Transcript
November
8, 2005
Dr. Conner
Bailey: Good afternoon. Welcome to the
last meeting, as far as I’m aware, of the calendar year. I’d like to remind senators to please sign in
at the back and as always, if we have a discussion matter that has much
interest, senators will be given privilege of the floor first, but anyone who’s
represented by this body-students, staff, A&P, faculty, administrators-are
represented here and have privilege of the mic.
Minutes of the October 4th meeting of the Senate have been
posted on the web page and I would entertain a motion to approve same. Rik Blumenthal. Do I have a second? We have a second, Larry Teeter. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying
aye. Opposed, nay. They pass without opposition.
Dr. Richardson is a little bit delayed today, coming back into
town. He should be joining us soon, so I
will proceed with comments from the Chair and we’ll start moving through the
agenda and when Dr. Richardson arrives, we will break, with your permission,
we’ll break the flow of the agenda and find a time for Dr. Richardson’s
remarks.
I’d like to start off by recognizing Jack Stripling of the Opelika-Auburn News, who is hiding back
there to my left, about 2/3 of the way back.
I’m saddened to say that Jack is leaving
I also want to start off with another high note and I want to express
appreciation for the work that has been done by Donnie Addison and several
student volunteer groups, including the SGA and the Environmental Awareness
Organization, the EAO, who have been promoting a culture of environmental
awareness on this campus. At the last
six home football games, we’ve recycled five tons of aluminum on this
campus. Five tons of
aluminum; think of that. A lot of RC Cola.
We’ve also established in many buildings across campus a desk
side-recycling program, which I’m thrilled about and plans are in the works to
establish a battery-recycling program as well.
The EAO has developed a campaign to encourage adoption, which I hope
we’ll all pay attention to, of post-consumer recycled paper use in our Xerox
machines and in other paper uses across campus.
It’s a very good opportunity for us to instill environmental standards
on this campus and use it for pedagogical purposes. Dr. Lindy Biggs in the History department is
the faculty advisor of the EAO and she’s also leading our campus sustainability
initiative. While there’s a lot of
attention given on this campus to pedestrianization and our transit system,
Tiger Transit, I think it’s also important to acknowledge, recognize and applaud
these smaller achievements in these smaller efforts, much less capital
involvement, much less organizational effort that are going to improve the
environmental quality, not only of this campus but the surrounding
environment-my appreciation.
Last weekend, Rich Penaskovic and I attended a meeting over in
Our own Board of Trustees met on October 28th in a specially
called meeting. Dr. Willie Larkin, who
is our Immediate Past Chair and faculty representative on the Board, in fact,
advisor to the Board, is here to be able to answer any questions you may have
of what transpired at that meeting.
Those of you who have followed in the media realize that a couple of
things happened. One is that Dr.
Richardson made a very brief comment about a SACS special committee that had
visited campus in September and I had previously shared with senators the
written remarks that the Senate Executive Committee had delivered to that
special committee when they came to town in September. The SACS special committee report is on the
Also at the October meeting, the Board of Trustees received a report
from Dr. John Kuhnle from Korn/Ferry International. At the last senate meeting I noticed that Dr.
Kuhnle had been retained by the Board of Trustees to help guide
I understand that Dr. James L. Fisher has been invited and will attend
the Board of Trustees meeting on the 17th of November. These meetings, as I’m sure you are all
aware, are open to the public; typically are held in the Auburn University
Hotel Conference-Dixon Conference Center, usually one of the ballrooms. If you are interested, I urge you to
attend.
I would note that one of the issues that caught my attention was partway
down the first page of the 18 points raised by Dr. Kuhnle, where he said that,
quote: “Questions exist whether the current faculty senate speaks for the
majority of the faculty.” Given that senators
are elected by their home departments-faculty senators are elected by their
home departments-I don’t quite know how to interpret this question of this
issue. I would note that the only
faculty group that met with Dr. Kuhnle was the Senate Executive Committee and I
can assure you that we did not raise this question with Dr. Kuhnle. It could also be that Dr. Kuhnle didn’t mean
the Senate as a whole; may have meant the Senate leadership and that’s always a
question and it’s always a question on the Senate leadership-the Executive
Committee’s mind-to what extent do we represent the faculty. Take for example the issue of post-tenure
review, which we’re going to discuss a little bit later this afternoon. I’d venture to say the majority of faculty
believe as I do that post-tenure review is both unnecessary and possibly quite
dangerous at this point in our institution’s history, but there are also many
faculty who believe that post-tenure review is a good thing and others who are
simply not worried about it. Some
faculty, maybe many in this room, are disappointed that the Senate leadership
has made the decision to move ahead and develop a couple of models of post-tenure
review for discussion and debate on this campus, which we will do in a little
while, believing that we should have refused to participate in any effort that
threatens the institution of tenure. The
Senate leadership made the decision, and it’s your judgment whether or not we
represent your interests in doing so, that it was in the faculty’s best
interests to develop, to work for a development of a policy that would protect
academic freedom and the institution of tenure, to the best of our
ability. We’ve worked closely with the
Senate Steering Committee on this. We’re
always understanding that the devil’s in the details and any written policy can
be subverted, so we’ve done this with some measure of care and no little
trepidation and disquiet of the soul.
Does the fact, does the Senate leadership represent the majority of the
faculty in this matter? I don’t know-we
will find out. The fact is, the fact that we’ve developed a process does not mean that
Senate leadership embraces it nor does it mean that we would vote to pass it
ourselves. But we do want to have an
open discussion of this matter, bring it before the Senate today, we will have
one more meeting as I will discuss later in the afternoon with the university
faculty. I want to keep an open mind to
the question of post-tenure review and urge all of us to do so as well. I look forward to the discussions we will
have this afternoon on the subject and in the next university faculty meeting.
Before I invite Dr. Richardson to come forward-glad you could join us,
Sir-I want to also note that one or more faculty colleagues reading the AU Report today had some concerns about
change in payroll and I wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity if there
were questions either on that subject-Dr. Don Large and others of his staff are
here to address those-or any questions you have of me before we invite Dr.
Richardson to come forward, this would be a good time to raise any questions
you may have, either on what I’ve said or on the topic of payroll.
Jim Saunders,
Geology & Geography: I have to apologize, I just got back last night
from being out of the country for three weeks so if I can paraphrase Will
Rodgers, all I know is what I read in my emails and I was interested in not only the comment about the faculty senate
not being representative of the university faculty as a whole but this other
comment that Dr. Kuhnle made about the Alumni Association not being, and there
may be some qualms about how we select our candidates for the faculty
senate. We have a selection committee
but as we saw, those of you who are alumni like myself,
saw that we had numerous slates of candidates for the Alumni Association
leadership and even some that were trumped up from ex-football players and
things like that to quite possibly one of the Board of Trustee members, which
were soundly defeated. How much more representative
can you get than democracy, as far as I concerned. And for a consultant to say, without any
statistics, that maybe the faculty senate doesn’t have responsive leadership or
that the Alumni Association doesn’t is ludicrous and I say let him come forward
with his statistics that say that, otherwise keep his mouth shut. Thanks.
Dr. Bailey: I think Dr.
Kuhnle was reflecting on what he had heard.
I don’t know that those were his judgments. He said questions exist and the wording…sure,
yeah. And you know, this is a university
and questions should always exist. Thank
you for comments. Any
other questions or comments?
David Cicci,
Aerospace Engineering: I do have a question about the new payroll. Several of my faculty members are a bit upset
because of the change to distribute the paychecks over 10 equal payments
instead of the current way it’s done now and particularly because we have been
given such short notice on this. It was
announced today for the first time; many of them just heard about it. First of all, I’d like to ask why the faculty
was not informed earlier so that they could possibly handle or set up their
personal budgets in a better fashion than to be surprised by a 10% less smaller
paycheck starting in January. That’s my
first question.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Don, would you like to address that
question?
Dr. Don Large,
Vice President for Business/Finance: (inaudible)…to be able to do probably a better job
than I. A little bit of background: we are in the midst of several conversions of
our systems, more extensive than we have done in 30-something years. We have just put in the Banner Financial
Budget System on October 1. That needed
to flow into a fiscal year. We have
around 70 of our people across the campus and many of them will be in your
areas working extensively to put these systems in. We have one outside consultant; this is
contrary to the way most institutions are doing this. We’ve had, for the most part, a very
successful conversion with the Banner system.
It is not without challenges and we are working through some of
those. The deans and others have been
good enough to provide their input and concerns and we have, we continue to
address those and over the next few weeks and possibly months, we will have all
those ironed out. That’s our first
significant transformation in over 30 years and that’s just a big change. Followed up on that is the implementation of
the new Human Resources system, and that’s what David is speaking of. That needs to go into effect on a calendar year, it needs to go into effect January 1. So we’ve got people working on those
conversions. In hindsight, we didn’t do
a good job of communicating. We were
spending too much time trying to figure out a way to do it the way we have in
the past and we just couldn’t and in September it became obvious we were going
to have to change the way we pay and during that period we should have gotten
better communication to you, but we didn’t, and we apologize and I take the
full responsibility for that. The reason
for the change, recall nine-month faculty-and we’re the only institution we can
find in the country, and maybe some of you do know differently-that would have
a check in the first month and the last month and eight additional regular
monthly checks. The system, to get to
that over the last 20-something years, we’ve had to go in and modify the system
rather dramatically and there’s now reasons on this new implementation to why
that is just, I won’t say that’s impossible but highly impractical to do so
we’ve got to follow the delivered system, and that is either 10 equal paychecks
over nine months or over your nine-month salary or 12 and over time, if you
prefer 12 we may be able to do that, but having them like we’ve been doing in
the past we’re won’t be able to do.
We’re following that up with student systems coming over the next year
that will put us on a 24-7 capability of access, processing and do away with
the Social Security numbers that have been your concerns and so a lot of things
are going on. We’ve got a lot of good
people working hard; we won’t get everything right; this is one we didn’t do
the best job of communicating it when we discovered it in September and it’s
just getting out. What does that
mean? It means in January you will, the
nine-month faculty, will get less than they usually do. It will be made up in May. If you roll that back over into August,
you’ll actually be ahead of the distribution that you would normally have
during the year because you would pick up pretty much 90% of a check instead of
50%, so it is what it is. If, I don’t have a better solution, David. We don’t have good opportunities to do much
more than get information out as quickly as we can.
David Cicci: Ok, as a
follow up question it stated that the summer pay would be handled in two equal
payments in June and July. Now if
nine-month faculty is on full-time over the summer with a research grant or
whatever, those two paychecks would then be about 167% of your typical
nine-month salary. Can this new system
handle that sort of thing? Or is there
going to be some limitation on what you can earn during the summer?
Dr. Large: I saw that
comment in the email and I didn’t understand it. I do have somebody here that may…Ronnie or
Fred, did you all…
Dr. Bailey: Can you use
the microphone please? And identify
yourself please for the minutes?
Ronnie
Herring, Payroll & Employee Benefits: You’re right, it’s going to be
June checks over the three-month period and the system definitely can handle it
that way. Another reason for doing that
also is the Teachers’ Retirement System.
The Retirement System is adamant about, across the state there were some
cases where people who were close to retirement or six years from retirement,
they would get two summers in one year and of course, that would bump up their
retirement benefit. This way, you’re
getting a check in June for the period really from May 16th to June
30th and that will go in one TR year. Then the TR year that starts July 1 and so
your next payment, which will be for, the one payment at the end of July is
really for July 1 through August 15th, so that will go in the
following TR year, so yes we can do it and Retirement System is approving the
way we’re doing it because they have already handled it in the past.
David Cicci: Ok, thanks.
Dr. Bailey: Herb, did you
have a question?
Herb Rotfeld,
Marketing: Actually I already passed this to Don and it never occurred to him
before that with this change of schedule, we actually lose money, in effect,
because since pay raises don’t go into effect after we get our first paychecks
for the year, instead of losing the pay raise on a small half-month check at
the start, we lose our pay raise on a full amount of pay. Unless we can start the pay raises from the start
of the academic year instead of sliding it in somewhere after the year
begins-that would be a nice change.
Dr. Large: Well,
normally you would get, again, a 50% or ½ of a month in August and then this
August you would get 90% so you’ll get more distribution as Herb points out,
some of that maybe would have flowed over into a different fiscal year,
ultimately, then you could be slightly impacted. And that may be something the Budget Advisory
Committee needs to look at as we convene our sessions this year.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Are there any other questions? Dr. Richardson, can I invite you forward now?
Dr. Ed
Richardson, Interim President: Thank you, Dr. Bailey. I again apologize for being late, I just got
in from
I have several points that I think might be of mutual interest and of
course, as usual, I’ll be glad to respond to any questions other than the
payroll questions-I couldn’t answer those.
November 17th & 18th, which is next week, we will obviously have a Trustee meeting and I
anticipate two or three issues to arise that I will call to your
attention. First, I anticipate that the
consultant recommended by Dr. Kuhnle, which is Dr. Fisher, will be present to
describe the process he will use to compile his report, and that will be done
on Friday morning-I would anticipate at this point.
The second item that I would add to the agenda is during the afternoon
of the 17th, which is the Thursday preceding the Board Meeting, we
will have Dr. Heilman, who is here today, to present to the Board, not for
approval, just to let them know that we are working on that, the criteria that
would be associated with academic program review and post-tenure review. It is my recommendation, and I’m assuming Dr.
Heilman, we are headed that way to pilot that over the second semester and then
perhaps would have a better handle on the procedure by the end of the spring
and then start the process the next fall, assuming everything works out. So those will be the major items on the
agenda. I would call your attention to
the fact that we will be having a ribbon cutting, if you will, for the
I would also like to talk about an issue that obviously has taken some
unusual turns and that is the strategic plan.
Obviously, I think, Dr. Sauser did an excellent job with the internal
review and was well received and it became apparent and many thought that the
Board just usurped the process and had moved in the direction of ‘We’ll take it
from here and let you know what happens.’
That is somewhat the interpretation that I received. That’s not the case at all, so I’d like to go
straight to the point and describe for you the procedure that I will talk to
the Board about during next week’s meeting.
I have not talked with all of them at this point. We anticipate that we will start the
interview-we had one scheduled actually yesterday morning, but because of illness
he was unable to attend-interview three people that have been recommended to us
that could provide the Board with an external view of factors impacting on the
operation of traditional universities.
We anticipate that will be done sometime in April. Again, not having the person selected, not
knowing the schedule, it’s a little premature.
But I hope that this will give you some comfort once I wade my way
through it. What I also anticipate is
that we will also have the same consultant provide the same opportunity for
faculty, I hope, preceding the work with the Board of Trustees. Again, we will have to work on
schedules. Upon receiving that, then
we’re going to ask again that those, the faculty committees who have been
involved will have all the information that the trustees do. We will start the process, come back in the fall
and continue the review so that we can blend both the internal report compiled
by Dr. Sauser and many of you that participated along with whatever information
we bring from the external review. I
would anticipate that would take some time, which buys us both time, provides
some continuation, I think, blends us more together rather than the trustees
taking it and upon completion. The trustees, that was not their intention, so do not be
misled. Obviously it was an abrupt
change. So I would anticipate the
following then that we will have a consultant selected; it’s my intention-by
the end of the month you should have that determined-I would anticipate then
scheduling this person to come some time in March to make himself available to
either the faculty committees or whatever format we choose to follow. I would then ask him to have about a
three-hour workshop with the Board during its April 13th meeting,
which is the Thursday preceding its regular meeting on
the 14th-same type of presentation.
Then we would basically do whatever we thought possible the remainder of
the semester and then come back in the fall and give it a full
consideration. The reason that I was
pushing as hard as I was because it was not my original intention to start a
strategic plan was that I had been asked to do this by several of the trustees
so that they would know what qualities they were looking for as they selected
the new president. But I really believe
as we have looked at it further that we can do some analysis of both the
internal and external factors and have sufficient information without bringing
closure to that until we are close to having the president on board. So I would say to you the strategic plan,
that would be a modification, I would see it being finished sometime next year
and that will be dependent on the length of the review as well as the length of
the search for my replacement. So change
in the strategic plan.
The next item that I would bring to your attention deals with the
February 2nd and 3ed meeting, which I anticipate, will be a rather
significant meeting. That one, by the
way, is in
On April 13th & 14th, obviously will be our
next meeting in which we will have, hopefully for the Board at least, external
review or review of external factors by the consultant-yet to be selected. I would anticipate that would probably be on
the 13th. But on the 14th
I would recommend that we consider what I’m calling the Ag Initiative or the
Initiative for
Now two or three other items I would call to your attention and then
respond to any questions. First, we are
continuing to work very closely with the
I hope also that the second reason for this will prove to be
profitable. One of the advantages that I
do bring to the table is serving on both of these Boards of Trustees and having
a level of trust. It was rather easy to
form this bond with the
The last piece is a little uncertain but I would speak to you with what
I anticipate will happen, I guess is the best way to describe it and that deals
with research funding. I think you’re
going to see, with the Governor’s presence with his contribution of $10 million
dollars that he put into it this last year, that you’re going to see an
increased emphasis in expectations and from what I’m reading, the literature
relative to higher education, there’s an increased expectation for higher
education to play a role in economic development, job creation, and that sort
of thing. And I believe it can be
handled within the context of the university without selling your souls to do
that. I would say that we anticipate
particularly with the one-time money, and we hope with continuing money as
well, for there to be some substantial funding for research as part of our
request and part of our priorities. Now
the questions will be ‘Well, now what are you going to do with it?’ I can’t answer that at this point, but by the
time the legislative session starts, and I would remind you that this is an election
year, so that creates some unusual dynamics, but it also means that the session
starts about two weeks earlier than normal.
It starts in mid-January instead of early February and so what we’re
going to have to do is work through that.
So I want you to know that I believe that is an expectation of higher
education and the state’s willing to fund it, I believe that we can effectively
utilize that. One downside to that is
that there will be many institutions that will claim to be very proficient in research
and they would like a pro-rata share of those funds. That to me will delude it to such an extent
that it would be meaningless. So that
will be a priority for the
One final thing I would point out.
I did not mention the final meeting of the year, which is on June 30th. This is a meeting that in addition to the
election of the officers of the Board of Trustees will start for the first time
to be the formal report of the presidents of each campus, AUM and
Dr. Bailey: Thank you
very much. Does anybody have any
questions for Dr. Richardson?
Cindy Brunner,
Pathobiology: Dr. Richardson, I have a question that goes way back to one of your
first comments. You said that next week
at the Board meeting on the 17th, Dr. Heilman would be presenting
criteria to be associated with academic program review and post-tenure review
and I would like either you or Dr. Heilman to expand on that considering that I
don’t think either of those issues have reached a point of settlement. How can we have criteria associated with it?
Dr.
Richardson: This is what I would best-that’s a fair question, Dr. Brunner-this is
what I would describe as I tried to indicate in my initial comments, this is
more of a progress report that we’re working on both, we’re going to pilot it
and it’s not for approval, it’s more for information just to convey to the
Board that progress is being made. We’re
not going now or later to really ask for approval but we are trying to keep
them informed. And I think by us
stepping up first, it prevents us from having to, or it enables us to avoid
some questions later. So I would say a
progress report with more work to be done.
Dr. Brunner: Ok, so it
isn’t that he would be presenting specific criteria that would be used? It’s more that he would be telling what we’ve
got going at this point.
Dr.
Richardson: Well, Dr. Heilman, when I asked, when we had our first conversation, he
made it quite clear to me that he wished to be the Provost and which was to say
stay out of his business and I have tried to do that, but I would say that
obviously there are some criteria that would be expected regardless of the system,
so I would prefer to let him elaborate on that, but as far as if I understood
your question and I interpreted it this way-is this the plan that we’re going
to use?-then I would say no. Will there
be specific criteria? I would anticipate
some specificity but John, do you want to deal with that?
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: Thank you, Dr. Richardson. I moved up here because it was closer, not to
distance myself away from you.
Dr.
Richardson: Thank you.
Dr. Heilman: The fact is
the work on academic program review and post-tenure review, I believe,
represents a very positive instance of shared governance. I’ve been working with Art Chappelka in
representing the Academic Program Review Committee of the Senate which has
invested an enormous amount of time in this project over the past many months
and if any member of the committee is here and wants to tell me that’s wrong, I invite you to do so. A lot of work has been done on that. Guess what?
Many, probably a majority of our peer institutions have academic program
review systems in place and they have criteria.
That committee has looked at criteria, we discussed them and I think
within the framework, with all respect-a very fair question-I believe that
within the framework of the presentation that Dr. Richardson has described,
it’s reasonable to begin talking, not to begin talking-I don’t want to go
there-but to speak with the Board about what kinds of criteria might be
used. Ditto for post-tenure review-I
think that among some, if nearly two dozen, I forget what all is on the list,
but at our peer institutions in the SREB, there are two institutions which do
not have post-tenure review systems, one is
Dr. Richardson: Ok. Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Harriette?
Harriette
Huggins, Chair, A&P Assembly: When you were
making remarks about changes in the strategic planning process, you mentioned
faculty committees a number of times. I
just want to know if A&P and Staff are going to be included in that process
also.
Dr.
Richardson: Absolutely. Just an oversight on
my part-it’s a full involvement and we think the university was fully involved
before on the internal and it would be clearly inappropriate to exclude any
groups and that’s just a shortcoming of my communication skills. Sorry.
Dr. Bailey: Dr. Gadzney.
Dr. Anthony Gadzey, Political Science: Mr. President, we in Political Science had a
meeting on post-tenure review and other matters in preparation for this
meeting. At that meeting one of our members had
strong reservations about the appropriateness of inviting Dr. Fisher to
provide these overall evaluations of the
governing structure of the university and the point raised was that those who
read his book are not particularly not attracted to his vision of shared
governance at the university. I know it
is your prerogative as president to appoint whatever advisors and consultants
you want. We just want you to know that
while this is not open to a democratic choice, there are some reservations
about his vision of shared governance.
Dr. Richardson: If I could respond to that and in just a minute
you may have a follow up as a result-when a search for a president starts, the
president, the one that’s in place now, sort of sits on the sidelines. I’m not as directly involved in that
obviously. Dr. Kuhnle, if I summarized
his comments and it’s something like this: whether it’s true or not, there are
a number of perceived problems within the operation of
Dr. Gadzey: I understand that, Mr.
President. The issue is whether or not
we need a secular view. But the person
whom Dr. Kuhnle has recommended doesn’t come with full approval in certain
quarters and again, we are in a situation where we need an outside review or
reviewer to take a look at what’s going on in here, but if that person himself
has a view that would exacerbate rather than give us some way out of the
problems that we perceive, then I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that
because Mr. Kuhnle recommended this particular person, that is the person you
go with. I think there are enough
experts around the country for you to make a choice. I’m guessing this is a reservation in certain
quarters, given the contents of his book.
Dr. Richardson: Thank you very much.
Dr. Bailey: Herb.
Dr. Herb Rotfeld, Marketing: In 2004 the Journal of Consumer Affairs
that I edit had a special issue on identify theft and related issues and when
I gave you a copy of that issue, your
words to me were ‘You never give up on this, do you?’ My issue of concern here is our social security numbers. We’re coming up on a decade since a faculty
committee made a proposal on how to get social security numbers out of usage as
Ids. A friend of mine on a school up
north with about 40,000 students decided about 10 years ago that they wanted to
get rid of it and about six months later it was done. I keep coming back here and I keep hearing it’s being done. A
comment was made earlier about a computer program, again, being done. Meanwhile, to register a bicycle, buy
football tickets, to complain about a parking ticket and to ask for information
at the activity center, you have to give your social security number. When are we going to see this end?
Dr. Richardson: Good question.
It is valid and I think it should be.
Don, in your answer as we implement the Banner system, that is to be
done, I guess the question is at what point could we expect that, is what Herb
is asking?
Dr. Don Large: With the implementation of the Banner system,
certain requirements for the social security number have gone away for the
outside vendors. With the HR
implementation on January 1, the requirements for many of the social security
questions will go away. We still have
the outside groups, the Athletics department and some of them we’ll have to
work with to get them into the Banner system because they’re out on their own
separate system. So we will work on
those. But I would think, with the
student system that we’ll follow up with about four different phases of
implementation from June of next year to most of the following year, we’ll do
away with most of the requirements for the students. So it has been a long time, we are almost
there-I would say you would see faculty, students, everyone at some point in
2006, students may not be fully out of that until all the student systems are
up. When is that, John? Sometime in 2007. It sounds like a simple thing but it has not
been a simple thing with the type of systems that we have.
Dr. Richardson: So what we’d say, if I could just summarize,
because I’m not sure if everyone heard that, Don. So what you’re saying is that some would be
completed by January 1st, some aspect of this, this coming January?
Dr. Large: (inaudible)
Dr. Richardson: In his example, in Herb’s example, something like
registering your bike or paying a parking ticket or something like that, where
is that in the….
Dr. Large: (inaudible)
Dr. Richardson: In that same process? Right.
Dr. Large: (inaudible)
Dr. Richardson: I guess we can offer that. It may not be sufficient, but that’s progress
anyway. Thanks.
Dr. Large: (inaudible)
Dr. Richardson: Thank you.
Don’t give up.
Dr. Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: Two
questions, one quick comment and then a question. We’ve had the comment several times about
whether the Senate and leadership represent the faculty. I can honestly say I believe I’ve seen this
written in the newspapers that you have questioned, you personally have said
that. I’m insulted. I have faculty meetings-I poll my faculty
before every significant action item. I
did not vote to ask for the resignation of trustees, because Rik Blumenthal,
the wild-eyed maniac wanted to do that.
I did that after polling my faculty and getting a unanimous, sir,
unanimous vote of my faculty to take those actions that I took. I had not a single dissenter on my faculty to
those things. Faculty
are represented here. I am their
elected representative and believe me, those guys are
quick to tell me if I say something out of line. Now, to move on…
Dr. Richardson: If I could just respond to one point then. The comments reflected from Dr. Kuhnle were
not taken from me at all.
Dr. Blumenthal: But you have made comments like that. I’ve seen them in the newspapers, you’re
quoted as saying that and those comments make their way around, end up in his
head and then they’re repeated by the trustees who believe it’s just wild-eyed
Rik Blumenthal, and Jim here, that are making these comments and it’s not the
faculty, and we in fact all poll, at least to my knowledge, all the senators
poll our faculties before we take actions.
Dr. Richardson: Well, I don’t think we should be too
concerned. I think he kicked everyone in
the room at that meeting. I don’t think
he is using that to justify the need for us to have the review and I think the
heart of this discussion is the review itself and hopefully that will bring
very productive changes that will improve things for both faculty and
administration.
Dr. Blumenthal: Now I do have a question to follow up. By my recall, the strategic plan came about
as an initiative of the president as an administrative
initiative. When you started in this
position, you said the most important job on your part was to make that
boundary-what is appropriate for the Board, what is appropriate for the
administration and erect a firewall so that the Board would stop meddling in
the administration of the institution in such a way that they got this
university on probation by SACS, and recall, that is the only thing that got
this university on probation by SACS-the Board meddling in the administration
in the running of this university. Now if
that was your goal and you started this strategic plan, and the Board has
hijacked part of it, there is only one action you can take. It was your plan, end it. Stop the strategic plan. So my question to you is, how do you justify
resetting the firewall, saying ‘Look, if you’re going to hijack this, then
there is no strategic plan. You are to
stay out of what I was doing.’ As I
recall, that’s how it started, it was your
strategic plan to present to the Board.
Now you’ve allowed them to hijack it, we’re right back to where we were
before SACS came and said ‘You guys, get back on your
side.’ And you’re giving that right back
and we’re once again having micromanagement.
And now I hear today you’re going to have a presentation of ideas, a criterion
for post-tenure review. I respect what
John said about program review, because that is a lot farther along the
way. The criterion for post-tenure
review should not be presented for the first time to them. It should be presented to the
institution. You said this is
institutional operation, not a trustee operation, not a trustee policy. Why is that not first being talked about with
the body inside here? Why is the first
mention of your first decision or criterion going to them? Going to the trustees, whom it’s not even
their business? They’re going to hear it
before me. Why? It is my business; you said it was my
business and not theirs. You are not
following your own firewalls and I want to know why you are now disassembling
those firewalls that you said you came here to erect.
Dr. Richardson: Is that your
question?
Dr.
Blumenthal: Yes, why are you disassembling your firewalls?
Dr.
Richardson: First, you’re not correct. This
is not a textbook where you just paint a line on the wall and the separation is
accomplished. This is ongoing based on
daily decisions in different situations.
The institutional control is a term I used, and that is something that
is very important. I think you’re going
to see the Fisher Report address that in some very significant ways. I announced last June the various initiatives
that would be on the table. I identified
November as the time that we would put the criteria on for post-tenure review
and for academic program review. I asked
Dr. Heilman earlier if he was ready to give the progress report and he is, and
I believe as you said earlier, you have been working with various faculty
committees all along. So it is not
disassembled. So in regard to the
strategic plan, this was not a usurpation by the Board
at all. It wasn’t; they left it with me
and what I’m trying to do now is pull it back together. Yes, if that doesn’t come together, as I said
we’re going to spend a lot more time working on it; then we could stop it. But I believe to stop it would be far worse
decision than trying to blend the two back together and the process that I took
some time to describe earlier I think, I know that’s what I would recommend and
I believe it’s a far superior plan than stopping it. And I believe it will accomplish both
objectives. We’ll still have a clear
line in terms of faculty involvement, faculty input and I believe it will help
to maintain this issue of institutional control that I’ve described. I think to stop it would indicate that we did
not have the capacity to do it and that would encourage others to come along
and go ahead and do it themselves. I’ve
made that choice and I believe it will work.
If I get out further, obviously it didn’t work exactly as I had planned
to begin with. If I get out further and
it doesn’t work, then we can stop it at that point.
Dr.
Blumenthal: But sir, if you’re in control, then why is another track being built on
this train line by somebody else if you are in control? If this going off and branching off in a new
direction, why is that new track for the train’s progress even appearing if you
are in control and it wasn’t in your plans?
I believe you need to seriously consider whether or not your plan was
usurped and there was micromanagement and stepping over your firewalls.
Dr.
Richardson: I have and I don’t believe that was the case.
Dr. Bailey: Are there any
other questions before Herb asks a second one?
Herb, go ahead and then Jim.
Dr. Herb
Rotfeld, Marketing: I’m not satisfied with the answer we had at the
last Senate meeting about the issue of the ombudsperson and especially as you
talk about concern for opening channels of communication and information on
things around the university. I think
this is a position that is important and to remind you of the history again,
when you spoke to AAUP shortly after taking on this job, you mentioned a desire
that the faculty not speak outside, try and bring things to attention
internally. The problem with bringing
things to attention internally is even, we’re not talking of things involving a
grievance or in terms of things where we might have a personal self interest,
but a channel is needed to point out and say ‘Maybe something’s wrong with the
administration in my college’ or something like that, not speaking of my
college, speaking hypothetically and an ombudsperson would provide that type of
channel. And this was mentioned by you
at that meeting as something that was being proposed and we thought was going
to effect shortly thereafter and we still do not have such a position. And I’d like you to respond to that desire.
Dr.
Richardson: Sure. The issue was raised well
over a year ago. I did indicate that I
was receptive to that idea and after the first year had elapsed and nothing had
happened, I went back to Dr. Heilman and Dr. Large and said ‘Evidently this is
not as big an issue as I thought it was’.
And so I believe Dr. Heilman has addressed that previously in terms of a
review. Is that not correct?
Dr. Heilman: Dr.
Richardson, that’s correct and I managed to address it incorrectly. The correct information as provided by Dr.
Large is that in fact Lynn Hammond has invited a, can I describe it as an
expert in this subject matter, to be here.
I believe that visit is scheduled to talk with us about systems and
advantages of doing this.
Dr.
Richardson: So that’s where we are in that regard?
Dr. Heilman: Yes.
Dr.
Richardson: Thank you so much.
Dr. Bailey: Jim, just a
moment. I would just add that I believe
that person is supposed to be here on the first of December.
Dr. Jim
Saunders, Geology & Geography: Just a suggestion about this apparent one-time
research money. Auburn, unlike a lot of
universities around the country, didn’t do much in the ‘60s and ‘70s for buying
research equipment and we have a golden opportunity now because prices, which
some of our colleagues spent millions of dollars on for various research
equipment, are now down into the hundreds of thousands of dollars so if you
need something to point to that would be a great one-time expenditure, it would
be let’s get some research equipment here on this campus and I’m sure that it
will pay itself back in many dollars continuing on into the future. I hate to see it go to administrative
overhead for whatever here at the university.
Dr.
Richardson: That’s a good point and I would say there will be some one-time money
that lends itself very well to what you describe and there will be some
continuing money to support the research on a year to year basis and certainly
that is possible. That is not my job, I
think, is to delve into the legislative arena and to secure the amount then it
will be Dr. Heilman and others to decide how we best utilize that money. But I’m just trying to make sure that Auburn
is well represented and certainly equipment would be an appropriate expenditure
and more specifically, because I do think that a fairly substantial amount of
one-time money that could be appropriated during this coming year that would
make it available to us about six months ahead of schedule.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
Dr. Richardson. Obviously we have missed
you in recent meetings. We will
appreciate that. We have no action
items. Today we have four information
items. The first one is from Caroline
Glagola, representative of the SGA, one of the constituent groups of this body
and she asked to spend about two or three minutes with us about the
Caroline
Glagola, SGA: I know how you like your announcements, so I promise I will make this
one short and sweet. My name is Caroline
Glagola; I am a representative from the Student Government Association as the
Director of Blood Drives for this year.
I’ve come just to encourage everyone in the University Senate to
participate in our
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
Caroline. Next, let me ask Gisela to
come forward to make a presentation from the Teacher Evaluation Committee.
Dr. Gisela
Buschle-Diller, Chair of Teaching Effectiveness Committee: The Teaching
Effectiveness Committee has performed a survey on the currently used teaching
evaluation forms and I would like to bring the results of this survey to your
attention.
This is the composition of the Teaching Effectiveness Committee last
year on the left side. Some of the
committee members have rotated off or have left
Now to the survey: concerns have been brought to this committee about
the currently used teaching evaluations forms, and I’m talking here about the 8
questions that are used across campus.
Those eight questions have been put together by the Teaching Effectiveness
Committee in 1988 and established in 1990 and since then have not been majorly
modified. The committee performed the
survey in February 2005 and sent a short questionnaire of 10 questions to all faculty on campus.
The questionnaire focused on the validity of the teaching instrument as
it is currently used. It’s used by the
administration and it’s used by instructors and if you would like to see the
full survey, it is downloaded on the Senate webpage and the website is on the
bottom of this slide.
The results are very interesting.
We got a response of about a third of teaching faculty across campus and
we got additionally 170 written comments which were very interesting, too. Now to the demographics: you can see from
this graph on the left hand side assistant professors, associate professors,
and full professors responded as well as instructors and visiting teaching
faculty. The tenure status was 31%
untenured and 69% tenured. And all
colleges participated in this survey. We
got responses all across campus. It is a
concern of faculty in all the different colleges and departments.
After the questions, I’m going to present the first four that we had and
the results to it. As I said, you can
see the full survey on the website. So
the first question that we asked was: How confident are you that the current 8
question teaching evaluation questionnaire accurately measures teaching
effectiveness? I circled the answers
here: we had numbers from 1-6, one meaning
no confidence, six meaning complete confidence.
As the red circle shows, about 25% had no confidence and 27% had little
confidence in the validity.
And the second question we asked: To what extent do you believe that
evaluations and comments written by students on evaluation questionnaires are
used by
And the third question we asked: To what extent do you believe that
evaluation comments written by students on evaluation questionnaires are used
appropriately by
The fourth question was: To what extent do you believe the current
student evaluation questionnaire on faculty teaching is valuable and useful in
terms of helping you improve your teaching performance independent of raise,
tenure, promotion considerations? In
other words, do you believe that this instrument is helpful to you in becoming
a more effective teacher, becoming a better teacher? And I’ve circled the columns on the right
side. There is not really much that
believes that these teaching evaluation forms as they currently are used are
helpful.
Now as I said before, we got 170 written comments in addition, and one
of the committee members extracted the common themes that reappeared and
grouped them and this is the result: 18 addressed the lack of or conflicting
goals for teaching. This has mostly to
do with research and teaching in a split appointment and the higher importance
of research when it comes to tenure and promotion. 52 addressed the misuse of teaching
evaluations and here summarized the misuse by the administration as well as by
the students that might use teaching evaluations as a means of getting revenge
with an instructor. 16 addressed the
lack of timely feedback. That is
partially a problem of administration, departmental administration, handling of
the forms and partially feedback from a department head during annual reviews. 51 questioned the validity of the teaching
evaluation form and its use so the actual questions were not really helpful and
4 only expressed positive feedback, so they were pleased with the current
forms.
So in summary, the widespread responses that we got across the
university community showed us that there is some concern and that people
really care about teaching. A clear
majority of the respondents expressed concern about the actual instrument and
the questions that are on there and how it is used and more than 80% felt that
the teaching evaluation form in its current form does not help them improve
their teaching, does not help them become better teachers. And that’s basically all; I just wanted to
bring that to the attention of the Senate.
Dr. Bailey: Are there any
questions? What is your committee’s next
step?
Dr.
Buschle-Diller: Well, we presented this. We have no official charge, so this could be
the end of it.
Dr. Bailey: No, you’ll be
hearing from me. Are there no further
questions? Thank you.
Jim…
Dr. Jim
Saunders, Geology & Geography: At what point did this become a function
unit? When I was a student here in the
early ‘70s, we conducted our own evaluations.
Of course, we published a book for student use only. At some point, it was co-opted by the
university. I don’t know if it was the
same questions or not, but at what point did we start doing this evaluation?
Dr.
Buschle-Diller: The current instrument has been put together by
the Teaching Effectiveness Committee in 1988 and then implemented in 1990 and
since then, the questions haven’t been changed much, except for quarter to
semester and things like that, but the basic questions are the same since.
Dr. Bailey: I think there
are some obvious problems that the respondents to this survey have
identified. I’d encourage you to talk to
your faculty, send comments to Gisela and maybe we can make some changes. Let me also note that there’s a Senate
Administrator Evaluation Committee that’s also working at revising the document
or instrument that we’ve used for administrator evaluations, so we have some
parallel efforts going on. Yes.
Dr. Darrel
Hankerson, Mathematics: This issue came up a few years ago in a slightly
different form and the proposal was to do folders, prepare packets that we were
going to present to our advisors and so forth, and all I wanted to say is that
my department would be very against that kind of solution. It’s time consuming. The best thing about the current evaluations
is they won’t cost us any time. They may
be useless, but they don’t eat our time up.
So, I just wanted to go on the record and say my department will not
support this idea of building teaching effectiveness packets or some such thing
that eats our time. It won’t-it’s not a
value item in our department, maybe in other departments, but it will not be
valued; it will simply be more time out of my day to fill up paperwork.
Dr. Bailey:
Dr. Virginia
O’Leary, Psychology: I just want to suggest perhaps to you, Conner, as
you contemplate the subsequent charge to this committee, that you take into
account the fact that there is a vast literature nationally on the topic of
teaching effectiveness, evaluations, etc. and in conjunction with that, there
is a great deal of data that’s been collected across the last 20-25 years. There are numerous experts in this area who
now have PhDs and who now make their living as evaluators, but it’s expensive
to do it properly and by properly, I mean consistently and to utilize the data
appropriately in terms of both its collection and interpretation. So as we reflect on what we would like the
next steps to be, it seems to be important to assess the extent of the
institutional commitment to providing the resources to do it right. The expertise, I’m convinced, exists in the
nation to seriously engage in this process and make it a meaningful, as opposed
to a meaningless exercise, but it will take a financial as well as a
ideological commitment on the part of the institution.
Dr. Bailey: Doubtlessly
anticipating your comment,
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: Thank you very much, Conner. I’d like to follow up first two points in
response to the question ‘Where did this get started?’ and I don’t know whether
this was the first administratively driven instance of teacher evaluation at
Auburn University, but I recall back in 1976, which I know dates me, Dean Hobbs
of Arts & Sciences organized a teaching evaluation committee to put
together what I think is the precursor of the form that’s been used for some
time now and I recall some members of the English faculty here who’ll remember
Norman Britton, who was very active into his 90s, Norman also served on that
committee and I will never forget his observation, which was that ‘They’ll tell
you this system is going to be used to improve your teaching, but just give it
a little time and it will be used in your evaluations.’ And I mean performance evaluations, but
perhaps more importantly than that bit of nostalgia, I do think as Provost I do
have a responsibility to respond to what was said about the teaching evaluation
system, which is useless but has the advantage of taking no time. With all respect, that can’t resonate well
with the faculty in this room. We are
about quality performance and self-improvement.
I absolutely believe that is a value of this institution and faculty and
to get specifically to the point that Virginia O’Leary raised and that you
picked up on, Conner, you don’t have an activity that’s meaningful without some
opportunity costs and yes, it’s going to take some time. I understand that because I remember class
time that was taken up in evaluations, and did I ever imagine that some of
those comments might have been aimed at me in terms of vengefulness; yeah, I
probably did. I understand the issues
about that but it’s going to take time, effort and investment of resources as
well, and I think that’s clear. Thank
you.
Dr. Bailey: Dr. Brunner.
Dr. Cindy
Brunner, Pathobiology: I’d like to make two points. The first is that the statement that filling
out evaluations is without cost is a fallacy.
It may not cost us but it costs our class time and at the very least, it
costs our students’ time if they’re conscientious about the process and
particularly if we teach courses like some of the courses at the Vet School
that may have 12-15 instructors in one course and the majority of them are
evaluated in that course. My second
point is that I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Jim Groccia, who’s the Director
of the Biggio Center for Teaching and Learning and it’s my understanding from
our Board meeting last week that he will be working with the Teaching
Effectiveness Committee in their pursuit of a better way of evaluating teaching
effectiveness and if we needed an expert, we have one.
Dr. Bailey: Jim is no
stranger to this committee and in fact, serves on it. If there are no other questions, then let me
invite John Heilman to come forward with brief comments updating us on the
status of the Ag Initiative and I’m glad to see so many are staying behind to
talk about post-tenure review, which is coming up next after his part.
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: What you see is the text of the message that went
out from AU Daily late last week and
it describes where we are with the Ag Initiative or the Initiative for
Here’s where we are: I’ve put together a task force, of which Dr.
Bailey’s a part of; several members of the Senate leadership are part of it and
includes administrators, especially those involved in Agriculture and the
college areas that are involved in the Experiment Station to organize four
lines of activity. The report is now
available on the web as to the results of this work. Step One was to develop a vision for
Agriculture and related disciplines based on faculty input-we have that and it
was initiated through two three-hour workshops which were facilitated by
Charles Laughlin, who came to the Auburn campus to do that.
A second step was to access the direction of agriculture in the state of
The third step or area of examination is extremely important, as are the
first two, and that is organizational options to guide the initiative; in other
words, if you say that we’ve got a vision and we want to put together resources
to drive work in the area that the vision addresses, then what structure do you
have to do that? A group of faculty and
administrators put together a discussion of four models, including the current
Auburn model, two structures frequently employed at other institutions-these
are sometimes called the Super-Dean model and Vice President model-there are
plenty of examples out there-and also a mission-funding incentive-based structure. Discussion of these is available as well and
in order to facilitate campus discussion and further faculty input, especially
with respect to the tremendously important issue of structure. What comes into an entity possibly similar to
what’s at other institutions? Is it
Division III? Is it Division IV? What exists at other institutions? Is it Division III? Is it Division IV? Is it one or more colleges? Is it departments? These are huge issues and a framework for
thinking about and commenting on them is offered on the web and I invite you
to, and all your colleagues, to visit and share those comments, share your
thoughts about it. That process has
begun. I don’t know whether Steve
McFarland is still here-I know that we had a huge amount of feedback on the
vision. Feedback has been a little bit
slower on the structure issue-it’s very important to
have that. To facilitate that feedback
or the discussion, the on-campus discussion with faculty of structural
options-Mike Moriarty, who I already believe is no longer with us this
afternoon-has invited Charles Laughlin back to campus on September 16th. There will be two three-hour open forums that
he will facilitate to discuss issues related to structure. I believe they’re from 8 or 8:30 to 11 and 2
to 5. I would invite all who are
interested in these matters to attend one of those sessions and also to visit
these websites. Conner, I think you and
I have discussed this-I think it’s very clear to all of us that feedback is
important on these matters and we will be monitoring very carefully how much we
receive and providing whatever opportunities we need for thorough discussion. Thank you very much. I’d be glad to answer questions.
Dr. Bailey: Are there any
questions for Dr. Heilman on the Ag Initiative?
Thank you very much, John. Let me
encourage you all please to spend some time, particularly those with an
interest in this topic, to spend some time and provide some feedback on this
topic.
I’d like to now turn to the subject of post-tenure review. I had developed a somewhat lengthy statement
somewhat paralleling comments I had made at the University Faculty Meeting on
October 18th. I’m going to
truncate those dramatically in the interest of time. I appreciate your forbearance. Comments referred to AAUP, our University
Handbook, and the importance of tenure at this university, the need to have
effective annual performance evaluations because all of our, the two models of post-tenure
review that are going to be discussed are based on adequate annual performance
evaluations. All of these models are
designed to be constructive and supportive and developmental, not
punitive. By this I mean there’s no
intent to create a mechanism to fire faculty.
In fact, we want to create mechanisms for those
faculty who might need some additional support; to provide that support
through a post-tenure process, if such is adopted on this campus and supported
by this faculty. It’s in no way going to
undermine, it is our hope, any aspect of academic freedom. We’re going to be looking not only at ways to
evaluate those who might be having some difficulty in performance but also to
reward those whose performance is exceptionally good or outstanding. So there might be some mechanism in place in
a policy such as we’ll develop that would reward excellence in
performance.
We have identified through this process that there are indeed some
problems with our annual performance evaluations and these need to be
addressed. We have had the Senate
Executive Committee have some discussions with Dr. Richardson; in fact within
the last couple of weeks and at that point there was discussion that we might
wait until the spring of 2007 to initiate a post-tenure review pilot
project. Understanding some comments I
heard today that maybe that delay may not be the case but I’m closed to that
option at this point and I hope others will not be as well.
There are two models that we’ve presented on the Senate webpage; one is the what we call the Trigger Mechanism, where only those people
who have been evaluated as having been unsatisfactory in performance in two
years out of some five, six, seven years would go through a post-tenure review
process. The other process is what we’ll
call the Universal Model, which is that all of us go through the process. We use the annual performance
evaluations. We’re going to be stacking
up all the collective performance evaluations and annual reports that we do. Our department chairs will provide
additional, the performance evaluations that we all are supposed to be doing,
and then that will go forward to a committee.
Those are the two basic models. I
hope you’ve taken the time to become familiar with them and I would at this
time simply like to open the floor for discussion. Dr. Rotfeld.
Dr. Herb
Rotfeld, Marketing: Conner, in Dr. Heilman’s earlier comments, he made
a statement that I found a little bit bothersome when talking about post-tenure
review. His comment was ‘Every
university and state, except for the
Dr. Bailey: I believe
that Dr. Heilman’s comments referred to SREB schools, not all schools and it’s
probably not appropriate for me to comment publicly on why the
Dr. Rotfeld: Are they
under the pressure to have something?
Dr. Bailey: At the
meeting that I referred to this past weekend of Alabama Faculty Senate Chairs,
there was no evidence that the University of Alabama was under any pressure and
one person with a somewhat, shall we say, high-ranking administrative
responsibility said the faculty here simply would not put up with it. And I prefer not to divulge that person, but
let me just say it was not a faculty member, just an administrator. I would also note that at that same meeting,
we had a lobbyist who works for the
Dr. Tony
Gadzey, Political Science: Again, this is from our meeting we had prior to
coming to this particular issue. One of
the views expressed questions whether we could actually believe what you have
just said, that the post-tenure review is not meant to be punitive. If it is not meant to be punitive, aside from
the fact that certain departments do not offer the kind of quality annual
evaluations that you recommended, I don’t see why if the goal is to have those
who are not doing very well, we do not use the current system to identify those
people and help them. Why must we
abandon this particular system and add something to this particular system if
we could use this particular system as it is today to identify those who might
need help, if the goal is to help those people?
That is a crucial issue, so if you’re saying it’s not punitive, I want
to believe you, so do many people in that meeting, but it’s not believable if
we do have within the current system the ability to identify those who need
help and target these kind of measures to help them.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. I don’t know I can respond to you
or give you any sense of comfort on that.
It does seem to me that at many other universities, and there may be
exceptions and there’s one on our
Dr. Cindy
Brunner, Pathobiology: Conner, the faculty in the department of
Pathobiology met to discuss and vote on the two proposals that have been
offered by the Steering Committee. We
met last Friday. I had predicted secretly
that they would favor one or the other of those two proposals, but I couldn’t
predict which. My faculty
tend to be pretty hardheaded about things, pretty demanding. They’ve got a high expectation level for
people going up for the tenure, although the responsibilities, the assignments
within the department range widely from a very, very strong diagnostic service
component to a very strong research component.
The expectations are high. What
surprised me was that they voted to not accept either of the two proposals that
are on the table. Neither did they
decide to stand in the doorway and refuse to participate. What they’ve recommended instead, and this is
by a vote of 15-1-I didn’t vote and the department head didn’t vote-they’ve
recommended an alternative that has two parts.
And the first part is that they respectfully, and they said I had to
insert that word, they respectfully request that Dr. Richardson explain to us
exactly what is the problem with the current system of faculty evaluation. And we spent quite a bit of time at the meeting
talking about that. They wanted him, or
someone, to clearly identify what aspects of the current system are not
working. So are we dealing with a
problem of public perception that faculty don’t work very hard? Are we dealing with accountability
problem? Is it true that the current
system does not hold faculty accountable?
Do we actually have a substantial amount of deadwood among the senior
faculty that needs to be taken out and burned?
Is the problem our dismissal policy and in fact, there are very few
faculty brought up for dismissal and of those, nobody can seem to think of
anyone who has been dismissed.
The second element of their proposal, once we’ve identified the
problems, is that we fix them, that we craft a solution that works within the
current framework of faculty evaluation and dismissal. So there are two parts to the approach of
faculty evaluation. There would be a
high degree of emphasis on the annual performance appraisals. We clearly need to fix some things
there. The performance appraisals need
to be tied with faculty development planning so if a department head finds an
individual not to be meeting expectations, there needs to be a concerted
conscientious effort to work with the faculty member to try to remedy the
situation. Then beyond that, given two
or three tries-and they’re not looking at 2 out of 6 years. I think they’d like to look at two
consecutive years as sustained evidence of lack of productivity-they then argue
that there ought to be some penalty associated with failure to respond to a
remedial plan and that penalty could even include dismissal. But if we’re going to consider dismissal as a
punishment, we need to revise our dismissal policy, because at the present
time, our dismissal policy deals only with fitness of a faculty member as a
professional. It doesn’t, at least the
verbiage, only allows for unfitness as a cause for dismissal. It doesn’t include things like a lack of
performance of duties or productivity or the sort of things we’re talking about
with post-tenure review.
So that’s their strategy. They
feel very strongly that we don’t need to invent a whole new level of
bureaucracy. We certainly don’t need to
burden the tenured faculty with reviewing 18% of their colleagues every year
for the rest of their lives and we don’t need to impose a system that, in the
words of one of my colleagues, is nothing but “ear candy” and I looked that up
and I think he’s got it wrong, but any rate, he thinks that this business about
post-tenure being for faculty improvement is a lot of fluff, it’s a lot of BS
and really seriously, what is sought by the individuals who are putting the
pressure on about this. Is this a way to
identify those faculty who are underperforming and do
something about it? If that’s the
problem, then let’s deal with that.
Let’s find a solution to that problem.
Dr. Bailey: Dr. Brunner,
thank you. Dr. Blumenthal.
Dr. Rik
Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: I‘ll succinctly say what I said last time, but I’d
like to start by saying that I agree overwhelmingly with the members of the
Pathobiology Department. I think they’re
well thought out and those are basically my thoughts and just to reiterate what
I said at the general faculty meeting: I would recommend to the whole of the
faculty to resist this and not vote for some plan because you think it’s the
lesser of two evils, because what is going to happen is hopefully, somewhere
within the next few years, we will have a new president and before he arrives,
we will have voted for this post-tenure review plan and we will be stuck with it
forever. If in fact we are resisting it,
if in fact we say we do not prefer to have any or at least before choosing what
the least of our two evils is, register a strong statement by a vote, that we
want no plan. We want to use the system
that exists. We will modify it if
necessary to relieve the deadwood problem, but let’s stay with what we
have. Let’s not put in a new system and
I think if we go ahead and do it, I think we are locking ourselves into having
one. I believe, as one of my faculty
members assailed me in the hallway, ‘absolutely if they do this, not by
trigger, because it will be used punitively.
This is
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
Rik. I understand the point. Let me, Charles, if you will for a moment, I
should have mentioned this in my comments that my understanding of the process
from here in addition to what we heard earlier about what the Board will hear
in its November meeting, is that the university faculty will discuss this
matter one more time and there will be votes taken. My understanding is at this time we will
start with a vote, yes or no, on post-tenure review. Once that vote is taken, if the vote is yes,
that the majority of the faculty at the university agree
that we should proceed, then we will subsequently have a vote on one or the
other models. We will have one or
possibly two votes at that university faculty meeting. I’m sorry-who was first? I think, Charles, were you first?
Dr. Charles
Gross, Electrical and Computer Engineering: We’re on our home court here because this is
our building.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you for sharing it with
us.
Dr. Gross: Hope everybody’s comfortable. Usually too cold in here
for me.
I have polled my faculty on this issue over email and have had numerous
conversations with individuals and I think I can state their consensus report
is basically they argue that we already have post-tenure review. Every faculty member has an annual review,
also submits an annual report. It’s a
very exhaustive process and we’re really quite comfortable with the system and
it’s working just fine. The purpose of
that really is threefold. There used to
be a basis for merit raises and promotions and that’s part of the reason we had
these annual reviews. The second reason
is that if a faculty member does have some kind of deficiency, the department
head shares that with him and comes up with a plan to rectify that. The third issue is people who are on the
tenure track need to have some guidance as to how they’re doing and that’s the
third reason for the activity. Of course
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
Dr. Gross. Dr. O’Leary. Oh, Dr. Sadik Tuzun.
Dr. Sadik
Tuzun, Entomology & Plant Pathology: I have also been discussing this
with individual faculty members on several occasions in my department and I
have received numerous emails and a couple of things really caught my
attention. One thing was that when Dr.
Richardson came here as a president, he started with 6 initiatives and his 6
initiatives did not include anything
about post-tenure review. And he said
that post-tenure review was due to political pressures. Now we are finding out there is really no
political pressure and I also attend all the Board Meetings. The first time post-tenure review was
mentioned in a Board meeting, without any discussion in front of the faculty,
by
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Dr. O’Leary.
Dr. Virginia
O’Leary, Psychology: You know it
just occurred to me as I was sitting in my seat thinking about this very
distressing issue that we have, as an institution, been struggling with for
some months, that perhaps the problem is merely semantic and perhaps the
Provost could report that to the Board; it does represent some progress. We conduct post-tenure review every time we
review the performance using the activity report format of a tenured faculty
member. That’s what it is-it is the
review of a tenured faculty member following the awarding of tenure by the
Board of Trustees of this institution, who make that determination either
because the person has come up through the ranks at this very institution or
because the person has been hired from the outside and has been approved
formally by that Board, although it’s kind of a de facto approval, but
nevertheless, it’s on the recommendation of the academic officers of the
institution and so it seems to me that it certainly could be argued that we are
engaged in the process of post-tenure review and we have been for some time but
that the process itself is imperfect and needs some attention that the progress
to be described to the Board will be more in terms of the issues that must be
addressed in order to make the current system the best possible system in
Alabama, in the nation. But to get out of this trap about “post-tenure review versus annual
evaluation”.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Dr. Locy.
Dr. Bob Locy,
Biological Sciences: Thank you, Conner.
I just like to say, as you well know, Conner, at the outset of post-tenure
review at the Steering Committee, we really discussed practically all of the
things that have been said here today and I have one other thing I want to add
to that. I pretty much agree with a lot
of what has been said, that it’s a problem of perception, as Virginia O’Leary
has just said and as Sadik mentioned, it’s also a matter of we already do post-tenure
review and that as Cindy mentioned earlier, that really there’s a problem of
identifying what was wrong and I believe in Steering we came to the conclusion
that what was wrong was that our current process of review was not necessarily
adequate to be convincing in terms of perceptions that what steps that have
been taken in the past are doing the job we want done. Dr. Heilman has heard all of this and my
understanding is that he’s to put forward some summary of what he thinks the
plan should be forthcoming as someone originally from the Political Sciences
Department, I think he’s well aware of the notion that in politics, perception
creates reality and so the issue is how to create the right perception and I
think we really have the team assembled to do this job for the university the
way Virginia just eloquently, more so than I, could ever speak to it and I
think practically all of the concerns that are on the table here are going to
be addressed and perhaps to go along with saying that, my view is that the
process is perceived really very wrong and that we have a lot of input and that
the output is going to reflect what is happening. I’d just like to say I think you’ve done a
marvelous job of representing the faculty leadership in terms of trying to hold
this together and address political issues that were being brought before us
where as this body isn’t set up to address them very well.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Dr Brunner.
Dr. Cindy
Brunner, Pathobiology: And I realize I’m borrowing speaking time from the
next two or three meetings, because of the amount of times I’ve been here. I forgot something: the model we’re proposing
actually has a name. I’m going to call
it the Michigan State Model and I
want to read you a short paragraph, excepts of a paragraph from the Michigan
State website. The date on this, the
statement was issued by the Office of the Provost on December 18, 2002 but it
is the current statement to the best of my knowledge:
And I’ll skip a sentence there.
They had to clarify the meaning of the term incompetence as it regards
dismissal policy, then went on:
Performance is monitored through the use of annual written performance
evaluations as required by the policy and faculty review. Work performance is determined in such
reviews as to be reflected in annual salary adjustments and as a basis for
advice and suggestions for improvement, although not triggered by a fixed
number of years of low performance; discipline in a variety of forms may be
invoked. Under the policy for
implementing disciplinary action, dismissal is not sought. In more serious cases, the dismissal of tenured
faculty for cause, procedure can be invoked.
This procedure involves notice and a formal hearing, involving review by
peers. Interpretation of the term
incompetence by the University Committee on Faculty Tenure-which is a standing
committee at Michigan State-includes an expectation of professional development
support and review by peers before disciplinary or dismissal action is
contemplated-and that’s it.
That is their policy on post-tenure review and I like it.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you
Cindy. Dr. Stadler.
Dr. Holly
Stadler, Counseling & Counseling Psychology: I’m not a senator. I’m just speaking for myself with a very
different point of view, if I may be so bold as to present that, after hearing
what everyone else is saying. I think
with our, as we’ve structured our careers in academia, we give a lot of
attention to the developmental milestones that occur before tenure and
untenured faculty get a lot of feedback, not only from the department head, but
from the senior faculty in their department, third year review and now we have
reviews every year for untenured faculty. All that kind of feedback, support, looking at
the big picture ends when a person is tenured.
I would just put out for an idea that may not be the best way to move
along in terms of thinking about a person’s career. There are many other milestones that occur
after tenure that make mean a broader perspective than just the annual
review. Another thing that I think
happens after than tenure decision is that a great amount of power and
decision-making authority rests in the hands of the department head. We don’t have reviews by peers or by senior
faculty after tenure. So we’ve heard
that some faculty members are not particularly pleased with the level of annual
review and so they’re essentially getting limited feedback on their own
development and they’re getting no feedback from their peers in any kind of
structured way. So I think that post-tenure
review does a number of things: it looks at the faculty members’ career
developmentally and it takes out of the hands of the department head a very
large amount of power over the faculty member’s career.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Sadik let me make a comment to
that. As I’ve looked, and as the
Steering Committee and Executive Committee have talked about this, this is the
one issue, if I was going to point to a positive feature of post-tenure review,
it’s the check on the power that an individual department head or chair has
over the annual performance evaluations and to provide another mechanism for
screening, scrutiny of those annual evaluations. Dr. Tuzun.
Dr. Sadik
Tuzun, Entomology & Plant Pathology: Other things came out from my
faculty that I forgot to mention. One of
them was the SACS review. SACS had no
problems with academia in
What I think, there is no need of review of a person. We also as individual scientists review
ourselves. Our papers get reviewed
before they get published. I think this
university, if they really want to do something, they should increase the
number of sabbatical leave requests, awarding sabbatical leave to faculty
members every five years, if they want to do something instead of spending
money and time on another layer of review.
Development seminars-we can seminars here. We can send faculty members to different
institutions. We can bring faculty
members here to work together to increase cooperation between
universities.
So, I think the most important point right now is to concentrate on the
initial six points that Dr. Richardson brought, because we have been working on
that and at this time, I don’t know how Dr. Heilman will manage that, but let’s
give some time to this. Let’s not
disturb the harmony and maybe in the future we can talk about this. But right now, this will be more destructive
than constructive.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Yes?
Gary Martin,
Curriculum & Teaching: First, a comment: I think Dr. Stadler did a very
nice job of describing the potential benefit of a post-tenure process and I’m
still evaluating that, as are the faculty in my department. But I think that was the one point I think
that we can agree could be very positive.
But I do have a procedural question.
I’ve heard two things stated in terms of what’s happening next. First, there’s going to be a series of one,
possibly two faculty votes at the next faculty meeting. Secondly, Dr. Heilman will be reporting to
the Board of Trustees. My question is:
is there any connection between these or is the faculty vote in essence just us
feeling good about having voted?
Dr. Bailey: My sense is
that, and my hope is that at this next Trustees’ meeting in November that Dr.
Heilman will present the status of thinking on this campus as it regards post-tenure
review and will say that he will be coming forward with a recommendation at a
future meeting. We can have a special
called meeting of the University Faculty before the end of this calendar year. Given the nature of the semester and timing,
it’s my recommendation and what others have told me that we do this somewhat
maybe early in the new calendar year and there may well be two votes that will
take place at a single meeting and the first vote would be, if it is the
preference of the university faculty who favor the development of post-tenure
review, yes or no, and then if the answer is yes, then to express opinions on
which model would be most preferable.
Does that answer your question,
The question was: was there any divergence with what I said and what Dr.
Heilman said. John, can you answer that?
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: I think the question is whether, the question as I
recall it was-first of all, not to quibble with words-it was suggested that I
would be making a report to the trustees and not to focus, not to parse the
words too carefully, I don’t see this as a report, I see it as basically a
statement to the Board about what criteria for academic program review and post-tenure
review might be. I will say that what I
will say will not be disconnected from the ongoing communication that I’ve had
with the Academic Program Review Committee and the work they’ve done and also
with the Steering Committee and the discussions that have taken place there of post-tenure
review. With that as background, I think
your question, and it’s a very reasonable question is, ok, Heilman is going to
say something to the Board and then we get to vote is, as some might say, is
the vote near Kabuki Theater-does it really not matter? Well, you certainly wouldn’t expect me to say
yes, but in being quite honest, I would say no.
I think the views of this body matter a great deal and the views of the
faculty matter a great deal and I’ve been quiet because I’ve been taking notes,
not to keep track of who said what but what the ideas were and I believe that
the system that is recommended to Dr. Richardson and I’d emphasize that any
recommendation that I’d expect the Provost would make to Dr. Richardson, it is
my belief as a practical matter that decisions about tenure and promotion are
made by the administration and that’s where it stops. And I think that is how I would view matters
of post-tenure review as well, so that the views of this body expressed in
debate would be just in hearing or through vote, I think will carry weight and
be important. To go a step further,
which may be my fatal flaw-I tend to do that-if the faculty were to vote not to
approve or to reject the notion of post-tenure review, would I take that as
preventing me in good faith from making a recommendation to Dr. Richardson and
the answer is no. So I hope this is
enough. I’ve attempted to be responsive
to what is a fair question. Thank you.
If I might just take a moment, I’d like to second what Bob Locy said
with respect to Conner’s, in my view, very balanced leadership. Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
John. Yes?
Cliff Perry,
Political Science: Yes, is it the Senate leadership’s intent and
understanding that no matter what version, if any, of the post-tenure review
proposals will not reduce process at all that’s due upon the finding of cause
nor will there be any increase in the number of causes for which a faculty
member might be dismissed?
Dr. Bailey: Can I ask you
to identify yourself for the record, please?
Dr. Cliff
Perry, Political Science: Sure-Cliff Perry, deadwood, petrified wood-I have
no idea which department I’m in…
Dr. Bailey: My
understanding is that any post-tenure review model that I can imagine the
Senate leadership and the Steering Committee developing or that I can imagine
John Heilman developing would not increase the issues, the causes, the criteria
that might lead to dismissal activities.
I’m absolutely confident of that.
Dr. Perry: In the
process due upon some allegations satisfying a cause for dismissal, the process
due will not be altered, will not be reduced?
Dr. Bailey: Well, the post-tenure
review models that we’ve been developing increase processes, in fact, such that
there may be at the college level a review, if there are post-tenure review
packets that are developed in whatever form, there will be perhaps a college
level review committee that would make a determination of whether a post-tenure
review needs to go forward. There could
very well be an appeal body that’s in one of the models, I think both models
actually, there would be an appeal body to which
someone who felt that their evaluation was mistaken could appeal. And then ultimately there are grievance
policies that could be followed. So
certainly there would not be any reduction or diminution of process; in fact,
we’re going to be adding process which resonates perhaps very well, but also if
we’re talking about efficiency of time at the university and how we spend our
time, there may be some transaction costs associated with that, and it’s our
job as faculty to determine if these are costs well spent.
Dr. Perry: And this
might also actually obtain with any kind of reduction in pay or any kind of
draconian measures that are meant to be punitive, like reduction in rank,
reduction in pay and all the rest.
Dr. Bailey: Yes, I’m sure
that we would have appeal processes built into that where that could be
reviewed. Now there’s no direct
connection between what we’ve been talking about on this campus, between post-tenure
review and dismissal. An unsuccessful post-tenure
review process identifies problems and over a period of two-three years, an
individual faculty member makes no progress that is not an automatic trigger
for a dismissal process under any model that we’re conceiving of at this
campus. I should tell you however draft
policy at AUM has that trigger mechanism and I’m very worried about that, as is
the chair of the faculty senate at AUM.
Dr. Perry: And just one
last question, what will be your response if that kind of proposal is
introduced to you as this part of the senate leadership?
Dr. Bailey: Opposition.
Dr. Judy
Lechner, Educational FLT: To the extent that my faculty colleagues expressed
a preference, they certainly preferred not a trigger mechanism. But one of my colleagues brought up an
interesting issue, which actually dovetails with Holly Stadler’s concept of
checks and balances, that if we did have post-tenure review committees, it’s
through the process that has to be very carefully drawn up and I’m just going
to read what she had said: “A well structured process has the potential to
extend the abuse of junior faculty if the reviewers are willing to address such
issues in the yearly evaluation of senior faculty. It therefore has the potential to protect the
intellectual and political autonomy of junior faculty. If it is not structured to address such
issues, the structure has the potential to extend the hazing process of the
newest faculty and for the senior faculty who are not considered part of
whatever ‘group’ exists in the various departments.”
So she really was expressing the idea that somehow, if the process itself
has to be very carefully, and I’ve read what the Steering Committee has
proposed, has to be very carefully drawn up to include some kind of safeguards
and to see that the senior faculty don’t just harass the junior faculty but
that’s part of the evaluation.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you.
Dr. Lechner: By the way, I do want to express something else
from my own personal point of view. In
an amalgamated department or a college with many different strands of
philosophy and thought-and my department happens to be that way-what
constitutes as productivity for some members is not what would be constituted
as productivity for others because some put out books that take years to
produce and other put out journal articles that are the preferred mode of
communication and so that’s another issue to consider.
Dr. Bailey: That’s one of
the reasons why in our debates within Steering Committee we’ve thought that
possibly the college level or school review process would be more appropriate
than a department.
Dr. Lechner: I agree, but even within the college, there’s
quite a variation.
Dr. Bailey: I’m a
sociologist in the
Dr Sadik
Tuzun, Entomology & Plant Pathology: Well, I know that this is my
turf time. I absolutely agree with
this. Even with a department, even
within a discipline, there is very different thinking. Some people like to publish fewer but lengthy
articles to keep their academic name in high standards. Some prefer to publish shorter, but many more
articles. There cannot be set criteria
to access each faculty member for performance of each faculty member, such as
books. Now I would like to say one
thing, I really appreciate John Heilman-and I know him for almost 15 years now
since I came and I worked with him on many committees-and I truly believe we
have a Provost who’s very, very faculty-oriented and oriented to protect the
faculty’s best interests. So I fully
trust John and John will do everything to protect the rights of the
faculty. My concern is that if we make a
statement to both, one day just open up the subject, can we stop this? I mean, the Board will get excited and they
will want something. I wonder if it will
be better if, instead of giving a presentation at this time to Board, if John
tells them that we are studying other universities, institutions-because that’s
true. This is a very important point and
senate leadership are studying various models and discussion is going on and
delay the report on that, if Richardson agrees.
Dr. Bailey: Sadik, may I
interject that I take very seriously the comments that Dr. Brunner made about
the