Transcript
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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:
Then question 6 was: If you
typically work for
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
In recent years, how many unpaid hours have you
worked for
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
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
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
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
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
What is the
vision, for example, what is the future for vision-oriented work at
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
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
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 ‘
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.