Transcript

Auburn University Senate Meeting

October 4, 2005

 

 

Dr. Conner Bailey, Chair: I’d like to call to order the October meeting of the University Senate.  Thank you all for being here.  Let me remind senators please to sign in on the back when you come in.  We’ll continue the customary practice of anyone in the room who is of a group represented on this Senate has the right to speak from the side microphones.  Please when you do so, introduce yourself by name and also what department you are from and say whether you are a senator or not.  If there are a large number of people wanting to speak on a matter, we’ll ask that senators have the privilege of speaking first and we’ll open it more broadly. 

 

The minutes of the September 6th meeting of the University Senate have been distributed and posted on the Web.  I would entertain a motion to approve.  That’s Rik Blumenthal.   Any discussion?  Those in favor signify by saying aye.  Opposed nay.  The ayes have it.

 

Dr. Richardson is unable to be with us today and in his stead, we have Dr. John Heilman, our Provost, who will bring to us announcements from the President’s Office and then I’m sure he’ll be available to answer any questions that you have.  Dr. Heilman.

 

Dr. John Heilman, Provost: Thank you, Conner, and good afternoon.  I know I’ll be involved later on in the agenda with discussions of the Ag Initiative and also Strategic Planning.  I spoke with Dr. Richardson and asked if there were specific items I should report on his behalf and he mentioned just a couple.  He asked that I confirm that there will be a special called Board Meeting on October 28 and it is his expectation that the Presidential search consultant, Dr. John Kuhnle, will be speaking at that meeting.  Dr. Kuhnle will also be on campus tomorrow and be meeting with representatives of various constituency groups to talk about the Presidential Search.  Other than that, Conner, what I will do is simply also affirm that the, or say that, Dr. Richardson’s expectation is that at the November Board Meeting, there will be discussion with the Board; there will be no resolutions or action items before the Board with respect to Academic Program Review or Post Tenure Review and I would also say simply that I appreciate the work that is being done by Senate Committees and Leadership on these two subjects.

 

Dr. Bailey: Any questions for Dr. Heilman?

 

Dr. Ruth Crocker, History: Dr. Heilman…

 

Dr. Heilman: Dr. Crocker…

 

Dr. Crocker: You mentioned that Dr. Kuhnle, the search Chair, will be on campus to meet with certain constituencies tomorrow?  Could you name those constituencies who will be meeting with him, please?

 

Dr. Heilman: I don’t have a list of them, Ruth, and one small point, if I said that he was chairing the search, then I misspoke.  I think he is a consultant for the search process.  I know that he’ll be meeting with deans, and beyond that, I’m sorry, I simply don’t know.

 

Dr. Crocker: I misspoke, but I still wanted to know who he was meeting with.

 

Dr. Heilman: That’s a minor point.  Beyond that, I don’t know his exact schedule.  I just don’t.

 

Dr. Crocker: Thank you.

 

Dr. Bailey: Herb…

 

Dr. Herb Rotfeld, Marketing: Sir, shortly after Dr. Richardson assumed the presidency of Auburn, he had a meeting with AAUP and one of his requests was that the faculty no longer be so quick to speak to outside groups or go to outside channels or other things with comments, and a member of the AAUP who was at that meeting said ‘Well, sir, part of the problem is that we have no route of inside channels to convey to you problems, difficulties, or concerns.’ And it was said at that meeting that others sent proposals up, there’s going to be an ombudsperson and this person will be in place soon and we’ll all have a mechanism to report problems or concerns inside the organization, and Dr. Richardson said ‘Yes!  That’s a good idea.’  What happened?

 

Dr. Heilman: Herb, I believe I was in communication with the Senate leadership and I brought that forward, that recommendation forward, to Dr. Richardson’s office and what I think I can do is to report that after meetings, in which Conner I think you were involved in some of them, I think Virginia O’Leary who, I don’t know if Virginia is here today, but also I think had been instrumental in making this proposal, making this recommendation, in discussions with Dr. Richardson’s and Dr. Large’s offices, I think a conclusion was reached that there was basically that the appointment of an ombudsperson at this time would be basically trying to address symptoms rather than underlying problems and that the underlying issue would be to communicate effectively what options there are within existing offices for redress of concerns or consideration of concerns.  And so at this point, there is no expectation as far as I know to proceed with the appointment of an ombudsperson.  As an alternate possibility for making available information about what sources of recourse there are, where can one go to discuss concerns, issues, problems, perceived problems, all of that, one of the steps that I’ve taken in the Provost’s Office is to build up the staff capacity of it, is to recruit two staff persons to basically take the place of Nancy Nowicki, who’s doing two jobs, two full-time jobs and is still working in the office and is really making a great deal possible.  Those two positions-one will be HR, the other will be Budget-we’re pretty well through the recruitment process for the Budget position and are into the process of recruiting the HR position, I will ask that person when he or she comes on board, to take on the responsibility of responding to questions or communications with respect to ‘Where can I go?’  That’s what I know at this point and Dr. O’Leary, Virginia, I don’t know whether you just got here, I referred a moment or two ago to you and your sponsorship of the original resolution.  If you weren’t here, I wanted you to be aware that I made that reference, if you were, I’d be happy to respond or correct whatever.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there any further questions of Dr. Heilman at this time?  I say at this time because he will be at the podium at least one other time.

 

Dr. Richard Penaskovic, Chair-Elect: John, I guess I’m surprised and deeply disappointed that the ombudsperson position isn’t going anywhere, especially since I thought it was a resounding Yes to this position on the part of the Senate several months ago.  So I don’t know what happened in the meantime, but I don’t know how this squares with shared governance or anything.

 

Dr. Heilman: Rich, I think there was strong support.  I’d remind that ultimately all resolutions of the Senate and recommendations that come forward from committees are recommendations to Dr. Richardson and of course, with further discussions with the Administration, that there was not the support to go forward with this.

 

Dr. Penaskovic: So in other words, Dr. Richardson made a decision already not to go forward with this position?

 

Dr. Heilman: I think it would be appropriate to say, and Don you can correct me if I’m wrong on this, but the decision was made to recommend to Dr. Richardson not to proceed and that took place within the framework of the meeting that you, Conner, and Dr. O’Leary were able to attend, partly but not completely.

 

Dr. Bailey: Could you take a mike please?  Thank you, Don.

 

Dr. Virginia O’Leary, Psychology: I just want to interject before Don gets here, yes I was at that meeting but I left before this final determination was made and I had not heard it until just now.

 

Dr. Don Large, VP for Business/Finance: My understanding of how we left it is that Lynne Hammond, our Assistant Vice President for HR and AAEO, was at the meeting and had a number of contacts and was going to bring in a person that she felt was nationally prominent in that area and could advise the group that we met with and ultimately the President and talk to whomever on a day or two visit and that we would then evaluate what we had in mind for a two year appointment, which brings on its own set of complications, and what we identified as the problems and look at the options and then decide how we go forward.  So I…

 

Dr. Heilman: You’re correct.  My recollection was faulty and I apologize.

 

Dr. Large: So that’s where we are and Lynne is trying to locate and confirm that meeting with the person she’s identified and hopefully in a month or so we should have somebody on campus.

 

Dr. Heilman: Thank you and that is correct.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.  Are there any further questions for Dr. Heilman at this time?  Thank you.

 

I’d like to make a few announcements and observations.  Thank you, Don for that clarification.  It’s my understanding that the subject is still alive and that the Senate leadership and the Administration will, I hope, come to like minds on this matter. 

 

The Board of Trustees met on the 15th and 16th of September.  The media covered that extensively.  Dr. Willie Larkin, our faculty representative on the Board, was at that meeting and is here to answer any questions that you may have from that Board meeting.  At the September meeting, the Board approved the budget and spent some time talking about the Strategic Plan, and we will return to that subject later on in the agenda for today.  The Board also approved, as Dr. Heilman said, a recommendation by Jack Miller of the Board to engage the services of Dr. John Kuhnle of Korn/Ferry International to serve as a consultant to the Board on a presidential search.  Dr. Kuhnle has a copy of the report this Senate adopted this last January, a committee chaired by Dr. Larry Gerber regarding the presidential search.  Dr. Kuhnle is quite familiar with Auburn University.  He’s been engaged in searches before.  I know I was involved in one search committee that brought in Dr. Bob McGinnis as Vice President for Development.  He understands the strengths and challenges of this university and the Senate leadership has exchanged communication with him, wished him well, told him we would work closely with him and we are one of the groups that will be meeting with him tomorrow.  There are other groups as well.  There is one committee that is called Title VI that relates to a court order that refers to needs of this campus to recruit and retain African-American students and faculty and other professionals, and that is a group that will be meeting with Dr. Kuhnle as well.  I don’t know who else is meeting with him. 

 

Most of you realize that SACS came to town soon after the Board met and that one of the committee’s concerns had to do with the presidential search.  The Executive Committee of the Senate met with the SACS special committee and I’ve shared with senators notes from that meeting.  The committee, special committee, struck me and the Executive Committee who met with them, as perceptive and well prepared and fully aware of many of the concerns that many of us in this room have regarding Auburn University that we’ve had over the years.  I anticipate that the committee will come forward with a set of suggestions regarding governance issues at Auburn University, but we will have to see until after the December meeting of SACS to find out exactly what their determination is. 

 

And as Dr. Heilman mentioned, the Board’s scheduled meeting on October 28th I imagine in addition to the discussion of the presidential search there may be some discussion on the Strategic Plan, but that remains to be determined.  At this Board meeting, our faculty was well represented on a number of committees.  I’ve put up here a list of names.  Dr. Willie Larkin, our Immediate Past Chair, serves ex-officio non-voting on the Board of Trustees.  I serve ex-officio non-voting on Academic Affairs and all the other members that you see listed, faculty members that you see listed, are our representatives on these committees of the Board of Trustees.  The only two committees of the Board without faculty representation are the Executive Committee of the Board and their Audit Committee.  These are all new representatives, faculty representatives on the Board.  I think they all did quite well representing the faculty.  Senate leadership met with this group before the first Board meeting.  We invited Steve Williams out of Building Science, who was on the previous group of faculty representatives.  He had been, I think, the most active of faculty representatives and it was useful, I think, for Steve to talk to this group, share with them the experiences and know what to expect at the meeting and the faculty reps to the Board committees suggested that we continue having these meetings the week of the Board meeting to discuss how to work with the Board.

 

While I am sharing lists with you, I’m happy to note that the Senate Executive Committee has done something in which the Handbook requires that we do and that is within the first six weeks of the fall semester, I think we’re probably within that, that we identify and appoint a Nominating Committee, which will be responsible for developing a slate of candidates for the positions of Chair-elect, currently held by Richard Penaskovic, and Secretary-elect, currently held by Kathryn Flynn.  I’ve asked Jim Bradley, who’s a past chair of the University Senate, to serve as a convening chair.  The Nominating Committee after they first meet, their first task will be to select from among their members a chair.  The work of this committee is very important.  The choice of leaders for this body and the university faculty is -- I think we can all appreciate -- is an important job of the faculty.  I encourage you to consider yourself the possibility that you might run for an office of the faculty.  It’s very time consuming. It’s also very rewarding in many ways.  Let me mention a material way and acknowledge the work of previous Senate Chairs, including John Mouton who’s with us here, that the university is now providing certain material benefits to Senate officers.  There’s some salary increase, there’s sabbatical opportunity and there’s also an office with a budget, a little bit of travel et cetera.  I don’t want to go into details here, Dr. Bradley’s got that material, I’ve got that material, and the Senate Officers have that material, and would be glad to talk to anyone interested in serving.  None of us serve in a role like Senate Chair or Secretary, least of all Secretary, for the money or necessarily the glory, but it’s the importance of service to this university and this body the Senate and the faculty.  It is nice, however, to recognize, to see that the university recognizes the service in these very practical manners.

 

I’d also like to announce that tomorrow there will be an open forum of the AAUP.  It is going to be in Thach Hall tomorrow afternoon at 3:30.  You see before you the names of the speakers.  I believe that Elizabeth Derrick, a person who was involved in the state of Georgia at the state level when that state developed their Post Tenure Review policy.  That policy could be influential in the policy that may someday be adopted on this campus, and I anticipate that this will be a very interesting forum.  For those of you in this room who may be interested in Post-Tenure Review, I’d also note that I anticipate, though the agenda has not been set, I anticipate at the October 18th meeting of the University Faculty, two weeks from today here, that we will have on the agenda Post-Tenure Review.  So there will be opportunities for discussion quite likely, and I would encourage input from this body. Quite likely we’ll discuss such at the November meeting of the Senate as well.

 

The Steering Committee has its minutes posted on the web, as Dr. Duffy has alerted you.  It’s at the Steering Committee that we’ve had a lengthy discussion on different models associated with the Post Tenure Review.  I think we’ll continue this Thursday afternoon at the next Steering Committee meeting.  What we are doing as the Steering Committee is not making decisions for this body for the faculty or for anybody else, but rather what we’re trying to do is use our best talents to clarify what are some of the issues and what are the possible options and then once we have that material, we will bring that forward for a full and thorough discussion.

 

We’ve been busy as the Senate leadership on a number of other fronts.  The Alumni Board met last, weekend before last during Homecoming.  I attended those meetings.  I think maintaining good relationships between the faculty and alumni is a very important obligation of the Senate leadership and I was quite pleased to attend that meeting.  We’ve also been working with the committee on Non-Tenure Track Instructors.  There have been some issues associated with the Cooperative Extension System transforming, reclassifying the positions of a number of faculty and determining that these positions are actually A&P employees instead of faculty and that has implications for the rights and status of faculty, so the Senate leadership has been looking at that.  We’ve also been looking at a set of issues related to patents, inventions, and licensing agreements and the Senate leadership is planning on appointing an ad hoc committee to conduct an independent assessment of this important area.

 

That concludes the comments I have.  I’d be glad to entertain any questions that are from this body.  Seeing none, let me invite then David King, who is the past chair of the Welfare Committee to come present a report of his committee’s work on uncompensated work performed by nine-month faculty.

 

Dr. David King, Geology/Past Chair, Welfare Committee: Thank you, Conner.

 

So what I’m going to do now is make a PowerPoint presentation on the results of a study conducted by the faculty Welfare Committee in 2004 on uncompensated summer work performed by nine-month faculty.

 

The history of this is that in 2002, the Welfare Committee discussed this issue and decided that it was an appropriate matter for the committee to investigate.  During ’03-’04, the committee met several times to discuss and design a survey instrument to be used to gather data pertinent to this question and the committee agreed on an appropriate set of questions after these meetings.  In April 2004 I met with Provost Hanley and gained the Provost’s Office permission to post the survey on the AU webpage.  In July 2004 I prepared the necessary internal review board documents for the use of human subjects and this IRB number was approved.  In July and August 2004 the survey was set up as a webpage under votes.auburn.edu behind a log-in page that required a password and user ID.  The survey instrument was tested then it was opened from a date sometime in August through October 2004.  Last fall semester it was open to nine-month faculty input.  We made an email announcement twice to all nine-month faculty, once at the outset and once near the end of the survey period.  One announcement was made in the AU Daily and that occurred near the mid-point of the survey period.  Of the 1,014 nine-month faculty with valid email addresses on the Auburn University main campus, 321 or a 31.7% responded to the survey during that period. 

 

These are the job codes that were open to people to respond.  Anyone who did not fall into one of these three job codes was not allowed to access the survey instrument and basically when we emailed those, we emailed them as a group.

 

This is the survey instrument as it appeared on the web.  If you were to log into votes.auburn.edu, basically it says the title here and it defines what the summer term is-May 15th to August 15th-and don’t answer any questions if you’re somehow not nine-month employee and so the first thing was that you hit a button to indicate what college you were in then there were seven questions:

 

  1. Is working at Auburn during the summer, whether paid or unpaid, expected by your department?   Yes/No

 

  1. Is it expected that you seek support from outside sources (e.g. grants or contracts) during the summer term?  Yes/No

 

  1. Do you think that unpaid summer work is expected of you for tenure, promotion, or merit raises?  Yes/No

 

  1. Whether you received any summer salary in recent years or not, do you typically perform tasks over the summer that you consider to be work for the University (i.e. work in furtherance of your assigned duties) for which you’re not compensated?  Yes/No

 

  1. In recent years, how many unpaid hours (i.e. person hours) have you worked for Auburn University during a typical summer?  Include all type of work-and there’s a calculation here-for example: 8 hours/day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks=160 hours.  And so the answers would be in one of these boxes:

 

    • Zero
    • 1 to 25 hours
    • 26-100 hours and so on up to over 300 and then a ‘Prefer not to say” box

 

Then question 6 was: If you typically work for Auburn during the summer and receive no compensation for some or all your work, what is the nature of the work for which you’re not fully compensated?

 

  • Supervising graduate students  Yes/No
  • Teaching classes  Yes/No
  • Working on funded grants  Yes/No
  • Working on grant proposals  Yes/No
  • Outreach  Yes/No
  • Service  Yes/No
  • Other  Yes/No

 

And the last question was: Do you think that the university should provide summer support for a faculty member who is expected to work during the summer term?  Yes/No/Not sure

 

So, the distribution of the 321 respondents was across various colleges: some in Ag, Architecture, Business, a few more in Education, Engineering.  I think one person in Forestry, Humanities, a vast number-almost 90 people-in Liberal Arts.  A few in Nursing and one didn’t indicate.  Pharmacy, Science and Math and there’s a unknown.

 

Subject of the distribution of the respondents; as you can see most of the respondents were either Science, Math, Liberal Arts or Engineering.  This is the way the data was collected.  You can see how Question 1 would be tabulated.  If the person hit the Yes box, it would drop into one of these categories according to the college.  If they hit No, it would drop into one of those and blank and then it would get a total here.  And each one of the questions basically the data fell in this way.

 

So this now is a presentation of the results per question.  This is Question #1 about paid or unpaid work expected by your department.  As you can see, somewhat of the majority, strong majority, said yes.  If you break that down by college, you see that there are some disparities and differences.  For example, in Agriculture there’s a strong Yes response, but when you look at Architecture, it’s No.  Business, yes but really close in Education, Engineering a little more in terms of yes, Liberal Arts, close, but a few more no, strongly yes in Science and Math.

 

Is it an expectation that you seek outside support and interestingly there is a slight majority response of no there.  But then again, if you look at it by school, college, it’s a different story there.  Agriculture strongly yes, Architecture on the no side, Business no, Education no, Engineering strongly yes, Humanities about 2/3 yes, strongly Liberal Arts no, Science and Math strongly yes. 

 

Is unpaid work expected of you for tenure, promotion and merit raises?  Again the majority, strong majority, yes.  But then again if you break it down by school or college, you see differences.  Agriculture saying yes, Architecture saying no for example-this is very close, almost 50/50-most of these-Liberal Arts on the yes, Science and Math, majority yes.

 

Do you typically perform unpaid summer work for Auburn?  Very strong yes response overall and by college, yes, yes, yes, yes,…..about the only one evenly split was Nursing and it was a very small sample.

 

In recent years, how many unpaid hours have you worked for Auburn University in a typical summer?  Using that formula that was inserted into the question: zero-just over 60 responses, 1-25 hours about 45, 26-100 nearly 80 and that would be the peak, and 101-200 hours somewhere in the 50’s, and then it drops off from there to over 300 prefer not to say.

 

This is a very busy graph, if you take the time to look-it is on the web-if you take the time to look at it, it is interesting in that there are some notable sort of points that stand out and the main peak there that we saw before in the 26-100 hours stands out strongly here.  One thing that I think that’s remarkable is in Liberal Arts, those guys report, quite a few of them report 100-200 hours and in Science and Math there’s a strong peak to over 300 hours. 

 

What’s the nature of the work?  Graduate student supervision-someone could mark more than one response here-teaching classes, very few unpaid teaching classes, funded research, I would assume not adequately funded research, writing grant proposals, outreach activities, service activities are probably the peak and then other here.  Then again, if you look at that by college and school, it’s maybe not so revealing with the ones where there’s not many responses, say in Liberal Arts for example, graduate student supervision is very high, service activities and other, which I don’t understand-maybe someone from Liberal Arts can tell us-and Science and Math very much toward the graduate students, service activities.

 

So do you think that Auburn University should provide support for faculty members?  No one said no.  A few were unsure, a vast majority said yes.  And if you break that down by college and school, you see that Yellow would be unsure, majority yes.

 

So anyway, in concluding remarks, of these 321 respondents, their response rate was about 32%, which is considered to be a good response rate for a survey.  Any time you get better than 30%, that’s a good deal.  Most respondents were in Liberal Arts, Engineering and Science & Math and Education; overall more respondents say that summer work, paid or unpaid, is expected.  2/3 or more of the respondents in Ag, Nursing, COSAM agree on this point.

 

Overall there’s a slight majority, over 50%, who say that finding outside summer support is not expected by the department but by overwhelming majority the respondents of Ag, Engineering and COSAM disagree with their peers on this point.

 

Overall more respondents, 56%, say that summer work is expected by their department for tenure, promotion and merit raises.  Two-thirds or more respondents in Ag, Liberal Arts, COSAM agree on this point.

 

Overall the vast majority of respondents-over81%-say that they perform unpaid summer work for Auburn, well over 2/3 at all schools and colleges, with more than 4 people answering that question. 

 

And the modal, or most marked, response for colleges regarding unpaid summer work would be Ag: 26-100 hours, Architecture: 1-25, Business: 0, Education: 26-100, Engineering: the same, Human Sciences: 0, Liberal Arts: 26-200, Science and Math both were marked as over 300 hours.  Overall, the most common types of unpaid work were graduate supervision and service.  And those two things are marked most by the same set of colleges as the responses with what they do. 

 

So overwhelmingly the majority say that Auburn should compensate nine-month faculty who are, quote, “expected to work summer term”.  No respondents indicated no and there were 261/2% not sure.

 

On behalf of the Welfare Committee I’d like to thank Janet Sugg in OIT for helping to put the web instrument up and so I’ll be available to answer any of your questions if appropriate at this time, Conner.

 

Dr. Bailey: Thank you, David.  Are there any questions for Dr. King?  While you’re thinking of questions, I think this demonstrates the subsistity the faculty provides to the university in a very important manner, tenured and non-tenured faculty alike.  Are there any questions?  Thank you very much David.

 

Dr. King: Thank you, Conner.

 

Dr. Bailey: Let me now introduce again to you Dr. John Heilman, who is going to speak to us about the, what I’m calling the ‘initiative that was formerly known as Agriculture’.

 

Dr. John Heilman, Provost: Conner, thank you very much.  And for those of you who didn’t quite contextualize what Conner just said, there’s one of Dr. Richardson’s initiatives, the Ag Initiative.  A substantial amount of work was done on that over the past many months that I think a feeling that in fact has been discussed in this chamber is that the ideas that came out of that did not have the benefit of broad, widespread faculty input.  And about five or six weeks ago I spoke with Dr. Richardson about this matter and proposed that a course of action, which I decided to call The Initiative for Alabama.  That’s my name for it because I wanted to get away from the notion of Agriculture as necessarily the heart of the initiative.  Dr. Richardson himself, I believe, has emphasized that what we are talking about is an idea, a framework that is broader than a single college.  And I told Dr. Richardson that working with the faculty and other constituent groups that could provide input; we had some of that already, that by the end of November we would put forward some recommendations on three issues and they are as follows:

 

  1. A vision for Agriculture and related areas. In this case, it’s extending across the university.  An academic vision and certainly this means to a significant extent, a research and outreach vision that connects faculty to the 21st century scientific forefront and to the 21st century needs of the people of Alabama.   Why the focus on the people and communities of Alabama and beyond?  One reason is that, I think, that’s part of our land-grant mission.  But beyond that, significant funding comes to work in these areas through the experiment station and the cooperative extension system, which have basically a mandate to address problems that are out there and applied problems.
  2. Second, the first vision, the funding pool to support implementation of the vision and its associated goals, to support work that would pursue it and,
  3. An organizational structure to direct the funding pool to projects and programs that would help implement the vision and its associated goals.  And a term that has been associated with the structural matter is institute.

 

What I have done is to first of all assemble a group of faculty leaders to, and some administrators who are involved in this-the director of the experiment station/extension system and others-to work on basically six tasks that, on the basis of discussion, we felt would carry us, would put us in a position to present recommendations to Dr. Richardson.  The first of these tasks is the development of a vision for this initiative at Auburn and I’ll just read a couple of words from a summary I sent out to members of the group:

 

What is the vision, for example, what is the future for vision-oriented work at Auburn in food, fibers, fuel, aquatics, and other natural resources? 

 

This list is meant to be illustrative, not to constrict and constrain.  I’ve asked Tim Boosinger and Mike Moriarty to lead that process and there has been activity as recently as this week in that regard.  Charles Laughlin, (former) director of the Colorado State, Colorado Experiment Station, Colorado State, also Dean and Director of the College of Agriculture and the Experiment Station at Hawaii-Manoa campus and also a USDA Administrator was on campus yesterday and held two three-hour, I guess they could be called visioning sessions, with a total of 36 faculty who had been, two from every department in Agriculture and two from every other college outside Agriculture to begin the process of visioning and provide reactions to a broad set of suggestions that were shared with them.  That process took place and I believe this morning Dr. Moriarty, Dean Boosinger and Steve McFarland met with Barbara Struempler and Kathryn Flynn to plan a process for providing broad-based campus input on the themes that emerged.  I said previously and I’d like to affirm that the intention in this is to open the process up to the full extent possible to provide for broad-based input and discussion.  You’ll note that there’s a fairly short time frame on review of the method that I described for proceeding.  We felt that it was expeditious and it’s kind of like a funnel-we opened up quickly to provide for broad input and that means for doing so were discussed this morning, although I’ve not been involved in a close discussion with the planning that resulted.

 

Second area of work-an examination.  If we’re looking-the first area deals with what we think, the drive that we have as a faculty.  There is the question also, I think, of what is out there in the world that we connect to and the second area of work is on the direction for Agriculture, ascertaining or exploring the direction of Agriculture through agri-business and related areas in Alabama and in the United States.  I’ve asked David Wilson, Conner Bailey, Richard Guthrie, and Bob Locy to lead this process.  Four groups, subgroups, have been formed in that area to explore and report back, at least briefly, on these subjects:

1. National resources, environmental and land use issues

2. Production systems for the 21st century

3. Rural development systems

4. Innovation

 

The third step is to put the results of steps 1&2 together and that will happen after those reports are in, which will be mid to latter part of this month. 

 

Fourth is the issue of organizational structures for the initiative, what exists elsewhere, what has been previously proposed at Auburn and I note that there are reports going back at least 15, maybe as far as 25 years talking about this set of issues.  So the university has taken a number of runs at this set of questions and there is some material and previous thought to work with, although not to be constrained by.  Here I’ve asked Richard Guthrie, Gaines Smith-Richard is both Dean of Agriculture and director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Gaines is Director of the Cooperative Extension System-Andrew Clark to lead this effort. 

 

Fifth is the matter of funding strategies for the initiative.  Where do resources come from?  How do we support work that addresses the vision?  And I’ve asked Don Large and Sharon Gaber to work on this.

 

Sixth is the development of an information and communication support system to sustain discussion on the first five of the overall project.  Steve McFarland in my office has taken the lead on that and I believe that it is a web-based system that he has established at least in part as a vehicle for campus-wide discussion of the ideas that are now out in play.

 

That’s my story and I’m…

 

Dr. Bailey: And you’re sticking to it.  Those of you who were here in late spring, I believe it was in May, we had a lengthy discussion on the Ag Initiative.  You can see that this initiative has taken a new direction, a far more open direction and a campus-based direction and so John, I appreciate that very much and your efforts to make this happen.  Are there any questions for Dr. Heilman?  This is a very important initiative.  It’s going to affect directly at least 20 percent of the faculty on this campus and probably much more than that because many of our colleagues in colleges that are not currently funded by the Ag Experiment Station may be able to work with, funded by, with research projects or extension or outreach projects with the resources available, you may find funding opportunities available.  The needs of the state are enormous and the resources that we have in terms of human capital, financial capital, are limited so we are going to make the best use of those resources, I hope.

 

Dr. Heilman: Conner has said it at least as well as I could do it.  I’d like to say also that I do believe there is a sense of urgency in doing this.  That history of reports that had been prepared, very thoughtful, a lot of work gone into them by various able people and then there hasn’t really been closure.  It’s an impressive history and I think it’s important that we reach some sense, some consensus, on direction and what we’re going to do.  We have the opportunity to do this now in a way that provides, and that is my intention for strong faculty participation and I believe this is the opportunity that we should take and capitalize on.  Yes sir?

 

Dr. Bailey: Could you identify yourself?

 

Tom Sanders, Library: I’m not a senator.  I’ve guess I’ve been kind of concerned by these later remarks that this is going to be another Peaks of Excellence program, i.e. rob Peter to pay Paul, and that the people who are not within the areas defined will find resources redirected away from their efforts and that this leads back to efforts on the part of the Board of Trustees from many years back to redirect the university to being strictly and undergraduate and agricultural research institute and away from the full university level that was adopted in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

 

Dr. Heilman: I understand that concern.  My thought really is the purpose of this is to provide for strength in programming.  I know that even I myself have spoke in general of the Peaks of Excellence concept, but the notion that has driven my thinking in that regard is the notion of an entity that is able to direct resources to an agreed-upon agenda for research, outreach, instruction, whatever.  The other piece that you referred to, which is taking money from somewhere else, certainly came out of the work that was done that also produced the Peaks of Excellence, but I don’t know; that connection has not been made in any of the discussions that I’ve been part of.  And I would say that this is an initiative that is driven by Dr. Richardson and it is an internally generated initiative.  I hear what you’re saying, but that’s the best response I can provide.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there further questions for Dr. Heilman?  If not, thank you, sir.  May I please invite then our colleague Bill Sauser to talk about the Strategic Plan, developments that have taken place on the Strategic Plan in recent weeks.

 

Dr. Bill Sauser, Associate Dean, Business: As I was approaching the podium, my dear friend Herb Rotfeld said, ‘Bill, please be brief!’ and so I will.  Thank you, Herb. 

 

I gave an extensive report to the Board of Trustees on September 15th at one of their meetings and that entire presentation is posted to the website, the Strategic Planning website.  It’s got a lot more detail than I’ll comment on today, but I did want to brief you on where we stand and what’s going on.  You’ll recall that we’ve got really a three phase process going on.  The first phase, on which we concentrated back in June and July, is to determine the proper questions to ask.  The right questions that need to be asked in the process of putting the plan together.  We had a lot of participation in that and for that I very much appreciate the work of those here in this room.  We had well over a hundred people  involved in seeking to identify questions and through a participative process, we identified 15 key questions and each of those, of course, had sub questions involved so that we could get into the issues in more detail.  Those questions, of course, are posted to the web as well.

 

Second phase is the one we are just now completing.  It’s been scheduled for August and September.  September’s ended and we have indeed collected data on it.  Second phase is to answer the questions, so we had the 15 key questions and again, a lot of participation.  We had undergraduate and graduate students involved, staff, administrators, professionals, a number of faculty, deans, vice presidents, community leaders, all were involved in helping us answer the questions.  We did that through a series of six forums that we held earlier in the semester and then we had the web survey available also and a number of people took part in that.  Others sent to me some responses through email and so forth and those have also been included.  We sought to include every response that we received.  Led to about 200 pages of ideas; we’re in the process of knocking out duplicates and so forth.  We have about 50 pages right now, very strong ideas focused on answering those six questions, and I’ll be working with Vern Herr and others to put that final list together so that we can share that with the president.

 

The third phase was scheduled for October and November and that third phase is to draft the plan.  A rather ambitious schedule to be completed by December, but that’s what we’ve been working on.  The idea was to bring a draft to the Board in November for their review and then in February, the Board would be asked to take action on that draft. 

 

I made that progress report, as I stated, on September 15th and at the conclusion of the report, the trustees began making comments and one of the comments was that they really would like to have an external perspective of before they consider the plan.  So there was discussion about the possibilities of comparative information from around the country and some external perspective.  And so I understand that process is now going to take place, an external perspective will be sought.  John Heilman told me that he’d be glad to respond to questions about that or to describe that, and then we’ll move on into Phase III, which is drafting the plan.  So that’s my report.  Conner?

 

Dr. Bailey: Before I ask John Heilman to come up and complete this report, let me ask if there are any questions the audience has for Dr. Sauser?  Then John, may I ask you to come forward and update the Senate on where the Strategic Plan currently resides.

 

Dr. Heilman: I think the Strategic Plan currently resides in process which Bill has begun.  The Board heard the results of Phase I.  Information with respect, which is, what are the questions.  Information on Phase II has been collected and Bill’s going to continue to put that together.  The Board, I think, having the information that Bill provided on what are the questions, I think it gives the Board a basis on which to become engaged and I think we knew all along at some point the Board would become engaged.  I recall early in Dr. Richardson’s discussion of Strategic Planning, he pointed out that boards are there to do maybe two things, those things are select presidents and identify strategic objectives for the university.  Dr. Richardson is in the process of engaging a consultant to work with the Board on the issue of the external environment.  Dr. Richardson indicated to me he expects that the consultant will work with the Board around the time of the February board meeting, that’s early February and is in Montgomery.  Once we have the results of the Board’s thinking, then, I’d say, we are positioned to do what Bill has described.  Recall, that a key to Strategic Planning is the operational planning that describes how we will proceed in practice and we will be proceeding with that and I expect Bill to continue his leadership role in that phase of the overall process.

 

Dr. Bailey: Are there any questions for either Dr. Sauser or Dr. Heilman?  Rik?

 

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: John, what is meant by “external”?  Is this external perspective of some groups from other universities or is this external perspective once again from the Cattleman’s Association?

 

Dr. Heilman: No, I think that the, it’s a fair question and external, as far as I can determine, refers to a set of issues in swat-what is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities.  That analysis, you take a look at the external environments-politically, socially, economically and say ‘Ok, what’s out there?  What are the constraints that we’re going to be operating within?  What do we expect the world to look like and what does that tell us about what strategic objectives might work for us and what strategies we might successfully pursue to achieve them?’  I think that is the focus of what’s involved.  An environmental scan, that’s my understanding of it.

 

Dr. Bailey: Any other questions for Dr. Heilman or Dr. Sauser?  If there are none, then I am going to hand over the gavel for the rest of this meeting to Dr. Rich Penaskovic and ask a question of my own.

 

Conner Bailey, Chair of the Senate, stepping aside as Chair of this meeting:   Dr. Heilman, if we’re needing to look at external affairs as they relate to the Strategic Plan, why, and that’s not a bad idea on the part of members of the Board to recommend that, what let the Board think that we were not in fact already scoping, looking at the larger environment of which we are a part and to the extent that we had not adequately focused perhaps on external affairs, why could not the Board simply have given us a recommendation and allowed us to proceed with a campus-based Strategic Plan initiative?

 

Dr. Heilman: Well, Conner, there are two parts to that question.  I’ve got an answer, at least that’s the answer that I feel comfortable with, to the first part of your question, and I don’t have an answer to the second part.  The first part is why do they think this mattered and why did we need to look at it and I think the answer to that is by the terms that this was set up and what had been done, that was not a major part of the discussion.  Could it have been?  Yes.  Was it? No, but that’s how the project developed as we conducted it.  With respect to Part 2, why did the Board decide to proceed in this manner, that is, seeking a consultant to advise them on that, I can’t speak to that.  It may well be that there are members of the Board who are experienced in Strategic Planning, certainly in the private sector and their experience in that regard may have led them to feel that it would be constructive to have a consultant to work with them on that subject.  But that is speculation on my part and I cannot speak for the Board.

 

Dr. Bailey: I have another question if no one else has a question. 

 

Dr. Richardson has justified his second year as Interim President with the need to establish institutional control.  Can you tell us how the change in control over the Strategic Plan reflects institutional control?

 

Dr. Heilman: To me, institutional control refers to the appropriate allocation, responsibility between the trustees and the administration.  Back from square one, I think Dr. Richardson’s view and I think to some extent my view too, that’s why I said earlier, we knew the Board would get involved.  Strategic planning and the establishment of strategic objectives is something Boards of Trustees do.  So if, and I don’t want to put words into your mouth, if I may appropriately interpret your question as ‘Is this running counter to what Dr. Richardson is intending to do?’, I don’t think so because this is precisely an area in which the Board has constitutional and constitutive responsibility.

 

Dr. Richard Penaskovic, Chair-Elect: Any other questions?

 

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: My question is, do you have any idea, now that the Board has taken its own initiative and is hiring an outside consultant, of whether all that feedback and the hours I spent at several of these meetings typing away will mean anything?  I mean, I talked to other people during this process.  Professor Sauser was very upbeat and kept me feeling like I was participating in something and this would mean something.  All my colleagues in my department said ‘Why are you wasting your time?  They’re just going to ignore you, you’re faculty anyway’, and I’m wondering have we just hit that point where now the Strategic Plan has been taken away from faculty input, the plan that Dr. Sauser put together which really was a university driven plan, to develop a strategic plan, and now it’s being taken out and some group of consultants who are also paid by agencies we don’t know and have loyalties to people we will never know, are going to decide what our strategic plan is.  Do you know how this is going to fold back together?  Do you see it folding back together at all?

 

Dr. Heilman:  I think, Rik, there are several-I understand the question you’re asking-there are several comments that were fit into that discussion that I’ll probably take some exception to.  I do not believe the Board will retain a consultant.  I believe Dr. Richardson will retain a consultant.  I don’t think, I would be very surprised if the consultant’s job would be to write a strategic plan.  I expect that a consultant that would be retained by Dr. Richardson would be one with credentials sufficient to establish his or her independence of thought.  And I’m not trying to bat down the things that you’re saying, but those are points that I do want to put in record.  In terms of this being taken away from the faculty, and the critical point you raised, which is an awful lot of people and a whole bunch of them sitting in this room, put a whole boatload of time into this and in fact really cared and believed and were invested in it so is all that going to just dribble away in the sand?  I don’t think so.  I recall that when Board input comes back, whatever form that takes, the same set of ideas that we developed and continue to develop with Bill’s work in terms of how do we answer the questions, is going to be there as a resource to work with and in terms of the implementation of any plan, the operational planning, that’s an administrative responsibility within the university.  I would just comment, I think the information that Bill provided to the Board at the meeting on just what are the questions that are being asked, I believe it has begun to enter into board members’ thinking.  At the Board meeting, at least one member of the Board quoted specifically from one piece of what was in there and so it had gotten attention.  So I’m, are the questions that you’re asking fair?  Sure.  Do I believe there will a real application and a meaningful contribution of the work that has been done so far and will continue to be done in the final product, yes I do.  Do I have a responsibility to urge that that be done?  Yes.

 

Dr. Penaskovic: Cindy?

 

Dr. Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: And I hope that my thoughts clarify over the next 10 seconds or so.  I’ve been troubled by this process since the outset, and we’ve reached two extremes, both extremes.  I wish that what Bill had taken to the Board had had more clarity than it did.  I was concerned that there was no filter that could bring our thoughts together.  I was concerned that if five people wrote down ‘Auburn needs to be a good four-year undergraduate institution’, that that would become the theme under that subheading.  I had no idea how all of the information we were bringing forward relative to the 15 questions would be constructed into a report to the Board that said ‘These are the things we think are important and these are what we think are the answers’.  Now, in exchange for that offering, the Board has said, my interpretation now, ‘That’s ok, don’t worry.  We’ll do it.  We’ll take care of it.  We’re gonna, via Dr. Richardson, hire a consultant and since it’s our job anyway to develop strategic goals, we appreciate all the effort you’ve invested in this as faculty, but don’t worry about it anymore, because we’re going to handle it.’  Now I’m overstating the case but if you detect some paranoia in the audience, I think that’s the basis of the paranoia.  What I would like to see is some joint effort, even beyond this point, such that the Board develops strategic goals and then brings them back to the faculty and says to us ‘Now, is that what you were thinking?  Are these things that you agree with us on, are the key directions that Auburn should take?’  What I dread is that we’re totally out of the loop at this point forward and that we’ll be reading about the new strategic plan in the newspaper, six months from now.

 

Dr. Heilman: Just a comment on the first part of your question/statement, Cindy.  I think that what Bill-I’m going to speak for Bill; Bill don’t hesitate to correct, add-but I think that the ambient of what Bill was intending to do in that presentation is somewhat less that what you conveyed in what you said.  It was to tell the Board ‘We’re in a multi-stage process, here’s the results of Stage I’, and it was a summary statement.  As you know, a summary statement summarizes stuff and there is a lot of stuff, as you know, hundreds of pages of comment that were wrapped up in what he said.  It would be my firm hope and expectation that in the newspapers six months from now we will read about a strategic plan, but it will be one in which the faculty and the other constituents within the institution have continued to have an effective voice, which I think we’ve had to this point.  Again, I understand that one could take the view of the Board as ‘Ok, we’ll handle it from here’, but I do not believe that to be the case and for the reporters in the room, I would note having said that ‘I do not believe that to be the case.’  Thank you.

 

 I’d like to offer one additional point and that is the, part of the rationale for the strategic planning process, I’ll put it this way: strategic planning will raise the question of governance and respective roles.  My own view is that the driver in the strategic plan is not that as an issue so much as it is describing where the institution is heading strategically so that, first of all, candidates in a national search for president will know what it is that they’re going to be expected to do and can figure out whether this is an institution that has an agenda that’s interesting to them and the other side of that equation is that we here can use the strategic objectives to help us judge the qualifications of candidates to lead us to those objectives.

 

Dr. Penaskovic: Any other questions for Dr. Heilman?  Thank you, John.

 

Dr. Heilman: Thank you very much.

 

Dr. Penaskovic: Do we have any unfinished business?  What about new business?  I don’t know do I need a motion to adjourn?  So moved, adjourned.