to tenure and promotion, I can report that this year’s process is underway and there are 72 cases for review.  In connection with the whole matter of the tenure experience here at Auburn, one through which I went myself, the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment is participating in a national survey of untenured/tenured-lined faculty by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.  The anonymous results from over 175 Auburn University faculty members will better help me understand how untenured faculty view institutional policy and gauge their job satisfaction against national benchmarks.  I hope all of you who received this confidential survey will participate.

 

I can also report that last week, we had four presentations for the position of Associate Provost for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.  Videos of the presentations will be available on the web tomorrow at the latest and I encourage all with an interest in this appointment, which I hope is everyone here, to review the information we have available and to make use of the web-based opportunity we have for anonymous input.  I can assure you based on searches already completed that all comments will be read carefully and given serious consideration.  And I guess I shouldn’t put that in the third, not in an active voice.  I do that; I’m the only one who reads those comments and I treat them all confidentially and I spend a lot of time studying them.  Individuals who would like to provide comments on the candidates can go to the Office of the Provost Website, click on the More under the discussion of the Associate Provost position, then click on evaluation form under each candidate.  As I said, I will review this feedback.

 

With respect to Strategic Planning, Dr. Richardson’s comments in my presence have made clear that he fully intends that the broad-based input we have provided on Strategic Planning questions and answers will play a vital substantive role in the strategic planning process.  Legitimate questions have been raised concerning the broader, demographic, economic and political core environment in which Auburn will be competing with other institutions of higher education.  We stand ready to contribute to those discussions, to contribute the best current information on the condition, the future and the special character of higher education and also to provide ongoing input through Bill Sauser with respect to what we have accomplished so far.

 

I would like to conclude my remarks with words of acknowledgement and appreciation for the faculty of Auburn University.  In fact, seeing that Judd Katz is here, I’m going to say the Auburn University System.  Am I correct in recognizing-would you please just wave your hand?  This is Judd Katz, Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Auburn University at Montgomery.  I do care very much about the Auburn University System as holding great promise as a means by which we all can work together to provide for the people and communities of the state of Alabama, the best values of the money they give us and strengthen both our institutions, working collegiately, and I look forward closely to the conversations.  In fact, we had a conversation yesterday afternoon for about an hour, Judd, in which we talked about sort of how the system might evolve, what the working relationships might be, how that might be set up and I believe that at both ends of the conference call, there was a sense of real optimism and a sense of a very good beginning so thank you to you and your colleagues at AUM for your investment in this, to me, very exciting project.  At the heart of the Auburn University System, AUM and Auburn campus, is the faculty.  The role of the faculty is central to the energy and advancement of this institution.  Auburn is vibrantly alive.  Conner quoted from a literary source that I think confirms it.  We continue to attract and to admit record numbers of increasingly well qualified students.  This fall, you are teaching 23,333 of them-you know that’s a lot.  In fact it’s more than we’ve ever had before.  Last year you taught over 786,000 student credit hours, you recommended the awarding of 5,079 degrees and you garnered over $111 million dollars in extramural grants and contracts.  These are numbers that I find impressive, but I am not alone.  Many of you, you who are here in this room, have received outstanding recognition nationally and internationally for your professional accomplishments and leadership.  And among our moving up a level of organizational structure among our schools and colleges, are our regional and national rankings that are setting a standard we all can aim for.  And finally, by one nationally known ranking, U.S. News and World Report, we are as strong as we ever have been.  This strength is a reflection of the strength of our faculty and it is a credit to you.  I know that Dr. Richardson joins me in expressing sincere appreciation for all you do for the students and for the institution of Auburn University.  Thank you.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there any questions for Dr. Heilman?  Seeing none, thank you, John.

 

The next item on the agenda is to note the creation, the establishment of the Nominating Committee for 2005-2006 for the Senate officers.  This is the committee that was established.  Jim Bradley was the convening chair.  The committee met last week.  Howard Thomas from Textile Engineering is also a member of the Senate Rules Committee.  Dr. Thomas is going to be the chair of the Nominating Committee.  This is a very important committee.  This is the committee that will nominate a slate of two candidates for chair-elect and secretary-elect-people who will follow Rich Penaskovic and Kathryn Flynn as senate officers.  The opportunities to serve are great.  There are also some resources available now that were not previously available when I served as senate secretary, including salary benefits and a sabbatical, and we also have a office with a 2/3 time assistant, La Keeta White, who’s here with us today.  So we have staff support, we have salary money and we have a little travel budget and things like this, so being a senate officer is not quite as unrewarded in these ways as it was before.  Nobody takes the job as a senate officer for these benefits.  It’s nice that they’re recognized because I think that’s appropriate, but let me urge you please to consider yourself or those of your colleagues who you would like to see up here at the podium or over there at the keyboard, in case of a secretary, that is, a senate officer as secretary and chair, chair-elect and secretary-elect and immediate past chair.  This is the Executive Committee of the faculty.  We meet with the President on a regular basis.  We meet with the Provost on a very regular basis.  We’re very actively involved with the Board of Trustees.  This is an opportunity for involvement and an insight into how this university works that is not at all like making sausage.  There are parts of it that are not as appetizing as others, to be sure, but I’m coming away after seven months in this job and nineteen months as an officer with a greater appreciation for this university than when I started.  And a measure of frustration on some levels as well, to be sure.

 

Coming to the agenda, we have today no action items for consideration.  We have two information items.  These are both important matters.  I’m sure you all recognize that and that’s why you’re here.  The first of these is the topic of Academic Program Review.  Art Chappelka is here.  Art chairs the Senate Committee on Academic Program Review.  This committee has been working very hard since the summer, through the summer, and is ready to come forward now-Art, please?-with an update on their activities.

 

Art Chappelka, Chair, Academic Program Review Committee: Well, it’s a pleasure to be here today to speak with you.  This has been an interesting endeavor, being chair of this committee and for the most part, it’s been enjoyable and maybe some frustration as Conner says on some of these things, but the fun stuff is still yet to come and I hope we do accomplish some things.  Conner asked me to speak to you today and I actually volunteered to speak with you and give you an idea briefly of what the committee has done and where we are and what we’re going to do and after my report, if you have, I believe there’s some time for some questions and try to answer some questions about that.

 

Ok, the committee members are, to start off with, this is the current committee and you can see those up there.  Right now, the Pharmacy, its open, but I believe it’s going to be filled rather shortly.  There was a retirement, a resignation for personal reasons from Pharmacy, but all of the schools and colleges are represented and also the administration has been represented and I’ll say this, the committee has worked very hard; pretty much everybody has made an effort to be at most of the meetings, sometimes obviously we can’t because of conflicts but when they can’t they’ve met with me and talked about things and shared their input and it’s been a very good committee.

 

Basically here’s some ideas and kind of sort of summarize where we’re at and what we think Academic Program Review is and what it is and basically it’s an organized activity based on data relative to an institution’s goals of Strategic Planning.  And the goal of our review basically is to strengthen the academic activities of the university.  Very simple.

 

These are some proposals; these are things that we’ve talked about; they’re not carved in stone.  The committee is still meeting.  The committee has, right now we’re starting to work on a draft and have a draft available for you and for the university community rather shortly.  I’ll talk about timeline here in a little bit.  Just to give you an idea of what we’re looking at on this, academic program reviews are going to be coordinated through the Office of the Provost.  I think the Office of the Provost knows that, but we’ll talk about that.  As a fundamental use and responsibility, we feel the academic departments, or schools, are the basic unit of academic program review at Auburn University and that’s what we’re looking at.  And I may add, too, right now we are, and I’ve been talking with Peter Zachar, from AUM who is there leading their effort on academic program review and we’ve been in pretty close communication in trying to make sure that a lot of our thought processes and committees, that these program reviews will be fairly similar.  There will be some uniqueness, unique to each university, but I think they’re going to be similar when we’re finished. 

 

The review has two main components, a self-assessment and an external assessment, as we’re looking at it right now.  The self-assessment is conducted by the unit under review.  The unit, in consultation with the Dean and Provost, basically will be responsible for defining their mission, developing assessment methods and tools, and reporting the result.  Now obviously, this is not going to be a carte blanche; there’s going to have to be some interplay, there’s going to be some interplay with the Provost and with the deans and the criteria is basically going to be composed of established measures which will be across all of the units on campus and those are such things as student credit hours, FTEs, national and regional rank of the program, etc. and there are a lot of things that we’re trying to put into the report.  Now, there are also metrics unique to each unit.  Because it’s difficult to compare all of the units and it’s unfair to compare each unit among each other really if you look at it, so your criteria-there needs to be some uniqueness among that.  I mean, it would be very difficult, for example, to compare a unit such as Agronomy possibly with Engineering, things like that.  So there are unique components.  Possible performance indicators and these are some things that we have thrown up here, they are not carved in stone, but obviously these are things that people look at, basically centrality, efficiency, diversity, productivity, etc. 

 

Now the external assessment, and these are things that we’ve been talking about as a committee and it’s still kind of in the talking stage as far as how what the composition of this committee, this external review committee is going to be and its external assessment, and a lot of the units on campus are having some kind of accreditation, they are having assessments.  But for those that aren’t, and in some cases for those that are, depending on how the accreditation is, external assessment is important and I think that’s one that the committee has agreed upon, the Provost’s Office, we’ve spoken with them, and everybody feels is very important.  And these reviewers are going to be nominated by the unit and selected by the Dean.  We haven’t really decided on how many yet and talked about that kind of thing.  The outside reviewers will review the self-assessment and will conduct interviews and issue a final report for the deans.  This will be forwarded to the Office of the Provost, accompanied by the Dean’s recommendation.  And the Provost will make recommendations and discuss this with the Academic Program Review Committee before implementation.  We are going to be, after looking at the development of this process, the way that we are looking at it right now, this is the committee, is basically sort of an oversight type of committee as our responsibilities in the future.  And obviously to help tweak the process and work on these kinds of things, too, as the University Senate and the Provost all work together, the idea of shared governance.

 

Now, what if an academic unit already undergoes an accreditation process by an external agency?  This report may serve as proof of an external assessment and it needs to be at the discretion of the Department head, Chair, Dean and/or Provost, then there may be some additional external assessments that may be warranted on this. 

 

Tentative timeline that we’re looking at, as Conner said, we have been meeting for a while.  W e have committee meetings bi-weekly, beginning in May of ’05.  We met before that, and may I say this in our meetings, the Senate leadership has been invited and has attended, I believe, every single meeting.  Somebody from the Senate leadership, Dr. Larkin, when he was the Senate leader when we were meeting, gosh, meeting in December, I believe and we kept, then started meeting again in May, both Rich Penaskovic and Conner, at least one or both of them have attended all our meetings.  I’ve been holding bi-weekly meetings with the Provost.  I’ve found those to be very helpful.  And I presented a status report to the Provost’s Council in August.  I’ve been meeting with the Deans; I haven’t met with all of them but I’ve met with most of them and I’ve found that to be quite helpful and quite useful.  And presenting status report obviously today, we’re working on a draft document right now and hope that we’ll have that in some kind of completion in November.  There’s going to be a presentation made to the Board in November.  I believe Dr. Heilman is going to make that presentation and that is going to be an information item to the Board and then the documents are going to be sent out for review.  I hope that everybody gets a chance to look at it and I believe the Senate will help on that, and the leadership, everybody will get a shot at that.  Basically we’d like to do some kind of Beta test, preliminary test or whatever, get some willing volunteer units to look at this in the Spring of ’06, this is our goal and then try to implement this procedure in Fall of ’06.  Now you know this may not happen right there; it’s a goal and that’s what we’re working on right now.  And obviously if there’s any comments that anybody has, I’ve spoken with quite a few faculty members and if anybody has any comments, criticisms, etc., certainly share those with myself or any of your committee members and they will certainly get it to the committee. 

 

Now that was very brief, but I hope that was very good and I’ll answer any questions if anybody has any.

 

Dr. Bailey: Does anybody have any questions for Dr. Chappelka?  Cindy Brunner.

 

Dr. Cindy Brunner, Department of Pathobiology: I have a question that I’m not sure you can answer for me.  I was a little bit concerned.  You mentioned that there need to be some standardized metrics that would apply across campus to all units, conceding that there is uniqueness in each program, excuse me, and that it would be difficult to compare, I don’t remember your examples, Agronomy and Civil Engineering-my question is why do you need to compare Agronomy with Civil Engineering?

 

Dr. Chappelka: Well, you don’t necessarily.  I believe that, by what I mean same metrics is that there’s metrics that are similar across campus, ok, such as FTEs, these kinds of things.  There’s no intent I don’t think to compare units in that sense but it also gives one a sense of where everybody is in that frame.  Now, then there’s the unique characteristics, too, of your various departments and schools and things like that so we don’t want to do that, but there are metrics that are available all over, for example, national rank, these kind of things and those folks can use this kind of self-assessments.  The Provost’s Office can obviously use those kinds of things when they’re trying to make decisions.  The Deans can use those kinds of metrics; that’s what I meant in that.  I don’t think there’s going to be necessarily a direct comparison among units, that’s not necessarily our intention, but basically the sense that there are metrics in common across campus and I don’t know if the Provost wants to respond to that or not, in his sense.

 

Dr. Bailey: Sure, come ahead, John.

 

Dr. John Heilman, Provost: Art, thank you very much.  I’ll go to your comment that having comparative information available across academic units enables one to make decisions.  Before that, it enables one to ask questions and I think that acknowledging the concerns that many reference to business-like concepts can raise, I think it’s a matter of good management, and I believe my predecessor in this office felt similarly and was in the process or was in the process of developing comparative measures, I think it’s good management to be able to compare units just in order to understand which programs do we have that are very productive on certain measures, whether they are student credit hour production or research productivity or extramural funding, to get a sense of the dynamic that runs through each of the programs we have to see what’s out there and another thing, another reason for having this is we are in a world in which data are widely available about what universities and colleges and departments do and we’re not the only ones who have access to them and having access to that kind of comparative information, as I said, enables the Provost to ask questions which might occur to others so that perhaps we can get a head start on working out the answers. 

 

Dr. Bailey: Did you have a follow-up, Cindy?  Or a different question?

 

Dr. Brunner: I have an unrelated question.

 

Dr. Bailey: Ok.  Holly Stadler?

 

Dr. Holly Stadler, Counseling & Counseling Psychology: I’d like to…

 

Dr. Chappelka: Hi, Holly.

 

Dr. Stadler: Hi, Art.  I’d like to ask about the issue related to some programs having discipline related national accrediting bodies.  Many of those disciplines accredit programs as we know them in the general jargon of programs as being different from units.  So why the selection of the word program to mean unit there could be some confusion there and my concern comes with a unit that might have, say, one or two accredited programs out of five.  Have you thought about how you would move on reviewing those kinds of units?

 

Dr. Chappelka: Right.  You’re not supposed to ask hard questions, Holly.  Holly has worked with us quite a bit and that is a very good question, and my home school has that kind of quandary that we’re going through right now and one of our programs goes through a very strict accreditation and our other one has not at the moment, and I guess when we’re really looking at that, that’s going to have to be something we’re going to look at in a sense as a case-by-case type of study, but we have talked about that and we’re trying, what we’d like to do I guess is, when the various, let’s say a unit, for example, does their self-study and they’ll be doing, each of them will be doing a self-study.  When they do their self-study, that would be something that they would include in the self-study and then they would speak with the dean about it and then the dean and the chairs or heads or whoever would get together with the Provost and they’ll try to make an appropriate decision on how to go with that particular thing.  So I don’t know if that answers your question or not.  Cindy, you had another…

 

Dr. Brunner: Ah, yes.  This is a question with regard to the timeline which you’ve proposed and I want to be sure that I interpret it correctly.  You said that you were working on your draft proposal for this process and that that would be presented to the Board on November 17th…

 

Dr. Chappelka: No, the draft would not be presented.  There’s going to be a, what will be presented I believe, and again Dr. Heilman may want to comment on it, is basically Academic Review as sort of an information item and I would say fairly similar to what I have given today, with some, basically trying to educate the Board on what Academic Program Review is and what the intent of it is.  I believe that, is that correct, Dr. Heilman?  The process will not be, the documents will not be given to the Board or anything like that at that time.

 

Dr. Brunner: Ok, that was my caution since the Academic Program Review Committee is a Senate committee, I would urge you to bring to the faculty any proposal that you’re polishing before you take it to the Board.  Thank you.

 

Dr. Chappelka: Absolutely, absolutely.

 

Dr. Richard Penaskovic, Chair-Elect: Art, what’s the, several people have put to me this question: What’s the overall purpose of Academic Program Review and why are we doing it at this particular point and time, particularly in light of the fact that SACS in their recent visit gave us very high marks on the academic side.

 

Dr. Chappelka: That’s a good question and it’s obviously, you know, I could give you the flippant answer, I won’t, that I was asked to chair the committee; I won’t do that.  I would think that the more serious thing is that we have academic reviews on this campus.  We had an established academic review, as Dr. Heilman said, I believe, about 15 or 20 years ago on this campus; it basically only lasted a few years, and since that time we’ve had more, I don’t want to use the right word, but kind of haphazard kind of academic program reviews.  We had one in the mid-90’s-I was on the committee that was chaired by Drew Clark-where we looked at the issue of viability and that was basically a numbers sort of thing that ACE came up and said that certain programs weren’t viable in the state, academic programs and we conducted an academic program review at that time.  Now once we did that, when we got into the meat of it, we looked at different things and then obviously from one of the reports, you know, there was the reallocation of funds and there was an academic program review committee, it was an ad hoc committee at that time, and it was an ad hoc committee when we met on the ACE viability-and then after that time, Conner, I would say in ’98 I believe, or somewhere in the mid-90’s it was then made a standing committee of the University Senate I believe.  But the purpose, I guess I’m making a short story long, the purpose of the Academic Program Review, I guess, is several fold.  One, I think it’s very good to take a look at yourself continuously.  I see this as a continuous process.  I think taking looks at it in snapshots at a time and then making decisions right away and things like that is wrong; that is at least my opinion on that.  I don’t know if the other committee members share that; my feelings is, and we’ve looked at tons of these academic program reviews that are continuous type of things; we’ve looked at the University of Georgia, I believe we’ve looked at 10 and more than that throughout the country-folks like Holly, who has been involved in academic program reviews at other institutions, has shared information with us.  We’ve gotten information from a lot of people and I guess the thing about it is one of the fears is if we don’t do it, if we really don’t take this introspective look at ourselves, and have external review, which I think is important, too, somebody else is going to do it for us, some kind of outside forces and I don’t think anybody really wants that and in looking at the academic review, in looking at this, Auburn University is right now probably, if not the only, one of the only schools in the southern United States who does not really have a systematic continuous academic program review.  That’s why we’re doing it.  I don’t know if I answered your question or not, Rich.

 

Dr. Penaskovic: You did.  Thank you, Art.

 

Dr. Bailey: Virginia O’Leary.

 

Dr. Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: I guess I have a concern about the rapidity with which we seem to be proceeding on academic program review.  I think it’s very serious, I think it’s something that should be continuous, philosophically speaking, but there’s something frightening about the prospect of a trial run in the spring when there is nothing before us yet, and I understand why, in terms of examining the criteria that will be used to undertake these continuous reviews.  Because of the complexity of the issues, and there are some metrics like FTEs that are so painfully obvious that we don’t have to be concerned about them, but there are other issues that are much more complex and it seems to me that it’s going to take some thoughtful consideration, not just from the committee and I’m confident the committee is concerned and worrying about these things; Holly asked a question in terms of what do you do when you have a department comprised of multiple programs, some of which are accredited externally already and some not, then how do you play into that at the department level as well as the program level and what are the criteria that you use to evaluate the various programs within the unit is certainly one issue.  But if we’re supposed to have something ready to go for spring, it seems to me that we have to have the criteria established last summer and because of the way things are moving, that’s obviously not possible.  So I’m just concerned about the timeline.

 

Dr. Chappelka: Sure.  Virginia, that’s a goal.  I mean it’s a goal and it may not be a goal that’s going to be achieved but if you don’t set goals you can try to reach them.  I can assure you that nothing is going to be done on this without the document being approved and without there being careful consideration and things like that and I don’t think the university senate would let us do that and I don’t think the Provost will want to move forward without any kind of serious consideration on these and trying to establish criteria on that.  Now let me say this, if we did this, and we will do it, it would be, not everybody’s going to be involved and I didn’t express myself clearly, not everybody is going to be reviewed at the same time.  You know, the whole university’s not, there’s going to be a cyclic type of process on this.  We haven’t come up with a particular time frame, you know, whether it’s going to be every five years, every eight years, every six years, things like that-we’re kind of working on that as a committee in trying to, we’re going to make some proposals on that and then see how it falls out.  But what we would do, we would one, let’s say one particular unit that wanted to participate in this and work with them and I believe it would be sort of a joint effort with everybody working together in trying to develop a criteria in these kinds of things and then see where we can go from there, but it’s not a, in my mind, it’s not carved in stone.  Now I don’t know, the President’s Office may have a different opinion, but we’re going to work as hard as we can on it and do the best job we can.

 

Dr. Bailey: Art, can I, just for clarification, you said approved-you meant approved by the Senate.

 

Dr. Chappelka: Yes.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there other questions for Dr. Chappelka?  I’m sorry, Dr. Heilman.

 

Dr. Heilman: Thank you Conner and Art.  With respects to Virginia O’Leary’s question, I think that models can be tested both deductively and inductively and the discussion of, I think, Art’s site, as it’s called Beta testing or what I might call field testing, is intended to provide just that, a field test to see how it works without the units involved having significant exposure.  It’s going back to my home discipline, as you know I’d see it as an instance of informative evaluation and see how it works.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there any questions for Dr. Chappelka?  Sadik, if you’d go to a microphone please.

 

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology/Plant Pathology: When I look at all the things we are trying to achieve, at a time point, which all of them are related to each other, for example, we are trying to develop strategic planning for the future of Auburn University.  Certainly this strategic planning will effect how the programs will be running in the future because if we choose a path to follow, then programs have to adjust themselves, what the goals of Auburn University are, and then we will be going through a review and, I think we are trying to make a big soup and maybe are putting too many ingredients in it and I don’t know what’s going to come out.  If we take the strategic planning first then decide what we want to do, what we want to be.  We are going through major changes in Agriculture, I mean, severe dynamic situation.  Maybe initially that academic program review was started, strategic planning wasn’t in the agenda and now there are importance of things have to be first in, I don’t know if I’m expressing myself, we have to prioritize what we are going to do.  First, develop strategic planning, two then programs, you’re going to have to adjust the strategic planning and then we should then be going through the program reviews, with these programs adjusting to the strategic planning with what Auburn is going to be in the 21st century.  So this is probably just a comment, but you don’t need to answer it.

 

Dr. Chappelka: I don’t disagree with you, Sadik, except, well I don’t disagree with you, but I think that a process can be developed that can be adapted to hopefully fall into things such as the strategic planning and things like that and I know Bill and myself haven’t talked but I’m sure we will on these, how these two can mesh.  But what we’re trying to do is develop a process.  If you look at a lot of the processes that have been developed at the various institutions, they’re very similar but then you can try to adapt this over time and I think this follow s through with Cindy’s thing.  We hope that the process can be something that can be contingent, be a continuous type of thing.  We hope that this will be something that will be going on, it will be taking place for a long time and, the committee feels very strongly that when you look at this, let’s say a particular program gets reviewed or unit or whatever you want to call it, what happens?  Obviously when you’re in these types of academic program reviews and these kinds of things, you’re given recommendations and there should be a time frame and period to when you can try to answer those questions or you can try to make yourself better.  But what you’re saying as far as resource allocations and all of these kinds of things obviously are going to depend on strategic planning, so we’ll try to work together if we can.  I don’t know if that answers your question or not.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  If there are no further questions; Art, thank you very much.

 

I’m going to start off by making a few remarks I’ve prepared on the topic of post tenure review and we’ll open the subject up for wide discussion.

 

The issue of tenure is the foundation of the American academy, the modern academy anywhere in the modern world.  It’s the bedrock on which academic freedom has been built.  There are few places in this country where academic freedom is understood as well as Auburn University.  The ability to speak truth to power, this is something we know here in abundance, something we’ve earned, academic freedom.  And I don’t mean only among our faculty, there are a lot of our administrative, academic administrators, some of whom are here in the room today who fully appreciate and understand tenure more than their peers at other institutions do because they understand the freedom of speech that academic tenure provides.  Protections for freedom of speech are important when that speech is in conflict with those who are in positions of authority. 

 

It’s important to start any discussion of post tenure review with an understanding of how important tenure is, what it provides and what it does not provide.  Tenure is about freedom of expression and teaching and research.  It is not about job security.  We all know there are mechanisms in place in the faculty handbook through which a faculty member with tenure can be dismissed.  We also know that there are due process protections in place to ensure that dismissals, if they take place, only take place for cause.  We also know that there are annual performance evaluations, evaluations of teaching, external evaluations every time a manuscript is presented at a conference or submitted for publication, every time a grant proposal is submitted for review.  We know that many of our academic programs are reviewed by external accrediting agencies.  We know that SACS, our university accrediting agency, has looked at our academic programs and found them above reproach, meritorious. 

 

Why, then are we pursuing post tenure review at Auburn University?  It’s not unlike the question asked a moment ago, ‘Why are we doing academic program review?’  And the short answer is because Dr. Richardson says we must do so.  And he defends this position on the basis of conversations with political leaders in Alabama who are concerned that highly paid faculty work only a few hours a week.  Those of us in this room know how far from the truth this image of indolent faculty is and for those who need further evidence on this matter, I would ask that you read the report on uncompensated work of faculty on 9-month appointments that was presented by Dr. David King at the University Senate meeting in October.  The report is available on the web.  The point is that many of us work very long hours and 9-month faculty over summer often contribute enormous resource to this university without compensation.  Nonetheless and despite all the evidence that faculty are, in fact, working hard for our money and advice from the Senate leadership that this is a bad idea, that post tenure review will do little to address problems at Auburn University, nonetheless, Dr. Richardson supported by the Board of Trustees, has made it very clear that we will have a post tenure review and if the faculty don’t do it, he will have it done by the Provost.

 

Now, post tenure review systems exist at many fine universities, some, many of them within our region.  And rarely is the initiative to create post tenure review something that emerges internally from the university.  It’s usually something that emerges, that is the case for Auburn today, from an external political pressure or in anticipation of external political pressures, as is the case in Auburn.  It’s not that we can ignore external political questions, but anytime a fundamental freedom such as academic freedom is brought into question through the political process, those of us in the academy need to couch our reply very carefully.

 

I don’t see a problem with accountability at Auburn University, certainly not with the faculty.  I don’t want to give anybody in this room or any taxpayer in Alabama or anyone who pays tuition at this university or anybody who funds grants to researchers at this university the impression that faculty are not accountable.  We are.  Our legislators who vote on budgets need to know this.  The students and their parents need to know that we are accountable in all ways, as I indicated above, for which we are accountable.  There is no failure of accountability among our faculty or our academic leadership.  That said, in fact the leadership was presented with a series of choices by Dr. Richardson, who commands that we have a post tenure process on campus.  We could have told him that post tenure review was ill-advised and we did.  We also told the Board of Trustees at the June meeting of the Board.  We could have followed these words with a refusal to develop draft plans for a post tenure review and share them with the faculty.  We could have just stood in the door and said no.  We did not do this.  Instead, working with the Senate Steering Committee, the Executive Committee, the officers of the faculty, determined that what was in the best interests of this faculty was to develop two possible models for a post tenure review process based on experiences at other universities around the country and to bring them forward for open discussion and that is what we have done today.   We benefited from the contribution of Steve McFarland-thank you, Steve-and also John Heilman, both of whom have attended many Steering Committees.  Dr. Heilman as Provost is, by definition, a member of the Senate Steering Committee.  As I mentioned earlier, John Aho, who is not with us today, from AUM, took part in many of these discussions and I’m grateful to John for the effort and time he’s taken. 

 

Over the last several months the Senate Steering Committee has debated the pros and cons of post tenure review.  The record of these discussions is on the web; through the Senate webpage you can find the Steering Committee and we’ve posted minutes of these discussions.  We’ve tried to be as open as possible, but we’ve taken it as our responsibility first to work through some of what the issues are so that we could bring forward something a little bit more coherent as for our discussion of the subject.  And that’s what we’re going to try to do today in a moment. 

 

My understanding of the process from here, before I present the two general models, will be to discuss and debate the merits of post tenure review generally today as well as perhaps, and in particular, the two models which I’m going to present shortly.  We’re not going to take a vote on these today.  No decisions are going to be made.  This is a time for input and discussion.  We’ll follow today’s discussion with another discussion at the University Senate Meeting on November 8th.  Again, I do not anticipate a vote being taken; I anticipate open discussion in getting a sense of what the issues are concerns are how we might move forward or if we should move forward.  I anticipate calling a special meeting of the university faculty, either at the end of this semester or early next semester, with the possibility at that meeting of moving forward on a vote.  I anticipate a resolution where we may come forward with a specific post tenure review policy that would be adopted on a pilot basis, perhaps a two-year pilot basis.  But in any event, not a final firm policy but something that might be much like what Art described with the academic program review, something that might be tried on a beta basis, a field trial as John Heilman said.  Depending on the outcome on that vote, I can imagine a pilot post tenure review policy being given an initial trial run at some point in the Spring of 2006, this coming spring, with a small number a handful perhaps, a small number of faculty who would put together a packet, a dossier for post tenure review.

 

I should also report, as did Art Chappelka, that the Provost is going to be making an information-only, I understand, to the Board of Trustees at its November meeting, November 17th, 18th, and that will focus on criteria and timeline for a post tenure review.  Certainly we will have as a faculty no recommendation to be made yet to the administration.  We are going to be considering this matter carefully; as said, when you start messing with academic freedom and tenure for politically motivated reasons, we need to be thinking very carefully about this.

 

Before I describe the two general models, let me point out some important principles in common between the two models.  The two models were prepared by the Steering Committee-Rich Penaskovic and myself took lead on drafting one and the other-and they were available on the web.  You can see the URLs there and I hope some of you have had opportunity to look these documents over.  No matter how we do a post tenure review, assuming we do, the intent is not to be punitive.  We’re following AAUP guidelines in this matter and the guidelines at virtually every other university that has a post tenure review process.  Any post tenure review process is to be developmental and constructive.  If a faculty member has reached a dry patch or for some other reason has gone through a period where they are not as productive as they once were, and they’re hired and tenured, then there’s an opportunity for post tenure review to provide additional resources to help that person get back on track and regain their level of productivity.  That’s the intent: it’s constructive and productive and not punitive.  It’s not meant as a mechanism and there will be no mechanism in the post tenure review process to fire faculty.  We have already in the faculty handbook a process for dismissing a tenured faculty.  We’re not going to be adding or subtracting from that policy.

 

Post tenure review should and shall in no way undermine academic freedom or the institution of tenure as spelled out in our faculty handbook, which model on policy is developed by the American Association of University Professors.  Post tenure reviews generally will be based on annual performance evaluations which are supposed to be conducted every year, annually, by department chairs and heads.  Now I hope everybody in this room goes through annual evaluations by their department chairs or heads, but a survey that was done by our SACS self-study team several years ago indicated that 15% of faculty said that no such annual performance evaluations have been done, reflecting a fundamental problem, an administrative problem at some point.  Moreover, 30% of our faculty indicated that the criteria upon which annual evaluations were to be conducted were not clearly stated and almost half of all faculty said the criteria by which merit raises were allocated within the department were not clearly stated.  So we have some obvious problems with our annual performance evaluations, which I’m trusting our administrative leadership will be addressing.  These are going to have to be addressed before we have an effective post tenure review process.  In my view and the view of, I believe I’m speaking for the Senate leadership and Steering Committee in this, there’s little reason to believe we’ll have a credible post tenure review policy without solid annual performance evaluations.

 

Let me now address very briefly the two models that we’ve developed for your consideration.  Again, these are based on the experience of universities elsewhere in the United States.  Model one, which sometimes we’ve called the trigger model, is based almost exclusively on annual performance evaluations over a period of years, five, six, seven, depending on which university, which number you would use.  But let’s say we use the six year period and if in a six year period a faculty member had an unsatisfactory rating on two years or a five point scale, below a 2.0 or whatever the criteria we develop are sufficiently common across campus to make this comparable, if someone has two bad evaluations, then this would trigger post tenure review.  Now simply because an individual received a bad evaluation once or twice does not necessarily mean that they’re subject to dismissal-far from it.  It doesn’t even mean that there’s a problem with that faculty member; it may also be a problem between the faculty member and the department chair.  Annual performance evaluations will be reviewed and this should be, provide some check on the annual performance evaluations of department chairs, which is a matter of interest of some faculty.  In any event, the trigger mechanism will be substandard, bad, poor performance, whatever word we want to use in two out of six years.  If we adopt this approach, there’s very few of us in this room, very few of our colleagues across campus who will ever be troubled by post tenure review.  It will be a very small fraction of the faculty.  We’d have to develop appeal processes to make sure that it’s not a vindictive department chair or head establishing these low scores and we’d have to have a committee of faculty who would review the dossiers and agree that the annual evaluations did in fact reflect poor performance.  This committee would also perhaps develop recommendations for professional improvement that a person who needs this might need.

 

There may be sanctions associated with post tenure review.  A recommendation could go forward that there be reassignment of duties.  There could be conceivable, and this is drawing on what other universities have done; loss of eligibility of travel funds or sabbatics, salary freeze or reduction; some universities have even called for a demotion in rank.  Continued unsatisfactory performance and failure in the professional improvement act requirements could lead to conceivably triggering dismissal hearings; so there is a “So what”, about post tenure review potentially.  The first model very few faculty would ever be troubled by it.

 

The second model is a universal model where all of us in this room virtually, including perhaps the Provost, certainly could, including our deans and department chairs, would develop dossiers.  These, too, based on the model we’ve developed, would be based on the annual performance evaluations and on our annual reports.  Everybody would do this every five, six, seven or whatever the number of years is.  And, again, if people were below a certain threshold then the post tenure review process might kick in.  The advantage of this process is that, in fact, everybody would have to develop a dossier and so the review committee, perhaps the college level committee, would look at the evaluation, the performance of all faculty and evaluations done of all faculty over time, and that again is a check on the evaluations, the power to do evaluations by a department chair.  We’d all have a stake in the post tenure review process; it would not simply be a few among us with a large PTR scrolled across their foreheads.  There would have to be appeal processes put in place, much like I was discussing previously and the same consequences also could accrue. 

 

The first model uses, as well as the second one, annual performance evaluations.  The clear disadvantage of the second one is that it will take a little bit more time on all of our part, since we’re all going to be developing these dossiers, but it would involve our annual reports and the one page evaluation, the one or two page evaluations by the department chair, bundled together, possibly a CV, possibly a brief page a statement or two of material that the faculty member may want to communicate to the review committee.  So I do not see this; the Steering committee does not see this as something that would resemble a tenure or promotion dossier with the level of work that would go into this.

 

Just a couple of more comments before I open it up for general discussion from the floor.  Both of the models that we’ve developed are not only focusing on those faculty whose performance may need some additional support, but also to identify faculty who are outstanding.  This is one of the things that Dr. Richardson has drawn attention to a number of times and Dr. Heilman has supported as well.  But as a post tenure review process it’s not only going to identify individuals who need support, but also outstanding individuals on the faculty who may deserve acknowledgement of their meritorious achievements and such acknowledgement would be something more than a gold star; it might take the form of a financial reward along the lines of increase to base salary that comes when one is promoted from associate to assistant professor.

 

There’s certainly a lot of details that need to be worked out before we move anywhere toward adopting a post tenure review, but as I conclude, let me ask that you be thinking of comments and questions that you may want to ask and be moving to the microphone.  There are a lot of details that need to be worked out.  We’re going to work on this in a very deliberate process.  I want this process to be as open as possible and I welcome your comments.  Dr. Gerber.

 

Dr. Larry Gerber, History: First of all, I want to express my sympathy for the task of the Steering Committee.  I think you’ve explained the situation quite well.  I would think that perhaps a substantial majority of the faculty believe that post tenure review was actually not necessary and could even be counterproductive at Auburn, but given the demands that have been made on the Steering Committee, I think you’ve adopted the correct course of action, of trying to come up with a process that’s most consistent with the principles of the professorate.  So I commend you for doing that.

 

Dr. Bailey: We’ve done what many other universities and faculty at many other universities have done.

 

Dr. Gerber: I think you’ve also done a good job with the document you’ve put on the webpage summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of the two types of approaches and I think there are advantages and disadvantages to either one and I’m somewhat torn.  I think in some sense in an ideal world the notion of having some kind of evaluations on a five to seven year basis to help with development of faculty, I mean, it sounds like a very good theoretical idea.  But I think the concerns I would have about the time that would be involved, the possibilities for misuse, the lack of likelihood actually that it would fulfill the purpose for which it was intended, make me concerned about that option and perhaps lean in the direction of the trigger mechanism as perhaps preferable. 

 

But I do have a couple of questions about either one, about sanctions that could develop for an individual going through the actual post tenure review process, however they get to that point.  The notion that there could be some sanctions short of dismissal for a faculty member who is not performing at a satisfactory level is understandable and comprehensible.  The notion that assignments could be readjusted to take into consideration where the faculty member has been weak in performance, the lack of travel funds if the person has not been making appropriate use of resources, those don’t make sense to me.  I have a serious concern, though, about the notion that in either system, a reduction in salary as opposed to a salary freeze might take place and even worse to me actually would be the idea of a reduction in rank as a result of this process.  I think in either case that actually raises questions about what the tenure process was about, tenuring and promotion, and I would seriously urge the Steering Committee to reconsider, including those sanctions, I wouldn’t say all sanctions, but those in particular are of concern to me.  I’d also, another issue that comes more I think with the trigger mechanism, has to do with the appointment of any kind of review committee that would take place and there is a discussion about faculty member under review having the option to eliminate certain nominees to such a review committee, but there is nothing that I could see in the document that indicates who came up with the nominees in the first place and I think that’s something that needs serious consideration and should actually be done I think in as a collegial way as possible, but I think that would need to be addressed in any system.  I think I’ll stop there.

 

Dr. Bailey: Ok.  Let me comment briefly.  I appreciate those comments and I’ve seen my colleagues noting those questions of sanctions.  It’s not a recommendation from the Steering Committee; we’re putting out discussion models at this point and before moving very much further with developing one or the other model with the amount of time of crafting something like this, we wanted to get a sense of where the thinking of the faculty was, the intent of this meeting, and we’ll address those kinds of issues, so thank you.  Cindy.

 

Dr. Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I’d like to echo what Larry just said with respect to the sanctions.  In the limited reading I’ve done of the minutes of the Steering Committee meetings, what I interpreted those sanctions as being applied during the remedial period so if someone is identified as having been, having not met standards, that individual would then meet with his or her department head, there would be some period of remedial effort undertaken.  It might take two or three years and the proposal was, not the proposal from your group, but the policy of other institutions were such that during that remedial period, the individual would be denied travel funds, might take a pay cut and would otherwise, in my words, be punished for having not met standards.  To me that’s certainly begs the question whether this process is intended as a faculty development process, a remedial process or a punitive process.  That would certainly argue that the point of this is punitive and that also was something I detected in some of the comments in the minutes.  I think some individuals were quoted as having said ‘Well, this process needs to have teeth in it.  If we can’t get rid of people, then what’s it for?’  That troubles me.  I think the Steering Committee and the faculty as a whole need to decide what is this process for.  Is it, in fact, remedial and developmental or is it, in fact, to get rid of low producing faculty?  And then I have an unrelated question, as usual.

 

Dr. Bailey: Ok, let me comment on that and I’ll do my best with apologies to my colleagues on the Steering Committee, if I’m overstepping.  My sense is very, most all of the discussion we’ve had is not looking at the question of teeth, and that post tenure review, in so far that it has teeth, is, may deal with some of these issues of travel funds and the like, but during that we’ll call it remedial period, during the program professional improvement period, removing travel funds might be the last thing we do.  We might want to say this faculty member needs to get out to some conferences and meet people and listen to what’s going on in the discipline because they haven’t been to a conference in the last few years, so I don’t think there’s any places that I know that where a person is going through a professional improvement period that travel funds would be reduced.  Maybe the salary would be frozen during that period; I don’t know.  Those are details that I can’t, I can only speculate about, but it’s very clear to me that there are forces out there that are looking at post tenure review as having a connection to dismissal of faculty who are not doing their job, and we may say there may be a few of those, it’s a very small number, and I’ve heard from many colleagues who think those individuals need to be, everybody needs to be carrying a fair share of the load, whatever that share is, at least it needs to be fair share.  I don’t think the Steering Committee is at all interested in developing a policy that is geared, that kind of “teeth”, that one phrase you had suggests.  Did you have another related question or should I let Rik come forward?

 

Dr. Brunner: Ok, thanks for the privilege.  This is an unrelated question, it’s not a question at all, it’s a caution and it is due to the fact that I’ve been at Auburn now 23 ½ years, so I’ve lived through several administrations, several VPs for Academic Affairs, including a few that had some fairly interesting tactics.  One of those individuals, if I’m not mistaken, encouraged each department to develop a points system for ranking faculty members within the department and I know, and this was under a previous administration for those of you who are familiar with my college, it’s not the current dean, it’s not my current department head, so they’re off the hook.  At any rate, it was a points system whereby we were awarded certain number of points for each extramural grant dollar that we brought in, literally each $5,000 got so many points, each paper that we published got so many points.  I’m sure now that those points would be rated according to the impact factor of the journals.  They were certainly rated according to where each name was in the authorship list-this certainly was very intriguing.  It was interesting because it raised some discussion among the faculty about what should be the priority, for instance, my then department head thought that any outreach activities should actually count negative points, literally, because they detracted from our real job which was in the department working for the university.  So my caution is please do not take us out onto that ice.  Do not, nip it in the bud.  Don’t let us be looking at a process whereby these evaluations are done through a points system.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  My apologies, I don’t know which of you got to the microphone.  Thank you.  Rik.

 

Dr. Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: I’d just like to comment on something for Cindy’s benefit on her last point.  Stu is sitting over there, so he knows this is the case.  That is exactly how my merit raises are calculated each year.  There is a point system and papers are counted, publication dollars are added and some number decides our raises.  So my main point here is I oppose going along with this at all.  I think that you should have taken the stand in the doorway and said no to this entirely.  This is uncalled for; we are the only group of people I know of who get paid and raises only on merit.  Nobody gets cost of living in the faculty.  So you can be punished every year by having no raise, which is a real pay cut of whatever the inflation rate was.  Now if it comes down to having to do this, I personally feel that it’s important and what you should be doing is voting on this, is first allow us a vote.  Do we think this should exist?  We should vote on that first.  Maybe we can vote a preference, if forced upon us we would prefer B or A.  But I really think a statement of this faculty about how inappropriate this is-we’re at a university that just received outstanding reviews by SACS for our academics.  We were voted by our students as the place most likely that they would return.  In this state we are the most popular choice that the students taking the ACT test want to go.  We’ve heard a lot of positive things about this university; none of that makes it out in the public because we’ve got a president running around saying that we work 9 to 2.  We’ve got a president who puts on advertisements on television where instead of doing what the University of Alabama does and showing their scholars, saying these students, more students making USA Today, more scholarships/scholars/top students than at Harvard, we put on a commercial where we walk through an airport and say “War Eagle!” to each other.  That’s a nice football reference.  I say “War Eagle” to people all the time out at the tailgates, but this is trying to return us to what this group of people who are trying to control this university want, football.  That’s all they care about and we are participating in our own destruction, our own demise if we participate in something like post tenure review.  We have to hold our ground.  Now when it comes to choosing between these, if there is a preference and its going to be forced upon us, I think the triggered one is the wrong one.  Larry made a comment concerning a perfect world, this ain’t a perfect world, this is Auburn.  I don’t trust the administrators of this university not to push down and certain people get negative reviews by political pressure so that they get stuck in front of this group and face post tenure review.  I have no faith in that so I believe that if there’s going to be anything, universal is at least a little more protection for the faculty.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  Holly.

 

Dr. Holly Stadler, Counseling & Counseling Psychology: Well, I have a different view of post tenure review and it may come from my experience from being a department head and I find that the annual evaluations give the department head a great deal of power as do the merit evaluations in a small department.  Some departments don’t have faculty steering committees because they’re so small.  There’s not enough senior faculty to compose such a committee so it can put a tremendous responsibility on the department head and it opens up, I think, especially in some of these areas like load or travel money, those sorts of things, it opens up the opportunity for various kinds of private deals between a department head and a faculty member, and I think that the universal post tenure review takes away that approach and allows for review by peers, and that’s where I think the locus of decision making can be very helpful for faculty in a comprehensive review of a person’s career.  There’s a way in which we’re talking about the review being a folder full of annual review papers with a little cover on it or something like that.  I would hope that the faculty senate would think of this as something to do with having a broad career perspective.  Mid-career, late career, what are the things that I’m wanting to be doing in the next six years?  How can the department head help me with this?  What are the resources that I need for the next six years as I look ahead?  What are the things that I hope to accomplish the last six years and how well did I do that?  So I just really caution against the triggered approach because that once again gives the department head, in many departments, another opportunity for a private deal.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  Yes.

 

Mark Barnett, Civil Engineering: I’d like to second the comments that Rik made.  I think before we discuss the different kinds of PTR systems we want, we should have a vote on even to proceed or not and but since we have raised the subject, one thing I would like to see if we do adopt the PTR system, it take place and come into effect after a new president is hired.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  If I can comment on that just briefly.  The proposal would be to establish something that would be of a pilot nature for some period of time and if it were two years, for example, that would probably go past Dr. Richardson’s term in office.  Sadik.

 

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology/Plant Pathology: Basically, we all are human beings and we have productive times, nonproductive times, family problems, accidents, health problems.  I don’t think looking at a person’s two or three years’ past functioning as a faculty member will be enough judgment of how much that faculty member has produced or brought to this university.  First of all, we have to look at what that person has done for the university overall and if there is a decrease in the performance, certainly the reasons has to be investigated rather than punishing the person by any means because the more you try to punish people, you diminish the morale and morale and effectivity in academia go hand to hand.  This is a very important aspect.  Also academic freedom is not just coming here and telling what I’m thinking.  Academic freedom gives us, I studied in England for a year, do whatever you like as long as it fits in academic principles, you are testing the right hypothesis, and you are using the right techniques.  Well, that’s fine, you know, once you are a professor, you should have certain flexibility to explore new ideas.  So this is a way of looking at academic freedom.  Another thing is that I have been looking into web pages of various universities and I found some very interesting concepts.  One of them was, actually fits Auburn rather well because we are going to a mission-oriented research and mission-oriented teaching.  So what some universities, for example, Davis, one of the best College of Agriculture universities in the nation, does is that they evaluate the units, not the individual faculty members, but the productivity of the units, productivity of the mission.  I think if you look at it that way, then you can, you have to look at positive, always positive, because more you give, like teaching a kid, we are learners all the time.  More positive input, you’ll get more out of that person and the more negative, more pushing, you will first of all, the faculty member will lose the morale and secondly, this is going to be all, it’s so, actually what we are trying to do in Auburn University are all related, just that we are trying to do all of them all together.  This is the fault.  If we go with developing a very good strategic plan, we will not need post tenure review because once the mission-oriented research-this is what the clientele wants from us, this is what Alabama wants from us and if you are giving what they want-so what is the reason for accountability and post tenure review of any faculty member?  Matter of fact, if you were “dead” faculty members or “deadwoods”, we wouldn’t be here by now because there are so many processes to get tenure, becoming full professor, this is not a simple system that people outside cannot realize that here our Provost went through 15 years of education and teaching, going through the tenure process and becoming a professor and then became an administrator-this is an incredible process.  We cannot undermine this process and for three year or four year performance of a faculty should not be determinant of a punishment, eventually a firing of that faculty member, because eventually what you will lose is that morale.  And if you lose the morale, you will lose academia.  The first person fired in this university will not only open up a big law case, lawsuit but also will trigger the rest of the faculty to be demoralized.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you, Sadik.  Are there any further questions, any points of discussion at this time?  I thank you.  Before we terminate this, I heard the points.  Mark, thank you and Rik, I appreciate your comments that we should have a vote on whether or not to proceed.  I tried to lay out the rationale that brought us to this point.    We’ll take this input and in three weeks we’ll be meeting with the Senate for further discussion.  Some of you will be here I hope.  It may be that we come forward at a special called meeting of the university faculty to vote on this matter.  It’s not a senate matter I don’t think because the Senate has a lot of people who are not faculty.  This is a university faculty meeting so that’s why a special called meeting of the university faculty would be called for.  It may be that you see before you at that time a resolution asking for a vote on a model.  My Parliamentarian can confirm this, but I understand that there’s such a thing as a substitute motion which could then be brought forward and it may be that would be an appropriate strategy to consider at that time.

 

Other discussions on this matter?  I don’t believe we have any unfinished business or new business and unless I hear objections, I will call this meeting adjourned.  Thank you very much.